A Terrible Reminder That White Supremacy and Patriarchy Are Inextricably Linked

[Content Note: White supremacy; domestic violence; descriptions of violence.]

White supremacist Matthew Heimbach, who came to national prominence by leading a hate group, shoving anti-racist protesters, and being quoted in a number of shameful Nazi-normalizing features in various news publications, has been arrested for domestic battery.

Marwa Eltagouri at the Washington Post reports:

Heimbach was charged with assaulting his wife and his wife's stepfather, Matt Parrott, who is also co-founder of Heimbach's Traditionalist Worker Party. The organization is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a new white nationalist group masking itself in "traditionalism."

About 1 a.m. Tuesday morning, Parrott, 36, called police from a Walmart in Paoli, Ind., according to a police report obtained by the SPLC. Parrott told police he had fled to the Walmart with his stepdaughter after a confrontation with Heimbach, who had allegedly been involved in an affair with Parrott's wife. The stepdaughter told police that the affair had lasted three months but had recently ended.

But that night, according to the police report, Parrott caught Heimbach with his wife. He confronted Heimbach and told him to get off his property, but Heimbach wouldn't leave. Parrott poked his chest, then Heimbach allegedly grabbed Parrott's hand and twisted it down. Heimbach got behind Parrott and "choked him out" with his arm, according to the police report.

Parrott told police he briefly lost consciousness. When he woke up, he again told Heimbach to get off his property, and Heimbach again tried to choke him, according to the police report. Parrott again lost consciousness, and upon waking up heard his wife tell Heimbach to track down his stepdaughter's phone because it had a recording of Heimbach and Parrott's wife together, according to the police report. Parrott and the stepdaughter escaped to the Walmart.

After police met Parrott at the Walmart, they left to track down Heimbach, and found him in a verbal confrontation with his own wife. Heimbach's wife told police that her husband grabbed her face and "threw me with the hand on my face onto the bed."

All four people involved in the incident stated their occupations were "White Nationalists" in the police report.

That Heimbach is a violent domestic abuser should come as no surprise. Despite their reprehensible, patriarchal rhetoric about "protecting" women, men who are grotesque racists don't treat women well, either. White supremacy and the patriarchy are inextricably tied together, and men who view exacting violence against people of color as their vocation don't come home from a long day of being vile shits to be loving husbands and fathers.

The human mind isn't built to compartmentalize eliminationist hatred so it can happily coexist with a healthy, functional, loving home life. White supremacists run profoundly abusive households.

And I want to highlight that Heimbach repeatedly choked his stepfather-in-law, because that is not an insignificant detail. To the contrary:

"Strangulation inhabits a category all its own in domestic violence as a marker of lethality. A kick, a punch, a slap, a bite — none of these, though terrible, portend homicide like strangulation does."https://t.co/Mc30CFVfKk

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 4, 2018

This is a dangerous man on a very dangerous path, who is increasingly violent at home. That is a major red flag.

I desperately hope that Heimbach encounters and engages with someone from a group like Life After Hate and abandons this heinous trajectory. It is the only intervention I can imagine having even a chance of altering his course of violence, which is chillingly being empowered and encouraged every day from the highest office in the nation.