Matthew Heimbach, founder of the TWP, is facing felony charges of assault. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog reported yesterday that Heimbach attacked his wife and her step-father, TWP spokesman Matt Parrott, after they confronted him over his affair with his mother-in-law, Parrott’s wife. Yes, that’s right: Heimbach was sleeping with his wife’s mother, according to the police report. And he didn’t love being confronted about it, the SPLC says:
“He grabbed and injured my hand after I poked his chest then choked me out with his arm,” Parrott said in a handwritten statement to police. “Then he chased me to my home and did it again.”
After police arrived, the responding officer overheard a verbal confrontation between Heimbach and his wife, followed by a “scuffle,” the report states. Heimbach’s wife said her husband kicked a wall, grabbed her face “and threw me with the hand on my face onto the bed.” Police said the step-daughter recorded the attack on her cellphone.
This isn’t Heimbach’s first alleged act of violence against women, but it could be the act that ends TWP. TWP was always mostly Heimbach and Parrott, who doubled as the group’s webmaster; since Heimbach’s arrest, Parrott deleted TWP’s website and membership rolls. While Heimbach could try to re-invent himself as a white nationalist leader, it will be difficult: He was already engaged in power struggles with other alt-right figures.
Unlike Richard Spencer, Heimbach based his ideology at least in part on his reliogisity; he joined a heretical Russian Orthodox sect after the Orthodox church excommunicated him for his white supremacist beliefs. So much for traditional family values.