Traditionalist Worker Party
 | |
| Formation | 2013 |
|---|---|
| Type | Non-governmental organization |
| Legal status | Active |
| Headquarters | North Carolina |
Region served | United States |
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) | Matthew Heimbach |
The Traditionalist Youth Network (TYN) is a small white supremacist group in the United States. Established in 2013, the group promotes a racist interpretation of Christianity.
History
TYN was established in May 2013 by Matthew Heimbach and Matt Parrott.[1] Heimbach has been a white supremacist activist since fall 2011, when he formed a group at Towson University in Maryland and invited the white supremacist Jared Taylor to speak at Towson's campus. The following year, Heimbach founded a "White Student Union" on campus, adopting racist and antisemitic views.[1] In spring 3013, upon graduation, Heimbach established TYN in partnership with Parrot, who founded a white supremacist group, Hoosier Nation, in Indiana around 2009.[1] Parrot is also a white supremacist group eventually became a chapter of American Third Position (later known as the American Freedom Party).[1]
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks extremist groups, has written of Heimbach: "Considered by many to be the face of a new generation of white nationalists ... Since graduating in the spring of 2013, he has entrenched himself further in the white nationalist movement and become a regular speaker on the radical-right lecture circuit."[2]
Views and activities
TYN's only active university chapter is at the Indiana University Bloomington; the group is led by a white-supremacist activist Thomas Buhls, who has also been affiliated with the Harrison, Arkansas-based Knights Party, a Klan group.[1]
The SPLC describes TYN's ideology as 'virulently racist and anti-Semitic."[3] Both the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League note that the group is modeled after the European Identitarian movement of Europe.[3][1] The group advocates for white separatism and proclaims to be "against modernism, individualism, globalism and Marxism."[1]
In August 2013, the group protested a leftist bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana; in October 2013, the group held rallies protesting campus speeches by anti-racist educator Tim Wise.[1]
In 2014, the group filed an amicus brief in a federal court in Michigan in the case of DeBoer v. Snyder. In its brief, the group took a stance against same-sex marriage, which Parrott described as part of "the Leftists [sic] social engineering campaign to destroy every last vestige of Western civilization."[4]
In January 2015, the group established the Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP) as its political-party offshoot in preparation for the 2016 elections, and a small group of candidates from the far right have announced plans to run under its banner.[3] The party states that it stands against "economic exploitation, federal tyranny, and anti-Christian degeneracy."[3] The group's strategy differs from that of the American Freedom Party, a different fringe group: while the AFP "has long run presidential candidates with no hope of success, works to exploit the election cycle as a way to raise money and generate publicity for their racist positions, TWP actually hopes to win by running for local offices in small communities."[3]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h Traditionalist Youth Network, Anti-Defamation League (February 7, 2014).
- ^ "Matthew Heimbach". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 2016-03-21.
- ^ a b c d e Keegan Hankes, Meet the New Wave of Extremists Gearing Up for the 2016 Elections, Southern Poverty Law Center (October 19, 2015).
- ^ Ryan Lenz, Traditionalist Youth Network Takes on 'Culture Distorters' in Marriage Equality Debate, Southern Poverty Law Center (March 26, 2014).