Everything You Love Will Burn Read online

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  Copyright © 2018 by Vegas Tenold

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  Nation Books

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  First Edition: February 2018

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  ISBN 978-1-56858-994-7 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-56858-995-4 (e-book)

  E3-20180103-JV-NF

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Introduction: Election Day 2016

  1 The Battle of Trenton

  2 The Little Führer

  3 The Defender of Western Civilization

  4 Kiggy

  5 The NSM Turns Forty

  6 The Soldiers of the Earl Turner

  7 National Kill-a-White-Person Day

  8 The ANA

  9 Hammerskins

  10 Harrisburg

  11 The Suits

  12 The College Boys

  13 Hail Heimbach

  Postscript: The Hard Right

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Notes

  Index

  For H & L

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  As I write this, nineteen people are being treated at University of Virginia Medical Center for injuries sustained when a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. One woman is dead. The victims were struck as they protested one of the largest gatherings of right-wing radicals in America in recent history. Last night I watched hundreds of predominantly young, white men march in a torchlight parade, paying tribute to a history that produced slavery, Jim Crow, and a society that still discriminates against its minorities in a million ways, large and small. They were not only paying tribute to white hegemony but also protesting the cracks in that hegemony, airing grievances that seemed both petty and fabricated. As they marched en masse to chants of “Jews will not replace us!” I had to wonder exactly how Jews were replacing them and how these young, white men—by any statistical measure perched at the top of the societal food chain—had come to feel so deeply aggrieved as to see the world’s progress as an attack on them.

  I’ve tried to write a book that explains the resurgence of right-wing radical groups that, as of this moment, seem only to be growing more confident and exuberant by the day. This is a book about the people who, for various reasons, have come to hold opinions and beliefs that most of us find abhorrent. It is not primarily about what is known as the alt-right, the anonymous, internet-dwelling trolls who rose to fame during the 2016 presidential campaign; instead, it’s about those who march in the streets, whose beliefs are rooted in the flotsam of decades of American racism, anti-Semitism, and white supremacy. In writing this book I have attempted to step aside and present as unvarnished a look into the lives of those on the radical right as I can.

  It should be stated that I’m not a neutral observer. In many ways I represent what my subjects believe to be the enemy. As long as I’ve been able to vote I’ve voted socialist (in my native Norway that is still, thankfully, a viable option), and I’ve made no secret about that in my reporting. Still, I’ve tried to approach the subjects of this book without bias, and I’m grateful for the way they have, in large part, returned the favor.

  The main characters in this book, including Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Workers Party, Jeff Schoep of the National Socialist Movement, and Dan Elmquist of the KKK, represent three contemporary yet disparate approaches to American white nationalism. Respectively, they represent a modern, more pragmatic strain, a European National Socialist strain, and a profoundly American strain. Taken together they are a cross-section of white nationalism in America today, but there are others—some who are mentioned in this book and some who are not—who are also part of the tapestry. This book was never meant to be an exhaustive account of everything that stirs on the far right. There are others—the writer Leonard Zeskind, for one—who have already done that admirably.

  There were many parts of this book I found difficult write, and there are parts that may be difficult to read. It’s safe to say that this book contains slurs, racial and otherwise, and I debated at some length whether to include them. In the end I decided to keep any offensive quotes untouched because the words people choose matter. It is not my place to take offense on behalf of others, nor would I want to make the opinions and statements presented by the subjects any more or less offensive than they are.

  This book also contains scenes of violence. Some of these events were reported to the police; others weren’t. There were instances during the reporting for this book when I witnessed extreme violence and did nothing to stop it. I believe that for my own safety and for the safety of those with me at the time I had no other choice.

  For that reason some names in this book have been altered. The social cost of being active in white nationalist or supremacist groups can be considerable, and for those who weren’t prepared to participate with their full names, I made allowances. I pushed back against most requests for anonymity and afforded it only to those whose jobs and personal safety would be affected. Most names remain intact.

  The reporting for this book always took place with the full knowledge and consent of my subjects. I never concealed who I was or presented myself as anything but a journalist. For the very few scenes in the book where I wasn’t present, I have relied on firsthand witness accounts, which I have corroborated as far as possible. Descriptions of inner monologues are based on extensive interviews. Descriptions of events that took place before my time are based on the reporting and research of others.

  For terminology I have tried to keep things as orderly as I could. The white nationalist movement is awash with different terms for seemingly similar beliefs, and figuring out what to call the different factions and ideologies is a daunting affair. There are those who believe that everyone on the radical right, from the so-called alt-right to the skinheads, should be called “Nazis,” and it is a point well taken. They all show an affinity for the words and teachings of Adolf Hitler, so calling them all neo-Nazis makes sense. However, the terms Nazi or neo-Nazi refer, specifically, to National Socialists, and because there is a distinct faction within the far right that identifies as National Socialist, using the terms Nazi, neo-Nazi, or National Socialist as a c
atch-all term becomes problematic because it makes it impossible to describe the actual Nazis in the movement.

  “White supremacist” is similarly problematic because it assumes that everyone in the movement believes the white race is superior to others. Although there certainly is a large contingent of those who believe in the inferiority of any race that isn’t white, there are also those who don’t, so labeling everyone “white supremacists” becomes an oversimplification.

  I have chosen, then, to use the terms white nationalist movement, the far right, or the radical right. These terms aren’t perfect. Some might argue—and rightly so—that these terms are either too facile or too generous, but I’ve tried to be as specific as possible when the situation requires.

  If I set out to write this book with the goal of understanding the far right or, perhaps more broadly, racism and bigotry, then what I have learned is perhaps unsatisfactory. As much as I would like to have found one single, underlying reason for racism and bigotry, I cannot say that I have. There are many contributing factors, and even identifying those is not enough to provide a satisfactory explanation for far-right ideology. Social status, income, education, location—these are all elements that contribute to a person’s worldview, but they cannot paint a complete picture. It is often said that the KKK is generational: you join the Klan because your father was in the Klan and his father before him. This is also patently untrue—I met many men and women in the Klan who were first generation. But even if it weren’t, it wouldn’t sufficiently explain why its members believe the white race is superior. In our current world information is ubiquitous, and simply being raised with certain beliefs isn’t an excuse for maintaining those beliefs. Even Klansmen know that their worldview isn’t considered appropriate. Poverty also isn’t enough to explain the rise of racist nationalism; it is quite possible to be poor and tolerant.

  Perhaps the answer to why some people believe in the inferiority of other races lies in how we see ourselves. Richard Spencer, the person who first came up with the term alt-right, told me he was an “identitarian” and that his identity was first and foremost a white man. By defining who we are, we are also defining who we are not, and if we are not “them,” then our interests are not theirs. This is the only way to rationalize the construct of white pride, on which the members of the far right base their lives.

  But white pride is itself problematic because it presupposes that all whites share common cultural bonds in which to take pride. This is a fallacy. There is no such thing as white culture—or European culture, for that matter. There is German culture, Irish culture, and Norwegian culture, but in the absence of a homogenous European culture, it becomes easier to define white culture not by what it is but by what it is not. In the eyes of the people I’ve covered in this book, that tends to mean not African American, not Hispanic, not South Asian, not East Asian, not Indigenous, not gay, lesbian, queer, and so on. The list contracts or expands depending on who you talk to. If six years spent with the radical right taught me anything about the underlying reason for white nationalism, it is this: “We are not them, and they are not us.”

  August 13, 2017

  INTRODUCTION

  Election Day 2016

  To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law.

  —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

  On the morning of the 2016 presidential election Matthew Heimbach’s beat-up, silver Toyota Corolla slowly made its way through the town of Paoli in southern Indiana. Both the car and the town had seen better days. The car’s chassis slumped over the wheels as it lurched through the damp morning, passing boarded-up storefronts and dark windows. “This used to be all stores and restaurants,” Matthew said. The man who had been called “the affable, youthful face of hate in America” was wearing a heavy, olive-green parka and Angry Birds pajama pants. Despite it being almost noon, his jet-black, bristly hair stood out in awkward angles, and his beard was tussled. It was a slow day. He’d only just gotten out of bed and had decided, perhaps in a show of solidarity with Donald Trump on the day of his presumed electoral loss, that the act of voting didn’t require pants.

  Matthew had a large head, made larger by the thick foliage growing from it, and a face that gathered around his nose, giving him a jovial if slightly cartoonish look. That face, along with a self-deprecating laugh, was his livelihood and somehow smoothed over the often wildly racist things coming out of his mouth. Discarded hamburger wrappers and soda cups lay on the floor of the car, left over from Matthew’s endless crisscrossing of the country to spread his nationalist gospel. The car was a mess, but rentals were expensive, and Matthew was far from wealthy. Like his face, he had worked this into a plus, spending years perfecting an aw-shucks, folksy persona who one moment talked about the simple pleasures of bagging groceries at a local store and the next warned of the terrible danger the international Jewry presented. Matthew had no doubt that the elites were bought and paid for by the Jews, and if there was one thing no one could accuse Matthew Heimbach of, it was being part of the elite.

  NPR was battling to rise above the static on the car’s stereo, and presently a voice broke through enough to make out that things were looking good for Hillary Clinton. “If the blue wall holds,” a reporter on Morning Edition predicted, “then Clinton would win.”

  “Goddammit,” Matthew muttered and turned the radio off. “Well, shit. It’s not like we didn’t see this coming.” Everyone had seen it coming. Perhaps with the exception of Donald J. Trump, nobody doubted that Hillary Clinton would cruise to victory that night. As if he was on the ballot himself, Matthew had been working on a concession speech that he would read to his podcast listeners the morning after the election. In fact, it was less a concession speech than a secession speech, with Matthew arguing that the election of Hillary Clinton was not only proof that nobody cared about the white working class but that life under President Clinton would be so deeply ruinous and authoritarian in nature that it would all but guarantee that God-fearing white folks in the heartland would need to withdraw from the Union and build their own country. In that way, a Clinton win would even be a good thing for the cause: it would usher in the destruction of the Union and the birth of a white homeland.

  In the back, latched into a worn child safety seat, sat a small boy of just over a year. The boy gargled happily as he attempted to eat a large, plastic toy. Matthew had decided to take his son along to vote because he felt his wife, Brooke, could use a break. “She’s probably at home playing Skyrim on the computer right now,” he said. “It’s funny—she’s the greatest wife I could ask for. In the game you can do whatever you want. You can slay dragons! But all she does is rummage around in the forest surrounding her virtual house, collecting herbs for potions. She really is the perfect woman.” We passed a squat house where a father had stabbed his wife and killed two of his children before taking his own life. The house was run down and battered, but no more so than its neighbors’. “This kind of stuff happens all the time around here,” Matthew said. “It’s depressing as hell.” He pointed to a large industrial building perched on a bare hilltop above town. “That’s the Paoli Furniture Factory. It’s closing down, and three hundred and fifty people will lose their jobs. Can you imagine what that does to a town of thirty-five hundred people? They are killing us, literally killing us.” Matthew made a fist and pounded the steering wheel with each “killing.” He had a flair for the dramatic.

  “They” were the Washington elites in general and the Democrats in particular. According to Matthew, through indifference, incompetence, and downright malevolence, they had allowed things to deteriorate in the rural part of southern Indiana, along with everywhere else in the Rustbelt and abutting Appalachia. Things here were miserable and had been for a long time. Jobs were leaving, coal mines were closing, and factories were shuttering. All over Ohio, mines were laying off their workers by the hundre
ds, and it was the same story in coal towns elsewhere in America. In the 1920s, when the coal boom was at its peak, the industry provided some eight hundred thousand jobs. At the time of the 2016 election the number of people working in the mines wasn’t even a tenth of that. The steel towns around Pittsburgh were deserted and quiet. West Virginia was twice broke, with coal disappearing and an epidemic of opioid dependency ravaging the state like a plague, far outpacing other states in terms of opioid drug overdoses; for the sixth year in a row 2017 saw the state’s indigent burial fund run out of money because of rampant drug overdoses. The debasement of Appalachia had been going on for decades—ever since the early 1980s the demand for both coal and US-made steel had been in decline—but somehow it felt to Matthew and his supporters like things had gotten worse under Obama. Say what you will about George W. Bush, but at least he wasn’t actively gunning for you, which is what Matthew believed Obama was doing. To him it was as clear as day that the elites in Washington hated his kind, by which he meant hard-working, Christian, and—most importantly—white Americans.

  “I don’t know how anyone can look at what’s going on and not see that it is a clear and orchestrated war on whites,” Matthew said. “Take immigration for one thing: Who are the Democrats’ core voters? Because it sure as hell isn’t the white working class anymore. It’s the black and the brown people. Of course the Democrats want to flood the country with immigrants—because it will ensure that they stay in power forever. Meanwhile we have no jobs, we have no education, and our communities are flooded with heroin and OxyContin. We are dying, and nobody gives a shit because the people in power either don’t need us or actively hate us. Either way, white people are screwed.”

  He pulled into a KFC drive-thru and got an order of chicken tenders that he passed to the backseat. “Here you go, Nicholas,” he said as his son enthusiastically began inserting the strips of meat into his mouth. He was named after Tsar Nicholas II, the hapless ruler of Russia at the time of the Russian Revolution. Matthew hoped that his son, like his namesake, would be a great man, but he worried that he, again like his namesake, was destined to be among the last of his kind.