The white nationalist activist who took credit for helping shove a black protester out of a Donald Trump campaign rally Tuesday in Kentucky was also involved in a chaotic forum at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference that devolved into a shouting match about “disenfranchized” white men.
Matthew Heimbach, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “the face of a new generation of white nationalists,” wrote Tuesday on the white nationalist blog TradYouth that he was in viral video of the crowd forcing out the protester.
Heimbach also infamously showed up to a 2013 CPAC session titled “Trump The Race Card: Are You Sick And Tired Of Being Called A Racist When You Know You’re Not One?” dressed in Confederate flag garb, TPM reported at the time.
He was accompanied by Scott Terry, who used the question and answer portion to grill the session’s leader, K. Carl Smith.
“It seems to be that you’re reaching out to voters at the expense of young white Southern males,” Terry asked, according to TPM’s report. He also said he loved “my people and culture,” whom he described as “systematically disenfranchised.”
After Smith responded that even Frederick Douglass forgave his slavemaster, Terry fired back: “For giving him shelter? And food?”
The event then devolved into a shouting match, and attendees later told TPM they were outraged at the one non-conservative black attendee, who tried to disagree with the conversation’s direction before being booed and shouted down.
