YWC Leaders Stay Active, Despite Recent Events
It’s been a few months since Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) president Kevin DeAnna stepped down in February from the far-right campus organization that has some problematic associations with white nationalists. Since then, and since the group’s appearance at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) in February, YWC has appeared to go into a hibernation of sorts, but some of its leaders continue to be active.
The YWC website has been down for “redesign” for a few months, and the extremely active Towson University chapter lost its official status in March when its faculty adviser quit because he was concerned about some of the rhetoric the group employed. That came in the wake of YWC members chalking “white pride” messages on campus sidewalks.
Taylor Rose, who DeAnna referred to as the national vice president when he posted that he was stepping down, has been active in Europe (he is allegedly based in Romania) with far-right nationalist groups and parties. He has also been busy writing a book about the rise of the right in the U.S. and Europe and the re-establishment of Western civilization and values. He has promoted the book on two white nationalist websites (so far).
In May, Rose wrote a description of his forthcoming book that was posted at the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens website (CCC). The Council is the modern incarnation of the White Citizens Councils formed to fight desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s. Its website has referred to black people as “a retrograde species of humanity” and claimed that race-mixing is “rebelliousness against God.”
Rose also gave an interview to the League of the South (LOS), a neo-Confederate organization that pushes for a second Southern secession and a society dominated by “European Americans” and run by an “Anglo-Celtic” elite. Rose discussed his book there, as well, decrying multiculturalism, internationalism, Islam, and the rise of a shadowy New World Order and global elites. But, according to Rose, the right will “take back” Western civilization, in spite of the left and “agents of the banking and industrialist elite.” If it sounds more Patriot than YWC, that’s not unusual. Rose has swerved into Patriot ideology before.
Meanwhile, Matthew Heimbach, president of the YWC’s controversial Towson University chapter, said in a March podcast on the Southern Nationalist Network (SNN) that the Towson chapter, in the wake of losing its official campus status, would go underground. Heimbach claimed that opposition could look forward to a “guerrilla war of activism.” Whether that’s true remains to be seen, but he has continued his own activism, which included a protest against the “global elite,” or the “Bilderberg” meetings held in May in Washington, D.C. Heimbach said in another interview with SNN that he went to the protests with members of the CCC, a member of “the League” (LOS, presumably), and people he knew from the Tea Party. Heimbach is listed as a member of LOS on SNN.
And though he also claimed in a March 21 interview with SNN that he is not a neo-Nazi and does not support that agenda, he tweeted Sunday in support of Greece’s far-right and virulently anti-immigrant party Golden Dawn, which can’t shake its neo-Nazi ties or labels, even though the party denies those accusations. On June 17, Heimbach tweeted that he was “Eagerly awaiting greek [sic] election results. Hail the Golden Dawn!”
Golden Dawn may claim that it’s not neo-Nazi, but books on Aryan supremacy line shelves in its office, and its leader, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, has denied the Holocaust on Greek television. Party detractors point out the Nazi-style salutes Golden Dawn members and supporters engage in. At Golden Dawn rallies and protests, participants can be seen carrying black flags with the “white pride world wide” symbol popular on white nationalist sites like Stormfront.org. The party ran on a virulently anti-immigrant platform, calling for placing landmines along Greek borders, while flyers and TV ads called to “rid the country of their [immigrant] stench.” Golden Dawn’s history or actions don’t seem to bother Heimbach, however. Nor do its ties to violence (see here, here and here).
