Matt Heimbach and the SCV
Matt Heimbach (center) receives his membership in the SCV through the Col. William Norris Camp #1398 at Gaithersburg, Maryland, March 1, 2011. Just over a year later Heimbach would be awarded one of the national organization’s highest decorations. From the camp’s April 2011 newsletter.
Matt Heimbach — founder of the White Student Union at Towson University, dabbler in Nazi ideology, and current darling of white supremacy movement — was awarded a Distinguished Service Medal (below, right) at the SCV annual meeting in Murfreesboro last year, along with “many of our own Va Flaggers.” This is according to this announcement, apparently from the Virginia Flaggers themselves, posted on several websites:
At the same time the Flaggers were at the Hanover Tomato Festival AND Flagging the VMFA, the Sons of Confederate Veterans were holding their National Reunion in Murfreesboro, TN. We were thrilled to learn that many of our own Va Flaggers received recognition for their work over the past year, including:
Commander-in-Chief’s Award: Everette Ellis
Commendation Award: Jamie Funkhouser
Heritage Defense Medal: Billy Bearden, Jamie Funkhouser
Meritorious Service Medal: Everette Ellis, Bob Harris, Ashleigh Moody, Mike Pullen, and Tracy Wright
Distinguished Service Medal: Billy Bearden, Matthew Heimbach, Grayson Jennings, Tommy Thomas, Capt. Tucker, Willie Wells
Commander-In-Chief’s Ladies Appreciation Award: Susan Hathaway
There are a couple of interesting things about this. First, Matt Heimbach is explicitly embraced as one of “our own Va. Flaggers.” If the Flaggers themselves claim him as one of “our own,” that settles it for me.
Second, I’m really curious about what sort of “distinguished service” Heimbach did to receive such a prestigious award. According to the SCV’s most updated award manual (PDF), the Distinguished Service Medal is a national-level award, presented to SCV members who “have served the SCV in an outstanding manner for an extended period of time in a position of responsibility.” Heimbach only joined the organization in 2011 (above), which doesn’t seem to fit with the award’s requirement for recipients to hold “a position of responsibility” for “an extended period of time.” It’s hard to imagine many 21-year-olds receiving that award, so evidently the SCV national organization recognized Matt Heimbach’s little-more-than-a-year tenure as being especially “outstanding” in furthering the SCV’s goals.
How, exactly?
Update, September 2: In August 2011 Heimbach received the SCV’s Army of Northern Virginia Scholarship, an award that includes “monetary renumeration, a certificate and an ANV medal.” So during the 2011-12 academic year, when Heimbach was serving as President of Towson’s Youth for Western Civilization, chalking up “White Pride” grafitti around campus and calling for the hanging of Nelson Mandela, he was doing it at least partly on the SCV’s nickel. Oops.
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Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog 
Thanks for your excellent sleuthing, Andy. It looks to me like the SCV needs a thorough house cleaning. The stench is even noticeable here in Ohio. I really don’t think most SCV members are racists, but I am beginning to wonder about the intelligence of its leadership.
This is actually a re-post of one that went online two years ago. The original was linked in some of the scurrilous data dump of personal information of various folks, and I didn’t want to be part of that, even indirectly. So I re-posted it with a new title and deleted the old one.
Since then, Heimbach has moved past his Nazi fanboy phase and become and adherent of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which quite a few white nationalists seem attracted to because of its rejection of many of the changes that have happened in churches in the West over the last few decades. He’s gone a long way because he’s affable, articulate, and likable, unlike the tattooed metal-and-meth-heads who are more stereotypical of the white nationalist movement. He is, last I checked, very much an admirer of fascist movements from Eastern Europe, like the Golden Dawn crowd in Greece. The League of the South make a big deal out of kicking him out of the organization for his Nazi fetish a while back, but it was all for show — he was back in their good graces and collaborating with them again within a few months.