It was just about 50 years ago that Richard Butler, an expatriate Californian, came to Kootenai County and founded the Aryan Nations, physically established near Hayden Lake.
It established some notoriety within a few years as a hub of activity for extremist and racist people and groups. After a lawsuit effectively extinguished it in 2000, Coeur d’Alene Mayor Sandi Bloem reflected, “we had people living in this community and in this area that were full of fear. We had many people that lived outside of this community that wouldn’t come here because they were afraid.”
That was true, but within this context: The Aryan Nations compound included only a small number of people, serving as an outpost in a society that emphatically did not accept it. When the compound was razed, the community overwhelmingly cheered. The racists were largely unconnected to the larger community.
Kootenai County still is a target for extremism, as the Patriot Front group showed in June 2022 when 31 people associated with it were arrested by law enforcement when they apparently were planning to disrupt a pride parade. They poured into Coeur d’Alene from around the nation.
The difference now is that some elements of extreme groups are much better connected.
Consider the national and Idaho linkages of one recent newcomer to the state - as just one example among many, this one being different for having picked up strong news attention.
The best known recent far-right event nationally was the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia - no doubt you remember it. One of the people there was a talk radio host named Dave Reilly, who said he attended to write about the event, which he did (notably on Twitter). But a report in InvestigateWest says he also “was part of a private invitation-only online group involved with brainstorming, planning and promoting the rally, courtroom testimony and leaked chat messages subsequently revealed.” You don’t get that kind of invite without close connections to the people running it.
Online posts also indicate his support for the America First Political Action Conference, founded, as the Spokane Spokesman-Review reported, “by Nick Fuentes, a former co-host of a podcast with James Allsup, the former Washington State University student who was ejected from the Whitman County Republican Party and whose appearance at a Spokane County Republican Party gathering prompted the resignation of the party’s chair. Both Fuentes and Allsup have been banned from social media platforms for views espousing white nationalism.”
Reilly moved to Idaho, where in 2021 (a year after his arrival) he ran for a seat on the Post Falls school board - with the endorsement of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee. He lost, but ran against a lifelong Post Falls resident who had organized backing, and after Reilly’s own past was aired in news reports, he pulled a respectable 46.6% of the vote.
Michelle Lippert, a school board member who worked with Citizens for Post Falls Schools in opposition to Reilly’s candidacy, was quoted, “You want to know the difference between back in the 80s and now? When the Aryan Nations were big in this area you saw young men with shaved heads and jackets with patches on them and saw men with sort of a pseudo-Nazi uniform? Today they wear ties and jackets and don’t shave their heads. They don’t stick out.”
Reilly turned up in Idaho news again this fall, with reports that the Idaho Freedom Foundation, which is as influential as any organization in Idaho Republican politics, had hired him as a contractor on communications. The IFF is extremely well connected in Idaho politics; its word carries major weight in the Idaho Legislature.
The InvestigateWest article noted a raft of ironies: “The Idaho Freedom Foundation, which began in 2009 as a libertarian-leaning free-market think tank, has been contracting with the self-described Christian nationalist — who’s said ‘free markets are a problem,’ who hates ‘libertarianism more than any other political ideology,’ and who compares conservatives who make capitalism their highest value to ‘being a slave and BEGGING your massa to keep you in chains.’”
A half-century has indeed made a big difference in Idaho, and that’s going beyond appearances.
(5) comments
Randy Syphilis seems to have a problem with Butler and Randy Weaver moving to the North Idaho woods in order to live free and be left alone. These radical leftists never have a problem
With BLM and antifa rioting and burning down police stations. They didn't seem to have a problem when the black panthers marched into
Vidor Texas armed to the teeth. They didn't seem
To have a problem when NFAC marched into Stone Mountain Georgia with their AK47s. The Patriot Front weren't armed.....at least the few
Who were not feds. The protest was plotted by the feds just like the Michigan Governor kidnapping plot was. Just the Bidumb way of keeping alleged white supremacists in the news until election day. The Aryan compound incident was precipitated by a mob of leftist commies who
Protested in front of the compound gate and some came back late that night and trespassed on private property. The radical leftist Southern
Poverty Law Center then used all the George Soros money they could get their hands on to
Persecute Richard Butler and steal his property.
Allowing that kind of corrupt use of the legal system is exactly how we get to the persecution of Trump today. There will be a reckoning.
You were the leftist pu--nk who broke their window. Typical chicken ch---it leftist act. You
Would think that they would try and keep the
Riff raff like you out of a gun show. You are probably the one who traffics guns to inner-city
Thugs. Is that you responsible for all the deaths in ch-itcago? Mon-grels like you are always jealous of the purity of people with good breeding. You and Joe Bidumb are both doppelgangers of that banjo playing kid in Deliverance.
There you go with the movies again. The kid in Deliverance was an actor, a character. If the windshield belonged to the master race, they were even dumber than I thought cause they were giggling like the drooling idiots they were.
You and Mikey both squeal like a pig when his
Wife Rosann pegs you with her strap on. You
People were born for a circus freak show.
Apparently the movie thing was a little too much for man hand tug knob.
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