The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    The History Of Hate In Idaho

    By kgb999 on Tue, 05/31/2011 - 5:27am |

    When I discovered Couer d'Alene Idaho, the only thing I knew about the area was that it looked breathtakingly beautiful in a travel brochure ... and equally beautiful when I visited. Literally, that's it; that and I could get to a major airport in around 30 minutes (which was my sole professional criteria at the time). Another visit and I had a home and was preparing to move a household and office from Las Vegas.

    It would take a somewhat tense conversation with a friend in San Francisco, who was decidedly uninterested in visiting, before I would learn of the darker reputation that the Aryan Nations had bestowed on my new locale. Since that time, I have learned bits and pieces of the story and watched the final chapters as the Aryan Nations compound in Hayden was seized and destroyed. Kept abreast of rumors that the core moved north and west to the Priest River area (incidentally, the exact area where the Spokane bomber was located). And generally just picked up local gossip. But I had never gotten a complete story of the history. Until now.

    Idaho Public Television has created a one hour program looking at the Aryan Nations and the human rights advocates who opposed them.  I found the program fascinating and informative. The first half of the program focuses almost exclusively on the rise of the Aryan Nations and evolution of the activists who emerged to challenge their message. The second half opens the scope and explores wider human rights challenges and triumphs in the state.

    Watch the full episode. See more Idaho Public Television Specials.

    Not sure if this interests anyone beyond my neck of the woods, but it is a pretty fascinating hour for those who interested in the history of organized racism and the story of how one group was challenged and defeated.

    (h/t: 43rd state blues)

    Comments

    Great video; thanks for posting it.  I think lots of people will be and are interested; hate's very popular in some corners right now, and Northern Idaho has been ground zero fro awhile.  Always amazes me how many 'others' are targets.

    A young in-law of mine attended and taught at Christ Church's college (it has about five different names) in Moscow.  Pastor Doug Brooks gained fame by debating Christopher Hitchins many times (can't figure out why Hitch did it), but the teachings are intolerant of gays, and Doug's pamphlets extoll the nice parts of slavery.  The town has become a battleground as Wilson's been buying up the town for his 'college'.  They are on the SPLC watch list.

    'In-law' blocks my emails now as I had written him with my concerns.  He married into the Church finally; Mr. Stardust says he'll never invite him/them into our house again.  I emailed his father about all these bigoted issues of the church, but had forgotten that he and wife once told us that friends of theirs had just returned from still-apatheid South Africa, and had declared it 'not all that bad'.  So my words kinda fell on bigoted ears.   ;o)


    by we are stardust on Tue, 05/31/2011 - 10:06am

    I hadn't heard of the Moscow group ... that sucks. Moscow has been a pretty chill little college town up to this point. I also wasn't too happy to see that new church outside Sandpoint highlighted in the video.

    Idaho is by no means racism free (nowhere I have ever lived was), but ground zero for in this region seems to have shifted to Eastern Washington as far as the violently dangerous folks go. Still, far too close for comfort. There are some places in the Midwest that seem to be emerging as major hotbeds as well. If I had to guess, that kind of seems where the next organization on the level of the Aryan Nations is going to emerge.

    Our biggest problem here is that the GOP are idiots and have all but bankrupted the state while the Democrats are just this side of useless. So funding and focus are flagging some. The local prosecutors are dedicated to the issue though, the judges are mostly good and juries aren't having that crap - we throw the book at hate crimes. So it's kind of a mixed bag. I'm really thankful PBS did the special to help keep awareness high.


    by kgb999 on Tue, 05/31/2011 - 7:15pm

    I could not get your video to work.

    http://video.idahoptv.org/video/1949293974/

    This link appears to work just fine.

    Thanks for pointing me in that direction.

    I had heard that Idaho and Utah and Colorado had some pockets of fascist groups, but this really looks scary.

     


    by Richard Day on Tue, 05/31/2011 - 11:58am

    I dunno. It's hard to describe the feeling of empowerment for a community when you beat a group like the Aryan Nations, basically drive them out of town and burn their compound to the ground. That's good stuff.

    The battle isn't won ... but as far as CDA goes today, their back is largely broken. Now we end up with a half-dozen morons protesting Mexican restaurants (which resulted in Mexican restaurants doing banner business for a week ... because it made the rest of us think "mmmmmm, Mexican food - haven't done that in a while"). But that video highlights we need to help Sandpoint with some resources.


    by kgb999 on Tue, 05/31/2011 - 7:31pm

    This is a serious subject but I cannot believe that when the children reach their teens they don't sneak out for some tacos. hahaha

    What a bunch of idiots.

    Mexican restaurants? damn


    by Richard Day on Wed, 06/01/2011 - 12:33am

    I actually have a strong interest in this.

    Gonzaga and Spokane is mentioned in that video, and the area has quite a few white nationalist sects throughout eastern Washington. What is really interesting is that these groups have gotten alot smarter and more adept at spreading their message. Showing up on a truck with Aryan symbols is way too obvious, these guys are now rather hooking on to anti-immigrant sentiment (which, with a pretty healthy population of Hispanics in the area, isn't hard to do) and mining that for what it is worth.

    The group to watch is an organization called the Youth For Western Civilization. YWC is directly associated with lovely people like Richard Spencer, the founder of the fascist website Alternative Right. YWC has a very healthy network that has been set up by its head, Kevin DeAnna, in an impressively short time. The organization really brings people in with their nativism and, to a lesser extent, Affirmative Action. They have an active offset at Washington State University in Pullman, which borders Idaho.

    The aforementioned Coeur d'Alene makes a reappearance in the world of YWC as well:

    A white supremacist just arrested on federal firearms charges in the state of Washington had ties to a university student leader of a new chapter of Youth for Western Civilization (YWC). Jeremiah Daniel “JD” Hop, previously convicted of child rape in California, is accused in a federal indictment of being a felon illegally possessing a shotgun. Arrested by FBI agents on Wednesday, Hop also likely faces state charges for possessing stolen property taken in burglaries near his home in Pullman and the campus of Washington State University, authorities say.

    The 29-year-old suspect is linked to recent Aryan and extremist picketing outside Mexican taco stands near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, authorities say. Using the name “WhitePhoenix,” Hop has boasted of that involvement on the racist Stormfront Web site, The Spokesman-Review reported Thursday. On his Facebook page, Hop’s list of “inspirational people” included the late William Pierce, who founded the National Alliance and author of The Turner Diaries. The fictional account of a race war has been the blueprint for action for some extremists, including neo-Nazi members of The Order in the 1980s and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in 1995.

    In a 2006 “guestbook” posting for imprisoned Order member David Lane, Hop, using a “fourteenwordlivin” e-mail address, said he was inspired by Lane’s racist writings. “It would be nice if you were not in prison,” Hop said to Lane, who died in prison in 2007.

    “They failed and you are still getting your message across,” Hop told Lane. “You have the power and determination. I’m 24 and have so much ahead. I wish I could talk to someone who could lead me on the right path to do the best for our race. My love and respect.”

    Although he isn’t currently a student at WSU in Pullman, Hop’s Facebook friends included Phil Tignino, the student leader of the Youth for Western Civilization chapter, an officially recognized student organization on the WSU campus. The group’s anti-immigration, anti-multiculturalism message targets young adults and seems to flirt with the extremist, hate-filled fringe.

    Alot of these folks mask themselves as "libertarian" as well. I'm not sure what is libertarian about picketing something as free market as a taco stand.

    Also, not to be alarmist, the fact that there is a substantial Hispanic population in the Eastern Washington/Idaho area may mean that this could take off as a mainstream movement in a way that it couldn't have before. With the American economy in recession, it's easier for guys like this to point their fingers at whatever ethnic group and say, "It's their fault!"


    by Orion on Tue, 05/31/2011 - 6:20pm

    Yeah, I have seen that Youth for Western Civilization group highlighted a few times. It is apparently doing quite well on some campuses. I haven't seen a group pitching the libertarian approach yet. That said, a couple flavors of libertarian are pretty damn xenophobic so crossover doesn't surprise me much.

    The groups have also started blending in economic populism; railing against banks and such. That ties in to your observation about economics. Eastern Washington is undoubtedly at high risk right now. That's where many of the folks we drove out of Idaho fled to. They are being really hush-hush about the investigation related to the Spokane bombing attempt, so we are all hoping they will round some of the leaders up before all is said and done.

    One thing going in our favor, at least in this region, is knowledge. We've watched a movement take off and go mainstream. Normally, these groups are able to get their hooks into a community quietly. I am hopeful that awareness will serve us well. That they have been forced to change tactics away from directly stating their hate-agenda shows that we are winning the war of ideas.

    My biggest fear is a lack of resources. GOPpers are trying to argue that with the demise of the Aryan Nations and in light of budget shortfalls, the infrastructure Idaho has built to address these issues is too expensive to continue to support. If they eliminate the HRTF, things become much more difficult.


    by kgb999 on Tue, 05/31/2011 - 8:32pm

    Yeah, I have seen that Youth for Western Civilization group highlighted a few times. It is apparently doing quite well on some campuses. I haven't seen a group pitching the libertarian approach yet. That said, a couple flavors of libertarian are pretty damn xenophobic so crossover doesn't surprise me much.

    YWC is especially creepy because the guys behind them are really intelligent, understand politics and know how to communicate effectively.


    by Orion on Tue, 05/31/2011 - 11:15pm