Many residents of north Idaho have learned to despise hate

Sunday, June 17, 2001 - HAYDEN, Idaho - The angry, 83-year-old man sat on a blue couch in the small suburban tract home someone else bought for him, still believing in his white man's revolution.

The blinds were drawn. Outside, a red NO SOLICITORS sign was nailed by the front door. Kids riding their bikes up the quiet street could hear dogs growling in the garage.

Just Richard Butler, founder of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations, and his live-in secretary were home on a recent Wednesday afternoon in suburban Idaho. For years, he'd enjoyed what must have felt like a little kingdom behind a white-and-red fence north of town, a cluster of buildings on an open knoll in the vast Idaho woods. People came there to hear him preach a whites-only message, to live in the place he'd surrounded with barbed wire to keep everyone else out.

But he lost it all in a lawsuit last year.
(...)

The Aryan Nations still exists, Butler said, but observers describe it as a flagging movement.

After the lawsuit, many of his followers abandoned him for a Christian Identity church in nearby Noxon, Mont.
(...)

Now, he preaches in this modest living room, he said, refusing to say how many come to listen. He says his movement is growing but has no numbers to show. He says he's looking for a new place to rebuild his movement - and rumors that he's coming to town are swirling across northern Idaho and northwestern Montana this summer - but he won't say how he'll pay for it.

But in the chorus of voices declaring Butler and his ilk unwelcome in Idaho, Butler's voice can be hard to hear.

Just a couple of miles away, Hayden Realtor Marshall Mend pointed to the collection of human-rights plaques adorning his office. As a co-founder of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Rights, he's been fighting the stereotype of northern Idaho as Butler's kind of place for years. Now, he said, the fight is almost over.
(...)

Mend called Butler's talk of buying new grounds wishful thinking.

"I don't think you're going to see another compound," he said. "Because whoever gets a compound, they're going to be responsible for whatever goes on there."

Anyone with the means to buy Butler a new place probably doesn't want to be on the liability hook for whatever might happen there, Mend said. The Aryan Nations compound in the past has been linked to violent crime, including the 1984 murder of Denver radio personality Alan Berg. In 1987, four members of a neo-Nazi group known as The Order were convicted of murdering Berg, who months before his death had taunted anti-Semites on the air.

The men who killed Berg were "nice boys" who attended his church, Butler said.

And Berg "was a Jew. He had no business in America," Butler said.

But it's Butler, who was born in Bennett, Colo., who doesn't belong, said people up and down the Idaho Panhandle.

Outside of Sandpoint, for example, as the recent standoff between five armed children and local authorities came to a close, Butler and a handful of his supporters turned up where the media had encamped for the duration of that news event. He gave an interview.

Rusty Shoopman, a local woman, lost her cool when she saw Butler pull in.

"I blew it," she said, meaning she blew her russet-colored top. "That isn't north Idaho. We're nice people. We don't cater to that jerk."
(...)

In Sandpoint, others also tried to debunk their region's reputation as fertile ground for racism. Leon Atkinson, an African-American classical guitarist, and Arthur Goldblum, a self-described "white Jewish boy from New York doing Chinese medicine in Idaho," said they think Butler and others have used the media to make their presence here look more significant than it really is.

"The stereotype of this area is not fair to the area," said Atkinson, who moved here in 1973. "It's just not."

That's not to say that the area is without racial tension, he said, but he described it as being no more severe than anywhere else in the rural United States.

Then again, just west of Sandpoint, in a former restaurant on a dirt road, is America's Promise Ministries, a Christian Identity church. The church's sign is almost totally covered with obscene graffiti. Someone spray-painted Stars of David on the walls by the door, and the phrase "Black People Rule" on the concrete steps.

Inside, the two largest decorations are a tall poster chronicling the lineage of "White Christian Israelites" and a large photograph of the United Nations in New York City under the title "Lamentations For a Dying Republic."

Pastor Dave Barley, who says he does not associate with violent groups like Butler's, preached the Christian Identity message on a recent Sunday: that America is losing its greatness, and its greatness is attributable only to the white Christians who came from Europe.

"It didn't come from the blacks," Barley said, describing America's greatness during a prayer. "It didn't come from the Asians, and it certainly didn't come from the Jews. They wanted to become a part of our nation because of the light. Now, they want it because of greed."

On that Sunday, 21 people listened to Barley; 13 of them were children and nine of them were from the same family. Elsewhere around Sandpoint, parking lots for Methodist, Catholic, evangelical and other churches were full.
[...more...] [Need the full story? Read this]

Many residents of north Idaho have learned to despise hate

• Technical Support generously provided by the makers of Good News Blog• AI is sponsored in part by Dutch Amsterdam, Blanes Costa Brava Self Catering Apartments, and IerseBouwer.com

• Technical Support generously provided by the makers of Good News Blog
• AI is sponsored in part by Dutch Amsterdam, Blanes Costa Brava Self Catering Apartments, and IerseBouwer.com