The house where Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler lived has been demolished. So has the church where he preached his racist religion. Cows graze where hundreds of white supremacists used to burn crosses in the summer.
The Aryan Nations is long gone from northern Idaho, but its reputation lingers to the chagrin of locals.
When a man recently shot up the Holocaust Museum in Washington, much was made of the fact that accused shooter James von Brunn spent a few days in 2004 in this area, living with a fellow anti-Semite before he was evicted for being too radical.
STEREOTYPED
“The stain is so deep,” said Tony Stewart, a long time resident who helped evict the Aryan Nations. “We feel stereotyped in a way that is unjust.”
At the center of the debate is Hayden Lake, a posh town of fewer than 500 people that mostly consists of a country club and lavish homes along its picture-postcard lake. Hayden Lake served as the post office address for the rural Aryan Nations compound, 8km away, and became shorthand as the haven for hate groups.
Instead of goose-stepping neo-Nazis, its streets are full of golf carts and joggers.
So it is in much of the Idaho Panhandle these days, where tourism has replaced logging and mining as the major economic activity.
Coeur d’Alene, 13km south of Hayden Lake, is the largest city and economic hub of the panhandle. Built along Lake Coeur d’Alene, it draws golfers, boaters, and outdoor enthusiasts, and the charming downtown is full of sidewalk cafes, art galleries and boutiques.
A decade ago, the Aryan Nations held annual marches by its handful of members down Sherman Avenue, at the height of the tourist season.
Not that it hurt business much. Kootenai County has grown from 69,000 residents in 1990 to nearly 140,000 now, and has been able to recruit jobs and retirees from larger urban areas.
The Aryans were never a local product. Butler was an aerospace engineer from California who used to vacation in the area because it had so few minorities. The county is more than 94 percent white and non-Hispanic, one of the most homogenous places in the nation.
ANNUAL MEETINGS
In the 1970s, Butler bought 8 hectares near Hayden Lake and began gathering followers from around the country. He held annual skinhead symposiums called the Aryan World Congress, which lured hundreds of supporters to the compound for a weekend of speeches, cross burnings and marches. Some followers would leave and commit acts of violence.
Stewart and other community leaders organized a human rights task force that rallied the community against Butler. Their opposition put them at risk, as when the home of activist Bill Wassmuth was bombed in 1986. Three Aryan Nations members were convicted in the bombings.
BEGINNING OF THE END
The end for Butler began during a congress in the summer of 1998. A car driving past the compound apparently backfired, and Aryan security guards, thinking it was a gunshot, gave chase. They shot at the vehicle and forced the two terrified occupants off the road. Working with the Southern Poverty Law Center, the two victims sued the Aryan Nations for negligence in the supervision of the guards.
A Coeur d’Alene jury awarded them a US$6.3 million judgment, and Butler was forced to declare bankruptcy and then sell his land.
He lived his remaining days in a donated house in Hayden, dying in 2004. His followers scattered around the country.
There are still efforts to revive Butler’s legacy.
The Aryan Nations Web site lists Coeur d’Alene residents Jerald O’Brien and Michael Lombard as leaders. Both hold the title of pastor, which was also used by Butler. O’Brien declined to say how many people had joined the group, but welcomed a reporter’s attention.
“Any publicity is good publicity,” O’Brien said. “If the enemy is not screaming for our blood, we are not doing a good job.”
INTOLERANCE
Northern Idaho is not a tolerant paradise, Stewart said.
Right-wing political attitudes are common. It’s not unusual to see people sporting Confederate flags, anti-government slogans or even a swastika tattoo. Many of the newcomers hail from California, including a large cadre of retired law enforcement officers.
“LA cops move up here to get away from diversity,” said Rachel Dolezal, director of education for the Human Rights Education Institute in Coeur d’Alene.
Dolezal, a multi-racial woman who graduated from Howard University, jokes that she traded one monoculture for another when she moved to Coeur d’Alene in 2004.
She finds plenty of challenges. The center’s efforts to bring black history programs to schools, and a black student association to North Idaho College have resulted in letters to the editor criticizing the efforts, she said.
There was also a recent incident in which three skinheads asked for a tour of the office, she said. They showed little interest in the center’s work, but saluted a Nazi flag that was part of an exhibit on propaganda, she said.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS