Evil Accessories Help Highlight Complacency

Two antique Ku Klux Klan belt buckles … 1920 era. Excellent condition. Sell or trade.

Too late for a January white sale. But still in plenty of time for the Hitler birthday blowout parade Aryan Nations goose-steppers want to hold April 18 in downtown Coeur d’Alene.

Wouldn’t a couple of vintage Klan buckles be the perfect ensemble accessories for fashion-conscious neo-Nazis participating in the 100 Moron March?

“We’d like to have 200,” Aryan Nations’ Richard Butler told me. The notorious leader of the Hayden Lake-area compound turns 80 on Feb. 23. He is perhaps looking forward to the parade as a final “Sieg Heil” before slithering off to join Der Fuhrer in his eternal bunker. “But we’ll have a good 100.”

I just about coughed out my molars when a co-worker pointed out the above belt buckle ad the other day.

The 208 telephone number jumped out like logic in a Butler sermon. As if North Idaho’s image hasn’t been stained enough by this dangerous coot and the racists who swallow his malarkey. Now North Idaho must suffer some fool hawking Klanwear.

This warranted checking out.

I dialed the number and reached David Laabs. The 64-year-old retired electrical engineer lives in Rathdrum with his wife, Bernice. The small city recently collected 500 signatures from residents who are sick and tired of racism.

“So how much do you want for your, er, buckles?” I asked Laabs, trying to break the ice.

Laabs gave me the perfect backwoods response:

“I dunno, but I’d trade ‘em for a little pistol of some kind.”

I thought I had this man figured out until he floored me with the following revelation. “I’m not a racist,” he claimed.

“My wife’s Jewish.”

This definitely warranted further investigation. I hopped in a car and headed east to see if Laabs was yanking my chain.

He wasn’t. I was greeted by an incongruous message on the front door of the modest home where you can buy these pieces of hateful memorabilia.

“Shalom.” The Hebrew greeting for peace and hello.

Laabs and Bernice offered me a chair. They sat smoking GPC cigarettes as I eyeballed the buckles.

One of them belonged to Laabs’ grandfather, John, who in the 1920s was a big shot Klansman in Cleveland. The rectangular piece of heavy engraved brass shows a hooded figure holding a Bible next to a U.S. flag and a burning cross.

Laabs, who collects guns and other items, can’t recall where he picked up the second buckle. Or why. That one shows two Klansmen chopping down a tree labeled “Rome.” Two vultures perch on branches. The tree is adorned with disembodied heads, maybe to represent different “mongrel” races. Who knows?

I asked the couple how they can have such reprehensible trash in their home?

Or how they justify selling them possibly to skinhead ne’er-do-wells who might parade them down Sherman Avenue?

“Why should it bother me?” Laabs asked.

Bernice would rather the Aryans didn’t march, but added, “It doesn’t really affect me. My opinions are mine. Their opinions are theirs.”

This was the most shocking discovery during my trip to Rathdrum:

The Laabs, I fear, are like too many other gracious, complacent citizens. They have somehow disconnected themselves from the stark reality that the mindset of Butler and his ilk is no different than jackbooted Nazis of yore.

The kindly old Rev would fire up the ovens in a heartbeat if he ever got the chance.

If someone wants “to wear an original Klan belt buckle,” said Bernice, a descendant of Russian Jews, “more power to them.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo