Remote Corners Of Idaho Attract Extremist Groups

Despite Idaho’s increasingly vocal condemnation of racism, its remote corners will remain a magnet for right-wing extremists, a sociologist warns.

Many Idahoans contend it is only a handful of bigots responsible for the state’s poor reputation nationally. But Idaho State University professor James Aho believes Idaho, and Montana as well, actually are very attractive to racist and other extreme organizations.

Both states provide plenty of spare room they can consider their territory, Aho says, and a broad spectrum of groups from white supremacists to anti-government “freemen” opposed to paying taxes take advantage.

“This is always a competitive market,” he says. “You have county-rights groups, militias and even wiseuse groups all filling a little niche in that market.”

Klanwatch, an Alabama agency that keeps tabs on racist groups, recently reported that the Panhandle-based Church of Jesus Christ Christian Aryan Nations is spreading across the nation while the Ku Klux Klan and youthful skinhead gangs are on the wane. It estimated the Aryan Nations is now active in 18 states.

“People don’t realize the white supremacist movement in general has a number of factions, from (reactionary) Christians to gay neo-Nazi bikers,” said Joe Roy, Klanwatch chief investigator. “The thing that holds them together is umbrella groups like Aryan Nations.”

In his book, “This Thing of Darkness: A Sociology of the Enemy,” Aho concludes the first step toward assembling a racist circle is to find a group of people to despise. It must convince prospective members the scapegoat is the reason for their misfortune or unhappiness.

So if the Aryan Nations only welcomes whites, that leaves most of the world as its enemies.

“A lot of people are starting to wake up and realize the white male is a third-class citizen and they’re the ones who pay taxes and support the lowlifes,” Aryan Nation’s founder Richard Butler said.

“Every non-white has a national state for their race, even the Jews,” he said. “But no country has a national state for whites since the fall of the Third Reich.”

Butler goes one better than Klanwatch, predicting his minions will be operating in 30 states by year’s end. Agents are already located in Finland, Denmark and other countries, he said.

But human rights activist Bill Wassmuth, executive director of the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment, says it is all a matter of perception.

“The Aryan Nations is on the increase from a couple of years ago when it was close to defunct,” Wassmuth admits. “But whether it’s anywhere as close to its numbers in the 1980s, it isn’t.”

And the former Catholic priest whose Coeur d’Alene home was bombed by racists a decade ago maintained that Americans who abhor prejudice far outnumber those who thrive on it.

In spite of reports to the contrary, Wassmuth claims Butler’s Sunday church services at the Aryan Nations’ Hayden Lake compound only attract about a dozen people these days.

And the growth in European strength, Wassmuth said, is the result of last summer’s merger of Butler’s band and that of Gerhard Lauck, a Nebraska supremacist who has circulated Nazi publications in Germany and Scandinavia for years. Authorities recently tracked down and arrested Lauck in Germany.

“While we realize the threat from the Aryan Nations, the message always shows it’s a handful of folks, compared with thousands on the other side,” Wassmuth said. “Whenever these groups spring up, their presence makes their opponents even louder.”