Aryan Says Board To Pick His Successor Compound May Leave Idaho, Richard Butler Tells Skinheads
The 78-year-old founder and leader of the Aryan Nations says he’s appointing a board to select his successor.
The board will decide whether to keep the white supremacy church in North Idaho or move it elsewhere, Richard Butler said Friday at the outset of the annual Aryan Youth Conference.
Large, red Nazi flags waved from the guard tower, and young men and women who call themselves skinheads posed for pictures with Butler.
The gathering, which lasts through Sunday at the Aryan Nations compound, is expected to attract at least 50 neo-Nazi skinheads.
They’ll celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday tonight with a cross burning.
Butler kicked off the conference by telling reporters that he’s established an Aryan Web page on the Internet.
He said the Internet is “another way to spread the word that the white race is being exterminated.”
“We’re the fastest disappearing species on the face of the Earth,” Butler said.
His first offerings on the net, Butler said, include a revised Declaration of Independence, which he co-authored with a follower who’s in jail in California.
Butler’s wife, Betty, died last December. In light of her passing, Butler was asked Friday about his successor.
“I am appointing a church board that’s going to take over that responsibility,” the Aryan leader said.
He’s selecting board members now and will divulge their names at the Aryan World Congress in July.
The board may include Louis Beam, a longtime Aryan ambassador and Ku Klux Klansman, Butler said.
He said he would prefer the church stay in North Idaho. “We have other sites all over the country, but I would hope it would stay here in perpetuity.”
The 15-acre site he bought for the Church of Jesus Christ-Christian, or Aryan Nations, is deeded to a corporation for the purpose of operating the church, Butler said.
, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: ARYANS ON THE NET The World Wide Web address for the Aryan Nations home page is: http://www.anwhq.com.