The Struggle Against Hate Is A Matter Of Solidarity

Who could have imagined 30 years ago, when the ‘60s counterculture was in full force, that we would someday be faced with militia groups, separatists, secessionists, fierce ideologues living off the grid, and entire blocs of people viewing the government as some sort of infernal enemy?

All of this in a country whose motto is “Out of many, one.”

Idaho has a reputation for rugged individualism, and though it is mostly Republican now, not all that long ago the state was a Democratic stronghold, albeit with a conservative streak. With that individualism came a rough-hewn tolerance, a belief in the American code that it didn’t matter so much who your parents were, but rather who and what you were.

It is not surprising at all, therefore, that North Idaho’s vigorous and instant response to the arrival of Richard Butler and his Aryan Nations movement was to create a Task Force on Human Relations to counter the blind hatred of racism. It is also not at all surprising that the vast majority of people in the Panhandle are horrified and disgusted by the vitriolic beliefs of Butler and his misguided followers, and wish they would go away.

I have friends around the country, and probably you do, too, who have never visited here and would never even dream of it because of the faulty image projected by this tiny but loud and visible minority.

This kind of image spells disaster for the tourist industry, of course. Each hateful convention, march, or arrest simply drives away more visitor and convention dollars. Worse, the national reputation of the many decent people here suffers.

Butler maintains a mostly low profile. We know he’s here, but we pretend he isn’t.

From time to time, however, he rears up again.

Now he wants to have a “100-man flag parade” on April 18, commemorating Adolf Hitler’s birthday in 1889.

Never mind that Hitler exterminated six million people just because of their race. Never mind that he started a war which killed 50 million people, and ruined the lives of hundreds of millions more. Never mind that many of us today, if we are not veterans of that war ourselves, still in one way or another bear its scars, its costs, and its burdens.

Despite all that, the Aryan Nations wants to celebrate as its hero the man most responsible for the 20th century’s greatest single calamity.

Racists have rights in our country, of course, and they should have every expectation of the benefits conferred on all of us by our precious Bill of Rights, even if they would deny most if not all of those rights instantly to anyone they consider suspect or impure.

Idaho still has a serious image problem. What to do about the minority racist element and its deleterious effects on business and reputation?

Trying to suppress the villains simply makes them appear sympathetic victims, garnering them support from areas where they would ordinarily expect and receive none. Meeting them with violence and intolerance would be counterproductive, providing more fodder for their off-base arguments. Ignoring them doesn’t seem to work, either. Since the Aryan Nations movement is known all across the country, even though his followers are mercifully few, what happens to it and to its leader does fall under the heading of legitimate news.

For years, men, mostly young, have arrived here seeing in Richard Butler and his acres some sort of haven from a world that doesn’t understand them. Butler’s beliefs provide simple answers, wildly incorrect answers, to weak and frightened people who seem unable peacefully to find their own place in the world. These are the sort of people who cannot face their own failure and discomfiture without blaming someone or something, if not their own government, then some sort of world conspiracy. Most of them leave, and one hopes they somehow learn enough elsewhere to find some more civilized answers.

It is trite to write it but it is true nonetheless: The only way to fight bad ideas is with better ideas. The only way to fight poor speech is with better speech. The only way to fight intolerance and racism is with tolerance and humanity. The only way to banish the darkness is with light.

All of us in the Pacific Northwest should make conscious efforts to remember our common link with all other members of our often-fragmented human race. While the immediate problem is Idaho’s, the larger issues flare up constantly in many other places.

So let Butler and his few followers march, and wave their flags, and celebrate the birth of one of our century’s most vilified monsters. But at the same time, let him look down the street and see the true majority facing him, linked arm in arm in harmony and solidarity - a majority that gives the lie to messages of separatist hatred.

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Fred Glienna Contributing writer