Fight against hate an ongoing battle

Racist Richard Butler and his cadre of born losers are gluttons for punishment.

After a jury of their peers helped run them off their Hayden Lake compound, after that compound was razed and after the city of Hayden overwhelmingly rejected them at the polls last fall, Butler & Co. insist on parading again through downtown Coeur d’Alene today. It’s hard to say why they’re annoying Coeur d’Alene shopkeepers with their habitual grab for the spotlight.

It can’t be tradition because the Aryans don’t parade every year. And it can’t be to show their numerical strength because most local Aryans scattered after they lost their free bunk and meals when the compound was forced to close. Maybe the neo-Nazis want to prove that octogenarian Butler’s still alive and somewhat coherent, depending on your definition of coherence.

Local human-rights leaders have summed up the significance of the scheduled parade and responded appropriately with a collective yawn. The Aryan Nations, as Kootenai County residents have known it for the last 25 years, is done. Kaput. A bad memory. A chapter in North Idaho history that closed when the organization was bankrupted by a $6.3 million civil judgment. There’s no longer a reason to make a fuss over these particular characters. “We think this is a non-event this time,” said Tony Stewart, a leader of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations. However, that doesn’t mean the fight in the Inland Northwest against prejudice is over.

About 100 miles east of Coeur d’Alene, near St. Regis, Mont., the so-called Church of the True Israel is staging an outdoors meeting this weekend that organizers have dubbed “a new beginning.” According to the group’s Web site, events include “a survival scenario exercise for children.” Speakers come from the usual list of suspect organizations, including Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and Militia of Montana. Underscoring the group’s bad intentions, the Web site says of this weekend’s event: “Non-whites and the press will not be allowed to attend.”

Of note, the gathering is viewed with alarm by local authorities and live-and-let-live Montana neighbors.

In the Missoulian newspaper earlier this week, authorities said they had contingency plans for a worst-case scenario. And Jeff Noonan, a third-generation native and 20-year military veteran, said 50 people had met at his house to discuss the supremacist get-together, “and the feeling of the group was that we have a nice-small-town atmosphere free from this type of prejudice and stupidity. We don’t want these bigots spewing their hate in this town. This isn’t the place for it.”

Where have we heard that before?

If northwestern Montanans are wise, they’ll contact the Kootenai County task force for expert advice on proven nonviolent ways to resist racists attempting to gain a foothold in their communities. Literally, the task force has written the manual and taped the how-to video on the subject. Supremacists, like noxious weeds, are hard to eradicate unless you get every last piece of the root. If nothing else, the parade in Coeur d’Alene proves some of the supremacists’ foul root remains in North Idaho.