Aryans have no home in N. Idaho

In his final years, Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler lived for his annual racist conferences and downtown Coeur d’Alene parades, where he would surround himself with like-minded disciples and thumb his nose at the community that overwhelmingly rejected his foul creed and him.

Unfortunately, his sad-sack movement didn’t die when he did last fall.

Jim Ramm, an Oregonian who spent considerable time with the ailing racist, is planning to honor Butler at a whites-only summer gathering on 5 acres near Athol, Idaho. Time will tell how serious Ramm is about staging a July event because he has a history of not following through on announced plans. Ramm’s notice may be no more than a grandstand play to gain traction as he and other supremacists struggle to claim Butler’s leadership mantle.

Ramm’s announcement, however, underscores an important fact: He has no place of his own in North Idaho upon which to stage a significant event.

Obviously, the annual Aryan Congress can’t take place at Butler’s old compound above Hayden Lake. It’s gone. Every building has been leveled. Every trailer has been moved. Every symbol of the Aryan Nations removed or destroyed, including trees that had swastikas carved into them. Wisely, local human rights activists seized Butler’s land and buildings as part of a $6.3 million civil verdict that bankrupted Butler and the Aryans more than four years ago. By razing Butler’s 20-acre compound, the activists denied refuge and a shrine to a new generation of white supremacists, like Ramm.

As he was dying, human rights activist Bill Wassmuth said he regretted deeply that he hadn’t sued Butler and his organization after three Aryans bombed his home in 1986. Wassmuth realized that the Aryans would have scattered sooner without a hate center. After Butler died, the Aryan Nations remnant moved its headquarters and post office box to Lincoln, Ala.

Imagine where Kootenai County would be today without the civil trial that broke Butler.

If Butler had kept his property and bestowed his mantle on a young turk, like Ramm, Kootenai County might be facing a never-ending fight against racism, rather than an annual annoyance. Butler’s compound might have continued as an educational center for hatred and staging area for hate crimes. Freshly minted ex-cons, with a racial chip on their shoulder, would have continued to visit North Idaho for indoctrination as well as free room and board.

Whether or not Ramm carries through on his gathering, he served notice, by his announcement, that Butler’s hateful propaganda found some fertile soil. Ramm relies on the Internet, the media and propaganda drops at odd hours to get his racist message out. He has no headquarters to do that in the Inland Northwest.

In the end, we can thank Wassmuth and other leaders of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations for their dedicated, disciplined war against racism – a fight which ultimately claimed the racists’ foothold as spoils.