Neo-Nazi plans N. Idaho event

A man tied to racist cable television shows and distribution of hate literature in the Portland area is planning a “whites only” gathering this summer in North Idaho.

Jim Ramm, self-described leader of an Oregon neo-Nazi group called “Tualatin Valley Skins,” says in an Internet posting that the July 1-4 event will honor the memory of the late Richard G. Butler.

The 40-year-old neo-Nazi, whose real name is Matthew Ernest Ramsey, spent considerable time with the 86-year-old Aryan leader just days before his death last fall at his suburban home in Hayden.

Next summer’s gathering will include a videotaped showing of Butler’s last sermon, conducted in his Hayden home three days before he died, Ramm promises on his Tualatin Valley Skins Web site.

Without naming a specific location, the posting says the gathering will occur near Athol, Idaho, “about 13 miles from the original Aryan Nations site.”

The posting says it is five acres of private land “protected by a clearly marked, three wire high-voltage electric fence.”

For several years, the Aryan Nations held parades each July, crippling business activity and halting traffic in downtown Coeur d’Alene.

Ramm was among the marchers who joined Butler for his last parade last July through Coeur d’Alene.

Wearing a T-shirt and carrying a Sony camcorder, Ramm quietly videotaped the parade and many of the sideline spectators, including civil rights advocates and plainclothes law enforcement officers.

The parade was part of the Aryan World Congress, a weekend campout that included the burning of the Israeli flag. Ramm posted pictures of that activity on the group’s Web site.

“This summer, unite with the nationalist and show Idaho ZOG that white patriotism is still alive and well in the Northwest,” Ramm said on his group’s “nuke Israel” Web site.

Instead of another parade through downtown Coeur d’Alene, the neo-Nazi skinhead group says it will offer classes in how to print and distribute “white flyers,” and then carry out a distribution.

“The flyer distribution will be followed by a rally in a nearby park,” the group says, without offering specifics.

July was the month when Butler, for more than two decades, would host the “Aryan World Congress,” which sometimes included parades or rallies in Coeur d’Alene.

Until 2000 when he lost his 20-acre compound, the “Aryan congress” was Butler’s attempt at an ecumenical gathering of racists who follow various religious and non-religious dogmas, but who were unified in their hatred of Jews, minorities, the “Zionist Occupied Government” and the media.

After losing his compound following a civil suit, Butler continued to hold annual Aryan gatherings at Farragut State Park and, last year, at a private campground near Cataldo, Idaho.

Experts who track such extremists say Ramm is part of a new generation of racists who prefer to operate behind the scenes, using the Internet and literature distribution to spread their message of hate.

He also is in a group of bit players in the racist movement, none of whom have fully grabbed the Aryan Nations leadership reins in the void created by Butler’s passing, experts say.

Nonetheless, the Tualatin Valley Skins is among the groups that state and federal law enforcement agencies working jointly on terrorism task forces routinely monitor. When contacted by e-mail last week by The Spokesman-Review, Ramm declined an interview.

Ramm frequently dresses in a World War II Nazi SS uniform and describes himself as a member of the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group.

He also says he is a “ghost skin,” an older skinhead who lets his hair grow and avoids tattoos in an attempt to blend in with mainstream society to spread racist views.

He formerly lived in Snohomish, Wash., and Colville, in Stevens County. He attended Eastern Washington University in 2000 – the same time when racist flyers mysteriously appeared on campus bulletin boards, sources said.

Ramm was a “person of interest” but was never charged with the postings, EWU police chief Tom McGill confirmed last week.

Ramm also has promoted events that didn’t materialize, including a leaflet distribution in southwest Portland earlier this month.

He promised a Nazi flag prize to the skinhead who could distribute the most racist flyers and not get caught. His Tualatin skinheads didn’t show up, but 1,000 counter-demonstrators did, along with a vanguard of police at considerable expense to taxpayers.

In the latest development, the neo-Nazi group was tied last week to two “Adopt-A-Highway” signs put up near Salem in Marion County, south of Portland, the Associated Press reported. The signs, which cost taxpayers $250 each, say: “American Nazi Party.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, ruling earlier this month in a Missouri case, held that free speech rights prevent states from barring such groups as the Ku Klux Klan from participating in “Adopt-A-Highway” programs.

The Tualatin Valley Skins “is a small group of people, probably no more than 10, who use the Internet and the media to get their message out,” said a law enforcement source in Oregon who asked not to be identified.

Still, Ramm’s Web site, updated almost daily, apparently is attracting a lot of attention in the hate movement, based on recorded hits.

It glorifies Adolf Hitler and shows a picture of a frail Butler sitting in a chair with a white cat in his lap, apparently just days before his death last fall.

The Internet site is full of racist, anti-black, anti-Semitic and anti-media messages, and includes about 100 photographs of last summer’s Aryan Nations parade in downtown Coeur d’Alene.

It was the last parade for Butler, whom Ramm calls “an intelligent man and a unique individual. He refused to stop fighting the good fight, even after the Jews stole his world.”

Ramm’s site calls Butler’s two daughters “traitors,” who were “raised in the church to love our white heritage, but who rebelled, embracing the illusion of the Jew-controlled world.”

After Butler’s death, the site claims, Butler’s daughters destroyed his Aryan Nations records and other church property “because of FBI pressure.”

The site says “RS flew to Idaho” and requested the Aryan records, but was told they were burned. The initials apparently are a reference to Rick Spring, an Aryan Nations colonel from Arkansas who was close to Butler. Spring is believed to be involved with the group’s continuing operation, now based in Alabama.