Locals prefer not to talk about the hate that took root here a generation ago, when the Aryan Nations and other militants built a white supremacist paradise among the tall pines and crystal lakes of North Idaho.
Community activists, backed by national civil rights groups, bankrupted the neo-Nazis in court and eventually forced them to move, a
hard-fought triumph memorialized in scenes from 2001 of a backhoe smashing through a giant swastika at the former Aryan compound just outside of Coeur d’Alene, the biggest city in the north.
For much of the two decades since, civic leaders have focused on moving beyond the image of North Idaho as a white-power fiefdom. They steered attention instead to emerald golf courses and gleaming lakeside resorts where celebrities such as
Kim Kardashian sip huckleberry cocktails.
Now, however, North Idaho residents are confronting that history head-on as a new movement builds against far-right extremism.
This time, activists say, the threat is no longer on the fringes of society, dressed in Nazi garb at a hideout in the woods. Instead, they see it in the leadership of the local Republican Party, which has mirrored the lurch to the right of the national conservative movement during the Trump era on matters of race, religion and sexuality. The bigotry of the past, they say, now has mainstream political cover.
In this ruby-red state, the pushback is being led from within the party. A group of disaffected, self-described “traditional” Republicans has spent the past two years planning to wrest back control from leaders who they accuse of steering the local GOP toward extremism, a charge the officials vehemently deny. A crucial measure of the challengers’ efforts comes Tuesday, Idaho’s primary day.
If the breakaway group can succeed, it would make North Idaho an unlikely setting for something rare: A meaningful internal rebellion against the forces that have driven the Republican Party toward open embraces of far-right rhetoric and policies since Donald Trump first claimed the GOP presidential nomination eight years ago.
The rebels have focused their efforts on precinct committee seats, the building blocks of local party power. On Tuesday, they need to win 37 seats out of 73 to force a change in local party leadership, but they’re hoping for a rout.
“I want a full sweep,” said Christa Hazel, 50, a Republican organizer who has been doxed and harassed since resigning from the party’s central committee in 2017 over concerns about extremism and a lack of transparency. “I want a full referendum on the ugliness, chaos and division.”
Hazel and her allies blame local leaders for ideological fights that have left North Idaho College on the brink of
losing its accreditation. Doctors, especially reproductive health specialists, are leaving the area, with
one local hospital recently shuttering its maternity ward. Extremism researchers and local media outlets have
documented the ties between GOP officials and far-right figures.
The challengers boast prominent GOP names within their ranks and deep pockets from local pro-business donations. Their candidates are pressing the case door to door, while
radio ads accuse the incumbent committee leaders of promoting “white nationalists and extremists who want to take over our state.”
The hard-liners dismiss their critics as closet liberals or “RINOs,” Republicans in name only. They argue that the labeling of committee members as racists or extremists is the last resort of elites whose politics no longer match the sensibilities of North Idaho.
“Nothing but the old ‘everyone we don’t like is a racist’ propaganda,” Brent Regan, chairman of the local GOP committee, posted on X. In an emailed response to questions, Regan accused his GOP opponents of engaging in “propaganda,” suggested they had sided with Democrats over Republicans and alleged they were manufacturing concern about racism and extremism that does not exist among voters.
Leaders have repeatedly dismissed portrayals of their stances as hateful or extremist. A statement on the central committee’s homepage says it “rejects all forms of racial, religious, sexual, and political supremacy.”
Those words haven’t reassured some North Idaho residents who remember the devastating consequences of allowing far-right extremism a foothold: pipe bombs and neo-Nazi marches in downtown Coeur d’Alene.
The
Aryan Nations showed up in the area in 1974 and stayed until the group crumbled in 2000 amid legal challenges and infighting. The leader, Richard Butler, built a heavily guarded 20-acre compound that served as a national hub for white supremacists. Butler acolytes formed splinter groups that waged a deadly terror campaign with the goal of triggering a race war.
“Coeur d’Alene has this kind of mythical status for extremists because of what Butler did,” said Art Jipson, a University of Dayton professor and expert on white-power movements.
Hazel, the daughter of an FBI agent who worked Aryan Nations cases, recalled learning as a child that her family was on a white supremacist hit list. They lived 3 miles from the compound and her dad sometimes ran kidnapping drills to make sure she stayed vigilant. Every July, Hazel said, her father disappeared to conduct surveillance on the group’s annual summertime gathering.
Still, like many with deep ties to the region, Hazel said she resents the lingering idea of North Idaho as a sanctuary for hate. The region is conservative, she said, and locals are proud of their Christian faith and “live and let live” ethos.
The problem, as she and her allies see it, is that traditional conservatism has become entangled with darker ideologies often held by right-wing “political refugees” who have fled California and other western states and moved here in search of racial and religious homogeneity.
“They want to take us back to some sort of archaic, medieval time,” she said.
The election was days away, and Hazel said she was excited thinking about all the voters she had met who confided that they were also uncomfortable with the stances of the Republican committee. But she was also braced for possible disappointment.
Maybe, she said, voters don’t understand the stakes or don’t care enough to show up. Maybe the mobilization to bring North Idaho back from the extremist brink assumes a decency that’s already obsolete.
“We may have it wrong, that our community has become something we don’t recognize, and there’s a true ugliness that has become acceptable,” Hazel said, squeezing in lunch between back-to-back political events one recent afternoon. “I don’t want to believe that.”
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