Led by SPLC attorney Morris Dees, the Keenans won a $6.3 million judgment against Butler and the Aryan Nations. "And boy they put on a hell of a lawsuit, let me tell you," said Gissel. The 20-acre former site of the Aryan Nations in Hayden, Idaho, is now a privately owned ranch. Gissel brought their story to the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Traumatized by the incident, Victoria Keenan reached out to members of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, including Stewart and a local attorney named Norman Gissel. The Keenans were injured when their rear tire blew out and the car stopped in a ditch, where neo-Nazis beat them through the windows with rifles. Aryan Nations members heard the car backfire, and started giving chase, shooting as they pursued the Keenans' vehicle. When the son dropped something from the car, they retraced their path. On a July night, an Indigenous woman named Victoria Keenan and her 18-year old son were driving along the road next to the compound. Every year it hosted an annual conference that drew Klan members and neo-Nazi skinheads, among others, from around the nation.īut in 1998, members of the compound committed a crime that would bring the group's days in North Idaho to a close. Aryan Nations had also assumed a key role among racist organizations. Tony Stewart, of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, helped in efforts to drive the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations out of the Coeur d'Alene region two decades ago.Īfter that, the group's criminal activities escalated to include bombings, bank robberies, and even the firebombing attempted assassination of Bill Wassmuth, a prominent local Catholic priest and human rights activist. "I have heard people say it feels like when the Aryan Nations were at its peak. "There's a lot of people that know what's going on and they know something's not right," said Jessica Mahuron, with the North Idaho Pride Alliance. Hammond was referring to a neo-Nazi group headquartered in that region between 19.īut many Coeur d'Alene residents said the events that day, and the hostilities that built up to them, felt eerily similar to that earlier chapter in the region's history. "We're not going back to the days of the Aryan Nations," said Coeur d'Alene Mayor Jim Hammond, two days after the Patriot Front arrests on June 11. But the events reminded locals of another time when far right extremists sought to use their turf as a national stage to promote intolerance and hatred – and how their community fought back. Rousseau, the self-proclaimed leader, was arrested along with 30 men for conspiracy to riot at a Pride parade after the group was spotted getting out of a UHaul Truck.An anti-LGBTQ protester carries a semi-automatic rifle as he monitors Coeur d'Alene's "Pride in the Park" event on June 11, 2022.ĬOEUR D'ALENE, Idaho - The mass arrest earlier this month of 31 white nationalists allegedly en route to riot at a Pride event in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, drew attention to the unprecedented increase in threats to the LGBTQ community. It is also the same group that turned up in Idaho. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the Patriot Front a white nationalist hate group that formed after the deadly "Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville in 2017. Robert Trestan, the executive director of the Anti-Defamation League of New England, told the I-Team, the protest "really has all the indicators of an act of defiance and act of intimidation." ![]() ![]() The men, all wearing white gators covering their faces, sunglasses, baseball hats, khaki pants and blue shirts, headed back to Malden from downtown Boston, where they marched in the streets, waving flags and a banner that read "Reclaim America." Thomas Rousseau, the leader of the group, told the men to be considerate and be respectful, but the group itself wouldn't say much about where they were going. BOSTON - Members of the Patriot Front, a white supremacist organization, boarded an Orange Line train in Boston on Saturday.
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