coeur d’alene, idaho | With his white hair and lined face, Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler looked like a kindly grandfather.
But when he spoke, it was to issue vile diatribes against Jews and minorities, and to call for a whites-only enclave in the Northwest.
Butler, who died in his sleep Sept. 8 at the age of 86, surrounded himself with thugs and skinheads, and decorated his home with swastikas and pictures of Adolf Hitler. For three decades his neo-Nazi group became the dominant public image of northern Idaho. He is mourned by few.
“I would say his death closes a particularly ugly chapter in the history of race and religious hatred in this country,’ said Daniel Alter, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director for civil rights.
Butler, who insisted on being addressed as “pastor,’ is easy to dismiss as a crackpot bigot with a tiny following. But he actually spawned a spectacular amount of criminal activity around the country, pushed Idaho to pass some of the nation’s toughest hate crime laws, and galvanized human rights groups in the region.
His parades through downtown Coeur d’Alene at the height of the tourist season horrified local leaders. His run for mayor of Hayden last year drew worldwide attention and prompted a record turnout to resoundingly vote no. He was always available to reporters and television cameras, making outrageous comments, often delivered in front of a swastika.
And he left followers who promise to carry on his work.
“Although all of us will take time to reflect and honor this man, we shall continue to build Aryan Nations above and beyond its former glory,’ Charles Juba, leader of a Pennsylvania-based splinter group also called Aryan Nations, said last week. “Pastor Butler was one of the last true racial warriors of his generation.’
Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose lawsuit bankrupted Butler in 2000, estimated Aryan Nations has about 200 members in 17 chapters around the country. But Butler left no heir apparent and Potok expects the group will eventually fade away.
Butler’s death and the 2002 death of William Pierce of the neo-Nazi National Alliance likely signal the end of the large, centrally organized and at least partially disciplined white supremacist groups, Potok said.
“I would say that, ironically, many times the leaders of these groups act as brakes on their members, and prevent them from shooting cops and holding up banks,’ Potok said. “They say, ‘Yes, yes, we need to shoot the Jews, but not today.”
Butler’s real legacy may be that he pushed lily-white Idaho into confronting racism. The state Legislature passed tough laws against malicious harassment and adopted a Martin Luther King Jr.-Human Rights Day holiday. In Boise, a memorial to Holocaust victim Anne Frank opened in 2002 after a $1.5 million private fund-raising effort. Politicians pushed a slogan: “Idaho, Too Great to Hate.’