White Supremacists Convene but ‘Good Neighbors’ Protest

Hundreds of white supremacists, many of them armed and from an assortment of Ku Klux Klan and similar U.S. and Canadian groups, met Saturday to denounce nonwhites, Jews and the federal government.

Meanwhile, Idaho Gov. John V. Evans and about 1,200 others gathered 15 miles away for a “Good Neighbors Day.” Nearly 200 communities sent resolutions in support of that session in Coeur d’Alene, and governors of Montana, Washington and Oregon sent statements asking citizens to reject racism.

‘Unreasoning Intolerance’

“We want everyone to know that the Aryan Nations and other such hate groups do not represent nor do they speak for the people of Idaho,” Evans told the crowd.

“Although small in number, these hate groups have a blind and unreasoning intolerance for diversity,” he said. “They hold a perverted notion of what America is all about as they promote senseless racism and religious prejudice.”

Meeting at the remote compound of the Aryan Nations Church in the heavily forested hills of northern Idaho, the white supremacists called for establishment of a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest and the destruction of nonwhites and non-Christians.

“Our goal is the destruction of them,” Pastor Thomas Robb of the Church of Jesus Christ, Harrison, Ark., told about 300 listeners. “There is no middle ground, we’ll take no survivors.”

No Trouble Reported

White supremacists stayed away from the counterdemonstration, and police reported no trouble or arrests.

Robb was one of 15 white supremacist leaders planning to speak during the two-day conference that includes a cross-lighting and tributes to The Order, a violent Aryan Nations offshoot that launched an unsuccessful but violent revolution in 1984. Armed men in combat gear patrolled the 20-acre compound.