Police stopped the 31 affiliates of Patriot Front after a caller tipped them off to seeing approximately 20 masked men load into a U-Haul truck at a hotel parking lot, looking “like a little army.”
In the vehicle, police also found metal shields, reinforced baseball caps, a smoke grenade and paperwork that appeared to show a master plan to riot.
But researchers say that in spite of the national attention that the arrests drew, Patriot Front has escalated its activities.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the group posted more than 1,000 pieces of racist propaganda between June and the end of August. Members of Patriot Front also marched in Indianapolis. And in perhaps their most brazen public display, they swarmed in Boston in July, where they are accused of assaulting a Black man with shields.
“They are not afraid of the police,” said Kristofer Goldsmith, founder of a volunteer veterans organization called the Task Force Butler Institute, which researches far-right groups. “They’re not afraid of the justice system because in their entire history, when they act as an organization, they feel that they have overwhelmed law enforcement.”
A new far right unites against a fresh target
Today, North Idaho continues to occupy a special place in the imagination of the far right as a potential haven for hardline conservatives.
The degree to which disparate actors on the far right have recently unified against LGBTQ people and events has presented an unprecedented threat to that community and its supporters. Across the country, it has exacted a steep toll during what otherwise would be a Pride month full of celebration of inclusiveness and varied identities.
A short distance from the pro-gun gathering, a self-identified Christian nationalist named Dave Reilly led a Catholic rosary prayer in opposition to the Pride event. Reilly, himself a transplant to Coeur d’Alene, participated in the racist 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. Among those praying with Reilly were several young men with blue baseball caps sporting the “America First” slogan, merchandise associated with a white nationalist group.