Moscow, Idaho—Okay, a confession: We never actually saw the site of the former Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake. We got really bad directions and drove around for a while looking for it, but we had to be in Moscow at a decent hour, so we kept on going. Sorry. Basically, though, the story is this: For about three decades northern Idaho was the notorious base of operations for the Aryan Nations, who'd turned to Hayden Lake because of its isolation and general absence of non-whites. By day they'd attend services at their shrine to Adolf Hitler,* or conduct exercises at their 20-acre wooded compound outside town; by night, they'd unwind to pagan death metal. Once a year, white supremacists from around the world would converge upon Hayden Lake (population 494) for a big conference.
Of course, if you happened to live in Hayden Lake and didn't hate the rest of the planet, this was a really frustrating situation. But it wasn't until 1998 when things finally reached a tipping point. That's when a bunch of Aryans Nations guards opened fire on a mother, Victoria Keenan, and her son, Jason, who had stopped on the side of the road to look for a wallet. The guards—drunk, I should note—hopped in a truck, assault rifles in tow, and followed the Keenans for two miles, spraying the car with bullets until the Keenans swerved into a ditch. Then the guards held them at gunpoint and beat them.
The Southern Poverty Law Center filed suit (pdf) on the Keenans' behalf, and won a $6.3 million judgment in 2000, throwing the Aryan Nations into bankruptcy and forcing them to give up compound**. An Idaho millionaire, Greg Carr, then bought the land and re-gifted it to North Idaho College of Coeur d'Alene, and the college, in turn, decided to turn the property into a "peace park."
Read more at motherjones.com
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