This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Reproductive Rights Reporting Fund.

It is the final installment on the reproductive health crisis and Christian nationalism in Idaho. Check out the full three-part series here, and visit our YouTube channel for more on-the-ground reporting from Idaho.

In summer of 2022, 31 members of the white nationalist organization Patriot Front were arrested in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. They had arrived in the city—North Idaho’s largest, with a population of about 56,000—with a plan to start a riot at Pride in the Park, an annual LGBTQ pride event. They arrived in a U-Haul truck carrying masks, shields, and other riot gear. Their arrest sparked something of a media frenzy.

But when I met with locals in Coeur d’Alene and nearby Sandpoint, they said they felt that much of that media coverage missed the mark. For one thing, almost all of the Patriot Front members arrested that day (five of whom were later convicted of conspiracy to riot) came from out of state—several from as far away as Texas.

Anti-fascist organizers in Idaho said they viewed that incident—and subsequent actions carried out by Patriot Front members in Idaho—as an attempt on the group’s part to create the perception that they have a bigger presence in the state than they really do. This would be consistent with Patriot Front’s general approach: The Southern Poverty Law Center, which designates Patriot Front a hate group, calls its members “image-obsessed.”

However, residents say the outsized media attention on Patriot Front overshadowed the threat they felt on that day from local groups that do have a strong presence in their communities. It also failed to capture the resistance to fascism and Christian nationalism that I encountered in every part of Idaho I visited.

It’s true that some people—especially doctors—have chosen to leave Idaho because of its political environment, which includes bans on abortion, and soon, gender-affirming care for children and teens. But plenty have chosen to stay. And in all sorts of different ways, they’re working to claw their state back from the jaws of extremism.

Alicia Abbott, a political organizer who lives in Sandpoint, made the one-hour drive down to Coeur d’Alene to volunteer at Pride in the Park 2022.

“I looked in my rearview mirror and I saw this white truck barreling down the highway, way fast, and they passed me,” Abbot said. “And on the back of their window was just a loud and proud white Nazi black sun.” (The black sun, or sonnenrad, is one of several ancient Norse symbols appropriated by Nazis during World War II, and also used by neo-Nazi groups.)

“I said, is today the day? Is today the day you’re going to be in a crowd that gets shot at? Because the Nazis are up real early, “ Abbott added. “They stood in that fucking park, 80 of them, all day long with semi-automatic weapons flanking an event … Everybody likes to focus on those people in the U-Haul that got arrested, and I’m like, you don’t even realize that we spent eight hours literally being flanked by people with loaded semi-automatic weapons.”

But just as many of the reports from that day don’t go into detail about local extremists—who are regulars at events like Pride in the Park—they also don’t capture the community response to them.

“There was a group of us who worked to identify a lot of the people that were coming—the dangers. We were getting that information out there,” said Casey, a former abortion “abolitionist” who is now an anti-fascist organizer, and whose name has been changed to protect their safety. In fact, activists worked to create a physical barrier between Pride in the Park attendees and neo-Nazis who came to demonstrate at the event.

“Patriot Front came in, they stole the show … it was very important, but it kind of took away from the local activists who had been working for years to keep the community safe,” Casey added.

When I was in Boise in October, I met with a group of anti-fascist activists who had recently pulled down a banner that Patriot Front dropped from a highway overpass. “OUR TOLERANCE IS AT AN END,” it read.

Patriot Front had dropped several banners that day. Activists told me that all of them were pulled down quickly, thanks to swift community action. Most of the Patriot Front members who participate in such demonstrations, the activists said, come in from out of town. Even still, they feel it’s important to them to push back, every single time.

“We have to show that queer lives are worth living in Idaho,” one of them told me.

The activists hung the banner upside down and spray painted it with a three arrows symbol, a mark used by resistance fighters to deface the swastika in Nazi Germany and also used by contemporary American anti-fascists. Then they set the banner on fire, and let it burn until nothing was left.

It’s no wonder that Patriot Front, an overtly fascist........

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