The Southern Poverty Law Center recognizes nine hate groups in the state of Idaho – none of the groups are centered in Eastern or Southeastern Idaho, but they cast a long shadow over the entire state.    

    Patriot groups — armed militias — peaked following Barrack Obama’s election in 2008 — the number of antigovernment groups escalated 813 percent, from 149 groups in 2008 to an all-time high of 1,360 in 2012.

    In 2013, the number of groups dropped to 1,096.

    SPLC Senior Fellow Mark Potok said while the election of Obama in 2008 fueled radical right antigovernment groups, his re-election took the wind out of their sails four years later.

    “His election represented the “browning” of America and he represented the fading of the white majority,” Potok said. “In the first four years, attempts to prove Obama was a secret Muslim, or a Kenyan, or the anti-Christ failed, I think they were blown away when he was re-elected.”

    Potok said the passage of right wing legislation in several states including Idaho, that ban federal interference regarding guns, and environmental regulations also contributed to the decline of Patriot groups.

    Idaho’s panhandle has a long history of major radical right wing groups beginning in the 1980s when Aryan Nation’s leader Richard Butler encouraged whites to retreat to Idaho to form an all-white state, and while officials across the state minimized the presence of the groups, they continued to grow.

    “Chambers of Commerce tried to ignore them,” Potok said. “Now they take the groups head on and law enforcement is more aware of the groups as well.”

    Formed in 1971 to following the civil rights movement, the SPLC works through civil action and public awareness to eradicate racism and defend victims of discrimination, abuse and bigotry.

    According to the Alabama-based group’s Hate Map, America’s Promise Ministries, a Christian identity group based in Sandpoint tops the list of hate groups in the Gem State.

    America's Promise Ministry is both a Christian Identity church and a major publisher and distributor of right-wing extremist literature. Its current leader, Dave Barley, evangelizes a version of Christian Identity that promotes white separatism and contempt for Jews and non-whites and stops just short advocating violence.

    The hate group was launched in Phoenix, AZ by Barley’s father in law, Sheldon Emry – Emry died in 1985 and passed leadership onto Barley. He moved the organization to Northern Idaho in 1988.

    In 1991, Barley told the Dallas Morning News, "We are guilty of believing that Jesus Christ chose only those of his own race to be his 12 disciples, and that he did not go out and choose two Chinese, two blacks, two Indians, two Arabs, two women or two homosexuals. Therefore (Jesus) would be called a supremacist, racist and bigot by today's worldly standards."

    And in a publicized sermon in 2001, Barley told his congregation, "America's greatness didn't come from the blacks. It didn't come from the Asians, and it certainly didn't come from the Jews. (The Jews) wanted to become a part of our nation because of the light. Now, they want it because of greed."

    Between 1991 and 1999, crimes committed by followers of the APM include pipe bombings at abortion clinics and a string of bank robberies committed by Jay Merrell, a protégé of Barley's who preached at America's Promise Bible camps – tapes of Merrell's sermons were sold through Barely’s  mail-order publishing operation.   

    In 1999, former Aryan Nations security official Buford O. Furrow, Jr., went on a shooting rampage at the Los Angeles Jewish Community Center and seriously wounded three children and a receptionist – he went on to murder a Filipino-American mail carrier before he could be arrested. Furrow had several Christian identity publications in his van.

    Barley has consistently denied any connection to the crimes.

    The second Idaho group listed on SPLC hate map is the Boise-based Aryan Nation.

    The Neo-Nazi group hates Jews and a shares a love for Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. The group also hates other minorities including, gays and lesbians and even sometimes Christians. But they view Jews as their enemy, and trace social problems to a Jewish conspiracy that they believe controls governments, financial institutions and the media.

    Neo-Nazi groups emphasize hatred and others are focused on the creation of a fascist political state. Nazism – the National Socialist Movement also claims a presence in Idaho.

    The NSM, another Neo-Nazi organization, organizes theatrical protests across the country and is the largest and most prominent neo-Nazi group in the United States.

    The group is best known for its violent anti-Jewish rhetoric and racist views. Until 2007, NSM members protested in full Nazi uniforms, now they parade in black, Battle Dress Uniforms. The group opposes all non-white immigration and believe that all non-whites living in the country should be required to leave.

    Based in Coeur D’Alene, the Campaign for Radical Truth in History is a Holocaust Denial group.

    Holocaust denial groups either deny that six million Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazis in World War II, or they minimize the extent of the genocide.

    Often disguised as scholars and historians, the deniers claim that Jews died from disease or were simply war victims. The deniers claim that gas chambers uncovered during the war were used to delouse prisoners.

    The best known Holocaust denier was David Irving, a British writer who sued an American scholar for calling him a denier. The cases was defeated in 2000, when a British judge ruled that Irving had selectively edited the facts in his books as part of his pro-Nazi, pro-Hitler and anti-Jewish belief.

    A second holocaust denial groups, the International Conspiratological Association, is also based in Coeur d’Alene.

    The SPLC lists two radical skinhead groups, Crew 38 and the Northwest Hammerskins and said since the 1980s, crimes committed by racists claiming affiliation with the Skinhead groups range from vandalism to murder. The SPLC reports that the skinhead movement does not appear to be shrinking in Idaho or the U.S.

    Two white nationalist groups are also active in Idaho, the Family Home Northwest in Payette and Free Edgar Steele in Sagle.

    White nationalist groups profess white superiority and promote separatism – all of the groups listed above, except the Holocaust deniers, could also be categorized as white nationalists.

    If there is any good news regarding the existance of radical right wing hate groups in the U.S., it is the fact that the majority of hate crimes are not committed by hate groups.

    “Known hate groups are responsible for a very small number of hate crimes,” Potok said. “And in Idaho, the situation is much better than it was 15 years ago.”