take the route they did. There really don’t seem to be any common denominators...they are from all parts of the social spectrum. I’d like to know more about Robert Matthews, the founder of The Order. He's something of an enigma.” The professor was right about that. Matthews, credited with founding The Order, is the Lee Harvey Oswald of this bizarre story. He’s almost too good to be true, leading to the speculation that Matthews may have been a government plant, inserted into the white supremacist movement to draw the militant faction out and into violent action. Proponents of this view believe that the Symbionese Liberation Army, a group responsible for the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst in the 1970s, was the result of an intelligence agency’s dirty trick which mushroomed out of control. Originally intended to polarize, confuse and discredit the militant left, the authorities solved the problem of possible embarassment by burning the SLA alive. The Order, so the theory goes, couldn't have gotten off the ground without Matthews; his background is professionally clouded, and his political orbit managed to intersect with virtually every major American white supremacist. Matthews and The Order may have been a device to draw out and defuse the militant rightwingers, and Matthews may have been snuffed to ensure his silence. “How many members of The Order have you identified?” I asked the professor. “So far, 33. That’s all I know of. At first I thought that the Aryan Nations’ prison recruiting program might have brought some people with records of criminal violence into The Order, but that doesn’t appear to be the ease. But there is plenty of violence among these 128 people on my list. Between them, they’ve been convicted of 42 murders since 1970.” School Daze and Soldier Tales The next morning I got up early and Exquisite Fashions & Accessories • Classic Tuxedo Rentals • Antiques B O H E M IA 219 Southwest Sixth 224-3683 drove to Couer d’Alene High School, where I was scheduled to be a guest lecturer to the senior creative writing class. The school was a microcosm of the community. Of the more than 1,700 students, three were black. I found the right classroom and was introduced to the class by the teacher. I’d never lectured to high school students before, and I was surprised at how adult and aware they were. Two students, I discovered, had written their term papers on the Aryan Nations. I asked to see their work, and when I opened the folders, found them stuffed full of white supremacist literature. Tina and Jerry, the two students, had gone out to the Aryan Nations’ compound and interviewed Eldon “Bud” Cutler, a former Apparently the paranoia of the elders hadn’t yet permeated the school system. The kids were more interested in getting two pieces of cake than they were in destroying an ' international Zionist conspiracy. Idaho GOP conservative who had joined the neo-Nazis and worked his way up to chief of security. Cutler had been more than happy to chat with the youngsters, and had supplied them with numerous pamphlets and leaflets that outlined the Aryan Nations’ basic philosophies. “Identity Theology” was mentioned several times. This is merely perceiving oneself as a white person, instead of a member of the human race. The amount of melanin in the skin becomes all-important. From that tenet it's a short hop to the twin doctrines of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. In its nether regions, Aryan theology insists that Jesus Christ was not a Jew, and that the Holocaust in Nazi Europe never occurred. A generous sampling of Biblical and Talmudic quotations served to prove their thesis that the international Jewish conspiracy is responsible for the world’s evils. The neo- Nazi message was well wrapped in the mantle of Christian fundamentalism and tied off with the American flag. It was an incredible collection of mindless hate, reminding me more of the occult ramblings of Aleister Crowley than anything else. It didn’t seem to have found a receptive audience among the high school students, who had a sizable portion of juvenile cynicism for just about everything. The two reports basically parroted the white supremacist rhetoric without drawing any conclusions. Neither student appeared to have been converted. “I enjoyed your paper," I told Jerry. “What did you think of the Aryan Nations’ compound?” “At least I know where it is now," he said. “Most kids in the school don’t know. Everyone pretty much stays away from there and leaves the neo-Nazis alone.” “Well, they do have guns out there,” I commented. “So what?” Jerry said. “Everybody has guns. I’ve got two myself.” Lunch at the school was enjoyable, not because the spaghetti was good, but because there was conversation taking place around me. Apparently the paranoia of the elders hadn’t yet permeated the school system. The kids were more interested in getting two pieces of cake than they were in destroying an international Zionist conspiracy, and they didn’t have any dark secrets to hide from the outside world. After lunch I called Sid Rosen. Rosen, one of the area's few Jewish residents, had once operated a restaurant called Chef Rosen’s at the north end of Hayden. Someone had scribbled swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans on the building's outside walls, and not long afterwards Rosen had sold the business. I asked him if that was why he’d sold his restaurant. “No, not at all," Rosen told me. “I was planning on getting out of business anyway. The way I look at it, it was just a few crazy drunks acting up. My neighbors offered to help me clean the paint off. It wasn’t that big of a deal.” But hadn’t that incident, coupled with the attack on the Coeur d’Alene children, prompted the Idaho State Legislature to pass a malicious harassment bill? “Yes, it did. But that’s all ancient history. I live in this community; I don’t want to dredge up all this old stuff.” Later that day, I stopped at the Hayden gun shop. A man and a woman were sitting at a table talking when I walked in. They instantly shut up and stared at me intensely. The proprietor, a lean man on metal crutches came out of a back room and asked me what I wanted. “Just looking,” I told him. “Do you buy guns?” “You bet,” he assured me. “If you’ve got any, bring them in. I’m in a buying mood these days. Keep me in mind.” I assured him that I would and then left. Paranoia seemed to be good for the gun business. Going into the next-door second-hand book store, I browsed through their stock. It was about like any other used paperback store except for the vast selection of adventure stories about mercenaries and war-trained anti-heroes. The Execution er, the Destroyer, the Death Merchant, the Mercenary, Soldier for Hire, the Liquidators, Able Team, the Survivalist, the Specialist, the Terminator...all those series, and many more. I bought a few to read and went back to the motel. One For The Road The next morning was check-out time. I packed my bags, loaded my car, and left the key on my bedside table. Goodbye, motel. I turned the ignition key, breathed my daily sigh of relief because no car bomb had exploded, and drove through Hayden for the last time. One thing that I wanted to do before I left was get a haircut. I pulled to a stop in front of a barber shop that I’d been told was the oldest in Hayden, and went inside. A middle-aged barber was clipping a man’s hair, while another barber stood idly behind an empty chair. All three of them stopped talking and shot suspicious stares at me. I was well used to this sort of reaction by then. I knew that I could chill out a tavern or restaurant by merely walking in, but this was the first time I'd managed to frost up a barber shop. I sat down in the empty chair, glancing over at the other customer on my right. He glared back with a look of pure, unadulterated hatred; a beefy, heavy-set man in his 50s, with an iron-gray crewcut and bushy eyebrows. “How do you want your hair cut?” my barber asked in a flat monotone. “Shorter all the way around," I told him. He draped a sheet around my neck and upper torso and went to work. No one said another word for fifteen minutes. Most barbers have a standard repertoire of pleasantries and banalities, but these guys weren't even going through the motions; the place was as quiet as a morgue. The silence would have been uncomfortable, but by now I was used to the ways of Hayden and didn't care much one way or another. I was leaving and they were staying; let them stew in their own juices as long as they wanted. The neo-Nazis were 20 years too soon with their big push to topple the establishment, I decided. There were still too many people alive who remembered the atrocities of the Third Reich, who had put their lives on the line to save the world from Hitler's brand of Naziism. But they were in the right spot to develop their plans for the future. Although Naziism is basically European in its rhetoric (Native Americans are completely overlooked in the hateful diatribes), the transplanted neo-Nazi hybrid was taking firm root in the good ol' boy loam of the American Northwest. After all, the West was won through genocide, and the Reagan administration has softened Americans up for the neo-Nazi sucker punch. As long as people are looking for scapegoats, neo-Naziism will have a chance to survive. It's nothing more or less than a religion of hatred. “Should I trim your eyebrows while I'm at it?” the other barber asked his customer, breaking the lengthy silence. “Might as well,” the man rumbled. No more was said. Naziism offers simple solutions to complex problems, I told myself. It has an eternal appeal to those who yearn for the days gone by, and imagine a return to safer, less complicated times. The neo-Nazis, supreme opportunists that they are, have taken advantage of Northwest culture. The local Panhandle residents, by respecting the white supremacists' freedom of expression, have lost a large chunk of their own freedom of speech through fear and ingrown paranoia. They’re afraid of everyone, afraid of themselves. The Code of the West has mutated into a sullen, resentful omerta, a xenophobic code of silence that permeates the community. The other barber finished and removed the sheet from his customer, who paid and left without another word, throwing me one final hostile stare as he stalked out. I wondered if he was a Nazi. Could be. The Aryan Nations’ ruling junta had probably graced these chairs with their holy alabster bottoms many times before. “That’s it,” my barber said, undoing the sheet. “That’ll be five dollars.” I paid him and left. That was it, all right. No “Thanks, come again,” no anything. It had been the quietest haircut of my life, as well as the worst. At least it would give me something to remember Hayden by. I got in my car and drove quickly out of town, turning west onto the freeway back to the Coast. I knew that I was going to miss Idaho more than ever. There's no place like home, especially when it doesn’t exist any longer. Dennis Eichhorn is a writer who lives near Seattle. He is a frequent contributor to the CSQ, and writes regularly for The Rocket and Stars, a magazine for young Americans. 8 Clinton St. Quarterly
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