QAA Podcast - Episode 190: Idaho's Far Right Insurgency Groyper Edition feat Christopher Mathias

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

Idaho was once home to the headquarters of the Aryan Nations. Recently it has seen extremism creep into political power at local and statewide levels. Emboldened extremists are working to squeeze out Republicans who aren’t far right enough. Our guest is reporter Christopher Mathias of the Huffington Post. He recently spent a week traveling across Idaho and wrote about what he learned for the article “Living With the Far-Right Insurgency in Idaho.” Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to Trickle Down, the ongoing miniseries by Travis View: http://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous Follow Christopher Mathias: https://twitter.com/letsgomathias QAA Merch / Join the Discord Community / Find the Lost Episodes / Etc: https://qanonanonymous.com Episode music by ENOFA. Editing by Corey Klotz.

What's up QAA listeners? The fun games have begun. I found a way to connect to the internet. I'm sorry, boy. Welcome listener to chapter 190 of the Q&ONANANANANANANAS podcast, the Idaho far-right insurgency episode. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky, Julian Field, and Travis Vue. Breaking news.

audience reacts to new Travis View podcast series with horror. The author of Trickledown is here with us to respond to certain allegations that have been made online. Welcome to the Field News Network. Thank you for having me on and sort of responding to this controversy that I'm on the verge being canceled because of the response to this podcast. Yeah, that's fine. We've been covering the Kate Awakening Patel Patriot defamation trial every day for about 12 to 13 hours a day. but we made some time to talk to you about how some people are reacting to what you've put out there. Sure.

What have you got for me, Julian? So here we go. I put it on when I was trying to take a relaxing bath, LMAO, then was immediately like, nope, nope, nope, not today, Travis View. Well, that's not really a rigging endorsement. I'm sure you bring it. It's like it's a, well, it's a reaction. I'll give them that. So, I mean, you know, could you explain why you might have achieved such a, I'm sure.

would say refined and amazing body horror in this episode where you decided to really put people in the body. Yeah, yeah. This most recent episode I felt was really fascinating. It's about the 1918 pandemic, a horrible influenza pandemic that spread all over the world. But really I focused more on how it was forgotten by history and how it was a result of this really bumbling response from medical officers during World War I. And yeah, I had to talk about how like how the influenza created, you know, led to pneumonia and these other secondary infections that led to people dying in horrible ways because I wanted to emphasize exactly how horrible this event was and how absurd it was that a generation of historians just forgot about it

because it was awkward and inconvenient for the war effort. Well, the audience is really reacting to this and here is from somebody who has opted to pay $5 a month. As you know, if you do that, you go sign up on patreon.com slash QAnonanonymous, you can get a premium episode every week, plus access to these ongoing series. There's 10 episodes of Trickle Down. We have another series down the pipeline with me and Annie called Manclan. Very excited to share more about that soon. And so they're paying this money. They're getting access to our whole repertoire of past premium episodes. There's like over 160, 100. It's just a crazy amount at this point. And so here is one of these people reacting. I am grocery shopping and have almost vomited

three times in my mask. Thanks, Travis. Well, yeah, that's the, that's the reaction that we, while you're, while you're around all this food and, um, um, making your grocery list for the week, why don't you to feel a little nauseated, you know, it's a money saver because all that food looks a little less appetizing. So what are we covering next? And how are we going to, you know, lose audiences? Next, I'm going to cover, uh, as really fascinating thing. I, is, I've been researching, um, this is something that's a little bit more contemporary. I was really fascinating. by the color-coded Homeland Security System, which was kind of short-lived.

It started in 2002, famously, had the various terror alert levels, the lowest, you went from green all the way to red, and it lasted just from 2002 to 2011, before they finally realized it was a bad idea, wanted to go away, had needed to go away. And I was always fascinated by that, and it's something I remember, you know, from my 20s, and it always felt absurd because it was treating terror. like it was a weather forecast, you know? And I was, it was like, how did this happen? How did this, how, who thought this was a good idea?

And how did we get to a point where like, you know, the government's sort of telling the populace exactly how afraid to be on any given day. You know, today we're our orange level afraid, not yellow afraid or going back down to yellow level afraid. Turning the knob on the fear machine and watching the audience to see how much money they pump into the military industrial complex. Exactly, exactly. So I was really, so it's one of those panicked sort of things that the government did in the wake of the 9-11 attacks.

And when I traced it back, I realized that it traces back to this Cold War, basically communication policy all the way back to Eisenhower. And there was this project called Project Kandor. And basically, there were the Eisenhower administration felt that they need to communicate the existential threat that was posed by by nuclear weapons in the new nuclear age and what what exactly and all of a sudden you know you know national security was like everyone's business and so so I so in order to really understand how you know we got this this weird ineffective terror alert system we had to go all the way back to the 50s to understand how the government started communicating the basically the the nuclear threat before it was the terrorist threat so yeah that

That's what I'm talking about for the next couple of episodes, about the way in which it became the business of the government to let the populists know how afraid they ought to be based upon, you know, the threats that are existing around the world, which was, you know, a fairly, fairly new thing. Well, that's all the time we have on the Field News Network. We've been renting out space from the QAA podcast, so I guess we should let them get back to business. Thanks, Travis. It's my pleasure. Idaho is blessed with many natural wonders. The lush sawtooth mountains, a solidified volcanic sea, the powerful Snake River, which carved out majestic canyons and gorges in the southern region of the state.

Unfortunately, the abundant land and supermajority white population has historically made the state attractive to white supremacist organizations. That state, which was once the home to the headquarters of the Aryan nations, has recently seen extremism creep into political power at a local and statewide level. emboldened extremists are working to squeeze out Republicans who just aren't far right enough for them. To discuss this, we're joined by reporter Christopher Matthias of the Huffington Post. He recently spent a week traveling across Idaho speaking with Democrats and moderate Republicans who are alarmed by what's happening to their state. He wrote about what he learned for the article, Living with the Far Right insurgency in Idaho.

So, yeah, thanks so much for coming on, Christopher. Oh, thanks so much for having me. It's an honor. Now, before we get into your reporting, by the way, fascinating article, I recommend everyone check it out. I was wondering if you help us get some, like, historical context. You wrote that right-wing extremists have long been attracted to Idaho. So can you talk about, like, why that is and how that manifested? Right, yeah. So there have been these kind of overlapping movements over the last few decades to kind of

set up like a conservative utopia in the Northwest. So you have like the American Redoubt movement, which is kind of this very conservative Christian libertarian idea of setting up this area out of reach of the federal government in Idaho and East. Washington, eastern Oregon, Wyoming, Montana. And then you also have something that was called the Northwest imperative, which was a more explicitly white supremacist idea of doing the same thing, of going to the Northwest and setting up this kind of, you know, white nationalist ethno state that is out of reach of the government. And, you know, with the idea of setting up, like, essentially an ethno state,

like, you know, very much the meaning of white nationalism. And basically what that has meant is And by the way, there are some historical origins in this, right? Like, you know, this owes a lot to the fact of how remote this region is and how, like, geographically isolated it is from the federal government in a lot of ways and kind of its history as, like, a frontier area. And also, you know, I think a lot of people forget that a state like Oregon, for example, was by law, like, whites only, you know, for a very long time. And they had, you know, whites only signs in stores during Jim Crow,

like the South did. At any rate, so what that has meant is there's been over the years a lot of high-profile instances of white supremacist groups going there and white supremacist figures going there and setting up shop. And like you mentioned in the intro, one of the biggest examples was the Aryan Nations, which had this kind of sprawling 20-acre compound in Cordillane, which is in northern Idaho. And it basically like terrorized the community for years and years and years. And this was, you know, not all that long ago. This was in the 90s up until the early 2000s and the 80s. And the Aryanations were like much more explicitly like neo-Nazi. And there were a lot of them there and they like really terrorized the community. I talked to a guy

in Cordillane named Sean Keenan, who's like a local progressive activist. And his aunt and cousin, uh, who are Native American, were driving past the compound one day and their car backfired. And area nations, you know, in quote, security guards, um, attacked them. and opened fire on them and then viciously beat them. And that led to this famous Southern Poverty Law Center lawsuit, which eventually bankrupted the Aryanations and now their compound is in ruins. But there's been some other high-profile cases like that, like famously the Ruby Ridge standoff, which is such an important moment in the American

far right, which is galvanized so much of the far right for so long, which was Randy Weaver, who actually just died recently, who was a white supremacist. and had a house in the woods and authorities tried to show up and arrest him on some gun charges and ended up being like a day's long standoff and the feds ended up killing his wife and child during the standoff. And it basically made him into a martyr and, or not a martyr, but like a hero in the far right movement. And yeah, so yeah, I feel like I'm babbling now. But there's a long history of this stuff in Idaho and the greater northwest. And you mentioned in the article,

although some people, some natives of the state say that there was, once upon a time, there was Republicans and Democrats sort of like were united in their belief that the presence of, for example, that area nation compound was a bad thing. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. So like what I was saying, when I was talking to Sean Keenan, the progressive activist in Cordillane, And he mentioned remembering there being like some bipartisan cooperation to beat back the Aryan nations. So for example, Aryan nations would try to hold these big parades through town. And basically all the business owners in town and both parties would kind of work to manage that. And what they would do is, you know, they would essentially close down all the businesses and just tell everyone not to show up, basically not to give it oxygen.

And, you know, you can say what you want about that as a strategy for Nazis coming in town. But it was an example of, you know, people from both sides at the political aisle kind of coming together to at least have a strategy against Nazis coming to town. And, you know, when I was talking to Sean Keenan about, and I think what is so scary and is really, you know, says a lot about what has happened to the far right over the last couple of decades is that now you have local Republicans openly working with and endorsing white supremacists, which I can get into now if you want. Yeah. Well, first I want to talk about, in that article, you talk about the white nationalist activist and podcaster Vincent James Fox, who recently moved to Idaho from California. And in February, he openly laid out the plan to take over the state with his fellow travelers. I have a clip of him talking about that. Here's the solution, right? The solution is local politics, amassing power in these pockets of the country until it's time to unify. Amassing power. not growing quickly one organization you know one organization that has top down registered categorized leadership

but amassing power in certain pockets with movements like decentralized movements like America First pushing Groyper's into positions running for office I mean I've been on here for a couple of months and I'm tapped in in the way that I am you can do it too just get involved go to your local GOP meetings push these people further right push them and if they don't push if they don't budge then replace them period

point blank run yourself run one of your friends, support, volunteer for campaigns, go to your local GOP meetings and start meeting people and talking to people. That's the solution. So can you talk about Vincent James Fox and why he's so interested in Idaho? Yeah, so Vincent James Fox is not from Idaho. He's from California, but he moved there back in November. And he did so because Vincent James Fox is very close to a guy named Dave Riley. But first, for a quick background on Vince James Fox, he has been a big name in like white supremacist circles for a while now. He was a propagandist for the Rise Above movement, which is like kind of this violent fascist gang, um, fight club that was involved in Charlottesville.

And then he launched this like all right media collective known as Red Elephants. And now he's been very mixed up with the Groypers, with Nick Flentes and the Groypers. In any rate, he has a named Dave Riley, who is from Pennsylvania, but basically kind of got ran out of town in Pennsylvania for he, like, worked at his dad's radio station in Bloomsburg. But then it emerged that he was very, very involved in Charlottesville in 2017 in the Nazi rally there. And then eventually, you know, he made his way to Idaho. And I think that's why Vincent James Fox moved there. And it's because last year, Dave Riley decided to run for school. board in Post Falls, which is in Kootenie County in northern Idaho. His history of anti-Semitism,

he said that, you know, Jews, every Jew was dangerous. I mean, just like the most vile shit ever, Dave Riley has said, like literally a guy that was marching in Charlottesville, like connected to the worst people in the country. And the local Republican committee endorsed in. And you could say, right, like, oh, maybe they just didn't know who he was. But, you know, there was like national media uproar over Dave Riley getting this endorsement. And then when you pressed the Kootenie County Republican Committee about it, they doubled down and they said, no, we think he's going to make a good school board trustee. So he ran in the election and he narrowly lost. He got 47% of the vote. I think he lost by like 130 votes or something. So, you know, not bad though for a guy who was like

literally filming the Tiki Torch March for the Nazis at Charlottesville, which I think is what inspired Vincent James Fox to go join his buddy. And there's a lot of other kind of alt-right figures in that area as well that I'm sure they all have like gross barbecues together and shit. Right. And if you add, you know, a couple years of, you know, COVID oppression and and all the things that have even just been cooking up, I would say, in the last year, you know, that 47% or whatever it was, you know, could easily tip. Yeah, totally. I mean, I think we'll get into this, you know, as we go on. But, you know, that clip you played about like amassing local power like this, you know, on its face, it's kind of innocuous, right? And I think we were talking about this before we got on. Like, you know, it's something that liberal say all the time, you know, like act locally think globally. I forget which one of you mentioned that. But it's innocuous on its face. But when you start to look at, you know, who's doing this and how they're doing it, it gets really disturbing. And, you know, could be a very effective strategy for the far right to gain power. Yeah, you mentioned a lot in this piece. You mentioned them the Cooney County Republican Central Committee. So they seem to have like a really central role in this sort of this, this lurch right word.

Yeah. So they, Cooney County is where Cordillane is and it's, you know, kind of directly used to Spokane, Washington. It's very beautiful. Your description up front about Idaho was very true. It's just one of the most beautiful places ever. It's also where, like, oddly enough, where a lot of millionaires and rich people from Silicon Valley are buying up property. And it's one of the fastest growing regions in the entire country and in the state.

Idaho is the fastest growing state in the country. At any rate, though, the Cooney County Central Republican Committee has consolidated power and basically kicked out anybody that doesn't align with extremely far-right views on things. And they, you know, have basically, if you, like, if you aren't almost a white nationalist, then you are a rhino, like a Republican in name only. You know, I talked to people that voted for Trump in 2020, who were nevertheless called rhinos or even worse, like liberals or communists, just for not, you know, agreeing with the tactics and strategy of the Cootney County Central Republican Committee. and it's made politics on the ground there very, very ugly. So you would say that being a Trump supporter solely is not enough? No, no. And I think that's what kind of the scary development is here.

Like these guys will still support Trump, you know, in the elections. They like Trump. They want Trump. But that's not enough. You can't just support Trump and be in their good graces. They've done a really good, effective job at staking out these far-rate positions. and then if you don't meet them, then you're a rhino and you're exiled and you're cast out. And, you know, what that's had the effect of doing is really thrown the Overton window wide open.

And it's, you know, they've taken a lot of people into their coalition who, you know, maybe five or ten years ago wouldn't have been allowed. You know, as you discussed in the piece, it's not just like local organizations or local officials who are really friendly with extremists, even high-level state officials in Ohio. are, you know, rubbing shoulders with, you know, out-and-out white nationalist. Most notably, the lieutenant governor Janice McGeehan, so she appeared at AFPAC, the extremist-friendly version of CPAC, which includes white nationalist Dick Fuentes among the speakers. Here's what she says to the attendees of AFPAC. I need freedom fighters all over this country that are willing to stand up and fight for the protection of our freedoms and liberties, even when that.

That means fighting amongst our own ranks because there are too many Republicans who do not exhibit the courage that is needed today for us to fight, protect our freedoms and our liberties. We are literally in a fight for our lives. Okay, this is an alien pretending to be human. It's either that or she is being held somewhere and forced to make these videos. You can hear the buzzing of like the fluorescent lights above her. And this is their official video Well, and I think I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure

Like when they played the video At AfPak, you can see them like Something like the camera falls over or they're like practicing like they didn't They didn't like edit it correctly Like yeah, she has Such a strange speaking style Like kind of a vacant expression

This is act two In Mars attacks when Everybody's TVs kind of go fuzzy and then all of a sudden, you know, one of the Martians appears, like, in a human costume, like, you know, with a message of peace. That's exactly what it is, yes. So McGeehan was later confronted by the local news station, KTVB, about her appearance at AFPAC, which led kind of to an awkward back and forth between her and the reporter.

Are you familiar with who puts this event on, like Nick Fuentes? I don't, I don't know who he is. I don't, I've never met him, I don't know who he is. Did you not look into it before you decided to say, okay, like to find out, I mean, his name is on it. Well, you know what, Nick Fuentes, I don't, as I said, I don't know him. He's never, I've never met him. I don't know, you know, what, what is, what he's, everything that he says or doesn't say is not, does not reflect on who I am or who the thousands of others that are participating in. in this movement.

You didn't bother to look up his name or anything? I didn't say that. You did look him up? You didn't, that's not the question that you asked. Did you look up who Nick Fuentes was and what he, what he's talked about? Like what he, things he has said? I have since. Since last week, not before?

Yes. Okay, I guess the question is, because if you've said, well, I'm only here because- Again, it's not fair. I mean, the mainstream media, you do this to conservatives all the time, but you don't do it to yourself. That every time, any time there's any kind of affiliation with anybody at any time on any stage that we're all guilty by association. And it's not, it's not appropriate. Holy shit, she is terrible at this. Isn't she so bad, dude?

She's like a child that was caught, like, vandalizing the school lockers. incredible. I mean she just has no capacity to go toe to toe with anyone. It's this is amazing because I think that we're going to see some really if we really do have a kind of

if this is the model for the takeover we're going to have some really interesting television to look forward to because shit's going to get real dumb. Yeah, some brutal brutal content the content minds will be bare in those days.

dark days ahead. I also, a quick shout out to KTVB and a lot of vocal press in Idaho. Like, they do, they are dealing with so much right now. And, like, in that interview, you can just hear how patient and calm he is and, like, impressing her on this. And it's just, like, it's such good reporting. And they have to deal with some really absurd shit. So shout out to KTVB and everybody out there.

Yeah. It's a tough slog waiting through these, you know, these types of interviews. It's amazing because, like, they clearly did prepare her a little bit, but because the guy uses slightly different words than the person who prepared her, she's like, wait, wait, you're cheating. Please, wait. Use the script that we used in the, in the, what the hell? I'm confused.

Yeah. And then, of course, she goes on a fire raid podcast like two or three weeks later, and is much more comfortable and relaxed. And, you know, basically says that she's not ashamed of going, having gone to AFPAC at all. And, you know, is just, kind of completely unapologetic so yeah and that's the second most powerful person in idaho so another major player in idaho politics is the idaho freedom foundation which rates politicians according to a scoring system called the freedom index so how does that work and how are

they influencing the state yeah um this was one of the most fascinating parts to me um out there uh basically the idaho freedom foundation is kind of this dark money organization extremely far right um is connected to the Kochs and others. And basically what the Freedom Index is is the score they've developed. So they look at every state legislator and look at how they vote on every piece of legislation. And then they have this kind of far-right scoring system, so from like one to 100. And there are about 24, 25 legislators with a score over 75 percent, which to give you an idea of how, extreme. They are, you know, at 100% at the top of the rating, you have Heather Scott,

who has been involved in two armed conflicts with the federal government, who has posed with the Confederate flag, who has defended white nationalism, who organized mask-burning events, who said, like, I think she compared mask mandates to Jews being taken to concentration camps. And then let's, if you go all the way down to 74%, 75% on the Freedom Index, you have someone, fuck, I'm blanking on his name right now, I think it might be Ben Adams, but do you guys remember that viral clip from a couple months ago? It's at like a TPUSA Charlie Kirk rally, and this guy, it's in Idaho, and this guy gets up on the microphone, and he asks when they can start shooting Democrats, and this Ben Adams

guy, another statehouse member, you know, wrote on Twitter. that this was a fair question. So you have, and that's like the bottom end of the extreme faction. So you have, the way I've kept describing it to people and the way I described in the piece is like a statehouse full of Marjorie Taylor Greens and Steve Kings. Yeah, that's nuts. There's also another person you mentioned in who was like rated very highly in this, in the scoring system named Chad Christensen. So what's his story? Yeah.

Chad is out in eastern Idaho, and he literally lists on his official government profile page. He lists his membership in the oathkeepers, like the militia group, that whose, you know, leaders were, you know, have been charged with seditious conspiracy for January 6th. And he literally lists that on his government website. He also lists his membership in the John Birch Society on his official Idaho website and the John Burst Society, which, I'm sure something you guys have talked about before, you know, has a real stronghold in Idaho, and I think across the West. But it's, you know, the very conspiratorial anti-communist organization. It kind of emerged in the 50s in McCarthyite era and basically sees a secret communist plot everywhere.

So, yeah, that's Chad Christensen. He just lists his membership into pretty extreme organizations on his government website. Yeah. So it's not enough to just say you're a member like the. NRA anymore. That's like table stakes. You need to be member of like oath keepers and John Birchers. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, and this is the pattern everywhere. So there's like a group there called actually, so this is something that didn't make it in the story, but I took a personal day in Idaho and went up to Sun Valley and decided to kind of had a went in Rome moment and

decided to go get a shooting lesson at a gun range. And I did it. And you know, by the end, the guy, my instructor asked me what I was doing in town. and I told him, you know, that I was there writing about the Republican Party and about Janice McGeehan. And without missing a beat, he goes, oh, yeah, Janice, she's a friend of mine. I'm a big supporter. And then he turns out, and I think he, like, delighted in the fact that he was giving, like, a gun lesson to a liberal, or someone from a liberal publication. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure.

What kind of guns you shoot? I was just shooting, like, a 9-millimeter clock. I hadn't shot a gun since I was, like, 12 or whatever. And I have been meeting to learn something I just want to know how to do. It was a bit ironic we were shooting a zombie Nazi target, but at any rate. From the popular video game series, of which there are four installments. Okay, yeah, I think that probably was it. But he brought me back inside and he gave me, he offered to give me a baseball hat for the Second Amendment gun aligns, which is a like basically the NRA on steroids.

They like basically think the NRA are a bunch of cucks. they like you know it's it's like a fundamentalist gun rights organization and then like by the end of our conversation he was talking to me about um how you know he was ready to like if the feds ever showed up in idaho to like have his sites like by gun sites like on the feds like dudes like ready for ready for battle and works works at the gun shop coincidentally yeah but that was your that was your test of course it was like see the power of the gun now Will he accept the power of the hat? Yeah, I did not, I did not accept the hat.

But he did, you know, to his credit, he did offer to talk to me for the story. But we kind of, you know, didn't get the opportunity. But maybe in a follow-up. All right. Well, what can you do? Let's talk a little bit about the impacts of these extremists gaining power. So in that piece, you write about Dr. Ted Epperly, who was a member of the Central District Health Board in Boise. Now, as you're right, he has a really impressive resume. He was a

physician in the Army for 21 years. He served in the Gulf War, reached the rank of colonel, also served in the White House as a personal doctor for two U.S. presidents and was later himself the president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. He has testified before Congress 18 times. He contributed articles to medical journals. But despite all these credentials, He was ousted from his position by the Ada County Commission. So what happened there? What sin did Dr. Epperly commit? Yeah.

So his sin was being a Democrat and believing that COVID is real. He, like you said, is hilariously qualified, like maybe the most qualified doctor like in the country for any position. But last June, I think I believe it was last June, he received notice that he, he, received notice that he would no longer be the physician board member of the Ada County Health Commission, which kind of oversees all public health matters for the county, and most notably for COVID stuff. And that was because the county commission got taken over by two Republicans, one of whom was especially far right, and I think dragged the other one with him. But basically,

they were COVID denialists, and they pushed Ted Epperly out and replaced him with a guy name Ryan Cole. And Ryan Cole is kind of an anti-vax influencer who has called the COVID vaccine needle rape and a poisonous attack on our population, among other things. And that's who they installed in this position over Ted Epperly. And I should mention too that like, you know, this came after months of Epperly facing harassment locally for supporting health measures related to COVID. They had a protest outside his house. They had a protest outside the health board office during a meeting. So it was kind of the culmination of a campaign.

I think they tried to harass him out of office. And when that didn't work, they just pushed him out. Yeah, I think it's important for everybody to know that we are in like the 90s Apocalypse movie plot lines. Like this is the this is the first act where the like doctor who's trying to get the truth out or like is basically pushed out of like realizes that like the rest of the board is like, he's going to be let go and, you know, which starts his investigation, obviously, that propels us into the second act. But, um, okay. But, but, but we're, we're this, we're here. Yeah. So it should

be fun, right? No, no, no, no, no, no. It ends well. It's a happy end. No, no, no. They learned, no, no, no, they, one, one lesson that they learned from the 90s, 90s, 80s and 90s films is that, you know what? Maybe we don't want to give audiences a happy ending. Maybe, yeah. So it's like a 90s action film with like a 70s like Deer Hunter ending. Doesn't Deer Hunter end with them all singing the National Anthem together? Sure, sure, well, but you know,

things have been lost along the way if you know what I mean. I'm not saying it's happy. It's a dark ending. Yeah, it's yeah, it's the wrong, it's the wrong people singing the anthem. Oh, man. Yeah, so I mean, I don't, you know, I don't mean to make light of this, but it's too late, too late, dude. It's so depressing that, you got to, you got to have some sense of humor about it.

It's pretty dark. I mean, and then what the anti-vax doctor, it turned out, did some really fucked up shit since he's been in office, which is he was making viral videos basically without evidence claiming that the COVID vaccine was causing cancer. And then there was this really big report by the Idaho Capitol Sun that found he had misdiagnosed two women with cancer and including a woman who underwent a major surgery removing her reproductive reproductive organs. And when they sent the organs to the lab to test them, there was no cancer. So all for an illness she didn't have. Oh, my God. That is. That is so dark.

Dyer. Very dire. Extremely fucked. Okay. So they're shoving out incredibly qualified doctors and replacing them with anti-vax lunatics who misdiagnosed people with cancer, not great. You also write about how far-right activists endorsed by the KCRCC took over the board of the North Idaho College. So how did they go about managing that college once they took power? Yeah, sure.

So a little background, I guess. North Idaho College is like a community college in Cordillane. It's like on the waterfront on a very pretty part of town. Basically, they have a board of trustees, and it was always nonpartisan, but the local Republican committee decided to make it partisan. So they installed three members in local elections via local elections, got them in. And then their first order of business was to fire the president without cause, which kind of sent the school into chaos.

And because they fired him without cause, they ended up having to pay him, you know, his salary and then some. So they, like, wasted over half a million. on this move. And then they've just kind of generally mismanaged the place so severely, including its president, Todd Banducci, has been, like, accused of, like, threatening and harassing people that work at the college. Then they've so severely mismanaged it that it was very, very close to losing its accreditation, which would have gone a long way towards ruining the school, which is a very, like, important part of the community. And, you know,

I talked to people that went to the school, and, you know, they talked about, like what a valuable institution it wasn't in the school, but that the reason they think the Republican committee was targeting it was that they felt that this college, this place of education, was basically infecting the local community with liberalism. And that you can hear Ted Todd Banducci and the Idaho Freedom Foundation,

they talk about that. They think that every school and institution is indoctrinating students with critical race theory and with far-left ideas, which is absurd. Yeah, it's like they just swapped out the, it's like this communism scare of like the 50s but like they've just swapped out the word communist for liberal yeah yeah it's the same exactly it's the same it's the treatment is exactly the same the you know the the the course of

action the plan of what to do about it and where to snuff it out is all exactly the same it's just the terminology has changed yeah yeah exactly i mean it's very like you know we're talking about john birth society early it's very like McCarthyism at your local level yeah by like your like weird uncle who's got a really fast internet connection right i mean like they hired a new president and they literally hired like the wrestling coach to be the president of the college of course it doesn't matter anymore now that now that trump's been president it's like it's like well i don't care who you are like oh you like you got a voice like do the you know the guys you like your vibe like we'll run you for something like yeah

all that matters at the end of the day and i think this is you know a very like important thing to think about when it comes to authoritarianism and fascism and how it plays out is that they value loyalty above all else. So they value loyalty to, you know, this group over any kind of expertise or anything in that regard. It's all about power and consolidating power and having the people in those places of power being loyal to, you know, in this case, a local, very extreme local Republican committee. Yeah, I think, you know, one of the scariest things is in that very first clip with the guy, you know, talking on his, on his stream or on his podcast where he was like, yeah, was like, if you don't like the local guy, get your friend or your buddy to run.

And that's like the scariest thing is like just going to your friends and being like, hey, we'll get you in there and creating this like network. This is unfortunately how all politics have been built in this country for a long time. I mean, at least now you can't trade a drink for a vote, but that's about it. But I mean, it seems like like real like mafia kind of logic where it's like what really matters is like you have someone who has your back. It won't snitch on you and knows how to keep their mouse shut. And, like, nothing else matters, how smart they are or how competent they are. Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

I mean, and we saw that, you know, at the macro level with the Trump administration, of course. And now it's, we're seeing it play out at the local level in a real way. In that piece, you discuss, I guess, a technique that these extremists are using, let they call a confrontational politics. And in particular, you show how it affected one conservative Republican named representative Greg Cheney. And like you discuss, he is a conservative Republican. is NRA endorsed. He backs the blue. He wants to ban sanctuary cities. But he's not right-wing enough for this movement that we're discussing today. So what exactly is confrontational politics

and what happened to representative Greg Cheney? Sure. Yeah, this was a fascinating interview. I met Greg Cheney in the statehouse, in his office, and he showed me the gun that he carries to work every day on his belt. And that's because he has dealt a lot with the far right in Boise in the state house, most notably during the pandemic when Aaron Bundy, which I'm sure has come up on your podcast before, you know, is kind of the militia adjacent anti-government extremist who was involved in the standoffs with the federal government in like the Malher National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon and his dad, Clive and Bundy had the standoff in Nevada with the federal government. But yeah, Bundy, you know, stormed the capital at one point over the state capital

at one point over COVID measures, and they also, he has a group called People's Rights, which is very big out west. And they have a strategy where they often will turn up to protest outside people's houses. So after they did this to some people like Ted Epperly and other like health board related people near Boise, Greg Cheney, the state house member, decided to, you know, introduce this bipartisan and Bill kind of making it illegal to protest outside public officials' homes with the intent to like harass or threaten or alarm. And in response, two nights later, far-right activists turned up outside his house with pitchforks and tiki torches and they had an effigy of him. Well, they had a stuffed animal in a shirt that said Cheney, his name, hanging from a noose on a pitchfork. And, you know,

he talked to me a little bit about how that affected his family and, you know, how his wife kind of jumps when she hears a car door slam now and how his daughter asked them why these people wanted to kill daddy and you know that's just one example of a lot of what's happened across Idaho but you know a really interesting part is that Greg Cheney and his wife

and a lot of other people I talk to they have bought copies of this book called confrontational politics not because they want to follow or practice confrontational politics but because they are the targets of confrontational politics and confrontational politics is this book written by a former California state senator named H. L. Richardson, who was also like a gun rights

fundamentalist activist. And the book is essentially a like how to guide or a blueprint for Christian nationalist insurgency. And it's basically like this philosophy of kind of always being the loudest person in the room and like always shouting down your opponent, always being on the attack, never apologizing. And it's this very zero-sum idea of politics where, you know, either we're going to be in power and run government or they are. And so we should start acting like it. It's fundamentally anti-democratic. It's very explicit about the fact that there's no room for compromise. And that is essentially the playbook by which the far right has been operating. And the book pays very close attention to special attention to primaries because they see it as an

opportunity to cease power because, you know, for example, in Idaho, it's a closed primary, right? So only Republicans can vote in the primary. And And if they can mobilize enough people on the far right to vote, you know, they can capitalize off the fact that there's low voter turnout and win elections and put people in power. And so we've seen a lot of examples of that model being used in Idaho over these last few years. This far right insurgency has also affected progressive activists as well. Could you discuss what happened to one woman named Laura Tennyson? Yeah, sure.

So Laura is a progressive activist in Cordelaine, and she literally, like, organized, a co-organizer of this very innocuous kind of project called Love Lives Here, Cordelain. And it was basically like kind of a, you know, anti-hate campaign to make Cordelaine seem like a welcoming place to the rest of the country, to the rest of the state. You know, it's kind of like the equivalent of the, like, in this house, we support, you know, black rights, yada, yada, yada, that you see in a lot of, like, suburban households, for example. And for this, she received just, like, horrendous harassment. She was walking back to her car one day and found an unspent shotgun shell in the hood of her car, which, by the way, it didn't make it in the story, but that's happened to a few people around town, including a local reporter. And then these disgusting racist postcards started to be sent around town with her likeness on it, in which she was dressed as a clown. And there was all these racist caricatures of different minority groups that she was allegedly, you know,

that she was allowing into the city through this welcome, like, you know, no hate campaign. And then the following year, she organized like a local women's march and a guy messaged her on Facebook and explicitly said she was going to die. and so she had to file a protective order. And, you know, it kind of had its intended effect. And, you know, Warra told me that she's had to take a huge step back in her activism just because she doesn't feel safe. You know, she's kind of always looking over her shoulder, which is, you know, when you think about it, that's exactly what these kind of harassment campaigns are designed to do.

I mean, what's really interesting about this whole, I guess, this plan is that it's not secret. They're really super open about it. In fact, for the story, you acquire recording from a KCRCC meeting from a KCRCC meeting from August of 2021. So what did they discuss in that particular meeting? Yeah, sure. So they discussed basically seizing every nonpartisan position in the county. So, you know, like we were discussing before, like health boards and the community college

boards and water district, fire districts. This guy in the recording says, you know, he's identified about 217 of these positions in the county and that they need to put. their people, far right people in all of these positions. And he's very clear in the recording, he says, you know, if you know a conservative, and then he goes, you know, I won't say this in some places, but if you know a conservative Christian, that might be interested in this, let me know. And we'll, we'll get them in office. And, you know, basically, it's just kind of this idea of, you know, complete domination of one party control of taking it all over.

You know, the other thing that happened up there that they allegedly tried to do was that there was another recording that local press caught Window where they basically devised a plan to disguise their supporters as liberals to run for local precinct chairs in the Democratic Party with the idea of taking over the local Democratic Party and installing

Dave Riley, the white nationalist to Marchton Charlottesville, as the head of the local Democratic Party, basically as a way of destroying the local Democratic Party. And just like bad shit crazy stuff. You know, that plan got foiled, obviously, but still gives you an idea of

like the lengths these people are willing to go. Now, you are a really seasoned extremism reporter. You've got arrested at one point while covering some George Floyd protests. But is there anything that you ran into while researching the story that, you know, I guess surprised or shocked or even like worried you? Yeah, man. This trip fucked me up a little bit. Like you said, I, you know, I've been on this beat for a while.

But I think it kind of crystallized a lot for me. Yeah, the trip fucked me up just because, you know, I think kind of like a roadmap for what the far right is going to do around the country. And I think like, I think a lot of times on this beat and I think this is certainly something that you guys can sympathize with with the work you do and like the way you're plugged in is that it often feels like you can never really scream loud enough about what's happening. Like you kind of want to like shake everybody and just tell them how bad it is. And I think, you know, what the scary part is, you know, what the scary part about Idaho is that like we're seeing kind of this the anti-democratic project at the heart of the

GOP at the national level is really starting to play out at the local level and so we're getting like a vision of the future of the GOP which is just this very kind of ugly authoritarian you know in explicit partnership open partnership with white nationalists and militias who target their opponents with you know shocking cruelty and are not interested in democracy and not interested in compromising. And I think it was so striking about it for me was that all the people I interviewed were not, you know, I didn't talk to any radical leftists, really. You know, these were very centrist folks out there who aren't all that used to being alarmist and including conservative Republicans. You know, I think at the certain, at a point where you have Trump supporting conservatives

saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, I think we need to take stock and realize what we're, what we're dealing with. So yeah, I mean, I've been heartened by the response to the piece because I kind of pulled my hair out writing it and really, really was stressed about getting across how what an emergency it feels like out there and how we kind of need to brace for what's happening in Idaho to happen to the rest of the country. Yeah, yeah. And like one thing, one thing before we wrap up, think of it this way. If it stays as it is right now and doesn't get any worse and doesn't spread out into other states or whatever, you still have a state that's what, like 93% white where people are being threatened, like, you know, threatened, they're having

burning effigies on their lawn, they're having shotgun shells left on their car, like, that's already bad enough, even if it got any worse, even if it's just one state that's like that and people know, oh, we can't go to Idaho because like, we're not, we're not safe there if, if we are not, you know, a white nationalist or at least sympathetic to that, like, that's bad enough. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's also, I think it's always easy, like, you know, for people on the coasts to, like, you know, there's that kind of annoying thing sometimes that liberals do where they like dismiss states, like, oh, we should just get rid of Idaho or get rid of Florida. But that, like, it's, you know, always neglects, like, the fact that there are people living there

that are dealing with this stuff. And, you know, there's literally people that are really leaving Idaho right now because of its politics. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, there's a huge influx of political migration to Idaho because of its politics. And it's a very scary development. I talked to a woman who didn't want to be in the story, but she had been involved in politics in North Idaho. She was a progressive. And she fled. She left because the harassment was too intense. And she said something that was really, you know, heart-wrenching. She said, like, what did she say? She said, Idaho is beautiful, but it'll break your heart, which has kind of stuck with me. Well, thank you so much for sharing or for writing a story, spending so much time, you know,

really explaining what the situations like in Idaho and talking about it with us today. Where can people find your work, Chris? Yeah, I'm at HuffPost, and you can find me on Twitter at Let's Go Matthias. Thank you so much. Thanks, guys. It's great. Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAnonanon Anonymous podcast. Please go to patreon.com slash QAnonanonymous and subscribe for five bucks a month

to get a whole second episode every single week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes. When you subscribe, you help us stay advertising free and editorially independent, which we really appreciate. For everything else, there's QAnonanonanonymous.com. Listener, until next week, may the Deep Dish bless you and keep you. I mean it. It's not a conspiracy, it's fact. And now today's auto Q. Now, you have some very strong America First credentials. Again, I believe you're involved with President Trump's 2016 campaign. I think you were a delegates for him at the convention if I'm correct me if I'm wrong absolutely and I was

also the Trump the first vice chair of the Trump Idaho team so I served in that capacity worked hard all across the state of Idaho for President Trump and I was a delegate and I was a delegate in 2020 would have been nice if we would have actually had a convention that year and then I had the honor of serving as an elector for the state of Idaho and I and it was a pleasure to serve in that capacity and to cast a vote in support of the thousands of Idahoans, 65% of the people who voted in Idaho voted in support of President Trump.

So it was an honor to be able to do that. And so, yes, I absolutely support Trump's America First Policies. That's why he's endorsed my campaign. Traveled to meet with him twice, personally. He's a great man, very real, very human, and to be able to sit and talk, chat with him. actually for over an hour, both times. And we spoke about the things that we both share concern,

primarily the election integrity. That's like a number one issue on the minds of people in Idaho. They're worried about what we saw happen in 2020, happening again in subsequent elections. So I joined, I was able to get an amicus brief in support of President Trump back then in 2020 when Governor Little refused to do so. So, but we got that submitted, and I also have signed on to support the 50 state forensic

audit that we should audit all of our elections, all of our counties. As a small businesswoman, we get audited all the time. I audit my books, my inventory is audited, my tax returns are audited. So in my view, government should have the same level of transparency to the people as the private sector does.