KALISPELL – A handful of white separatists and more than 300 protesters swarmed Kalispell’s public library one night last week – again – in what has become a sort of ongoing combination white-nationalist-film-festival-turned-street-theater.
Outside, a rainbow of banners flew diversity’s flag, punctuated by signs and placards protesting hate. Inside, the white separatists settled into a small room to watch a movie about the Nazi party. And at the doorway in between, a minor skirmish, a broken camera, and a couple misdemeanors for the separatists.
It was the second such confrontation in as many months, and another already is scheduled for May.
“I’m loving it,” said white nationalist April Gaede. “This is great. I love politics, and I especially love race politics. And these people are bringing it right to my door.”
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And they’ll keep on bringing it, promised Darryl Kistler, pastor at Community Congregational Church and organizer of last week’s protest.
“Their goal,” Kistler said, “is to create a kind of Aryan Nations headquarters here, and to invite all their white separatist friends to move into the Flathead. This is a strategic move to relocate from northern Idaho into the Flathead Valley.”
Gaede doesn’t deny it – she’s actively promoting Kalispell as “a homeland for white people” – and she warns that Kistler “better put on his steel shorts, because we’re not embarrassed by who we are.”
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Who they are depends upon whom you ask.
Kistler says they’re Nazis. Travis McAdam at the Montana Human Rights Network says they’re white supremacists. Rabbi Allen Secher says they’re potentially dangerous racists.
Gaede, for her part, identifies herself as a white nationalist – meaning she considers white people to be of one nation.
“The term racist has kind of got a bad rap,” she said, adding that she doesn’t shy from the label. “A racist is just a person who acknowledges the differences between the races.”
She chose to live in Kalispell because the town is predominantly white – about 95 percent of residents are caucasian.
“There’s a lot less crime where there’s a lot less non-white people,” she said. “That’s just a fact.”
Rabbi Secher chose to live in the Flathead because it is, he said, a beautiful paradise on earth.
“But even if you’re living in paradise,” he said, “paradise has some snakes.”
And he worries it’s about to get more.
Gaede, using the white nationalist website stormfront.org, has been posting open invitations to Kalispell, linking like-minded readers to jobs and real estate here, while promoting the Flathead’s schools, hospitals and recreation.
She endorses the area for its acceptance of guns, and for the beauty of Going-to-the-Sun Road in nearby Glacier National Park, and notes that “over 20 years ago, some of the first white nationalist pioneers started moving to this area. The numbers are not clear, but we are slowly but surely gaining ground.”
And Gaede isn’t just looking to recruit newcomers; she’s also reaching out to the Flathead with white nationalist events such as the monthly films, hoping to enlist more locals.
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On March 22 – the first night of Passover – Gaede and other white nationalists sponsored their first free film in the basement of the Kalispell library. It was called the “Holocaust Debate,” and again, what it was depends upon whom you ask.
To Kistler and the 80 or so protesters who turned out, it was straight Holocaust denial, an uninformed rewriting of history being used as a recruiting tool for local neo-Nazis. It was the sort of thing that’s actually illegal in several countries, including Germany, because of fears it might spark violence, Secher said.
But to Gaede and the eight or so white nationalists who attended, it was “just a documentary. I think it’s pretty interesting that they’re having such an issue with a documentary.”
They’re having an issue, McAdam said, because “communities need to take these kinds of activities seriously. If you don’t deal with these issues up front, in the light of day, then you start to have problems.”
He recalls Billings not so many years ago, where anti-Semitic graffiti and Nazi symbols started appearing around town, and families were targeted with violent threats and vandalism until the community at large “rose up against hate.”
Secher said that “you have to be aware, and you have to know what blind hate is so that you can stand up against it. You can’t afford to live in a bubble, because some day that bubble’s going to pop and you’ll find they’re not on my doorstep, but on yours.”
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Gaede’s doorstep, when she moved here in 2006, was quickly plastered with “No Hate Here” fliers, as was her entire neighborhood. Community members became alarmed when they realized she was mother to Lynx and Lamb Gaede, the white nationalist pop teen duo known as Prussian Blue.
“We’ve been under attack,” April Gaede said, by notices that said, in effect, “we just want to warn you, there are white nationalists living down the street.”
She tries to imagine that same message, except with white nationalists replaced by “homosexuals” or “Jews.”
“They don’t really believe in free speech, unless it’s their free speech,” she said of her detractors, and by “they” she means anyone affiliated with the “multicultural, homosexual, leftist agenda.”
But while McAdam admits some of the white nationalists’ ideas “can be dangerous,” he also insists “we can’t limit those ideas. Limiting speech is never a good thing.”
Instead, he said, the protesters are choosing to spotlight the issue and raise awareness, buying large advertisements in local newspapers and organizing opposition. They’re promoting a vision of inclusiveness, in the face of those who would exclude all but themselves.
“It is not an unloving thing,” Kistler said, “to say no to something when that something is degrading and dehumanizing.”
Which is why his protesters are bringing their own ideas – their own “free speech with a positive message” – to the monthly movie nights.
“It’s pure recruitment,” Kistler said of the films. “It’s like bring-your-friend-to-church day, except it’s bring-your-friend-to-Nazi-film night.”
Last Thursday night, Gaede and the white nationalists sponsored their second film – “Epic: The Story of the Waffen SS.” It was, she said, just another documentary, although Kistler considers it another glorification of Nazi Germany and a troubling enlistment tool.
The Waffen SS was the paramilitary arm of the Nazi party, condemned for war crimes at the Nuremburg trials.
Gaede says she and the other white nationalists just want to be left “to sit in the basement of the library and watch a movie,” but she admits that’s not likely, especially given her very public mission of making Kalispell a hub for racial separatism.
“Is that what we want the Flathead to be known for?” Kistler asked. “Is that who we are in Kalispell? I think this community has a different vision for itself.”
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At least some who attended Thursday’s film call themselves members of the Creativity Movement, whose motto is “White People Awake, Save the White Race.” The group is active in the “survival, expression and advancement of the white race,” and its goal is “building a whiter, brighter world.”
National Creativity Movement organizers have vowed to ramp up “confrontational activism,” promoting RaHoWa – the Racial Holy War – and although Gaede does not necessarily associate herself directly with that movement she does anticipate an escalation in what has so far been a war of words.
“One basic thing we all have in common,” she said of the Creativity Movement and other white nationalist sects, “is the 14 words: We must secure the existence of our people, and a future for white children.”
It is, McAdam said, a philosophy of exclusion, and of marginalizing everyone considered different, “and it’s a threat to Montana. What we’re talking about here are white supremacists who believe that only white people should have the opportunity to participate as citizens in a community, and that’s not the Montana we live in.”
Protesters have a right, if not an obligation, to “stand up and disagree,” he said, “because there’s a real risk of violence if these hateful ideas start to get played out in real life.”
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The way Kistler sees it, the more the public knows about what’s going on the more the public will pressure the white nationalists, making Kalispell an unwelcoming town in which to establish Gaede’s “homeland for white people.”
The rallies will continue as long as the separatist events continue, he said, as will the discussions now unfolding in classrooms and among civic groups throughout the town.
“To me, that’s the biggest accomplishment of the rallies, is the teachable moment, the opportunity to talk about what’s going on in our valley, to have civil discourse in a public way without denigrating, dehumanizing, scapegoating, censoring or limiting anyone’s right to their opinion,” he said.
The rallies, Secher said, “show those who come to see the films that this is not a comfortable environment for messages of hate. I would like to offer them a different message, of tolerance.”
But the way the separatists see it, any exposure is good exposure, and will serve only to attract other white nationalists to the area.
“There are a lot of people who are already headed up this way,” Gaede said, and if community members such as Kistler organize opposition, “we’ll have no choice but to push back.”
Said Gaede, “We are not going to stop what we’re doing.”
Answered Kistler, “We’ll be there to confront it, every time.”
