The Lumberjill: Boogeymen

By Jen Jackson Quintano
Reader Columnist

In 2012, neo-Nazi Shaun Winkler bought property an hour north of the old Aryan Nations compound with hopes of building a new homeland for his white supremacist compatriots. He was a lingering remnant of a bygone age, one ushered out by area human rights groups’ dogged efforts. Amid his renewed monthly cross burnings, he launched a campaign to run for Bonner County sheriff. 

Cue the media frenzy. North Idaho was again — or still — a haven for bigots.

However, after receiving just several dozen votes, Winkler disappeared without much fanfare. Photos from his time here show a man living below the poverty line, raw sewage and the elements proving to be more formidable opponents to his existence than the Great Replacement. He and his extended family were living under tarps. A few stragglers would show up for his cross burnings, but beer and camaraderie may have been a bigger draw than the flames of hate. His was a tenuous existence at best.

Jen Jackson Quintano. Courtesy photo.

Winkler was a bigot and deserved our condemnation, but he was not a threat. He soon foreclosed, and we’ve heard nothing of a neo-Nazi compound since. But while our eyes were on a solitary man cosplaying in a white hood in the deep woods — the media flocking like moths to a flame — the Idaho Republican Party was recasting itself as a truly threatening entity. Yet, without the iconography of hate — swastikas, burning crosses, the Wolfsangel emblem — we didn’t recognize the danger. 

In 2011, Idaho Republicans sued to close their primary in order to elevate the voices of party loyalists, those who also tend to be the most extreme in their views. This, in addition to the concurrent rise of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, was a defining moment in Idaho politics and culture, leading us down a path that has legitimized many of the views we worked so vehemently to oust in the 1990s. But these events came with little fanfare or protest. In the absence of a costumed villain, it seemed there was nothing to condemn. 

* * *

Due to our fraught history with bigotry here, North Idaho’s reputation precedes it. A woman I met who is visiting Sandpoint this week told me that she was afraid to tell her Black friends that she was vacationing in North Idaho, lest they connect her with racism. 

Meanwhile, when reporters come to talk to me about my activism, their first question is always along the lines of: “Do you feel safe here?”; “How many times have you been threatened?”; “Might you flee to protect your daughter?”; “How bad is it, really?”

One reporter, upon hearing my response that I feel safe, that it’s not that bad here, responded, “No. But it is. It is that bad.” She said this from thousands of miles away. Another reporter, shocked by my equanimity, commented, “Well, perhaps that’s the real story!”

Will our image forever be marred by the ghosts of our past? That was certainly the case in 2012, when Winkler hit the national headlines for his sinister yet baseless plans for a white-power homeland. Today, however, the rightward lurch of the Idaho Legislature is reanimating those ghosts, bringing new life to old perceptions.

Today, rhetoric that was once at the margins of acceptability is now the law of the land. Last legislative session alone, Idaho passed bills curtailing children’s access to library materials containing LGBTQ+ content, prohibiting the use of preferred pronouns, banning DEI positions or training in state government, and attacking the transgender community, while considering bills to further rescind any vestiges of emergency abortion access, hobble the citizen initiative process, embolden far-right groups by abandoning the label “domestic terrorist,” funnel school funding toward religious institutions, allow concealed firearms on school property, and change all mentions in Idaho Code of “fetus” and “embryo” to “preborn child,” thus paving the way for abortion to be considered homicide rather than health care. 

Today, the real threat isn’t the purveyor of hate-filled flyers or the racist fringe group. It’s the people making our laws. Which is less splashy than cross burnings but more damaging.

* * *

During a haircut recently, I asked my Sandpoint-born hairdresser what it was like living up the road from the Aryan Nations as a kid. She got agitated.

“Everyone assumed that we were all racist by association. But that’s not true. We were not racist. And they were not a part of our community.”

Many North Idahoans felt this way.

In the ’90s, flinching at the ugly depictions of our town in national media outlets, residents and businesses took up a campaign to promote Sandpoint as a big-hearted and beautiful place. It was a campaign of existential proportions, just as much as the campaign against hate had been. It turns out, the fight against perceived extremism is just as important as eradicating its actual manifestations.

Even as we continue to uproot the perceptions of our racism, an insidious new breed of closed-mindedness is grafting onto that scaffolding. Our current reputation as a MAGA haven has drawn in a new population of people who value firearms and “freedom” above all else — even though many existing residents wouldn’t rank permissive gun laws and a tepid COVID response as defining attributes of our community. But when our reputation precedes us, our reputation comes to define us.

Surveys repeatedly show that Idaho is still a live-and-let-live state that broadly supports LGBTQ and women’s rights. To paraphrase my hairdresser, we are not assholes. But our past, paired with a minority-view-ruled present, makes us appear that way, thus manifesting a darker future. Which means we need to double down on battling perceptions of our assholery, both to the world at large and within our own hearts.

More than being not that bad, Sandpoint is rather remarkable. In touring the state this past year, I’ve come to realize how fortunate I am to call this place home. 

To answer the reporters who keep coming here looking for stories of intimidation, violence and fear: No, the boogeyman is not waiting armed on my doorstep; instead, he’s busy drafting the laws of our land. Which is far more terrifying.

Unfortunately, this boogeyman isn’t one we can oust through bankruptcy, but we can through bravery. We can rise to the occasion armed with our voices and our votes. We can redefine the narrative of extremism. Let’s prove to the world — and, most importantly, ourselves — that we are not the enemy and that our past is not our future.

Jen Jackson Quintano is a writer and runs The Pro-Voice Project, a reproductive rights organization, in Sandpoint. Sadly, neither requires much in the way of chainsaw use.