Sandpoint couple receives white supremacist propaganda

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A Sandpoint couple has reported receiving white supremacist propaganda mailed to them Wednesday from a group called Northwest Front, which included a call for a white ethnostate, preserving the “white race” from extinction and condemns race-mixing.

As of Wednesday evening, no other reports had been made to Sandpoint Police or the Bonner County Sheriff’s Office, officials said.

Because the number of mailers is unknown and the wife is a mixed-race Black woman, the couple’s names have been omitted to protect them from possible retaliation. The letter was addressed to the husband, who did not wish to comment as of Wednesday.

However, the wife said, she wanted to raise awareness for other people, and particularly people of color, who might currently live or be moving to the area.

“I felt like the community needs to know that these things are going out to people who are potentially new residents here,” she said. “For someone like me or other people of color who move here … within a year of me living here, this shows up on my doorstep.”

Although it’s unclear whether the mailer was isolated, it wouldn’t be the first for the area. Sandpoint has previously been targeted with racist CDs left on cars in the Sandpoint High School parking lot, flyers and emails.

The four-page mailer, among other things, describes its group as “white patriots” and advocates for a “separate and independent nation” of white people in the Northwest.

“A new nation, the Northwest American Republic, is coming to land where you live,” the letter said. “Other white people are moving here also, and the reason for their coming is called white flight. Let’s make sure our final WHITE FIGHT for our freedom and for the legacy of our white children begins here.”

The document provides a link to “Northwest Quintet + White Book,” a book written by neo-Nazi Harold Covington, along with “acronyms and terms used by the group. It further states that white Americans have been “betrayed” by politicians, and portrays them as the victims of “Antifa and BLM riots, cancel culture and open borders.”

The letter also referenced the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and called it a “lite version” of what is to come.

“[T]he majority of demonstrators were unarmed and had no plans to use force! They didn’t use the ultimate check and balance: correcting the government with force when needed. That’s why we have the Second Amendment,” the letter said. “January 6th was a birth pang. More will come. There will be blood. The baby is coming.”

One page, titled “Hero and Patriot — Edgar J. Steele” warns that “America’s race war” is coming to the Northwest, and that “people in high places hate and fear us for being white.”

“Because you live here, in mostly white communities, it’s often difficult to sense the physical and social danger caused by the presence of large numbers of non-whites,” the letter said. “The dirty secret politicians don’t want you to know is that DIVERSITY IS A CURSE — and it will be the death of white America.”

The reference to Steele, who served as the defense attorney for Richard Butler, the founder of the Aryan Nations hate group, falsely states he was murdered by the federal government and framed by prosecutors.

In reality, Steele was arrested in 2010 for attempting to have his wife and her mother murdered. He died in 2013.

The Daily Bee will continue to follow this story.