Outside agitators turn us against each other
A small but loud mob tried to disrupt the August City Council meeting where a mask mandate was discussed.
The commotion conjured up images of people brandishing pitchforks, ready to tar and feather anyone who defied them.
Inside, a young man wearing black arm bands spoke quietly on a radio receiver attached to a cord that snaked out of his shirt. The armbands said something like “Regain our rights.” Another man shouted at the mayor, calling him a “Nazi.”
It was as if all the vitriol and paranoia from Facebook leapt off the screen and trampled down the goodwill that has defined Sandpoint — one to which we were drawn because of its sense of community. Where hippies and loggers — who often disagreed — all generally got along by adopting a live-and-let-live creed.
That was before the more militant people showed up with their black armbands, radios and an armful of QAnon (or other) conspiracy theories.
What happened?
The federal government kicked the can of pandemic prevention measures down to the states. Our governor kicked them down to health districts and mayors. Our library district took matters into their own hands and imposed a mask mandate, earning the ire of Ammon Bundy’s “People’s Rights” group, which stormed the library and harassed the staff.
Bundy also helped organized the mob that stormed the state Capitol on Aug. 24, breaking a glass door as they forced their way into the gallery. Bundy gained notoriety for leading the 41-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016. He now lives in Emmet, Idaho, and earlier this year formed People’s Rights, whose disarming website features wholesome images of Christian families.
Yet People’s Rights is more akin to a domestic terrorist organization. Bundy has declared that wearing a mask in the face of COVID-19 is comparable to slavery. Like the Boogaloo Bois, his followers seem to be eagerly preparing for civil war.
“We are going to be like a den of rattlesnakes,” Bundy told his followers, according to a report by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and the Montana Human Rights Network. “If our rights are threatened even one bit, we will be venomous.”
According to IREHR, People’s Rights has more than 20,000 members through regional areas across 16 states. The Idaho Panhandle has nearly 500 members. Area leaders communicate and activate members through a secure cellphone messaging system.
A couple weeks ago, People’s Rights hosted a meeting with Idaho Rep. Heather Scott in Sandpoint, where she had a receptive audience for her message to “push back on government overreach and don’t submit to tyranny.”
Rep. Scott, along with Sheriff Daryl Wheeler, and county commissioners Dan McDonald and Steve Bradshaw, have promoted defiance of Gov. Brad Little’s pandemic-related orders. These commissioners appointed someone to the Panhandle Health District Board (Allen Banks) who doesn’t even believe that the COVID-19 virus exists.
We should worry more about overreach from these elected officials — and their well-armed allies — than of Governor Little. Little was trying to keep us safe, while Bundy and his fellow travelers stoke fear and chaos.
I don’t know if People’s Rights organized the small mob that descended on City Hall in August, but it fit an ugly pattern. I am hopeful that most people see through their smoke and mirrors, and their following remains relatively small.
Maybe then we can get through this pandemic without too much loss of life, either from COVID-19 or violence, and somehow come together again as the friendly community we’ve known and loved.