Missoulian: Supremacists march in Idaho

About 40 neo-Nazis and Aryan Nations members marched for an hour waving racist flags, bringing local business to a standstill and shocking the many onlookers. The group obtained a city-issued permit for the march in February. The eight-block march lasted its legal 60-minute limit and stopped at least four times on the route. (...) Saturday's parade was part of this weekend's Aryan World Congress. Ailing founder Richard Butler, 86, has hosted the three-day event since the late 1970s when he moved to Hayden Lake from California. This year's conference met at a private campground near Cataldo, Idaho, about 40 miles east of Coeur d'Alene. Under hot, humid skies, Butler offered a handful of Nazi salutes from the back of a pickup that was dragging the flag of Israel - an anti-Semitic first for Aryan parades in the area. Tom Metzger, one of the country's foremost racists and leader of the White Aryan Resistance, came from California to join the parade. He was a regular speaker at Aryan Nations World Congress events during the 1980s and 1990s when Butler had his 20-acre compound near Hayden Lake. Butler lost the compound in 2000 to bankruptcy after losing a $6 million civil rights suit. Other leaders of neo-Nazi groups joined the march, including the leader of a newer supremacy group called White Revolution Billy Roper, of Russellville, Ark.