Richard G. Butler, 86, Founder of the Aryan Nations, Dies
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
Published: September 9, 2004
Richard G. Butler, the founder of the Aryan Nations and a leading figure in the white supremacist movement who preached that Jews descend from Satan and black people are subhuman, died yesterday in his home. He was 86.
Mr. Butler died in his sleep in Hayden, Idaho, The Associated Press reported, at a home lent by a wealthy supporter after he lost his 20-acre compound four years ago in a lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Mr. Butler, weakened by congestive heart failure, lived out his final years in a house adorned with crosses, relics and books about Adolph Hitler and Holocaust denial. He was surrounded by a dwindling number of quarrelsome followers, but maintained a presence on the Internet, with about 200 followers in about 17 chapters nationwide, said Mark Potok, who monitors the group for the Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Ala.
A racist to the end who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Hayden, just outside Coeur d'Alene, last year "to keep it white," Mr. Butler for decades was a unifying force for white supremacists, skinheads, neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen and others of the ilk. He propagated the idea that the Northwestern states should be a refuge for whites.
"For many, many years, Richard Butler was the hub of the wheel of white supremacy," Mr. Potok said. "The Aryan Nations compound had a very serious importance in the movement for many years. This was the nonsectarian gathering point for haters of all stripes."
Mr. Butler held a yearly "World Congress" that at its peak drew several hundred people to the compound, near Hayden Lake, which was furnished with a silver bust of Hitler, stained-glass swastikas, Nazi flags, a guard tower and patrolling German shepherds. "Whites only," read a sign at the front gate.
During the last event, in July, Mr. Butler and about 40 followers marched through Coeur d'Alene. He gave the stiff-armed Nazi salute from the back of a pickup truck that dragged an Israeli flag behind.
But over the years, he also inspired a human rights movement in the Coeur d'Alene area. Several organizations opposed to racism and anti-Semitism were founded by local residents in reaction to his presence and out of concern for the area's reputation.
In recent years, criminal prosecutions of his followers, the loss of the compound, suspicions that the F.B.I. had infiltrated the group and defections eroded his influence.
By the end, Mr. Butler's World Congress drew fewer than 100 people, and when he ran for mayor, he lost by about 2,100 votes to 50.
Ron McIntire, the mayor of Hayden, said during the mayoral campaign in 2003 that Mr. Butler ran mainly so he would have "an opportunity to speak up again."
"He's slowly disappearing into the sunset,'' Mr. McIntire said.
Richard Girnt Butler was born Feb. 23, 1918, outside Denver and later moved with his family to Los Angeles, where he studied aeronautical engineering. While in India, working on planes for the Royal Indian Air Force, he said he became aware of the caste system and the idea of racial superiority.
"I noticed all the maharajahs were much whiter than the average Indian," he told The Los Angeles Times in an article published in 1999. "As you went up the hierarchy, the lighter they got. It all got me to thinking, and when I came home from overseas, I had a feeling that we, the white race, were losing the war."
He served with the Army Air Corps in the Pacific, after marrying his wife, Betty, in 1941. Mrs. Butler died in 1995; the couple had two daughters.
After the war, he settled in Montebello, Calif., where he said he came to believe that Jews were behind a Communist conspiracy of worldwide domination. He parted company with the Presbyterian Church, he said, because it was accepting minorities, and fell under the influence of Wesley Swift, a white supremacist preacher in Los Angeles.
While employed by Lockheed as an engineer, working on passenger airlines, he said he became disgusted when the government required more minority hirings at a Lockheed plant in connection with a federal loan. Mr. Butler went on to invent a method of repairing tubeless tires, making him financially comfortable and able to retire at 55.
In the 1970's, identifying Idaho as a racially pure place, Mr. Butler bought the land for his compound and founded the Aryan Nations in 1973. Several years later he established a religious arm, the Church of Jesus Christ Christian. He styled himself a pastor. The Aryan Nations distributed racist literature, held gatherings and recruited in prisons.
In his world, Jews controlled the news media and were descended from Eve and Satan, African-Americans were "mud people," and Hitler stood up for the white race.
"Eve was seduced," he told The Los Angeles Times. "Now our whole race is seduced. But we have a nation to broadcast the truth to our people. Two-thirds of our race will die, according to the Bible - because of the Antichrist, famine, disease, warfare, whatever."
In the 1980's, followers formed a splinter group called the Order. Members assassinated Alan Berg, a radio talk-show host who was Jewish, in Denver, bombed a synagogue in Boise and held up armored cars. Other former followers bombed the home of a Roman Catholic priest in Coeur d'Alene. Another former member sprayed gunfire in a Jewish Community Center filled with children and killed a Filipino letter carrier in Los Angeles.
Investigators failed to link Mr. Butler conclusively to violent activities. The only major criminal case he faced came in the late 1980's, when he and 10 others were charged in Arkansas with plotting to overthrow the government. They were acquitted.
In the end, it was a civil case that struck a major blow. As two local residents, Victoria Keenan and her teenage son Jason, were driving by the compound one night in 1998, their car backfired. Members of the Aryan Nations pursued the pair, shooting at them and assaulting them. The Keenans sued Mr. Butler's group, with help from the Southern Poverty Law Center, and won a $6.3 million judgment. Mr. Butler had to auction off the property, and it was bought by Greg Carr, an Idaho native and a former chairman of the Internet service Prodigy.
The buildings were burned down, and Mr. Carr donated the land to North Idaho College, which designated it a "peace park." Half of the month, said Norman Gissel, a member of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, people are given tours of the area.
The rest of the time, he said, cows use it for pasture.
