Neo-Nazis rally at courthouse
The first white supremist demonstration in Spokane in five years occurred Saturday outside the Spokane County Courthouse, just across the river from the ethnically diverse Hoopfest games.
The demonstration, involving at least eight neo-Nazi skinheads, was part of a so-called “worldwide remembrance day” for the late David Eden Lane.
Across the United States, demonstrators were urged to stage events outside U.S. courthouses, according to an Aryan Nations Web site. But, rather than amid the Hoopfest crowds downtown near the U.S. Courthouse, Spokane demonstrators held their rally at the county courthouse on West Broadway.
There were at least as many uniformed Spokane Police officers present in the area as demonstrators, and no incidents were reported. The skinheads did get a few stares and a taunt or two from Hoopfest players and fans who walked past the demonstration.
The last white supremacist demonstration in Spokane was in April 2002, when a dozen Aryan Nations members and skinheads held an anti-Israel rally in Riverfront Park.
Lane, who was 68, was a founding member of a domestic terrorist group known as The Order, formed in 1983 in Metaline Falls, Wash.
“We don’t want to talk to you,” one skinhead responded Saturday when asked if the group, composed of at least three members of the Eastern Washington Skinheads, had a designated spokesman.
Most of the demonstrators held their signs over their faces when cameras were present.
The demonstrators included Gerald O’Brien, of Coeur d’Alene, who was active in the Aryan Nations before the 2004 death of Aryan founder Richard G. Butler.
“We haven’t gone anywhere,” he said when asked about the presence of the Aryan Nations in the region.
Lane, convicted of involvement in the 1984 machine gun assassination of Jewish radio talk show host Alan Berg in Denver, died in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., on May 28.
He is remembered in white supremacy circles for coining the term “14 Words” for his phrase, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” Lane promoted that ideology from his federal prison cell while married to Katja Lane, who lived near St. Maries and published his material.
The seven men and one woman outside the Spokane courthouse each held signs depicting Lane and his slogans, including the “Bruder Schweigen” cross commemorating him and other members of The Order, also known as the Silent Brotherhood.
After Lane’s death, his body was flown to Kalispell, Mont., where it was cremated following a private ceremony.
His remains were placed in 14 urns, and the remainder reportedly were to be spread with the ashes of Robert J. Mathews, another leader of The Order who died in a shootout with FBI agents in December 1984 on Whidbey Island.
In the mid-1990s, Mathews’ Metaline Falls home was occupied by Buford O. Furrow Jr., who is serving a life sentence for shooting five at a Jewish community center in Granada Hills, Calif., and killing a Filipino-American mail carrier. For a time, Furrow was linked with Mathews’ widow.