'Christian patriots' are flocking from blue states to Idaho

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

long article...


Idaho and Montana have repeatedly ranked among the U.S. Census Bureau’s top five fastest-growing states in recent years. According to a recent study overseen by Jaap Vos, a University of Idaho professor of planning and natural resources, 1 in 4 Idahoans didn’t live there 10 years ago.

Most come, Vos said, for cheaper housing and lower taxes, not Rawles’s clarion call. But Vos noted that when it comes to transplants in North Idaho, motivations go beyond finances. “They want to be around people that are like them,” he said.


Bradley Onishi, who teaches at the University of San Francisco, dedicated a chapter to the Redoubt in his book “Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism — And What Comes Next.” He said he knows between five and 10 friends in Southern California — primarily evangelical Christians — who’ve moved to Idaho in recent years.

As he studied the migration pattern, Onishi said, it became clear Idaho had become “the new unzoned land” for residents hoping to remake it in the image of “Christian patriots.”

The influx has given birth to a phalanx of “Redoubt Realtors” who specialize in resettling transplants. Chris Walsh works for Revolutionary Realty, whose webpage features images of bald eagles, American flags and a banner that welcomes visitors to the “heart of the Great American Redoubt, North Idaho!”

Walsh, munching on a sandwich at a diner in Coeur d’Alene, explained that clients seek him out to locate property that is “defensible,” with clear “firing lanes” in the event of invasion. His customers, overwhelmingly preppers, also typically claim the Christian faith. “I don’t remember the last time that I met somebody that wasn’t a Christian,” he said.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/christian-patriots-are-flocking-from-blue-states-to-idaho/ar-AA17TeLn

[Faux pas]

1. GOOD

let them go

[jimfields33]

29. Only problem is California gets less electoral votes.

Residents moving out of blue states have hurt New York for sure. They lost an electoral vote.

[obamanut2012]

36. My wife and I just moved to CA from FL

So,it is going the other way, too.

[jimfields33]

50. That's true. Congratulations! Enjoy!

[obamanut2012]

68. Thanks!

[Polybius]

75. I guess you can look at it both ways

Florida loses another two liberal votes, while Cali gains two.

[treestar]

65. Could be OK if many of them go there from swing states

making it possible they could become bluer. Though it may not be enough people to make an effect.

[Mister Ed]

58. Yes, splendid! The Jewish Space Lasers can make short work of the True Patriots...

...once they've all been gathered in one place.

And what a master stroke it was on the part of the Ministry of Woke to disguise our agents as Redoubt Realtors.

"Redoubt Realtors"! Bwahahahaha!

All is going according to plan, comrades!

[CurtEastPoint]

2. Go. Just go.

[Timeflyer]

3. What are they all so afraid of, that they have to prepare for war in rural USA?

They are the threat that could destroy the country they're so patriot about.

[Elwood P Dowd]

20. They're afraid of George Soros'.

They're afraid of trans people they claim have taken over the schools.
They're afraid of the millions of immigrants they think are storming across the border every day.
They're afraid of smart, liberated women.
But mostly, they're afraid that white/straight people are about to become a minority in our country.

[slightlv]

23. Maybe they're finally thinking they shouldn't have goaded

and cajoled Putin so much? Nah.... it's the overwhelming hordes of us "Woke" folks! (LOL)

[LastDemocratInSC]

24. Maybe they don't remember the 23rd Psalm.

[rubbersole]

45. What's a Psalm?

Isn't that what you see when you look at your hands? Tucker, inform me!

[musette_sf]

4. Don't let the door hit ya

where the good Lord split ya

[MurrayDelph]

11. I disagree

Let the door him them there. They might give themselves nosebleeds.

[dembotoz]

5. once upon a time i have visit everystate on my bucket list.

not so much anymore

[I_UndergroundPanther]

6. i guess they are

Divorcing the blue states. I say good riddance. And cut these maga nuts evangelical fools and nazi groups chock full of losers hoping to split off from the US off from all federal aid.

Remove all the federal army bases and everything there,all the weapons etc. Decommission and remove any missile bases where they want to stake claims. We all know it's the blue states are who keep these red states afloat.
They split from us they on thier own totally alone..

Let them try to build a country that is modeled of nazis and ayn rand.
It will be fun watching it run itself into the ground. Then maybe these rightwing fools will realize republicans are not fit to run anything. But they will be stuck with it.
They try to move to blue states they get shot and the border and deported.


Meanwhile in the blue states things will be much better we can be a great place to live and maybe we can grow past capitalism..etc.

[Ocelot II]

7. Idaho can have them.

[mopinko]

8. they've been there forever.

my 1st hub’s family had a place in idaho and got out of there cuz of those sorts in the 70’s.

[central scrutinizer]

9. If you drive through eastern Oregon

You’ll see signs advocating seceding from Oregon and merging with Idaho.

[BluesRunTheGame]

71. Those counties are supported by the taxes of liberals in Portland.

Idaho has plenty of its own rural deadweight. It doesn’t want any more.

[The Unmitigated Gall]

10. Land of fascist fuckwipes.

[Cha]

12. NEWS FLASH! They're NOT

"patriots".. they Traitors to the USA.

& BYE.

[JustAnotherGen]

18. Yep

But hopefully they'll all go to one place. One landlocked place.

[oasis]

13. Randy Weaver/Ruby Ridge; Mark Fuhrmann Sandpoint Idaho

And a shit-ton load of those types.

[Lucky Luciano]

43. The whole disgusting family should have been eradicated at ruby ridge.

[orleans]

14. what does "redoubt" mean? i don't get it nt

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

17. Titled "The American Redoubt -- Move to the Mountain States," Rawles's 4,000-word treatise called on

The origin of North Idaho’s relationship with contemporary Christian nationalism can be traced to a 2011 blog post published by survivalist author James Wesley, Rawles (the comma is his addition). Titled “The American Redoubt — Move to the Mountain States,” Rawles’s 4,000-word treatise called on conservative followers to pursue “exit strategies” from liberal states and move to “safe havens” in the American Northwest — specifically Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and eastern sections of Oregon and Washington. He dubbed the imagined region the “American Redoubt” and listed Christianity as a pillar of his society-to-be.

[blugbox]

46. From what I know

Historically, a redoubt is like a fort or fortification with defensible areas around it.

Personally I think it's embarrassing that they are calling it that. They are so pathetic

[orleans]

49. from your first sentence i thought i could google the word and find it

and i did; this is from wiki
"The word means "a place of retreat". Redoubts were a component of the military strategies of most European empires during the colonial era, especially in the outer works of Vauban-style fortresses made popular during the 17th century, although the concept of redoubts has existed since medieval times.

so thank you!

[Arthur_Frain]

66. Helms Deep was a classic example of a redoubt.

From the Lord of the Rings stuff.

[JustAnotherGen]

15. So they will all be in one place?

Excellent!

[edisdead]

16. I'm good with that.

[frogmarch]

19. Good riddance.

[Pobeka]

21. Looks like maybe I wasn't too far off...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217674129

In that OP I conjectured this was part of the strategy of GOP extremism, to maintain control of RED states and thus the unbalanced power resulting from controlling the Senate and Whitehouse.

[Celerity]

70. Just piling into small Red states (plus driving out Dems there) does

little to maintain or expand unbalanced Rethug power nationally, especially if those Dems leaving Red states move to swing states, and help tilt them perma Blue.

We should concentrate (Dems move en masse from deep Red and a few massive Deep blue states to the following) on making AZ, NV, GA, NC, VA, and NH perma Blue.

Hell, win all those and we could even lose one (NH), plus lose ALL of the Midwest except IL and MN (so even lose WI, MI, and PA, plus ALL of the rest of the already Red Midwest states) and lose BOTH NE-2 and ME-2 (the 2 swing districts in the only two split EV states) plus lose the now almost perma Red FL and lose (of course) TX and ALL the rest of the already Red states....

and still win the POTUS:




Expand that to also winning ones we should keep winning (NH, PA, and MI, NE-2) minus WI (not sure if long term we can stop it from going full Red) and we win POTUS easily:



I would also love to see South Carolina long term flipped perma Blue via Dem mass move-ins from Red and a few derp Blue states (which is how we are flipping GA Bluer and Bluer), and both Maine and Nebraska stop splitting their EV votes. Nebradka came within 1 vote of doing so a few years back, and if they do stop (we now win NE-2 on multiple occasions, which drives the NE Rethugs crazy) Maine MUST stop splitting as well (as we now lose ME-2 regularly).

FL and TX are now (TX has been for decades) both fool's gold. Same for OH, IA, MO, and IN. Those are all now deep Red states that will only become worse and worse to live in, unfortunately.

We need to concentrate on AZ, NV, GA, NC, VA, NH, plus shore up PA and MI. WI too is deffo worth continuing to try to save.

[aeromanKC]

22. Note to self: Stay away from Idaho!!

[slightlv]

25. Let's wait until they're all there,

and then build a wall - a modern wall... not one of those trumpian things people can climb over or under or thru!

[machoneman]

51. Yes, a wall with only one way in portals! Let all the crazies move there then..lock the portals up!

Good riddance, I say!

[roamer65]

26. Good riddance.

Fuck em.

[Aristus]

28. 'Clear firing lanes'.

So you can see the tank that’s going to turn you into a red mist and your tarpaper shack into kindling.

Bye-bye, assholes…

[vercetti2021]

30. Fine

Let them have Florida and Idaho. Hopefully all these cons moving to redder states can make swing states more blue

[albacore]

31. Most of them will never make it.

Homesteading is tough. It takes more than dogma to build what they think they want.
First time they run into the big downsides, and find no social safety net, they are screwed.
Health care? Nonexistent. Jobs? Nope.
I'm a battle-scarred veteran of the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s and 1980s. I made it because I had a real job to fall back on.
Big capital investments in land and buildings, startup costs, food in the interim...
And Idaho is not the home of friendly terrain and climate.
Most of them will never make it.

[yonder]

40. +1.

[treestar]

64. and choosing a place where the winters can be harsh

wherever they are coming from, they may not be used to that.

[GenThePerservering]

34. Not a brain drain

Idaho has always been full of nutcases.

[yonder]

35. I moved to southern Idaho 44 years ago to escape the in-migration

of folks to the front range of my native Colorado. Except for the in-place RW politics here, I'd found my own slice of heaven with plenty of decent Western weather, gorgeous, wide open space and far fewer people. Despite the similar influx of people now, those characteristics, though impacted, are still available.

My wife and I are too old to pick up and try moving again. And really, we wouldn't want to. We'll take our chances in the south here with odd politics, increasingly smoky, late summer skies, Mormons (with regular cycles of their namesake crickets which aren't really crickets), the very rare tornado, much rarer serious earthquakes and hopefully rarer still, far-in-the future lava flows.

However, those redoubt-hungry transplants in their new woodland paradise up north might get chased out by Bigfoot, the ever increasing chance of another Wallace-style Big Burn or far more likely: getting eaten alive by their particular brand of religion they think is called Christianity. They'll get tired of trying to out kook themselves.

[Tom Rinaldo]

52. There are others simply escaping western Washington just looking for cheaper homes to buy

I know one young couple who moved from the Seattle area to the suburbs of Bpise for that reason. If they had asked me I would have advised against it though. I worry about where Idaho is headed, and it already has always been right wing outside of some more urban areas.

[yonder]

72. Yes, the purchasing power of people from other areas is undeniable.

True or not, one local take is newcomers can often buy two or three times the house compared to where they're from. I don't doubt that is the case for many people, despite their political/religious persuasion.

The Boise area is thriving with an excellent quality of life, jobs, an okay arts/cultural scene, low crime, easily accessible public lands/outdoor opportunities and a decent university — a great place to raise a family — and one reason I planted myself here those many years ago. But one doesn't have to travel far from this purplish area to find themselves in backwardsville either. Those attributes are attractive to many and have resulted in the crazy growth southwest Idaho has experienced in the last couple of decades.

Of course with that growth come the downsides, eventually but surely. Long gone are the days of being able to drive across town in 10-15 minutes. We've noticed an increase in the general snarliness and impatience of people and I suspect that will continue to grow as things get more crowded.

In high school I read an essay by Thoreau or perhaps Emerson that has stayed with me because it applies to most everything. I think it was titled Compensation. Basically, you can't get something for nothing, everything has a price. Joni Mitchell sang "They Paved Paradise and put up a Parking Lot". All true, IMO and it certainly applies here. The very things that make a place attractive will eventually be the cause of its undesirability.

Your young friends who came here from Washington - I believe they made a good choice and were not too late in making their decision. I would be curious how they like it so far.

[bringthePaine]

37. they're neither christians nor patriots, and this is the dumbest tactical move ever

[mountain grammy]

38. Sad.. absolutely beautiful state.

[relayerbob]

39. "I don't remember the last time that I met somebody that wasn't a Christian,"

Oops, he misspelled "was".

I lived in northern Idaho decades ago, and on literally the first day I was there, someone on the radio was complaining about people coming into the state and "Californicating" Idaho (this was many years prior to the movie). The Aryan Nation, Posse Comitates and many other fringe groups had already chosen to hide out up there. The nutcases were there, then, and have only increased in size and psychoses.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

41. Patiently waiting for Idaho's internal civil wars to begin.

As their populations grow, so will crime, poverty and extremism. They're not escaping anything.

I could envision gun fights between Baptist evangelicals and Methodist moderates.......

[AverageOldGuy]

42. Thanks for this article . . .

I have a couple of christian nationalist neighbors. I will give them Chris Walsh's name and offer to pay half their moving expenses.

[The Wizard]

44. weirdos

[nakocal]

47. White supremacists and bigots flock to Idaho

These people are NOT Christian.

[keithbvadu2]

48. "They want to be around people that are like them,"... That won't last.

If you have 100 or 1000 like minded (conservative) people, they will eventually subdivide into more/less conservative groups... back to relatively conservative/liberal.

Start seeing name-calling such as RINO.

'Like-minded people' of course.

[Martin Eden]

53. Nationalist Christians -- Nat C's

Thank you for that, Mrs. Betty Bowers

[Roisin Ni Fiachra]

54. Idaho has long been a magnet for fascists, Nazis, christo-fascists,

major RW religious cults, and every type of RW loon under the sun.

Lots of militia types.

Consequently, I suspect Idaho has the highest percentage of FBI agents per capita than any other state.

[Kaleva]

55. I think Idaho is expected to be hard hit by climate change.

[Conjuay]

57. this makes me very sad

this is one of the few remaining wild places left in the lower ‘48.

And these characters disregard for environmental concerns will cost us all dearly.

[gulliver]

59. Real estate bubble scam? Pump and dump?

If you want American flags in lawns, you don't have to move to Idaho. You can find that anywhere. A lot of folks are chasing a lot of soccer balls, and that means a lot of other folks could be laughing all the way to the bank.

[bluestarone]

60. Just want to say i feel sorry for OUR Blue friends that gotta put up with

These crazy TRAITORS coming to their state! Be safe my friends!!

[Wounded Bear]

61. And right across the border in WA, all the marijuana and abortions you can use...

[marmar]

62. .......

[albacore]

63. Per capita income in ID is $20K per year lower than in WA state next door. nt

[Maeve]

67. Damn. Daughter just moved to Coeur d'Alene

Although she and her roommates are NOT in that group in any way, shape or form. Hate to see her surrounded by that crap.

[themaguffin]

69. I remember "the last time he met somebody who wasn't a Christian" - all of them weren't.

[NowISeetheLight]

73. White America?

As I recall, wasn’t Idaho where the Aryan Nation used to have a compound? Maybe these “patriots” are just returning to their roots?

[TlalocW]

74. How long until they start turning on each other?

Not Christian enough?
Not conservative enough?
Not dedicated enough to the cause?
Not White enough?

Remember Craig Cobb, the white supremacist who discovered he had 14% African ancestry on live TV? I think that led to his buddies vandalizing his home in some small town in South Dakota (which he was trying to turn into a White haven) and a general falling out. It will happen in Idaho.