COEUR D'ALENE -- About 40 neo-Nazis and Aryan Nations members marched for an hour Saturday, 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.
Hecklers jeered from the sidewalks during the stops, but there were no incidents or arrests like previous Aryan parades.
Uniformed officers and police automobiles clogged every intersection along the route. Plainclothes officers, including federal agents, mingled with the crowd.
Saturday's parade was part of this past weekend's Aryan World Congress.
Ailing founder Richard Butler, 86, has been host of 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 truck 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 Billy Roper, of Russellville, Ark., the leader of a newer supremacy group called White Revolution.
"Pastor Butler has devoted his life to the survival of our people and our race," Roper said. "He's given up everything he's had to make sure America doesn't become a Third World country. All white American citizens owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude."
But sideliners, who seemed jolted by the event, either shouted opposition or stared in awe.
"Where I'm from, any display of public racism like this is against the law and wouldn't be tolerated," said Jaime Reid, 32, who moved to Coeur d'Alene from Edinburgh, Scotland. "We're all born equal. It's a great country and I love it very much. I just don't understand this. They're not representing America in a good way."
Residents held signs reading "There's no place for racists in Idaho," and "Hate is a bad business." They mingled with a dozen or more outnumbered Aryan sympathizers.
"They have the right to do it, but it sure degrades the town," said Paul Bentz, 29. "This puts a bad light on a great town with great people."
