Reading the Record: Labels Today and a Reporter's Guide

Thirteen lessons have covered a long time and a lot of labels. This lesson gathers what the evidence supports, looks at how the older labels show up in Idaho politics today and gives you a checklist you can use on a claim you encounter next week.

What the record shows, movement by movement

1. Mine wars and the Haywood trial (1892 to 1907). Violence by union members and state and employer force, including martial law twice, are both documented. The verdict in 1907 did not settle who ordered the Steunenberg bomb (lesson 2).
2. Socialists (1912). 11,960 Idahoans, 11.31 percent, voted for Debs, strongest in Bonner, Clearwater and Shoshone counties. This is a vote count and not a membership count (lesson 3).
3. Wobblies (1917). A strike of up to 2,400 North Idaho loggers won an eight-hour day eventually; the state used a criminal syndicalism law to jail leaders (lesson 3).
4. Communists (1920s to 1945). A third-party tabulation shows 491 Idaho votes for the Communist candidate in 1932. Membership totals exist only for a multi-state district. No named Idahoan's membership is documented in the sources gathered (lesson 4).
5. The Klan (1920s). A dozen or so chapters according to one historian, a documented Boise parade in 1923, and an archive collection of limited size (lesson 5).
6. The Red Scare (1944 to 1957). Accusations by Senator Welker and others, including an unexplained claim of 87 communists in Idaho, and the 67-22 censure vote in which both Idaho senators sided with McCarthy. No formal loyalty investigation in Idaho is described in the sources (lesson 6).
7. Aryan Nations and The Order (1973 to 2001). A compound with swastikas and a stated aim of a white homeland, bombings in 1986, and the Order's murder of Alan Berg; the compound ended with a $6.3 million civil verdict about guards' conduct (lessons 7 to 9).
8. The new generation (2011 to 2026). Patriot Front arrests with uneven prosecutions, a federal case tied to an Iron March and Atomwaffen-imagery group, and rising reported hate crimes with the limits stated (lesson 10).
9. DSA, 50501 and No Kings (2025 to 2026). Democratic Socialists of America chapters in Boise and Southeast Idaho, an electoral and organizing group; and the Idaho 50501 and No Kings protests, which are mass public demonstrations. The sources document organizing, elections and public protest, and report no violence at Idaho events; the Crowd Counting Consortium's data likewise record no arrests, injuries or property damage at Idaho events on seven key days from February 2025 to March 2026 (lessons 12 and 13). They are kept in a category of their own, apart from the Aryan Nations and The Order. Pierson argues that No Kings functions as a recruiting and onboarding tool for a radical movement; the organizers say they intend to bring people into local groups, and the sources read do not name a more radical group that participants are recruited into (lessons 11 to 13).

A pattern, with its limits

Looking across the thirteen lessons, the sources gathered here document organized extremist violence and prosecutions in Idaho mostly from white-supremacist and neo-Nazi groups after 1973, and organized labor violence and state force in 1892 and 1899. They document electoral socialism in 1912 and a very small Communist vote in 1932. They do not document an organized communist movement in Idaho after the Red Scare of the 1950s. That is a statement about the sources, which are limited. It is not a claim that none existed, and it is not a claim about any person's beliefs. It also covers only the movements this module treated; the sources do not address violence by anarchist groups, or by groups that others have labeled antifa, in Idaho in recent decades either way, and a researcher should search for it before concluding anything. The 2025 and 2026 activity in lessons 11 to 13 is membership organizing and public protest as reported; the sources gathered here report no violence at any Idaho DSA, 50501 or No Kings event, though other places had serious incidents that lesson 13 reports with attribution.

How 'Communist' is used in Idaho politics now

The word still appears in the Idaho Legislature, mostly about foreign governments. House Joint Memorial 1 of the 2021 session (RS28587), introduced by the State Affairs Committee on February 16, 2021, condemned the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party over the early handling of the COVID-19 outbreak. In the enrolled text the Legislature resolved that the two "should be held accountable for their crimes against humanity," said it "believes the Communist Chinese government to be a hostile state," and said the Chinese government "should be sanctioned for its misdeeds." Its recitals say the Chinese government "lied to the world" about the disease and is "currently waging genocide against the Uighur people." Those are the Legislature's own assertions, reported here without vouching for them. The House adopted the memorial by voice vote on March 1 and the Senate by voice vote on April 7, and it was delivered to the Secretary of State on April 12, 2021. Its fiscal note said there was no fiscal impact.¹³⁴ An earlier version of this lesson quoted phrases ("deceit, duplicity" and "Communist China should be sanctioned") that are not in the enrolled text; they may come from a draft stage, and this lesson now quotes the enrolled memorial. The memorial's subject is the government of another country, not people in Idaho, and it is a statement of opinion addressed to the President, Congress and Idaho's congressional delegation. It is a useful example of what to watch for: a writer who describes such a memorial as an Idaho action against domestic communists misreads it.

The same word was used about Idahoans in 1950 (lesson 6). The difference is the target: then, a senator; now, a foreign government. A reader should ask each time what the word is attached to and what evidence follows it.

Labor, then and now

The labor conflict that opens the module has a later chapter. According to the Post Register's labor-history article, in 1985, when Idaho's right-to-work law passed, about 11 percent of private-sector workers were covered by union contracts, and by 2013 the figure was under 3 percent. Public-sector coverage fell from 25 percent in 1985 to 18 percent in 2013, and by 2013 Idaho ranked 44th nationally in union representation. Union membership rose slightly from about 28,000 to 29,000 between 1985 and 2013 while total jobs more than doubled from 289,000 to 617,000.² These are 2013 figures. For a current claim about union strength, use current Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Who this module does not cover, and how it weighs sources

This module covers specific organizations and movements, each described by its own stated beliefs and documented acts: mine-war unions, socialists, Wobblies, communists, the Klan, the Aryan Nations, The Order, Patriot Front and the groups in the federal grid case, and, in a separate category, DSA, 50501 and No Kings. It does not cover Christian conservatives, the American Redoubt (a relocation and preparedness idea, which is a different thing from Christian conservatism), or conservative political groups, and it does not group them with any of these. Christian conservatives and extremist and nationalist movements hold diametrically opposed values and worldviews. Christian Identity, the theology some separatist groups adopted, is rejected by mainstream churches. A writer who places a Christian conservative or a Redoubt resident beside the Aryan Nations has made a guilt-by-association claim that no source in this module supports.

Group lists, hate-group maps and incident counts come from advocacy organizations such as the SPLC, the ADL and the ACLU, and from progressive writing on race and hate. They are useful and they are not neutral. Each has been criticized for how it classifies groups and counts incidents, and each has faced disputes about its own conduct. The module therefore attributes each classification to the organization that made it, never uses one of them as the only proof, and checks the claim against court records, government documents, contemporaneous news, the group's own publications and sources from other points of view. A group may reject a label applied to it, as the Proud Boys and ACT for America do; report the label, the group's own description and the documented acts separately.

A seven-step checklist for any claim about an Idaho group

1. Name the category and the evidence. Is the claim about supremacy, separatism, nationalism, Nazism, socialism or communism (lesson 1)? What did the group say or display?
2. Separate the four kinds of fact. Votes, membership, accusation and conviction. Which one does the claim rest on?
3. Find the primary document. The court judgment, the canvass, the indictment, the finding aid, the newspaper issue, the legislative record.
4. Check the number. Compare it with a second source. If the sources differ (for example 1973 and 1974), say so. For a crowd count, name who counted and whether the number is an organizer claim, a published estimate or a floor.
5. Attribute opinion. SPLC, ADL and ACLU classifications, a historian's interpretation and a politician's claim are each attributed.
6. Check for a living person. If a living person is named, what record puts them in the story? A court record, a public office or their own statement. A rumor does not.
7. Give the other side. Report what the defendants, the group or the accused said, and say when no response was obtained.

Where to look

• Courts: Kootenai County District Court (Keenan; the Patriot Front cases); the federal docket in the Eastern District of North Carolina for the grid case.
• Archives: Idaho State Archives (finding aids, ballots, the W. C. Roberts papers), Idaho State Historical Society, Chronicling America.
• Government: Idaho State Police, Crime in Idaho; the Idaho Legislature's session pages; the Senate's published records.
• Watchdogs, attributed: SPLC, ADL, Wassmuth Center for Human Rights, Western States Center.
• Counts and lists: the Crowd Counting Consortium's public data on Harvard Dataverse for protest tallies, and the coalition's own Partners page at nokings.org, each attributed.⁵⁶
• Newspapers: the Idaho Statesman, Idaho Capital Sun, Spokesman-Review, local weeklies. Several Idaho outlets block automated readers, so read them in a browser.

Open research questions

• Idaho's criminal syndicalism statute: year, text, prosecutions.
• Idaho Socialist officeholders, 1900 to 1920.
• Idaho entries in the UW Communist vote map and the original 1912 and 1932 canvasses.
• Idaho Klan membership and any prosecutions of 1920s violence.
• Any Idaho pro-Nazi or fascist organizations before 1945.
• The Boise synagogue bombing: date, defendants, court findings.
• The 1986 Idaho bombings: which cases ended in convictions, and of whom.
• Sentences in the federal grid-attack case.
• Current Idaho State Police 2025 hate-crime figures.
• Boise DSA and Southeast Idaho DSA founding dates, membership counts and any endorsed candidates (neither chapter site states them).
• Published independent crowd counts for the Idaho No Kings events. Lesson 13 gives raw sums of Crowd Counting Consortium data, which are floors, and no official count exists.
• The sender of the October 19, 2026 text blast.
• The trial and outcome of the Salt Lake City No Kings shooting case (lesson 13), and the source of the Greenberg wording that Pierson's essay quotes but her June 10, 2025 essay does not contain.
• Whether the coalition members named in lesson 13 share officers or donors, which takes Form 990 officer lists and FEC detail that were not read.

A closing thought on method

The rule that runs through every lesson is that a label is a claim, and a claim needs a source. "Socialist," "Communist," "Nazi," "white supremacist" and "white separatist" are not interchangeable, and Idaho's record is better served by sentences that say exactly what happened, to whom, on what date and according to which document.

What the first hand record adds

Lessons 1 to 13 rest mostly on court records, government documents and news reports. The first hand record, meaning what people said and wrote themselves, adds what those sources cannot: how organizers, defendants, officials and neighbors described their own aims and dealings, in their own words and on their own dates. Lessons 12 and 13 begin that work for 50501 and No Kings by setting organizers' statements beside what reporters and critics wrote. Lessons 15 and 16 take it up for the whole module, with each account labeled by who wrote it and where it stands. A statement in someone's own words is still a claim: it shows what the speaker said, not whether it was true, and it is weighed with the same checklist as any other.

Learn more

• Idaho Legislature session information: Bills, memorials and statements of purpose by year.
• Bureau of Labor Statistics: Current union membership data by state.
• SPLC: Hate-group profiles; attribute to the SPLC.
• ADL: Incident audits and symbol database; attribute to the ADL.

Notes

1. Idaho Legislature, 2021 session, House Joint Memorial 1 (RS28587), Statement of Purpose and Fiscal Note. Read it online. The statement of purpose says it was prepared by a proponent of the bill. ↩
2. "Idaho unions: A history of conflict," Idaho Post Register, on union coverage from 1985 to 2013. Read it online. ↩
3. Idaho Legislature, House Joint Memorial No. 1, 66th Legislature, first regular session (2021), enrolled text, delivered to the Secretary of State April 12, 2021. Read it online. ↩
4. Idaho Legislature, HJM001 legislation page and action history (introduced February 16, 2021; House voice vote March 1; Senate voice vote April 7). Read it online. ↩
5. Crowd Counting Consortium, Phase 3 public data (2025 to present), version 18, Harvard Dataverse (CC0). Read it online. ↩
6. nokings.org partner list ("Partners" page), read October 27, 2026. A self-published list by the coalition. Read it online. ↩