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At first glance the Pioneer Little Europe website seems like it could be the work of the Montana Office of Tourism. Photographs depict the rugged beauty of the Flathead Valley region near Glacier National Park in northwest Montana.
One image shows a young blond-haired girl playing in a meadow overlooking Kalispell, the largest town in the area, with a population around 20,000.
The site also features short news items about the Northwest Montana State Fair and a wildflower beautification program along with Kalispell job postings.
But then there's this: A scan of a full-page advertisement in a recent edition of the Flathead Beacon, the local paper, with photographs of 47 babies newly delivered in the Kalispell Regional Medical Center. All but one are fair-skinned with light-colored hair. "Wonderful white babies being born in Kalispell," the website reads. "What do the babies look like being born in your town?" Another item on the Pioneer Little Europe site depicts white families relaxing on the shore of a lake. A caption reads,"This is how white our beaches are, and I'm not talking about sand."
And that little girl in the meadow? Her name is Dresden Hale. That's Dresden for the German city firebombed by the Allied forces in World War II, and Hale for the 1990s leader of the neo-Nazi group World Church of the Creator, Matt Hale, who's doing 40 years in prison for soliciting the murder of a federal judge.
Dresden Hale is the youngest daughter of Kalispell resident and neo-Nazi activist April Gaede, the public face of the Pioneer Little Europe (PLE) movement. Launched in 2008, PLE invites "racially conscious" white Americans to relocate to the Flathead Valley to help create a heavily-armed Aryan homeland.
(Gaede's other two daughters, Lynx and Lamb, are identical twins who gained widespread media attention by performing neo-Nazi folk ballads as the musical act Prussian Blue. They have since renounced white supremacism.)
The PLE movement has brought dozens of white supremacists to the Flathead Valley. They are increasingly making their presence known by staging public events, openly recruiting and distributing racist literature, stocking up on firearms at area gun shows while dressed in neo-Nazi clothing, working for local anti-gun control and anti-abortion campaigns (according to Gaede), and issuing violent threats to perceived enemies, including Media Matters, which is now under "indictment" for treason to the white race.
The growing numbers of PLE white supremacists in the Flathead Valley parallels a recent influx to the area of ultra right-wing "Patriot" movement leaders and their followers. Their combined forces are rapidly transforming the region into the hottest flash point of right-wing extremism in the country.
Nationwide the anti-government Patriot movement is surging, and the number of racist hate groups has surpassed 1,000 for the first time since the Southern Poverty Law Center, a leading authority on extremism, began tracking white supremacist activity.
Both trends are glaringly evident in the Flathead Valley. Local anti-hate activists have responded to the PLE with several large demonstrations. Meanwhile, local, state, and federal law enforcement authorities, as well as Montana civil rights activists, say that PLE white supremacists are forming ties with newly arrived Patriot group members in the region.
"They're showing up at each other's events, and they have in common a great degree of hostility toward the government in general and specifically law enforcement," says a federal law enforcement investigator with specialized knowledge of extremism in Montana. "Also they're both openly encouraging individuals with a similar mindset to relocate to the Kalispell area. At this point they are separate but related concerns for law enforcement."
One image shows a young blond-haired girl playing in a meadow overlooking Kalispell, the largest town in the area, with a population around 20,000.
The site also features short news items about the Northwest Montana State Fair and a wildflower beautification program along with Kalispell job postings.
But then there's this: A scan of a full-page advertisement in a recent edition of the Flathead Beacon, the local paper, with photographs of 47 babies newly delivered in the Kalispell Regional Medical Center. All but one are fair-skinned with light-colored hair. "Wonderful white babies being born in Kalispell," the website reads. "What do the babies look like being born in your town?" Another item on the Pioneer Little Europe site depicts white families relaxing on the shore of a lake. A caption reads,"This is how white our beaches are, and I'm not talking about sand."
And that little girl in the meadow? Her name is Dresden Hale. That's Dresden for the German city firebombed by the Allied forces in World War II, and Hale for the 1990s leader of the neo-Nazi group World Church of the Creator, Matt Hale, who's doing 40 years in prison for soliciting the murder of a federal judge.
Dresden Hale is the youngest daughter of Kalispell resident and neo-Nazi activist April Gaede, the public face of the Pioneer Little Europe (PLE) movement. Launched in 2008, PLE invites "racially conscious" white Americans to relocate to the Flathead Valley to help create a heavily-armed Aryan homeland.
(Gaede's other two daughters, Lynx and Lamb, are identical twins who gained widespread media attention by performing neo-Nazi folk ballads as the musical act Prussian Blue. They have since renounced white supremacism.)
The PLE movement has brought dozens of white supremacists to the Flathead Valley. They are increasingly making their presence known by staging public events, openly recruiting and distributing racist literature, stocking up on firearms at area gun shows while dressed in neo-Nazi clothing, working for local anti-gun control and anti-abortion campaigns (according to Gaede), and issuing violent threats to perceived enemies, including Media Matters, which is now under "indictment" for treason to the white race.
The growing numbers of PLE white supremacists in the Flathead Valley parallels a recent influx to the area of ultra right-wing "Patriot" movement leaders and their followers. Their combined forces are rapidly transforming the region into the hottest flash point of right-wing extremism in the country.
Nationwide the anti-government Patriot movement is surging, and the number of racist hate groups has surpassed 1,000 for the first time since the Southern Poverty Law Center, a leading authority on extremism, began tracking white supremacist activity.
Both trends are glaringly evident in the Flathead Valley. Local anti-hate activists have responded to the PLE with several large demonstrations. Meanwhile, local, state, and federal law enforcement authorities, as well as Montana civil rights activists, say that PLE white supremacists are forming ties with newly arrived Patriot group members in the region.
"They're showing up at each other's events, and they have in common a great degree of hostility toward the government in general and specifically law enforcement," says a federal law enforcement investigator with specialized knowledge of extremism in Montana. "Also they're both openly encouraging individuals with a similar mindset to relocate to the Kalispell area. At this point they are separate but related concerns for law enforcement."