Your Own Privatized Idaho

An Article For Lux and Teen Vogue

My latest article has just dropped in Lux and Teen Vogue! Thank you also to the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, which funded my reporting trip and made this project possible. You can skip my musings about this project and go straight to it, or you can keep reading…

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If politics weren't a factor, I'd have a hard time not moving to North Idaho. For the sake of Idahoans, it's probably for the best. This state has endured an ever-increasing influx of people for the last 60 years or so, which is driving real estate prices sky-high (though still dirt cheap for a New Yorker). These immigrants are mostly from California, and mostly determined to remake the state in their own image: not the liberal hellscape they believe they left behind, but a fantasy version of a privatized Christian nationalist paradise. The state used to be union blue. Now it might be the reddest state in the nation. Property values go up. Freedom goes down.

Say what you want about those assholes — and I say plenty in the article I'm about to link — but they have an eye for beauty. I am terminally in love with the razor-sharp mountains that scrape the sky, the endless forests like Grimm's Fairy Tales come to life — complete with big bad wolves. The KKK is active here. The Aryan Nations set up shop just north of Coeur d’Alene, a town on the edge of a lake that reflects the big big sky and is much less poisoned by run-off from mining operations than it used to be.

But Idaho holds something else: generations of rock-ribbed Idahoans who have never stopped fighting back against these howling, dangerous forces. I think that might be what really attracts me to this place. Defiance runs deep. It’s a place where people say no and mean it. Sometimes, this is very bad. Sometimes it’s incredible.

The story is bigger than my favorite state, though. It's about a plan to remake America that lies beyond the edges of this country's already-extreme form of conservatism, a nightmare vision linked to Peter Thiel and the Dark Enlightenment and the fantasy of freedom without democracy (read: authoritarian hellscape). This push is happening nationwide. Idaho just has a decade-long head start.

The election is in just a few weeks. If you take nothing else away from the article or this Substack: please, please research your precinct committeeman candidates. I am so serious. Long-term, it might be more important than anything else on your ballot.

You can read Privatized Idaho at Lux Magazine (and also Teen Vogue). If you want to see the story in print, you can buy a subscription to Lux or, if you're in NYC, pick up a copy at the launch party next Friday, October 25th. Seriously, it's a great publication — the kind of magazine your favorite magazine's editors read when they go home. Buy this month's copy at the door and enjoy free drinks from 6 to 7 (I recommend the Naked Bear).

There's a lot I'd like to write about here — all the things that have happened at North Idaho College since the article closed two months ago, the Detroit community college where a different group is running the same playbook — and I'll try to write about it next week, I promise, after I hopefully make my deadline for the article I'm currently writing. But for now, a fun exercise: read the article and guess how things have shaken out over the last couple months. Odds are you'll be close.

Or, if you don't want to wait and/or know how flaky I am, check out Dan Gookin’s YouTube channel. If you've ever wondered what might happen if the original author of the “…for dummies” series got extremely involved in North Idaho politics and made incredibly entertaining videos about it, boy howdy do I have good news for you. Go forth and learn the lore of Fart Cucumber, Screechin’ McGeachin, and so many other awful people who did not make it into the article but should certainly make it onto your playlist.

I'll leave you with the three paragraphs that ended the first draft. The articles’s ultimate ending flows better and wraps the story up more thoroughly, but I believe the original stands on its own and offers an auxiliary look at the thing that keeps me coming back to North Idaho, again and again, as often as I can.

Christa Hazel is the daughter of an FBI agent who went after the KKK and other white nationalist groups in Kootenai County. She attended North Idaho College while living at home to save money. “Occasionally, for books or tuition, dad might sell a horse or a gun. It’s a true North Idaho type story.” Eventually, Hazel went on to university, got her law degree, and followed in her father’s footsteps of battling extremism. The fight has not been without cost. She’s been doxxed. She’s been stalked. White nationalists have threatened her family. “You're constantly having to look over your shoulder, or you’re contacted. You’re in Target, and you’ve seen the same guy in four aisles.” Idaho is an open carry state. Anything could happen.

Idaho is a deep red state with a long history of extremism — and a long history of fighting back. They destroyed the Aryan Nations, bankrupted them and forced them out of their state. They hold Pride parades in the face of armed protesters and arrest the white nationalists that threaten them. This is not an easy place to live, but then again, it never has been.

“I was raised to never back down to bullies,” Hazel said. “No one’s coming to save us here in North Idaho. We have to save ourselves. So we're working on it.”

Please go read the article. I think it's really important.

(Audio coming soon — you'd hardly believe how slammed I am right now)