Rabbi Fink: GOP silence on ‘far-right’ group’s Idaho Statehouse shenanigans is shameful

On Aug. 25, a gang of far-right zealots, some of them armed and flagrantly ignoring COVID public health protocols, stormed the Statehouse. As a rabbi and a Jew, the scene horrified me. It brought back images from the white supremacist march at my alma mater in Charlottesville, Virginia — and countless dark moments in Jewish history when lawless vigilante mobs wreaked havoc upon my people.

The next morning, I wrote letters to Gov. Brad Little, House Speaker Scott Bedke and Senate President Pro Tempore Brent Hill, urging them to condemn these extremists and their violent tactics of intimidation. I personally delivered the governor’s letter to his office, together with a group of concerned clergy allies who submitted their own appeals.

Nearly a month has passed since that time, and I have yet to receive a single response. I am, therefore, now posting the content of those letters publicly. I urge you to add your voice to the call for peace and justice.

Dear Governor Little/Speaker Bedke/President Pro Tempore Hill:

I am writing because I consider you a person of integrity, and I believe that Idaho is in a state of dire emergency that calls for your voice to be heard, clearly and unequivocally, in defense of our polity.

As you know, yesterday heavily armed right-wing extremists, led by Ammon Bundy, essentially took over the Capitol building. They screamed and shouted, shoved police, stormed a door, and, in what was unquestionably an act of vandalism, shattered a glass window.

Yet no one in Idaho’s governing Republican Party has spoken out against this ugliness. Indeed, the perpetrators’ tantrum got them exactly what they wanted: entrance into the gallery, where they ignored social distancing, refused to wear masks and thus endangered everyone in the room.

I speak as one who was arrested seven times in protests urging our state to Add the Words extending protection to our LGBTQ community in the Idaho Human Rights Act. We didn’t object to being arrested; such is the price we willingly paid for our civil disobedience. But I want to emphasize that our disobedience was exactly that: civil. We protested silently, politely, with respect for those around us and the police. Yesterday’s action was, by contrast, anything but civil. It was an act of bullying by folks carrying assault rifles, disrespecting the state police, and wantonly and angrily destroying property. Yet no one was arrested and no one spoke out. These unruly hooligans acted with the intent to intimidate and they have succeeded — at least so far.

Any student of history should know that to tolerate this behavior is to empower it. This group and others like them want to disregard all rules of decency and take over the state of Idaho — and they have the guns and the propensity toward violence that demand we take this threat with utmost seriousness. The only way to stop them is for those in power — starting with yourself — to make it eminently clear that their actions are intolerable and contrary to the democratic values that are meant to guide our state.

Please speak out. I believe the future of our very democracy depends upon the willingness of people of integrity such as yourself to do so in short order.