Rawles’ reach was magnified by outlets such as Radio Free Redoubt, a podcast geared toward “God-fearing, liberty-loving patriots,” and Redoubt News, an “online publication featuring the Christian conservative culture.” This loose group has a political champion in Idaho state Rep. Heather Scott, who represents the northernmost tip of Idaho’s Panhandle, wedged between Washington and Montana. (Scott was there to hear Greene speak in Kootenai County last week; Idaho’s GOP chairman, pointing her out to the congresswoman, described Scott as “the Marjorie Taylor Greene of Idaho.”)
The Redoubt is growing rapidly, bolstered by conservative flight chiefly from California. Idaho and Montana have repeatedly ranked among the U.S. Census Bureau’s top five fastest-growing states in recent years. According to a recent study overseen by Jaap Vos, a University of Idaho professor of planning and natural resources, 1 in 4 Idahoans didn’t live there 10 years ago.
Most come, Vos said, for cheaper housing and lower taxes, not Rawles’ clarion call. But Vos noted that when it comes to transplants in North Idaho, motivations go beyond finances. “They want to be around people that are like them,” he said.
Bradley Onishi, who teaches at the University of San Francisco, dedicated a chapter to the Redoubt in his book “Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism — And What Comes Next.” He said he knows between five and 10 friends in Southern California — primarily evangelical Christians — who’ve moved to Idaho in recent years.
As he studied the migration pattern, Onishi said, it became clear Idaho had become “the new unzoned land” for residents hoping to remake it in the image of “Christian patriots.”
The influx has given birth to a phalanx of “Redoubt Realtors” who specialize in resettling transplants. Chris Walsh works for Revolutionary Realty, whose webpage features images of bald eagles, American flags and a banner that welcomes visitors to the “heart of the Great American Redoubt, North Idaho!”
Walsh, munching on a sandwich in a diner in Coeur d’Alene, explained that clients seek him out to locate property that is “defensible,” with clear “firing lanes” in the event of invasion. His customers, overwhelmingly preppers, also typically claim the Christian faith. “I don’t remember the last time that I met somebody that wasn’t a Christian,” he said.
But Walsh added that the latest, and by his estimate the largest, concentrated wave of newcomers came during the pandemic.
“The COVID thing really drove a lot of people to get out of Portland, Seattle, San Francisco — anyplace where the government was acting very tyrantlike in terms of lockdowns,” he said. “Up here, we locked down for about three and a half weeks.”
When, a year ago, the Coeur d’Alene City Council was faced with whether to take American Rescue Plan Act funds to support pandemic health measures, citizens approached the microphone at the council’s public session to rail against COVID-19 restrictions and government interference in general, often describing both as “tyranny.”
Over and over, speakers admitted they had only just moved to Idaho. “I moved from Southern California to be free, and I don’t want to be under the chains of the federal government,” one commenter said.
