Fascism Came to Idaho—and Hundreds of People Just Sat and Watched

At a Kootenai County Republican Central Committee meeting at Coeur d'Alene High School in Idaho, a woman was bound and forcefully removed by a group of unidentified men for supposedly interrupting the public gathering several times.

The video is disturbing to watch, with the men violently yanking Teresa Borrenpohl by the arm, zip-typing her, and dragging her out of the auditorium by her wrists and ankles, within feet of the local Sheriff. As the scene unfolds, the host of the event can be heard mocking her over the sound system.

Most unsettling of all (at least to me), were the rows of Idahoans seated around her. Some sat stunned, some shot video with their phones, a few made efforts to stop the men (later identified as part of a private security team), while others actually applauded. Likely a segment of the crowd shared Borrenpohl’s political views, while others opposed them—and that shouldn’t mean a damn thing.

People often post some form of a meme reading, If you ever wondered what you’d do in 1930’s Germany, you’re doing it now.

The Americans in that auditorium don’t have to deal in hypotheticals anymore, they have a precise moment in time to evaluate themselves on.

I can imagine it was jarring and disorienting witnessing this kind of unmerited aggression in the middle of a place they feel quite comfortable in, a setting that they’re used to, and they might have been too shocked to move—but that is the point.

When fascism shows up it will be jarring and disorienting, the way it is for immigrants walking down the street and trans teens at school and Federal workers being escorted out of their workplaces. When authoritarianism arrives, you may feel too shocked to move, and yet you’re going to need to.

Teresa Borrenpohl chose the moment of that meeting to move, to say something, to push back—and whether you believe it was ill-timed or inappropriate or rude, realize that movements of justice and acts of liberty often must be precisely such things because this dangerous aggression counts on acquiescence and niceness and silence.

Recently, I was speaking with an elderly African-American minister who lived through the Civil Rights Movement about the days we’re in here in America. He lifted his glasses from his head, turned to me and said, “The terrifying truth, is that people are going to be injured and jailed and killed facing what is coming.”

And that’s something I don’t think we are fully ready for here.

Many of us have been weaned on the strong sedative of American exceptionalism that makes what is happening right now almost unthinkable. We’ve lived our entire lives in the false comfort of the belief that a fascist takeover can’t happen here.

But it can and it is—and soon, whether we want to believe it or not, we’re all going to find ourselves in situations like the people in Idaho did.

When fascism arrives where you are, you likely won’t have the luxury of watching it on video after the fact and second-guessing the people on screen. You won’t be able to read think-pieces and theorize on what you’d do.

When fascism arrives, it will show up swiftly and unannounced, and in that moment you won’t have time to examine your conscience or weigh the options or wrestle with the consequences. You’ll have the few terrifying seconds it takes to watch a stranger by bound and wrestled to the ground, and the choices you make.

Which means, we all need to decide who we are right now.

We need to inventory what matters to us enough to move, not in disconnected safety that makes our choices easy, but in the crucible of uninvited brutality that will call us to respond.

I don’t know what was in the heads and hearts of the people seated in a high school auditorium in Idaho, but I know damn well that I hope whatever is in mine in such a moment, it gives me the courage and conviction to move in such a way that I can live with myself.

There will be a cost to such movement for all of us, but there is a cost to not moving, too.

There is a price tag to not standing or speaking or pushing back, and it is the normalization of atrocities that allows fascism to arrive unimpeded.

That is something we cannot sit by and watch.