I asked whether he meant a migration of white nationalists. The man in the red hat corrected me to say they preferred to use the word “separatists.”

Reilly denied that he wanted to build a white ethnostate and insisted his focus was on his Catholicism. Richard Spencer—who gained infamy for his own participation in Unite the Right—later told me that he thought Reilly, while sincere in his faith, had shifted to emphasizing Catholic themes because the ethnostate conversation “hit a brick wall” with the average American.

One theme I heard repeatedly about Coeur d’Alene was that it is a bellwether for radicalization. Meaning that if you see something like authoritarians ­shutting down speech at a town hall there—or maybe even a maniac ambushing firefighters—you should take it seriously, because it could be coming to your city next.