Cotopaxi is a blink-and-you-miss-it stop on US Route 50 in Fremont county, Colorado. It’s an unincorporated, tiny little burg that was once home to a small community of Russian-Jewish immigrants who settled there in 1882.
It’s ironic then, that it’s where Chad Edward Keith calls home. Keith, according to FBI testimony provided to a federal grand jury, is a self-avowed Nazi who was indicted on weapons charges and remanded without bail to federal prison on May 17.
His possession of multiple assault weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition was a violation of his sentencing after pleading guilty in 2003 to possessing an unregistered firearm — revealed to be a “destructive device” according to KRDO news — in federal court.
From the article: “The FBI alleges that Keith told a confidential source who was working for the FBI that Keith wanted to start a school on his rural property. The school would teach various skills, including weapons training, and instill ideology consistent with white supremacy, federal court documents say. Keith allegedly told the source, who was close to Keith, that he had specific plans for the school, including an antisemitic curriculum.”
According to the documents, Keith would make disparaging comments about Jews and spout age-old tropes about supposed Jewish control of all financial and scientific institutions in the world. The FBI source reportedly asked Keith if he would die to protect those beliefs, he was firm in his reply: “Absolutely.”
Federal Judge Kristen L. Mix denied bail for Keith, citing her reasons as such: “The defendant claims to have buried weapons around the country and is an avowed white supremacist. At his home, the government found a copy of Mein Kampf and other white supremacist texts and Nazi paraphernalia, including a piece of paper in a sealed plastic bag stating that gun control is a Jewish conspiracy and containing photographs of current members of Congress with the Star of David on their foreheads. Defendant expressed a desire to start a community and/or school at the mountain property to teach high-schoolers about white supremacy.”
This all comes on the heels of another extremely concerning sequence of events in Colorado — this time in the Cherry Creek School district. On April 28 at Campus Middle School, a student allegedly drew swastikas on other students’ arms and legs immediately following a lesson on the Holocaust. Not long after this was reported to administrators and shared with teachers and parents on a wider scale, more stories of antisemitic incidents began to flood in.
According to Scott Levin, Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League: “…Families and students from this and other schools reported that students and educators have been subjected to Nazi salutes, pennies being thrown at them, and taunts that include they should be thrown into gas chambers, ‘Kanye was right’ and ‘Hitler did not do a good enough job.’ And, this is not an isolated incident; not a week goes by without ADL receiving reports of similar incidents across our region.”
The arrest of Keith recalls another anti-Jewish terror plot in Southern Colorado. In 2021, Richard Holzer was sentenced to 19 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to a federal hate crime for plotting to blow up the Temple Emanuel synagogue in Pueblo. In the charges filed by the FBI, Holzer told undercover agents that he wanted the bombing to send a message to Jewish people that they must leave his town, “otherwise people will die.” In the course of the investigation, Holzer went as far as purchasing explosive devices from undercover FBI agents in the course of his plan (the devices were not functional).
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Per the ADL’s 2022 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, last year’s increase was the biggest leap since they began tracking — more than 36% more than the year prior, which had been the biggest leap at that point, which had been 34%. This includes numerous instances of vandalism of Jewish schools, cemeteries and synagogues, as well as violence against Jews across the country.
Last fall, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser gave a historically important speech on antisemitism that should serve as a loud warning as to what we’re experiencing in this oft-repeated cycle through history.
“For many Jews, the history of stereotypes and demonization is a painful and familiar tale,” Weiser said. “Quite notably, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, Yad VaShem, begins with a detailed background of the prejudice and biases against Jews that were dry kindling for the fire lit by the Nazis. Germans were, in other words, familiar with the antisemitic tropes about Jews. Hitler weaponized that sentiment into an ideology and ultimately marshaled hate into support for genocide. When we say ‘Never Again,’ that cannot only mean no more genocides; it also needs to mean that we will never allow the mass demonization of an ethnic group to lay the groundwork for a genocide. In other genocides, such as in Rwanda, the demonization of the Hutus preceded the genocide and indeed was a necessary predicate for the killing that followed.”
This analog is crystal clear, and it’s all over the historical record. In short, an autocrat like Hitler doesn’t come into power by happenstance. He rides a wave of hate that is already roiling, and uses it as a tool to further his own agenda — just like the behavior we’re witnessing today from the likes of the Trump and Desantis camps.
And if there’s anything history has taught us — it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
