HateThe Road to Power: Idaho outfit behind rash of racist, anti-Semitic robocalls
The Road to Power, a white supremacist and anti-Semitic broadcasting outlet based in Sandpoint, Idaho, continues to ramp up its tactic of robocalling communities nationwide with racist, anti-Semitic and bigoted language. The calls, which have targeted communities in California, Idaho, Iowa, Florida and Pennsylvania, seek to exploit current events by disseminating vile, offensive commentary. Robocalls are a relatively low-cost and easy means of communicating hate and allow callers to mask their identity while reaching a wide audience.
The Road to Power, a white supremacist and anti-Semitic broadcasting outlet based in Sandpoint, Idaho, continues to ramp up its tactic of robocalling communities nationwide with racist, anti-Semitic and bigoted language.
The calls, which have targeted communities in California, Idaho, Iowa, Florida and Pennsylvania, seek to exploit current events by disseminating vile, offensive commentary. Robocalls are a relatively low-cost and easy means of communicating hate and allow callers to mask their identity while reaching a wide audience.
The man behind Road to Power, Scott D. Rhodes, is a white supremacist who achieved local notoriety in late 2017 when police linked him to the distribution of white supremacist propaganda at Sandpoint (Idaho) High School, harassment of a Sandpoint resident, and threatening, anti-Semitic calls that included recordings of Hitler.
In addition to robocalls, The Road to Power posts racist and anti-Semitic videos and commentary on bitchute and Gab, platforms that have voiced no objection to hosting white supremacist and extremist ideologues. The video episodes include screeds against “kikes” and “jungle animals…Negroes.”
Since May, The Road to Power has zeroed in on divisive political campaigns across the country. Their first political call, supporting neo-Nazi Patrick Little, a failed U.S. Senate candidate in California, accused Little’s opponent, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, of being an Israeli citizen (a nod to a common anti-Semitic trope about Jewish “dual loyalty” to the U.S. and Israel) and promised Little would “rid America of the traitorous Jews.”
The robocall volume spiked in the following days. On May 15, The Road to Power took to Gab to boast about the calls, which they claimed were delivered to more than 350,000 Californians, a hugely inflated count. As ADL documented, many of these calls specifically targeted roughly 50 Jewish institutions throughout California.
Little was soundly defeated in the primary, and subsequently spent much of the summer on his “Name the Jew” tour, bringing his anti-Semitic bile to cities across the U.S.
