RED-HANDED

Boise State Professor Secretly Authored Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory Site: Report

The site regularly endorsed violence toward LGBT+ people before it went dark in 2022.

Boise State University (BSU) political science professor Scott Yenor is the secret creator of the right-wing site Action Idaho, which openly attacked LGBT+ people and peddled conspiracy theories, an investigation by The Guardian found. Yenor secured donor funding for the short-lived Action Idaho, made an unsuccessful attempt to hire a rising conservative writer to run it, and relied on a network of right-wing thinkers across the Claremont Institute and a shadowy Christian Nationalist fraternal organization. While the site was active, Action Idaho regularly published op-eds and other articles that endorsed violence against LGBT+ people, including one that denounced BSU’s firing of a preacher who supported death sentences for gay people and said “step-by-step consent is a boner killer.” It also commended a “men’s rights activist” who made the bonkers claim that a BSU scholarship aimed for women in STEM courses was discriminating against men. Though its URL is defunct, an Action Idaho account still exists on X, where it targets conservative politicians deemed inadequately right-wing. When The Guardian asked for comment, Yenor replied with “personal abuse.”