5 Insane Small-Town News Stories You Need To Know About

Unsurprisingly, the town's Jewish community wasn't thrilled with the plan and tried to kick him out. That, in turn, led to neo-Nazis harassing and threatening local Jewish citizens and planning (although ultimately failing to hold) an armed rally, with the state's non-awful citizens mounting a counter-protest. The head of Nazi website The Daily Stormer claimed this was all a Jewish conspiracy to make Nazis look bad, just because they said things like "We're going to come cremate you." Yes, because the only way to make Nazis look bad is via massive conspiracy.

Montana's courts are currently trying to figure out where to draw the line between free speech and open threats, and the whole affair is an important reminder that the neo-Nazis you see online aren't abstract. They have to live somewhere, and right now, they're all about big sky country.

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Yes, the public board, as in the board for the schools that none of their children attended.

They bussed in supporters to ensure they got the votes they needed, and once they took power, they gutted everything while filtering public funds to their private school system. To keep their personal taxes lower, the school board cut hundreds of teachers and other staff members, full-day kindergarten, music, athletics, and extracurriculars. It was a minor miracle that the schools were allowed to acknowledge the continued existence of math, much less attempt to teach it.

All this nonsense eventually led to protests and the state government appointing a powerful fiscal monitor to ... monitor the fiscal situation. Anyway, remember this story the next time you're tempted to skip your local school board election because "it's always the same."

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The Ohio State Legislature argued that Linndale's speed traps were designed solely to generate profit without any concern for encouraging safety. The state eventually passed a law preventing Linndale from profiting from the practice, but Linndale countered by installing speed cameras, which make them even more money, because tickets produced by cameras fall under a different legal category. Though the law does state that ticket cameras have to be monitored, which means that this tiny town has seven police officers and 27 volunteers, essentially making it the world's smallest, lamest police state.

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Up until 2014, the courts had been on Team "You Can't Live In A Gosh Dang Shed," ruling that Ahmad's wife and Muslim America owned Springdale $23,000 in legal fees. But the shed supporters countered by arguing for a religious exemption to building and zoning codes. That plunged the case right back into a legal quagmire from which it has yet to emerge. Maybe they could solve the dilemma by instituting a merciless speed trap and using a fraction of the profits for proper housing?

Related: The 7 Most WTF Houses People Actually Live In

It was obviously a terrible situation, but as the case's lead prosecutor pointed out, it's not unheard of with children. Sometimes it's all down to horribly misplaced curiosity, while other times the perpetrators have themselves been victims of sexual abuse. Whatever the cause, the boys pleaded guilty and were sentenced, and the situation was resolved as well as a situation like that can be.

Then thousands of shitty people, both local and not, did what thousands of shitty people will do: They started Facebook groups to advance an agenda. They quickly agreed upon a variety of nasty and far-fetched fabrications, including that the perpetrators were Syrian refugees, that a father had high-fived them in congratulations, that adult men had been involved, that the girl had been held at knifepoint, and that the municipal government and the police conspired to suppress the crime.

Infowars ran an article with the headline "REPORT: Syrian 'Refugees' Rape Little Girl at Knifepoint in Idaho."

Of course, neither of the boys were Syrian and there was no knife, but that was somehow the least of the article's problems. Infowars claimed that an older brother had directed the younger boys to rape and then urinate on the girl, and that it was all part of a spate of crimes by Muslim refugees (refugees in scare quotes, naturally) that also included spitting in the faces of non-Muslims, as well as a rash of hit-and-runs.

Because of these baseless rumors, the town descended into anti-Muslim chaos. City council was harassed because they weren't kicking all the immigrants out of town. The case's judge was harassed and accused of corruption. The mayor was accused of being part of a globalist conspiracy to destroy America, and was also the victim of a widespread rumor that he was a convicted rapist. His wife received rape threats, and they both, in the worst possible form of marital bonding, received death threats. Local journalists tried to counter with actual reporting, but their reach was minuscule compared to Breitbart and Infowars.

Oh yeah, and fake Facebook accounts connected to the Russian government were later found to have helped spread this garbage. Do try to feign some surprise.

Jordan Breeding also writes for Paste Magazine, the Twitter, and himself, and he isn't a huge fan of Nazis.

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