Mil­i­tant extrem­ist Matt Shea of Spokane Val­ley — who rep­re­sents the 4th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict in the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives — has been in the news a lot late­ly as media orga­ni­za­tions con­tin­ue to delve deep­er into his dis­turb­ing activ­i­ties and the House offi­cial­ly inves­ti­gates whether he has “has engaged in, planned, or pro­mot­ed polit­i­cal vio­lence against groups or individuals.”

If you’ve nev­er heard of Matt Shea before, here’s what you need to know.

Shea is a fun­da­men­tal­ist reli­gious zealot with vio­lent ten­den­cies who has a long his­to­ry of bad behav­ior. He was first elect­ed to the state Leg­is­la­ture eleven years ago and has been con­tin­u­ous­ly reelect­ed since in his solid­ly Repub­li­can district.

And that’s despite all of this:

He pulled a gun in a road rage con­fronta­tion. He called the tax audit of Ida­ho Rep. Phil Hart “bureau­crat­ic ter­ror­ism.” He riffed with Alex Jones about FEMA camp con­spir­a­cies. He encour­aged peo­ple to stock up on ammo to use on loot­ers when soci­ety inevitably collapses.

He flew down to Neva­da to cheer­lead the Bundy Ranch stand­off.  He sent a “secu­ri­ty expert” named Antho­ny Bosworth — who had ear­li­er been arrest­ed for bring­ing an AK-style rifle to the fed­er­al cour­t­house — down to help the armed occu­piers of the Ore­gon wildlife refuge.

He repeat­ed­ly refus­es to answer ques­tions from the local news­pa­pers, refer­ring to them as the “Social­ist-Review” and the “Ins­lan­der.”

Most fright­en­ing of all, though, was the rev­e­la­tion that Shea had authored and dis­trib­uted a doc­u­ment called “Bib­li­cal Basis for War”, which appears to jus­ti­fy vio­lence against any­one who dis­agrees with right wing fun­da­men­tal­ist ideology.

“The doc­u­ment is orga­nized in four­teen sec­tions with mul­ti­ple tiers of bul­let points and a smat­ter­ing of bib­li­cal cita­tions,” The Spokesman-Review report­ed. “Under one head­ing, ‘Rules of War,’ it makes a chill­ing pre­scrip­tion for ene­mies who flout ‘bib­li­cal law.’ It states, ‘If they do not yield – kill all males.’”

Shea has admit­ted to dis­trib­ut­ing the document.

Shea was for­mer­ly the Chair of the House Repub­li­can Cau­cus in Olympia, but after his involve­ment in the cir­cu­la­tion of “Bib­li­cal Basis for War” was revealed, the House Repub­li­cans qui­et­ly removed him from that post.

Ear­li­er this year, The Guardian report­ed that Shea “took part in pri­vate dis­cus­sions with right wing fig­ures about car­ry­ing out sur­veil­lance, ‘psy­ops’ and even vio­lent attacks on per­ceived polit­i­cal ene­mies.” Read their report here.

In August, The Guardian fol­lowed up with a new report reveal­ing that Shea “con­nect­ed close allies with a group offer­ing train­ing to young men in ‘bib­li­cal war­fare’ that includes how to use knives, pis­tols and rifles, with lessons based in part on the teach­ings of a Geor­gia-based neo-Con­fed­er­ate pastor.”

The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty and its top brass have pret­ty much kept mum in the wake of the rev­e­la­tions about Shea’s activ­i­ties, nei­ther offer­ing a defense of Shea nor con­demn­ing his despi­ca­ble behav­ior, though Spokane Coun­ty Sher­iff Ozzie Kne­zovich (a Repub­li­can) has offered force­ful denunciations.

The Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, on the oth­er hand, has open­ly called for action, say­ing that Shea is unfit for pub­lic office. The par­ty’s Advo­ca­cy Com­mit­tee (which I chair) has rec­om­mend­ed that the expul­sion of Shea be a leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ty in 2020 and the par­ty is call­ing upon Shea’s cor­po­rate sup­port­ers to retract their sup­port through a Can­cel Matt Shea cam­paign that launched today.

Sev­er­al com­pa­nies and lob­by­ing asso­ci­a­tions have already stat­ed that they will not be mak­ing any fur­ther con­tri­bu­tions to Shea, includ­ing Boe­ing, All­state, and the Wash­ing­ton State Hos­pi­tal Asso­ci­a­tion. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is call­ing on Shea’s oth­er cor­po­rate sup­port­ers to fol­low suit immediately.

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty may be pulling away from Shea, but he still enjoys strong sup­port from the pro-Trump Repub­li­can rank and file in Wash­ing­ton State as well as promi­nent Repub­li­can activists. Shea hosts a pod­cast called Patri­ot Radio that com­bines fun­da­men­tal­ist ram­blings with inter­views of like-mind­ed souls.

In June of this year, Shea had dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman on to talk about Ini­tia­tive 1648, a mea­sure that Eyman was pro­mot­ing at the time to reverse the rev­enue reforms adopt­ed by the 2019 Wash­ing­ton State Legislature.

I‑1648 sub­se­quent­ly failed to qual­i­fy for the bal­lot.

Not long after, the “Lib­er­ty State” extrem­ists who had helped Eyman with sig­na­ture gath­er­ing for I‑1648 had a pub­lic falling out with him.

But before those events, Eyman was invit­ed to come on Shea’s pro­gram and pro­mote his var­i­ous schemes, includ­ing I‑1648 and I‑976.

At the end of the inter­view, Eyman offered a full-throat­ed endorse­ment of Shea and his pol­i­tics. Here’s a tran­script of their exchange:

TIM EYMAN: I am so grate­ful, man. And Matt: Thank you so much for hav­ing me on. You’re just a hero down in Olympia.

And [yours is] just one of the few voic­es down there that has­n’t got­ten Stock­holm syn­drome iden­ti­fy­ing with your cap­tors. That you’re so will­ing to fight the good fight, even when you don’t have the num­bers in par­ty, but you’ve got that, you know, you’ve got the right ideas and the right prin­ci­ples on your side.

[Eyman pro­vides his con­tact infor­ma­tion for Shea’s listeners]

We hope you join in and help us get that on the ballot.

MATT SHEA: Tim Eyman. Thank you. Per­ma­nent Offense. I love that. I’m going to men­tion it any­ways — Per­ma­nent Offense — because we should be on per­ma­nent offense.

TIM EYMAN: We should be on per­ma­nent offense.

MATT SHEA: The truth is … the truth is behind us, right? So hey, thanks for join­ing me on Patri­ot Radio today.

God bless you and keep up the fight.

TIM EYMAN: You too, man. You’re awesome.

MATT SHEA: All right, so Tim Eyman. And once again… give them noth­ing dot com. What a great web­site [Shea utters an evil laugh]. Give them not one red cent more. Not one more cent.

Pre­fer to lis­ten to the Eyman-Shea love­fest? Here’s an audio clip.

Here at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, we have been work­ing to counter the tox­ic pol­i­tics of agents of destruc­tion like Tim Eyman and Matt Shea for over sev­en­teen years through our Per­ma­nent Defense project. (Per­ma­nent Defense is so named because Eyman’s ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry, which was orig­i­nal­ly named Per­ma­nent Offense and now is again, requires year round opposition.)

You can sup­port our work by becom­ing a mem­ber of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute or mak­ing a one-time dona­tion to sup­port our work.

Your con­tri­bu­tion will enable us to con­tin­ue defend­ing Cas­ca­dia from the harms that Eyman, Shea, Don­ald Trump and oth­ers seek to inflict on those who do not share their extreme, mil­i­tant, white suprema­cist ideology.