[1] Butler was a member of the Silver Shirts, an American fascist organization modeled on the Nazi Brownshirts, which was active until its suppression following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

After Pearl Harbor, Butler enlisted in the Army Air Corps where he served stateside for the duration of World War II.

[6] In the early 1970s, he moved with his family from Palmdale, California, to North Idaho, where he founded the Aryan Nations, a wing of the Church of Jesus Christ–Christian, whose ideology is a mixture of Christian Identity and Nazism.

His group often blanketed the community with fliers and mass mailings, and held an annual parade in downtown Coeur d'Alene; however, the group was condemned by the town of Coeur d'Alene, and locals responded almost immediately by forming the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, with legal battles often overshadowing the parades.

"[9] In 2000, Victoria and Jason Keenan, a Native American mother and son who were harassed at gunpoint by Aryan Nations' members, successfully sued Butler.

[10] Represented by local attorney Norm Gissel and Morris Dees's Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, they won a combined civil judgment of $6.3 million from Butler and the Aryan Nations members who attacked them.

The house was troublesome for neighbors; police were forced to respond to at least one domestic disturbance call, in which two Aryan Nations members were engaged in an altercation on his lawn.

Butler's 2002 World Congress drew fewer than 100 people, and when he ran for mayor of Hayden against incumbent Ron McIntire, he lost by 2,100 votes to 50.