Straddling Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon and Washington State, the northwestern United States is the new Eldorado for Americans in search of wide open spaces. Among these new settlers, many nostalgic for old America. Here, we love life in the great outdoors, freedoms and private property. We reject the interventionism of the federal state and laws that are too restrictive. We are also wary of movements deemed too liberal: Wokism, LGBTQ, Black Lives Matter… The Great North-West is also the chosen land of the radical right. Families of predominantly white Americans, Christians with an evangelical tendency, opposed to abortion, to overly conspicuous minorities and fierce defenders of carrying arms. Each year, thousands of them settle in these postcard landscapes, often virgin, thus perpetuating the spirit of the pioneers of yesteryear who conquered the American West one hundred and fifty years ago. For some, it is a new colony that is being created. Throughout their investigation, conducted like a road movie, the journalists accompanied the installation, in the vast plains of Idaho, of a family from San Francisco. They also went to meet these new settlers: Viper, the rock’n’roll and ultra reactionary biker, Brett, the pro-Trump real estate agent who selects his clients according to their political ideas. They also met Pastor Bradshaw, who advocates holy war, himself armed with a guitar and a pistol, or even Ammon Bundy, engaged in the electoral campaign for the post of governor of Idaho, while he served two years in prison for armed rebellion against the FBI.
