Rural California is divided, armed for revolt. What’s the matter in the State of Jefferson?

Carlos Zapata has a message for any government official who shows up at his Tehama County restaurant and tries to enforce California’s pandemic shutdown orders.

“I’ve made it very clear that if they come to shut us down, I’m going to call 100,000 people that’ll be there with guns, and what happens happens, you know?” Zapata said Tuesday. “I’m hoping that they’re not stupid enough to want that kind of a fight over a restaurant being open, but if they want it, we’ll definitely give it to them.”

It’s not the first time the Red Bluff restaurant owner and U.S. Marine combat veteran has made those kinds of threats. A few weeks ago, he told the Shasta County Board of Supervisors to expect trouble if they enforce Gov. Gavin Newsom’s COVID-19 restrictions on local businesses.

“Right now, we’re being peaceful,” he said in a short speech that has since made Zapata a celebrity among far-right groups. “But it’s not going to be peaceful much longer.”

Just about anywhere else in California, that sort of talk would have been widely condemned. But here, in what’s arguably the capital of the State of Jefferson — a decades-old movement to break off conservative northern counties from Democrat-controlled California — many have shrugged Zapata off as commonplace.

In Jefferson, the sweeping pandemic edicts out of Sacramento are the latest in a long line of grievances about California’s liberal policies, from new gas taxes, to minimum wage hikes, to environmental restrictions, to gun control.

Indeed, the rebellious sentiment behind Zapata’s threats briefly carried its way to Shasta County’s elected leaders who considered this week rebelling against California on their own.

Despite having one of the highest per-capita rates of COVID-19 infections in the state, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors spent the last several weeks hearing calls to ignore state public health orders that would force restaurants, gyms and other small businesses to stop serving customers indoors.

At board meetings, business owners spoke at times through tears at the prospect of closing their shops permanently if the shutdowns continued. Dozens of others also brought up every manner of internet-driven conspiracy theory about the pandemic — vaccines are a health hazard, masks are a form of government control, the pandemic is a hoax to sway the election against Donald Trump, who won State of Jefferson counties by margins of up to 72% in 2016.

At one point, an anti-mask activist in a Grim Reaper mask stood at the microphone and tried to set a face mask on fire. A man announced he was placing the entire board under citizen’s arrest. Activists read out the county health officer’s home address, prompting police to step up patrols in her neighborhood.

s the country approaches a contentious election and the coronavirus shutdowns continue to hamstring the economy, the State of Jefferson may seem primed to explode.

But how much of this revolutionary talk needs to be taken seriously? How much is over-hyped by outsiders? And how much of it just comes with the territory? This is a place that has long resented its stepchild status in California’s strongly Democratic household — a place where grousing about Big Government is as fundamental as buying a new gun or putting a campaign sign for a local Republican on your lawn?

On Thursday, more moderate voices broke through the chaos. The Shasta County board heard from dozens of members of the community, including at least three physicians, urging the county to follow the state’s rules.

“I understand that these people for some reason call themselves ‘The silent majority’ even though they come in there and scream at you guys every week. They want everything to just be open,” one man told the board in a recorded message. “Don’t let the Carlos Zapatas of the world intimidate you from making the right decision. Because that’s all they’re trying to do.”

Ultimately, the supervisors decided to back away from a full-blown revolt from the state, after members said top state health officials were willing to consider easing the restrictions that went into effect on Friday.

For an afternoon at least, the conspiracy theories and calls for rebellion in the State of Jefferson were muted. But with the pandemic still surging, and the possibility of a new Democratic president, the same potent mixture of resentment and alienation from the rest of California remains.

THE LOCAL MILITIA GAINS SUPPORT

For Woody Clendenen, defiance has been good for business. Clendenen owns a barbershop in the small Shasta County community of Cottonwood, which has enjoyed a steady stream of customers for months because he refused to stop cutting hair even when the state told him not to.

“People are starving for courage and leadership right now. And that’s why guys like Carlos, a lot of people are gravitating to them,” he said, referring to Zapata, the Red Bluff restaurateur warning of violence.

“That’s why I have people traveling from four hours away to get their hair cut. It was a four-hour wait to get in here for four months, people were waiting outside, 15, 20 people out there.”

It also helped draw in a particular type of clientele that Clendenen is the leader of the local company of the California State Militia. The group made its presence felt during the small, peaceful local protests that followed the George Floyd killing this spring.

Members stood guard outside buildings in Red Bluff and Redding in early June after seeing the reports of riots and looting in major cities across the country.

Unlike some other militia groups elsewhere in the country, they didn’t openly carry rifles, though Clendenen said many of his members have concealed weapons permits.

“I’m carrying right now. I mean, if I’m out of the shower, I’m carrying, so it was nothing out of the norm,” he said as he trimmed a man’s hair inside his small shop festooned with “Don’t Tread on Me,” “Make America Great Again,” gun-rights and State of Jefferson swag.

He said they were especially worried because someone had “a trailer load of bricks delivered,” a sign that people were going to riot and toss them through windows.

Similar tales popped up in rural towns across the country in the aftermath of rioting in major cities. Most turned out to be unfounded, fueled by social media hoaxes. Redding’s police chief said his officers heard about those bricks as well as reports of piles of rocks left in the city’s alleyways, but they were never able to confirm them.

Either way, Clendenen said the militia’s appearance was never intended to intimidate activists — they were just there to be a deterrent against violence.

“I said to one of the guys at the Black Lives Matter protest, ‘Hey, if law enforcement tried to make you stop having your protest, we would be on your side. You guys have the right to protest. As long as you just keep the protest (peaceful), we’re totally on your side.’ That’s the freedom of assembly, you know, one of the rights that we believe in.’”