Beyond the Headlines: The Controversial Legacy of the Boulder Highland City Club

A recently published essay written by the Highland City Club founder, Sina Simantob, contained heavily racist and Islamophobic rhetoric. The HCC is a social club for wealthy residents in Boulder, with memberships ranging from $1500 to $3000 a month. In response, a local activist group, Front Range Antifa, wrote a scathing article that looked into Simatob’s history of bigoted writings. 

Crow, a member of Front Range Antifa and the leading researcher behind the press release, recently drew attention to Simantob’s reinforcement of racist stereotypes and Islamophobic sentiment. In his essay, Simantob defends the anti-Muslim riots that took place in the UK last month. Simantob’s newsletters are published weekly and are openly accepted on the HCC’s website. 

In “A Modern Crusade,” Simantob dives into why these racist riots are happening to Muslims and reinforces demonizing stereotypes, “I posit that the origin of this fight goes back 1400 years to the very start of Islam with its injunction that all Muslims embrace Jihad as a way of life to spread Islam throughout the world by any means,” 

The Highland City Club newsletter has been an open and comfortable space for Simantob to express his views freely with no backlash or reaction from the general public. Crow emphasizes the importance of warning and propping up specific communities that may be affected.

“As antifascists, our primary goal is to empower communities to defend themselves against oppressive forces who wish them harm. As such, we have warned Islamic community centers about the HCC and distributed flyers and posters to community members who are neighboring the HCC. These flyers are available to print on our website,” Crow told YS.  

“Highland City Club is an important institution in the City of Boulder.  As such, we felt that the Club defending race riots and pushing racist conspiracy theories was newsworthy. However, to our knowledge, Yellow Scene is the only publication engaged with this info, which is probably a function of broader anti-arab sentiment that is widespread in America.”

The normalization of Islamophobia and anti-arab sentiment has been rampant throughout the country and has increased exponentially since the genocide in Gaza began. Could there be a connection between the HCC’s legacy of anti-arab sentiment to the genocide in Gaza? 

Yovel Peretz, an Israeli American who willingly served in the IDF, recently returned from Gaza and was hired by the HCC in July as their new Chief Operations Officer. In the progress report posted to the HCC website, Simantob jubilantly writes and praises Yovel’s experience in the IDF: “Yovel has registered more miles than years, as evidenced by the fact that he has secured a degree in business, recently completed his four-year service in the Israeli army, and has proven himself to be a natural leader.”

But things take an even more shocking turn, as the country club is rumored to have hosted a private event for Boulder’s new deputy police Chief, Stephen Redfearn. Redfearn, who was captain of the Aurora police department, is infamous for overlooking and covering for the murder of Elijah McClain, bringing on the looming shadow of police brutality into the city of Boulder. 

“We don’t know what the [event] entailed as it was only available to paying members of the Highland City Club and their guests. The event was likely a way to build a relationship with Chief Redfearn and give the wealthy HCC members exclusive access to one of the most powerful people in the City.” Crow said.

“We all have people in our lives that we would do something for simply because we know them personally and like them, but would most likely ignore a cold call if we had never met face-to-face. For Redfearn, the event helps him establish a base of support that he can leverage to maintain his reputation and power in order to further his agenda.”

YS reached out to the Highland City Club in Boulder for any commentary regarding the allegations of their founder’s racism and Islamophobia and whether or not the hosting of Chief Redfearn actually took place. They have not responded to our attempts to contact them.