Pacific Views

Spawn of the Minuteman Project

David Neiwert notes that more so-called "mainstream" Republican politicians are actively backing the anti-immigrant Minuteman Project. But as David has shown, the leaders of this movement are not very far removed from the most extreme rightwing hate groups responsible for spawning the homegrown American terrorists like Timothy McVeigh.

While Chris Simcox and Jim Gilchrist are now being feted as heroes for putting together "neighborhood watch" groups to stop the flow of illegal immigrants crossing the USA-Mexican border, they have provided the perfect cover for some of the most violent haters this country has. To expose the underlying evidence of hate group involvement, David quotes the Southern Poverty Law Center's latest report.

While most of the Minuteman volunteers were not organized racists, at least one member of Aryan Nations infiltrated the effort, and Johnny and Michael said they were two of six members of the Phoenix chapter of the National Alliance who signed up as Minuteman Volunteers. They said the other four had arrived separately in two-man teams in order to cover more ground and be less conspicuous. They said the Alliance members came out to support the Minuteman Project, but also to recruit new members, and to learn the remote hot zones for border crossers in Cochise County. They said they intended to return and conduct small, roaming, National Alliance-only vigilante patrols in the fall, "when we can have a little more privacy," as Johnny put it.

...The other vigilantes assigned to Station Two included a pair of self-professed members of the National Alliance, a violent neo-Nazi organization. These men, who gave their names only as Johnny and Michael, were outfitted in full-body camouflage and strapped with semi-automatic pistols.

Earlier that day, Johnny and Michael had scouted sniper positions in the rolling, cactus-studded foothills north of Border Road, taking compass readings and drawing maps for future reference.

"I agree completely," Michael said. "You get up there with a rifle and start shooting four or five of them a week, the other four or five thousand behind them are going to think twice about crossing that line."

When "decent" Republicans beat the anti-immigrant drums, they are playing with fire because they enable the homegrown terrorist groups to act out their violent fantasies. Nevertheless, this indecency seems to be yet one more sign of our times as we see someone like Bill O'Reilly stating that if he was in charge of gitmo, he'd just execute the prisoners without worrying about whether there was any evidence of guilt. This is what we have come to: public figures backing racist movements and totalitarian actions. It seems that our country is, indeed, heading down that proverbial slippery slope.

Posted by Mary at August 13, 2005 01:17 PM | Human Rights | Technorati links |