Apparently the extremist militia movements of the 1990's went to Extreme Makeover, Vigilante Edition. The 'minutemen' that were prominent earlier this year in Arizona are planning on setting up shop in Washington State next month. One militia member from Whatcom County, Tom Williams, has decided to start up his own local chapter to 'monitor' the border between the US and Canada:
Williams said his group had identified 23 positions between Blaine and Sumas from which minuteman members will be watching for anyone crossing or attempting to cross the border illegally throughout the month of October.
Great. A bunch of gun nut militia soldier-of-fortune wannabes walking around with their six shooters. Oh but everything is on the up-and-up, promises Williams. He decided to join the minutemen because they are simple American patriots:
“I told them I was interested but if they were just a bunch of gun-toting nuts or racists I was going to stay away.”
Uh huh. Well on that gun-toting nut thing:
...no alcohol would be allowed during the patrols and that members would not carry long guns or shotguns. In an interview with The National Post, Williams was quoted as saying he planned to carry a weapon.
Blaine's police chief refers to the militia as a 'block watch' program:
“I’m treating it similarly to a block watch,” he said. “It’s a group of citizens who have come together to be of assistance to the government. Anytime citizens make a point of being observant and reporting suspicious activity it has the potential to be useful.”
It would be unfair to say that Tom Williams himself is a gun-toting nut and a racist. He appears to be a good citizen trying to do what he feels is an attempt help secure the border, and being a good samaritan. Unfortunately for Tom, and Blaine police chief Mike Haslip, they didn't do enough research on the history of the minuteman project, and its racist roots. David Neiwert has the goods and the report on the minutemen by the Southern Poverty Law Center:
The extremist roots of the movement are laid out in some detail in a new SPLC report on the Minutemen, which notes that Chris Simcox and Jim Gilchrist, the movement's two leading figures, specialized in racist Latino-bashing prior to taking their organization national:
While Gilchrist is newly prominent on the anti-immigration front — he recently joined the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, a hate group whose leader routinely describes Mexicans as "savages" — Simcox has been active since 2002, when he founded Civil Homeland Defense, a Tombstone-based vigilante militia that he brags has captured more than 5,000 Mexicans and Central Americans who entered the country without visas.
"These people don't come here to work. They come here to rob and deal drugs," Simcox told the Intelligence Report in a 2003 interview. "We need the National Guard to clean up our cities and round them up."
But that was the old Chris Simcox talking, not the new, spiffed-up, buttoned-down, ready-for-primetime Chris Simcox.
The old Simcox described Citizens Homeland Defense as "a committee of vigilantes," and "a border patrol militia." The new Simcox — the one interviewed for dozens of national TV news programs and major newspaper articles about the Minuteman Project — characterized his new and larger outfit of citizen border patrollers as "more of a neighborhood watch program."
The old Simcox said of Mexicans and Central American immigrants, "They have no problem slitting your throat and taking your money or selling drugs to your kids or raping your daughter and they are evil people." The new Simcox said he sympathizes with their plight, and sees them as victims of their own government's failed policies.
The report also makes clear just how serious the Minutemen really are about weeding out extremists from their midst -- as well as limiting their firearms:
Early this year, white supremacist and neo-Nazi Web sites began openly recruiting for the Minuteman Project. In response, Gilchrist and Simcox proclaimed that neo-Nazi Skinheads and race warriors from organizations such as the National Alliance and Aryan Nations were specifically banned from participating. Pressured by journalists to explain exactly how they planned to keep these undesirables out, the two organizers said they were working with the FBI to carefully check the backgrounds of all potential Minuteman volunteers, only to have the FBI completely deny this was the case.
Gilchrist and Simcox then claimed they were personally checking out each and every potential volunteer using on-line databases. Even if this were true, one of Gilchrist's computers crashed the morning of April 1, wiping out the records of at least 75 pre-registered volunteers. As a result, the registration protocol in Tombstone rapidly degenerated into a free-for-all, and virtually anyone who showed up and gave a name was issued a Minuteman Project badge and told where to go the next day to be assigned to a watch post.
Gilchrist and Simcox further claimed to the media prior to April 1 that the only volunteers who would be allowed to carry firearms would be those who had a concealed-carry handgun permit from their home states, an indication that they had passed at least a cursory background investigation. In fact, virtually no one was checked for permits.
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.
Perhaps the most chilling part of the report, though, were the quotes the SPLC's investigators obtained from Minuteman participants:
At Station Two, Minuteman volunteers grilled bratwursts and fantasized about murder.
"It should be legal to kill illegals," said Carl, a 69-year old retired Special Forces veteran who fought in Vietnam and now lives out West. "Just shoot 'em on sight. That's my immigration policy recommendation. You break into my country, you die."
Carl was armed with a revolver chambered to fire shotgun shells. He wore this hand cannon in a holster below a shirt that howled "American bad asses" in red, white and blue. 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."
