Sunday, October 09, 2005
By Any Other Name
Ten years ago, the public spokesman for the then nascent Washington State Militia--a self-appointed paramilitary group of misfits on the Canadian border--liked to tell news reporters about his group's good intentions: sandbagging dikes during floods, directing traffic during emergencies, and so on. In their private meetings, though, they complained about all the brown-skinned immigrants coming into the US, and in January 1997 he and seven of his cohort were convicted of making explosives in order to do something about it, including threatening and murdering human rights activists.
Some of the older fellas hanging in this milieu wore Minuteman caps, and recited long-standing grievances about communism, civil rights, and gun laws. Others talked about obscure references to "common law courts" where they could exempt themselves (as white property-owning males) from paying taxes, licensing their cars, and other legal requirements.
Even their anti-communist propaganda harkened back to the McCarthyism and the witch hunts of the 1950s and the associated Minutemen of the 1960s. But the prevalence of racist rhetoric seemed more of a blend of the Ku Klux Klan Border Watch/John Birch Society talking points from the 1970s.
So when I read about the latest incarnation of the Minutemen--the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps--planning to patrol the US/Canadian border between Vancouver and Seattle this week, I was neither surprised at the continuity of identity within the racist vigilante milieu, nor with the media's lack of institutional memory on the subject. I mean, that's history, right?
But there are, fortunately, people and organizations who do remember, do understand, and do worry about vigilantism, racist violence, and other forms of domestic terrorism in the US. Two of them I link to below.
http://www.buildingdemocracy.org/shellgames.pdf
http://www.publicgood.org/reports/nullify.htm
http://www.publicgood.org/reports/spectrum
Some of the older fellas hanging in this milieu wore Minuteman caps, and recited long-standing grievances about communism, civil rights, and gun laws. Others talked about obscure references to "common law courts" where they could exempt themselves (as white property-owning males) from paying taxes, licensing their cars, and other legal requirements.
Even their anti-communist propaganda harkened back to the McCarthyism and the witch hunts of the 1950s and the associated Minutemen of the 1960s. But the prevalence of racist rhetoric seemed more of a blend of the Ku Klux Klan Border Watch/John Birch Society talking points from the 1970s.
So when I read about the latest incarnation of the Minutemen--the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps--planning to patrol the US/Canadian border between Vancouver and Seattle this week, I was neither surprised at the continuity of identity within the racist vigilante milieu, nor with the media's lack of institutional memory on the subject. I mean, that's history, right?
But there are, fortunately, people and organizations who do remember, do understand, and do worry about vigilantism, racist violence, and other forms of domestic terrorism in the US. Two of them I link to below.
http://www.buildingdemocracy.org/shellgames.pdf
http://www.publicgood.org/reports/nullify.htm
http://www.publicgood.org/reports/spectrum
