Sunday, January 22, 2006
Resurrection
When I first caught wind of anti-immigrant vigilantes being stirred up in support of racist legislation to support GOP electoral campaigns, my first thought was, “not again.”
So when I got a call last fall inviting me to present at a December 10 national human rights conference in Whatcom county, Washington, in order to help put the Minutemen militia in historical context, the first thing I did after getting off the phone was to look at the Whatcom GOP website to see who was running things. What I found was Whatcom Republican Party Chairman, convicted insurance fraud Bruce Ayers, and Republican National Committeeman, Jeff Kent, a former radio talk-show host who’d been fired in the 1990s for leading anti-Indian racists in diatribes on the air.
Whatcom GOP Chairman Ayers had previously played a leading role in garnering Republican support for property-rights vigilantes in the early 1990s, and even served on their Board of Directors. For a couple years, the property-rights group merged activities with militia recruiters until the militias were busted by the FBI and ATF for building bombs to murder human rights activists.
Needless to say, when I read that the Minuteman militia was coordinating its national anti-Latino campaign with GOP Congressional hearings on immigration, I figured mainstream media would be running interference for the militias once again. And, judging by what I’ve seen so far, I was right. As the apparent paramilitary wing of the GOP, it might not look so good to have convicted felons and nazis and certified loons as grassroots support, so US media is simply not reporting it.
Once the anti-immigrant national campaign gets an infusion of cash from right-wing fundraisers like Alan Gottlieb, though, things could get real ugly.
So when I got a call last fall inviting me to present at a December 10 national human rights conference in Whatcom county, Washington, in order to help put the Minutemen militia in historical context, the first thing I did after getting off the phone was to look at the Whatcom GOP website to see who was running things. What I found was Whatcom Republican Party Chairman, convicted insurance fraud Bruce Ayers, and Republican National Committeeman, Jeff Kent, a former radio talk-show host who’d been fired in the 1990s for leading anti-Indian racists in diatribes on the air.
Whatcom GOP Chairman Ayers had previously played a leading role in garnering Republican support for property-rights vigilantes in the early 1990s, and even served on their Board of Directors. For a couple years, the property-rights group merged activities with militia recruiters until the militias were busted by the FBI and ATF for building bombs to murder human rights activists.
Needless to say, when I read that the Minuteman militia was coordinating its national anti-Latino campaign with GOP Congressional hearings on immigration, I figured mainstream media would be running interference for the militias once again. And, judging by what I’ve seen so far, I was right. As the apparent paramilitary wing of the GOP, it might not look so good to have convicted felons and nazis and certified loons as grassroots support, so US media is simply not reporting it.
Once the anti-immigrant national campaign gets an infusion of cash from right-wing fundraisers like Alan Gottlieb, though, things could get real ugly.
