On the Minuteman Project

The Minutemen claim to be many things, taking "Civil Defense Corps" as their official title. The one thing that they flat out deny is being a racist organization. It is quite obvious that they are not the KKK or the Aryan Nation. For this, I am very thankful (the last thing we need is another of those groups). I would even doubt that they are racist. Their stance seems to have very little to do with race itself, but instead with nationalism (think patriotism on speed).

This was posted on their official website. They, in a very arrogant and sarcastic tone, boast about how they fed a group of immigrants during a cookout. They call the four people "guests" (in a very sarcastic tone denoted by quotation marks) and "illegal aliens", but never people. The only time they come close to describing the group as anything remotely hinting at humanity is using the words "men", "mother" and "daughter" in the most literal sense to describe who they found. Through out the article, the author jokes about arranging "ground transportation" through the Federal government. The article concludes with a very sarcastic invitation to future other aliens to join them at their next cook-out in October.

While the Minutemen may have no ties to white-power groups, they are engaging in a verbal campaign to strip illegal immigrants of their humanity, a very dangerous endeavor.

The Minuteman photo gallery raises more questions. For a group that claims to instruct its members not to confront groups of illegal immigrants or to leave their posts, why do we see Minutemen marching a group of immigrants here with no Border Patrol in sight(Perhaps a more disturbing question is why three out of the four Minutemen, who always work in pairs of two or more, in this picture are visibly carrying side-arms, which, according to their regulations, are to be always holstered and used only for self-defense. The math just doesn't quite add up.)? And why do we see a photo of a group of immigrants being sneaked up upon here? Both of these photos seem to violate their third and fourth SOPs. And why do they find this concept along the Canadian border so disturbing?

While the Minutemen claim to be a civil defense project, they are, in reality, vigilantes. They may not be racists, but they are nationalists. In their minds, illegal immigrants aren't human (the word "disgusting" is often used by them to describe Mexican immigrants, illegal or not). This video of a Minuteman march in LA shows the true mentality, depicting the baseless accusations that members of the Minuteman movement make against all immigrants.

While I think immigration should be done legally, taking the law into your own hands is dangerous. Making such accusations as members of the movement do is uncalled for. The Minuteman movement needs to be dissolved to make way for a better end to the immigration debate.

Rock on.