The Bloody History of Border Militias Runs Deep — and Law Enforcement Is Part of It

Ryan Devereaux April 23, 2019 The Intercept ...the very creation of the border, and the genesis of American border policing, is rooted in a deep and bloody tradition of vigilantism. A member of the civilian border militia group the United Constitutional Patriots stands near the border in Sunland Park, N.M., Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York Times Last week, American vigilantes captured hundreds of migrants — including women and small children — along a darkened stretch of the border in New Mexico. The group, calling itself the United Constitutional Patriots, or UCP, uploaded video of its score to Facebook. Illuminated by the fluorescent glow of flashlights, the shaky footage showed weary mothers, fathers, and toddlers kneeling in the dirt, heads bowed, as the armed men circled around them. The migrants’ captors summoned the Border Patrol. The agents, once they arrived, offered no sign of concern at the masked men carrying AR-15s decorated with Punisher skulls. For others, however, the footage shot in Sunland Park was a chilling reflection of America in 2019. “We cannot allow racist and armed vigilantes to kidnap and detain people seeking asylum,” American Civil Liberties Union attorneys María Martínez Sánchez and Kristen Greer Love said in a letter. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham called the vigilante operations “unacceptable” and Democratic Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich said the UCP’s operations “cannot be tolerated.” Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees the Border Patrol, provided The Intercept and several other news organizations with the same statement when asked about the militia’s operations: U.S. Customs and Border Protection does not endorse private groups or organizations taking enforcement matters into their own hands. Interference by civilians in law enforcement matters could have public safety and legal consequences for all parties involved. Border Security operations are complex and require highly trained professionals with adequate resources to protect the country. Border Patrol welcomes assistance from the community and encourages anyone who witnesses or suspects illegal activity to call 911, or the U.S. Border Patrol tip line.

Memories of Charlottesville

Memories of Charlottesville, 

Palmer Foley

In 2016, things fell apart. The center lost its hold, and the worst of the far Right, full of passionate intensity, seemed poised to loose their blood-dimmed tide upon the world. With cracks suddenly appearing in the free-markets-and-phony-multiculturalism orthodoxy, Luxemburg’s old question was suddenly, shockingly, back on the table: socialism or barbarism? And it appeared barbarism had a considerable head start.

Four years ago, I was a groom’s maid in my dear friends’ wedding in a little chapel in Charlottesville. I’d spent many happy, moon-shining nights talking and walking the streets of the college town, 45 minutes from my home in Richmond, VA. When I learned armed fascists, confederates, white nationalists, and sundry other scum, emboldened by the pandering faux-Bonapartist businessman in the White House, were descending en masse on the community, I was no longer thinking about long-game Left strategy. I only knew we all had a duty.

The morning of Saturday, August 12^th was drizzling and miserable when our crew from the Richmond DSA chapter set out. By the time we met up with other DSA chapters in Charlottesville, the storm clouds had cleared. After precautions, plans, and red armbands were shared, we set out for Emancipation Park. A comrade handed me a button that read, “No Race But Human.”

Emancipation Park – teargas? Cops or Nazis? Hard to tell.

            Unlawful assembly declared –

            Better move to McGuffey Park.

Pass the darkened windows of twee little shops, their handpainted sandwichboard signs folded up like sleeping birds.

Anti-capitalista! Anti-fascista!

            Regroup.

Everyone’s offering water bottles,

but everyone has to pee.

Several people lie on stretchers in medic tents.

            Now down the block, at the corner of Market Street –

                        They pass by:

Doughy boys in white polos with floppy Nazi haircuts sweated to foreheads

            Colonel Sanders klansmen in bulletproof vests

                        White knight LARPers with Celtic cross shields

                                    Olde Europa-fetishists shouting slurs at immigrants

(I wonder how many of their ancestors were spat at, dragging through Ellis Island, not yet considered white.)

            There are some grizzled old bigots, but mostly, they’re startlingly young,

the glaring sun revealing on their faces the sallow stamp of 4chan and closed circuits of hate.

August Bebel once called the proto-fascist anti-Semitism of his day “the socialism of fools,” and rarely have I seen such fools as on that street.

            They looked like little puffed-up cowards – fractured consciousnesses adrift in this viciously competitive, alienating, spiritually barren capitalist society that gambled away our future on speculative markets, leaving us stuck with a present in foreclosure.

Who Are These Terrorists ?

Robert Dear 

“Fighting Back Against the Rising Tide of Nativist and Racist Reaction”

A statement by the National Political Committee of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

Timothy McVeigh 

November 30, 2015

The Democratic Socialists of America call on all progressives across the United States to join together in a broad coalition against the rising tide of racist and nativist politics in the United States. The nativist fear-mongering by one Democratic and 27 Republican governors about the alleged threat posed to U.S. residents by Syrian refugees (themselves often fleeing ISIL violence) and undocumented immigrants obscures the true violent threat to our collective security: nativist, racist and misogynist terrorism. 

Recent tragedies have shown all too clearly the state of crisis in which we find ourselves. The Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting illustrates how right-wing hostility to women’s rights makes those providing and seeking reproductive services targets for murder. The shooting of Black Lives Matter protesters in Minneapolis by white supremacists demonstrates that anyone doing work around racial justice must now expect and prepare for a violent racist response. And in Chicago, recent revelations of a year-long cover-up by city officials of the blatant police murder of Laquan McDonald add yet another chapter to the shameful history of police terror against African Americans and other communities of color. Meanwhile, ongoing harassment of individuals and groups who appear to be Muslim or immigrants goes under-reported in the press, as do attacks on mosques and Black churches. 

Over the past decade, heavily armed and mostly white men have killed or injured close to 1,000 individuals in politically-motivated shootings and other mass killings. These are not isolated incidents. They are encouraged by a rhetorical climate produced by right-wing politicians and media personalities who blame immigrants, poor African Americans and foreign countries for the decline in white working-class standards of living. Donald Trump is a perfect example: for him, the barriers to America’s “greatness” are Mexican immigrants, Muslim terrorists, Black protesters, China’s economic and military power and American leaders too weak to oppose them. This nativist politics diverts attention from the 1% — the capitalist class —that long ago declared war on working-class and poor people of all races. This politics is not the fault only of the Republican leaders who espouse it, but also of Democrats like Barack Obama and both Bill and Hillary Clinton, whose “free trade” and austerity policies contribute to the declining standards of working-class communities. This utter failure to put forward convincing ways to explain and solve the crisis leaves a vacuum that racists easily fill.

Trump is Dangerous

Racists Politics Must Be Exposed and Opposed !

The intolerant agitation promoted by Republican Donald Trump and support in essence by most Republican candidates is a call to the ‘silent white majority’  combined with a demand that 11 million immigrants be deported is a dangerous and divisive racial message.  It must be vigorously opposed.

Trump’s popularity among Republican voters has dramatically risen in the polls as he now has a double digit lead over runner-up Jeb Bush. His fear mongering political message has found a very receptive base within our society among xenophobic and angry conservative sectors.

We know these campaigns to be dangerous. It is not only the ranting of a fringe right.

The Trump – Republican arguments are factually incorrect and the  proposed agenda is impossible to implement short of establishing an authoritarian police state never before seen in the US. How will he deport 11 million, when 40% of these people are members of families with US citizens and thus they are eligible for gaining a green card ? For them, it is only a matter of the 20 year long waiting list.

And, how will he round up the  estimated 40% of all of the workers who arrived with a valid visa, but overstayed their work or tourist visa.  How will he find these people?  His claims are stupid.

Let us be clear.  The attack on Mexican American children by Donald Trump is impossible to implement.  They are US Citizens.  Yet, US citizen children were deported in the 1930’s in the program euphemistically known as “repatriation.”

There is no such thing as an anchor baby.  They are US citizens.

There is no such thing as “birth right citizenship”, they are US citizens. 

6 People show up for militia's Border Rights Rally in San Antonio.

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Murrieta Convoy Arrives in San Antonio

Videolicious video created by news@mysanantonio.com

   half-dozen people from the San Antonio area gathered to hear radio host Pete Santillitalk about illegal immigration Wednesday afternoon.

The event had been promoted online as a stop in a caravan of activists from Murrieta, California, who opposed the busing of immigrant children to a center in that city.

Instead only Santilli, flanked by men in body armor, showed up.

Posted from Latino Rebels.

The Racist History of modern Right Wing Militia

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/watch/radical-racist-context-missed-in-rancher-hype-236481603620