Thread: Hard Core of Nativist Movement Growing

Intelligence Report
Spring 2009

'Sinister Intentions'
Hard Core of Nativist Movement Growing
By David Holthouse



'Nativist Extremist' Group List
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En Español

Midway through last year, Jim Gilchrist, one of the principal architects of the modern nativist movement, sounded like a man burdened with regret.

"In retrospect, had I seen this, had I had a crystal ball to see what is going to happen… . Am I happy? No," Gilchrist told the Orange County Register last June 25. "Am I happy at the outcome of this whole movement? I am very, very sad, very disappointed."

Little more than three years had passed since Gilchrist and Chris Simcox, a kindergarten teacher-turned-Wild West gunfight reenactor, had co-organized the Minuteman Project, a month-long border "civilian border patrol" operation in April 2005. It mustered a few hundred volunteers, garnered international media hype, and inspired a slew of ragtag imitators whose militant rhetoric and confrontational methods rapidly exceeded Gilchrist's original vision of retirees in lawn chairs keeping a leisurely eye on the border.

"There's all kinds of organizations that have spawned from the Minuteman Project and I have to say, some of the people who have gotten into this movement have sinister intentions," Gilchrist said.
armed border
Armed members of nativist extremist groups are still patrolling parts of the U.S.-Mexican border.
Sandy Huffaker/AP Images

Jim Gilchrist was right. Even as the total number of anti-immigration groups has remained more or less the same in recent years, the number of extremist groups within the nativist movement has continued to climb. According to a count by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of "nativist extremist" groups in the U.S. rose from 144 in 2007 to 173 last year — a 20% increase.

Organizations identified by the Intelligence Report as nativist extremist are groups that go after people, not policy. Rather than limiting themselves to advocating within the mainstream political process for tighter border security, stricter immigration controls or tougher enforcement of immigration laws already on the books, these fringe outfits target and confront immigrants as individuals.

Some conduct armed "citizen border patrols." Others confront Latino immigrants congregated at day labor centers or informal roadside pick-up sites. Some conduct surveillance of apartment houses and private homes. Almost all of them disseminate vicious, immigrant-bashing propaganda.

Nativist extremist groups do not, however, present a unified front. Like other movements on the radical right, theirs is rife with infighting, ego clashes and allegations of fraud leveled by former allies. "I get more hate mail from members of my own movement, the so-called Minutemen, than from the open-border people," Gilchrist told The New Republic last August. He complained about "troublemakers with personality disorders and criminal propensities" hijacking the cause.

Gilchrist was embroiled in controversy and court battles last year after Minuteman Project board members accused him of misappropriating more than $400,000 in donations. His organization lost five chapters. Meanwhile, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a spin-off group led by Simcox, more than doubled its number of chapters from 34 to 78, establishing itself as the largest and most geographically widespread Minuteman organization in the country. This rise occurred despite persistent allegations of fundraising improprieties leveled against Simcox by former MCDC national officers and state chapter leaders, along with a marked drop in actual border operations conducted by the MCDC.

Many other growing nativist extremist groups — most notably the Federation for Immigration Reform and Enforcement, or FIRE, which increased from two chapters in 2007 to 14 last year — largely steered clear of the border in favor of confronting immigrants with aggressive protests at day labor sites, which are safer, closer to home, and don't require spending hot days or cold nights in the desert.

One exception to this trend was the die-hard nativists stationed in the badlands near Campo, Calif. Since late 2005, the Campo Minutemen and various like-minded groups have maintained a heavily armed, tightly organized presence in a human and drug smuggling hot zone roughly 60 miles southeast of San Diego. Whereas the original Minuteman Project and subsequent made-for-TV civilian border patrol operations were carried out in heavily traveled or populated areas the organizers knew to be shunned by coyotes and drug runners, the Minutemen outside Campo are dug into remote, secretive positions in dangerous territory. The Campo operation is a magnet for the movement's true believers, many of whom feel marginalized by the election of Barack Obama and the trouncing of anti-immigration candidates in last year's elections, perhaps making them more volatile than ever.

"I'd be wary of going down to the border myself these days," Gilchrist told The New Republic. "I'm worried about what [the Minutemen] would do with a sidearm."

Last year ended on a bizarre note for the nativist extremist movement when Shawna Forde, the leader of a small but ambitious group called Minuteman American Defense, reported she'd been the victim of a Dec. 29 home invasion carried out by a trio of Spanish-speaking men who ambushed her in her kitchen, beat her unconscious, sexually assaulted her, slashed the back of her neck with a knife, and then wrote "13" on her floor with a black felt marker. She said the 13 was apparently a reference to the ultra-violent, international Latino street gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.

Some rival group leaders didn't buy Forde's story, which was under police investigation at press time. First of all, her estranged husband was shot exactly one week earlier in the same home where the reported rape occurred. Then, on Jan. 15, Forde told police a man she couldn't describe had shot her in the arm in an alley two blocks from her home.

"The small scratches she reports via photos on her arms and neck look far too light for any knife attack, much less the work of MS-13," Americans for Legal Immigration head William Gheen wrote in a mass E-mail to his group's members. "Why would MS-13 switch from brutal murder and decapitations to bruises and light scratches that look like they were made with a paper clip? If this story is a hoax and some sort of attention grab, then it could prove highly embarrassing to our movement and cause."

splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=1025

1. I told everyone they would go right for Jim Gilchrist and Shawna Forde to try and harm our movement. Jim Gilchrist is openly aiding our opposition and conducting interviews with opposition writers and researchers and saying all sorts of bad things about everyone in the movement that has rejected his 'leadership'.

2. FIRE COALITION does not have new chapters, that fraud outfit just calls up people on the phone they spot doing their own thing, tries to wow them, and offers them a title. A person with a title is not a "Chapter". But they make it look like a chapter on their website.

3. Notice that the two examples the Southern Poverty Lie Center is focusing on for their hit piece are the two isolated groups ALIPAC and the majority of our coalition partners will not work with? Jim Gilchrist and Shawna Forde's Minuteman Project (MMP) and Jason Mrochek's Fire Coalition dead center.

Well, I guess if the SPLC can't convince their donors that evil groups like ours are growing and out to harm people they could not raise funds.

By the way, ALIPAC has NEVER targeted any immigrant. We have never targeted any individual illegal alien even unless you count the ones we take issue with for broader criminal conduct and murders and such.

ALIPAC does not even meet the SPLC's self professed definition of an Extremist Nativist group.

W

If people don't read our side, they probably dont read that crap. News-print is dying because it is too liberal/anti-American.

All they had to do was go 'Pro-American' and they would have lasted a few more years.

Being Anti-American does not really speak to the core of the population.

Independent MM groups don't want him around them or to be used by him, since he broadcasts their activities and accomplishments as his own. In fact, there is video footage of them asking Gilchrist to leave their border site.

"I get more hate mail from members of my own movement, the so-called Minutemen, than from the open-border people,"

He will probably receive some ugly messages about this article too.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Dixie

Originally Posted by ALIPAC

Organizations identified by the Intelligence Report as nativist extremist are groups that go after people, not policy. Rather than limiting themselves to advocating within the mainstream political process for tighter border security, stricter immigration controls or tougher enforcement of immigration laws already on the books, these fringe outfits target and confront immigrants as individuals.

The SPLC is getting desperate. I don't know of any group that detains or confronts individual illegal aliens. The border watch groups do just that, watch and call BP if they see illegals. Apparently the SPLC doesn't like the great work they are doing on active smugling trails.

Day labor groups I have been with like SOS confront the hiring contractors, not illegals. I assume FIRE is the same but don't personally know.

Seems the SPLC has turned perfectly legal and Constitutional watch and freedom of speech groups into "nativist extremists". What a joke. They should sue the SPLC for false advertising, the SPLC is lying about them in order to raise money.

The term Nativist is so convuluted. This is our country, we are "Americans". Most Americans are not extremists, they just want our government to uphold our constituion and get the illegals out of our country ASAP!

Originally Posted by ELE

The term Nativist is so convuluted. This is our country, we are "Americans". Most Americans are not extremists, they just want our government to uphold our constituion and get the illegals out of our country ASAP!

I am proud to be called a Nativist, to me it means Americans first Patriot.

Show me one country in the world where it's citizens are not nativists, ie. citizens first?

Come to think of it the American Indians were Nativists, I don't hear the SPLC or anyone else ragging on them for fighting to defend their land and culture.

The badlands of Campo, with it's freezing winters and blazing hot summers little can survive out there except the chapparal and rattlesnakes, only the hardcore can endure this type of climate!
Actually I was out in Campo last month checking on the Pacific Crest Trail for a upcoming hike and I think I saw a couple of those heavily armed extremist entrenched out there, they were sitting under a oak tree playing with some dogs and waved as I drove by.
I also talked to several of the Border Patrol agents out there who were very friendly and helpful in giving me directions for my hike and warned me to stay away from any groups I may see passing through but made no mention to use caution around the Minutemen I may encounter.

"I'd be wary of going down to the border myself these days," Gilchrist told The New Republic. "I'm worried about what [the Minutemen] would do with a sidearm."

:P :P :P :P :P

After all of the trouble he has caused I can understand his personal concern. But, he would be shunned not injured as he implies.

I see nothing wrong with being a "Hard Core Nativist", I kind of like the sound of it. It sounds like - commited to my country and kind of - nifty.

We are the reporters of and have a right to our opinion of the news we find in our Dear America and World. Gilchrist and Forde - have a need of money, greed and personal attention.