If you’re not up to speed on the back story, there’s a RWNJ group called the “Minutemen Militia,” whose purported role is to assist the U.S. Border Patrol — which they believe is overwhelmed by an invasionary force of immigrants and in need of an armed citizenry to maintain law and order. Last November, the Border Patrol was briefed not only on the issue of Trump’s fantasy caravan heading north to overwhelm the southern border, but also on the growing concern of citizens arriving in RVs and setting up camp, prepared for a skirmish. Here’s a recent communique from a New Mexico police office, who encountered a member of one of these groups, ostensibly there for the purpose of assisting Border Patrol.
Member of border militia that detained 200 migrants at gunpoint told police another member had said, “Why are we…not lining them up and shooting them? We have to go back to Hitler days and put them all in a gas chamber” per report I obtained under FOIA: https://t.co/XLUCBIAGTo pic.twitter.com/Bdtv3H28sp
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) May 6, 2019
The obvious problem here is that nobody knows who is who. There are splinter groups in the border militia, who are getting progressively more outrageous, as this tweet proves. To assist border patrol by observing and reporting on activity on or around the border is one thing. To have people prepared to carry out executions on the spot, is quite another.
I wrote about this in November, when Trump made yet another infamous crack, conflating rocks and bullets, and basically giving the go-ahead for violence to be used against migrants crossing the border. Here’s one story on the militia group that called the ACLU and SPLC “transnational criminal cartels.” This is a frightening world view to say the very least. Trump is just fine with it, because to him it’s all political theater. He’s safe and cozy, why should he be worried about the fact that his policies, and those of henchman Stephen Miller, are putting marginalized, vulnerable people at terrible risk?
THIS IS TRULY SCARY, URSULA, these words by ANY person or group rep should make any thinking person mad as hell, and taking it to our House Reps for investigation into Trump’s work-a-bees at the border and WHO is supposed to be in charge and which oversight committee should hammer this down on Trump NOW!!
I saw this tweet and immediately remembered the piece that I wrote last year. Hit the link to read that. An organized militia, ready to go to the border and shoot people, is nothing to take lightly. It is wing nuttia and gun nuttia at its worst. If Trump had an ounce of decency, he would be telling this people to take up a sport or something and not worry about defending the country. All that’s going to happen is innocent people getting killed.
There are a lot of “militia” people in the US who would cheerfully line up everyone named Gonzales (or people with any other “foreign” name) who isn’t a blue-eyed blond. And then…
It’s sad to contemplate, but I can’t disagree with you. When I first discovered the “Minutemen Militia” I realized just how rampant xenophobia was in this country. I’ve always known racists, obviously, but I didn’t know how afraid so many of these people are.
You do not want to know what I would just as willingly do in kind to those armed bullies.
I no longer call them “militias”, oh no. Now I think of them as white supremacist domestic terrorists in waiting or in practice.
You know, that’s the size of it. The Minutemen have cobbled together an alternate reality, where hordes of people are surging across the border — and Trump goes along with this. Do you remember him saying last year that the immigrants had “tremendous vehicles” — there were tweets of Mad Max characters, in James Bond-type cars, going across the border. The yous and mes laugh, but there are people who believe this stuff.
Well I hate to say this, but in Arizona we have been seeing this group of “milita” for a long time. These groups gave rise to the infamous Timothy McVeigh wannabes (and he is still worshiped as a great patriot), the Bundy’s group, etc. Some of their splinter psychotics have killed people, most notably a child and her father down in the Amado area, south of Tucson. They are nothing to laugh about as they are deadly serious. And they keep multiplying like rats.