David Neiwert: The March of the Minutemen

Friday, January 13, 2006

[Note: What follows in this series of posts is the text of an informational paper I presented Dec. 9-10 at a researchers' conference on the Minutemen in Bellingham, Wash., which I described here. The full title of the paper: "The March of the Minutemen: When Extremist Vigilantism is Embraced by the Mainstream." Much of the material contained in it was gleaned from work compiled at Orcinus, so it will be appearing here for a second time. However, some of it is also new material.]

Part I: What's in a Name?

What do we call the "Minutemen"? Should we call them racists? Vigilantes? Nazis?

Part II: Rotten from the Top

Chris Simcox and Jim Gilchrist have taken steps to attempt to reassure the mainstream media that their organization is not extremist. They've described efforts to "weed out" racists by performing background checks that in fact are likely only to uncover criminal backgrounds, and it's not even clear just how assiduously they're being applied (there are many indications that the standards loose at best).