Meet the Nativists!
Thanks to Lee Hall for this story!
Meet the Nativists
By Susy Buchanan and Tom Kim, Intelligence Report
Posted on March 2, 2006, Printed on March 2, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/32644/
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One of them says he’d like to bring nuclear weapons to the border. Another vows to stop the alleged Mexican invasion of Idaho. Several have links to white supremacist hate groups; others are given to dire warnings of horrible diseases, “barbaric” practices, and secret Latino conspiracies to “reconquer” the American Southwest. These are the nativists — the new crop of activists who are driving the movement that exploded last spring with the Minuteman Project in Arizona, a monthlong effort by armed civilians to seal the border with Mexico.
Along with a whole array of media enablers, they have barged into the nation’s consciousness with remarkable success. Some of them, like Minuteman co-founder Jim Gilchrist, have made attempts to win high political office.
Others have contented themselves with trying to build a mass movement. Not all those who have joined the movement are extremists — many are legitimately concerned about the ability of the nation to absorb large numbers of immigrants, particularly the undocumented. But one thing seems clear: A dangerous mix of nativist intolerance, armed and untrained civilians, and wild-eyed conspiracy theories could easily explode into violence.The following are three profiles taken from the Intelligence Report’s comprehensive review of nativist leaders in America.
Aliso Viejo, Calif.
Less than a year ago, Jim Gilchrist’s vision of the future was plainly apocalyptic. The country, he predicted to one newspaper reporter, will have “100 tribes with 100 languages,” a situation from which “mayhem” will result. “I see neighborhood armies of 20 to 40 going out and killing and invading one another,” he said. Too many immigrants, he added, could even result in a full-scale civil war — a situation he suggested might be avoided by inciting a revolution in Mexico.
“Illegal immigrants will destroy this country,” Gilchrist said last May. “Every time a Mexican flag is planted on American soil, it is a declaration of war.” By late August, Gilchrist wasn’t talking like that any more.
Of course, by then he was a candidate for Congress from Southern California, where he lives with his wife and their dogs in the small city of Aliso Viejo. Gone was the rhetoric about civil war and private armies and immigrants who are legal. In fact, Gilchrist began to carefully enunciate support for legal immigrants.
For the rest, see http://www.alternet.org/story/32644/
KJ