Anti-immigrant Sentiments Fuel Ku Klux Klan Resurgence

You have to be kidding me. We are really going backwards folks.

Anti-immigrant sentiments fuel Ku Klux Klan resurgence By Brad Knickerbocker, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Fri Feb 9, 3:00 AM ET

The Ku Klux Klan appears to be on the rise again after years of irrelevance and splintered obscurity.

"Due to the successful exploitation of hot-button issues," the Klan has seen "a surprising and troubling resurgence," states a new report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Gay marriage and urban crime are part of the picture. But, in particular, it is the debate over what to do about the nation's nearly 35 million immigrants, of whom about 11 million are in the US illegally, that has become the Klan's main recruiting tool.

"If any one single issue or trend can be credited with reenergizing the Klan, it is the debate over immigration in America," says Deborah Lauter, the ADL's civil rights director. "New groups sprouting in parts of the country that have not seen much activity."

more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20070209/ts_csm/akkk;_ylt=AnMFTxL2IFiINvLAwuJowMvMWM0F

Hatred of immigrants has fuelled the rise of the far right throughout the continent. Denmark, the country which protected the Jews, has some of the most bigoted laws against immigrants of all European countries. It's a distressing, and frightening, time for Europeans.

Many groups, immigrants included, have seen a marked increase in bigotry against them.

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.......In addition to the South, where the Ku Klux Klan was founded by Confederate Civil War veterans in 1866, this now includes active or growing Klan chapters in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Nebraska, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

There is no centralized organization, and membership numbers are estimates at best - 5,000 to 8,000 in as many as 179 Klan groups, according to the ADL, a group that fights bigotry, especially anti-Semitism, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights law firm and education center.

But it is the increase in activity, including rallies, recruitment drives, and distribution of racist literature, and the partnering with skinheads, neo-Nazis, and other kinds of hate groups, that civil rights groups find troubling.

As it did from its founding, the KKK views itself has having a religious dimension. Members see "lighting" a cross as a symbol of faith. Today, Christian Evangelicals are much more likely than mainstream Protestants or Roman Catholics to believe that "newcomers threaten traditional American customs and values," according to the Pew Research Center.

It seems your anti-immigrant hysteria is working.

Considering that the major anti-immigrant organizations in the U.S. got their startup money and share board of directors members with a white supremacist organization.

These doofuses (doofi?) have their Keystone Kop side, but the Brownshirts also started out with their stoopidity on display, not taken seriously.

In the links at the bottom of this, the good people of Vermont ran the ijits out of a town and the Minutemen got lost in the woods and inadvertantly became illegal aliens themselves when they stumbled across the U.S./Canadian border. They were up there (all FOUR of them) to demonstrate that they were NOT being discriminatory JUST for the SOUTHERN border (yeah, right).

Then, their doofiness continued. They were building a 10-miles fence in AZ on private property. Univision had cameras there, did the news professional gig of interviewing the token Hispanic leader of the MM (Al GARZA), and then the camera panned over to a stack of concrete mix, the bags all showing the logo, "MEZCLA CONCRETO MEXICANO" (Mexican Concrete Mix)!!!1 That was PRICELESS!!1

As I say, they would be funny, but...

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http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=589

Broken Record
Lou Dobbs' daily 'Broken Borders' CNN segment has focused on immigration for years.

But there's one issue Dobbs just won't take on.

By Heidi Beirich and Mark Potok

.... For more than two years now, Dobbs has served up a populist approach to immigration on nightly segments of his newscast entitled "Broken Borders." He has relentlessly covered the issue, although hardly from a traditional news perspective -- Dobbs favors clamping down on illegal immigration, and his "reporting" never fails to make that clear. He has covered the same issues, and the same anti-immigration leaders, time after time after time. In recent months, Dobbs has run countless upbeat reports on the "citizen border patrols" that have sprung up around the country since last April's Minuteman Project, a paramilitary effort to seal the Arizona border.

But there's one thing Lou Dobbs won't do. No matter what others report about the movement, Dobbs has failed to present mounting and persistent evidence of anti-Hispanic racism in anti-immigration groups and citizen border patrols. ....


http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17104568&BRD=2290&PAG=461&dept_id=569392&rfi=6

Border Patrol chief doesn’t want Minutemen near agents (Laredo, Texas)

LAREDO MORNING TIMES ^ | 08/24/2006 | MIGUEL TIMOSHENKOV

The head of the Border Patrol said Wednesday he doesn’t want members of the Minuteman Project working near his agents when they come to the Laredo area next month. The civilian group, which reports illegal immigrants to immigration authorities, is expected to start patrolling the border in the Laredo area on Sept. 11 and continue through Nov. 7.

Acting Chief Patrol Agent Reynaldo Garza of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Laredo Sector said he can’t prevent the civilians from coming to Laredo, but said they won’t be allowed to interfere with official business. ....

Esquivel said that if U.S. citizens should have any trouble with a member of the Minuteman Project, he or she should call the sheriff’s department or other law enforcement authority.

State Rep. Richard Raymond deplored the group’s plan to come to Laredo.

“They don’t have anything to do with this community,” Raymond said. “Here, we reject the racism they practice.” ....


(Miguel Timoshenkov may be reached at (956) 728-2583 or by e-mail at timo1@lmtonline.com)


http://iapprovethismessiah.com/2006/08/moons-paper-and-minutemen.html

Wonkette: if the Border Patrol is short handed, why not call out the Minutemen? You know, the more-bark-than-bite nationalist “movement” that, according to the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center, Jerry Seper and the Washington Times largely invented out of the ether? Mind you, we’re not complaining. We’re big fans of making mountains out of molehills...

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=635

Anti-Immigration Movement

Newspapers Inflated Minuteman Numbers

, Report Finds

Moon's paper and the Minutemen

The report, "Creating the Minutemen," is based on an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) analysis of 581 articles and editorials printed in major U.S. newspapers between January 2005 and February 2006. The ACLU has been highly critical of the Minutemen, and ACLU volunteers closely monitored the group.

The first of those articles, "Volunteers Set to Monitor Border Crossings," by Jerry Seper of the hard-right Washington Times, reported that 240 volunteers had signed up. By early March, Seper was reporting that the number of volunteers had "more than tripled," came from every state, and included 16 pilots with aircraft.

During the last two weeks of March 2005, the media hype shifted into overdrive. Fifteen journalists reported the Minuteman Project had signed up "at least 1,000 volunteers." The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin ran a March 23, 2005, article headlined "2,000 volunteers expected for Minuteman Project."


BoingBoing MM-"Wetbacks" http://www.boingboing.net/2005/04/15/snapshots_of_volunte.html


(direct to wetback:

Boston Globe/Vermont: http://www.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2005/10/16/volunteers_get_cold_reception_in_vermont?mode=PF

WashPost/Hate-State: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/30/AR2005103000822.html

Pro-MM / LoneWacko: http://lonewacko.com/blog/archives/004214.html

WashPost MM-Go-Home editorial: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/12/AR2005111200954.html

Slave flags: http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2005/08/minutemen-home-for-extremists_08.html


Austin councilman Go Back to MX resolution opposing MM: http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/stories/local/12/17minutemen.html

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