CROSSING THE LINE: DOCUMENTARY PUTS THE MINUTEMEN SQUARELY IN THE WHITE POWER CIRCLES

The following comes to us from the One People's Project

Since the group’s inception earlier this year, the Minuteman Project has tried to paint itself as a non-racist organization, emphatically denying any association with racist activists. This denial always seems to come with a wink and a nod as it become more and more apparent that this is not the case. There is Joe McCrutchen, a Minuteman from Arkansas who is a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens, and whose reports from working with the Minutemen would appear on the website of Billy Roper’s group, White Revolution. There is anti-Hispanic activist Glenn Spencer of Voices of Citizens Together (VCT), who has spoken at many Council of Conservative Citizens events. There are the two National Alliance members that the Southern Poverty Law Center found working with the Minutemen. There is also John Clark from Florida, a member of two hate groups, California Citizens for Immigration Reform (CCIR) and the American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF), who was a keynote speaker at a meeting in Bridgewater, NJ on June 25. California saw neo-Nazis demonstrating openly with the Minutemen, complete with swastika flags. Minutemen leaders in Texas resign because of the rampant racism that no one would do anything about. Then there is co-founder Jim Gilchrist, who is not only a member of CCIR, but is also running for Congress as a member of the racist American Independent Party (AIP), a party formed by segregationalist George Wallace that worked in opposition of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

If the Minutemen thought that even with all of this they will somehow beat the charge of being a racist crowd, along comes something that might suggest otherwise. Touted as the first and only feature-length documentary about the Minuteman Project, The Line in the Sand is a DVD recently produced by Byron Jost, an independent filmmaker from Torrey, Utah with ties to the white supremacist Vanguard News Network (VNN). Featured prominently in the documentary are Gilchrist, his fellow Minuteman Project founder Chris Simcox and anti-immigrant congressman Tom Tancredo along with Glenn Spencer, VNN webmaster Alex Linder and Dr. Kevin MacDonald, a Professor of Psychology at California State University-Long Beach who has claimed Jews are responsible for a "breeding program" to conquer other "races." In the documentary Dr. MacDonald has a rather lengthy segment where he blames the Jews for the current immigration situation.

The documentary is just over 90 minutes of hatemongering against the Hispanic community, whether they are Mexican nationals or those who live in the US. From listening to Spencer and others on the DVD, viewers see that this hatred is from the perceived notion that Mexicans are trying to take over the US and reclaim it for Mexico, something that is commonly refered to by white supremacists as a reconquista. This is the most prominent theme of the documentary, and those featured routinely refer to what they are doing as engaging in a war, particularly against Mexico. Even with this theme, Spencer, Simcox and the others featured repeat the mantra that what they do is not because they are racist, but when the documentary goes to Dr. MacDonald or Alex Linder, racism and anti-semitism is what drives their points.

This is not the only contradiction in the documentary, which while it is supposed to be favorable to the Minutemen, ends up exposing them for the phonies they are. In one scene, Gilchrist holds up binoculars and a cell phone as being the weapons of the Minutemen. This was done in an effort to deflect charges that the Minutemen are armed. Earlier in the documentary, however, Simcox is speaking about how some Minutemen are carrying weapons, and even jokes about how being detained by a woman with a gun embarrasses some of the Mexican men. Detaining those crossing the border in itself is another contradiction, as Minuteman spokespersons have said repeatedly that they only observe. In the documentary, one woman, Cindy Kolb detains two border crossers for the border patrol. Kolb is caught in yet another contradiction, that of how humanitarian the Minutemen paint themselves. While their spokespersons have noted times they have given border crossers, food and water, Kolb is seen in this documentary picking up a jug of water she found and emptying it so border crossers looking for water will not happen upon it.

Attempts were made to reach Jim Gilchrist and Chris Simcox and ask about their involvement in a documentary on their organization produced by neo-Nazis. Simcox did not return emails, but the campaign manager for Gilchrist’s congressional campaign had harsh words for the production. “I can tell you that Jim personally and professionally condemns the movie,” wrote Howie Morgan in an email. In addition to being Gilchrist’s campaign manager, Morgan is a Mississippi Representative of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the organization responsible for the Freedom Rides of the Civil Rights Era, but since then has become so right-wing under the 37-year leadership of Roy Innis, that white conservative racists often turn to them to help them deflect the charges when they arise.

Originally from Los Angeles, filmmaker Jost says he has two more productions in the works, and this is the first for his production company, October Sun Films. “I came to the realization that there is just a lack of professional quality in pro-white video, and since that's my background it was only natural that I start doing this,” he said in an interview.