When the Minuteman Project first surfaced, we thought it strangely familar. That's because this has been done before. Almost thirty years ago there was another group that basically our current vigilante xenophobes pattern themselves after. They weren't called the Minuteman Project then. They were the Klan Border Patrol, and it was what gave David Duke his first big break. This is an excerpt from a 1989 video titled The History of W.A.R., Pt. 1. For those who forgotten about this crew, W.A.R. stands for White Aryan Resistance, the group that Tom Metzger runs when he isn't going around California doing blues karaoke. He talks about the formation of the Klan Border Patrol back in Oct. 1977 and what it entailed. After watching it, ask yourself what is the difference between them and the Minuteman Project. And before you conservatives out there email us with the bullshit "Minutemen aren't racist" line, after finding scores of people working with them that are also part of hate groups, you are wasting your time and ours trying to play that routine on us.Click on the link to see the video, but you need RealPlayer.

WAR reminded people of the KKK of the 60s, and included people who had been connected to that scene.

The KKK of the 60s had links to the KKK of the 1920s and 30s. That KKK probably had links to the anti-immigrant movement of the turn of the century.

The arguments advanced are so familiar, it's eerie:

- They work for so little that they will turn us all into slaves.

- They carry disease.

- They don't speak English, and eat weird food.

- They won't assimilate.

- They will "out breed" us ("us" meaning whites, usually).

- They are criminals in gangs and use drugs (or drink).

They said this about Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Italians, Irish, Germans, Swedes. You name it. Same old stuff.

Unmentioned in this dynamic, but ever present, were African Americans, who were sometimes pitted against the immigrant group in question. (They were also a major internal migrant group in the 1920s.)