Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

432 • MINUTEMENThe anti-Communist component of the group’s ideology included attackson the Internal Revenue Service and Federal Reserve System asbeing anti-American conspiracies, while the Minutemen’s tabloid OnTarget identified 20 members of Congress investigating right-wingmovements as being “Communists” and made veiled threats againsttheir lives. Following the outbreak of racial rioting in the mid-1960s,the Minutemen advocated that whites undertake guerrilla warfare trainingto fight minority group members in the event of racial warfare.DePugh was imprisoned in 1968 on a conspiracy conviction arisingfrom violations of federal firearms laws. He jumped bail in 1968and survived in the wilderness of the Rockies and New Mexico desertuntil he was arrested in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, in1970. Following his release from prison in 1973, he wrote a manualon survival entitled Can You Survive? Guidelines for Resistance toTyranny for You and Your Family that became widely read and admiredamong other right-wing survivalists. The Minutemen actuallycarried out very little in the way of terrorism, but this group servedas the inspiration for other groups that have since then engaged interrorist actions. The Posse Comitatus and Arizona Patriots absorbedmany of the former Minutemen and much of the Minuteman ideology.The Christian-Patriots Defense League fused Minutemanideology with Identity Christianity.2. Minutemen Project: Networks of vigilante citizens seeking topatrol the U.S.-Mexican border in order to intercept or report crossingsof illegal aliens into the United States. This group has severalchapters along the U.S.-Mexican border and reportedly also hasfounded chapters along the U.S.-Canadian border.Founded on 1 October 2004 by Jim Gilchrist, the group stagedpatrols of hundreds of volunteers along the U.S.-Mexican border todraw attention to the national government’s lack of effective controlover the southern border. Patrol members would report sightings ofillegal aliens crossing the border to U.S. Border Patrol agents. Inaddition, the Minutemen lobbied the U.S. Congress and state legislaturesin the border states to enact legislation to increase border securityand to punish employers who knowingly hired illegal aliens.Personality clashes and disagreements over tactics caused a splitin the group, and on 26 April 2005 a splinter group known as theMinuteman Civil Defense Corps emerged. Immigrant rights groupshave accused the Minutemen groups of racism and brutal treatment