Anti-Immigrant Terrorist Shawna Forde Found Guilty of First-Degree Murder

Posted by Michael Bryan

For a horrific crime that should be understood as an act of political terrorism in furtherance of an extreme right wing plot to fund vigilante border actions through the proceeds of criminal activity, a Pima County jury convicted Shawna Forde today of two counts of first-degree murder in the May 30, 2009 deaths of Arivaca residents Raul Junior Flores and his 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia. The jury also convicted Forde of attempted first-degree murder in the shooting of Flores' wife, Gina Gonzalez, as well as related aggravated assault and robbery counts.

The jury deliberated for 9 hours before returning a verdict of guilty on all charges. Forde's accomplices go on trial March 15th and June 1st.

Forde's trial now moves to the penalty phase in which it will be determined whether Forde will be sentence to die or serve life in prison.

The speed with which the anti-immigrant factions back-pedaled from the former border vigilante activist Forde has been stunning – and simply not credible. Forde was the president of Minutemen American Defense, one of the many proto-militias seeking to terrorize the borderlands of America in hopes of slowing illegal immigration. She was widely regarded as a spokesperson and authority in the movement.

Forde's extremism is not aberrant; it is the norm among racist vigilante anti-immigrant groups. Her eagerness to strike a blow against imagined drug runners (she thought her victims were trafficking in drugs – they weren't) and thereby fund her 'movement' is unusually ambitious, perhaps, but certainly in keeping with the eliminationist spirit and violent rhetoric of the 'movement'. It is to be expected that when a subculture arises that promotes dehumanization of a minority and extols violent self-help and vigilantism, the inevitable result will be that some of those people will turn that rhetoric into real actions.

There have been literally dozens of violent terrorist actions across the country in recent years centering around the vilification popular right-wing scapegoats such as immigrants, gays, abortion doctors, liberals and the federal government. Shawna Forde is part of a pattern, part of a purposeful campaign to radicalize a segment of the American population and inspire them to terroristic acts. By inspiring fear and insecurity and creating martyrs for the racist and eliminationist causes they espouse, those driving this campaign of terror hope to capitalize at the polls, even as they deny publicly any association or support of the terrorists. In private, however, their pride and approval of terrorists like Forde is evident.

Leaving out unatributed attacks on targets that would clearly fit the ideological purposes of right-wingers, here are just some examples of recent attributed terrorist attacks and plots by domestic right-wing radicals:

2006 September 11: A man rammed his car into a women's clinic that he thought was an abortion clinic and set it ablaze in Davenport, Iowa causing $20,000 worth of damage to the building.

2006 November 29 Demetrius Van Crocker a white supremacist from rural Tennessee was sentenced to 30 years in prison for attempting to acquire Sarin nerve gas and C-4 explosives that he planned to use to destroy government buildings.

2007 April 25: A bomb was left in a women's clinic in Austin but failed to explode.

2007 May 1: Five members of a self styled Birmingham, Alabama area anti-immigration militia were arrested for planning a machine gun attack on Mexicans.

2008 July 27 Jim D. Adkisson opened fire in the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, killing two and injuring seven before being tackled to the ground by congregation members. A note found in his SUV indicated this was intended as a suicide attack, and said the church was apparently targeted because of its support of liberal social policies.

2008 October 27 Federal agents claim to thwarted a plot by two white power skinheads to target an African American High School and kill 88 blacks and decapitate 14 more (the numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic to white supremacists) and although expecting to fail try to assassinate Barack Obama.

2009 May 31: Assassination of George Tiller. Dr. George Tiller, a doctor who provided late-term abortions was shot to death in a Wichita, Kansas church. Tiller was shot previously in 1993, and his abortion clinic had been bombed in 1985. Alleged assassin Scott Roeder, who believes in justifiable homicide of abortion providers, was arrested for the killing.

2009 June 10: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting. 88-year-old James Wenneker von Brunn walked into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and shot a guard, who later died. Von Brunn was critically wounded when security guards immediately returned fire.^[56] On January 6, 2010, von Brunn died of natural causes at a hospital near where he was imprisoned.^[57] Von Brunn was a self-described white supremacist and neo-Nazi.

2010 February 18: Joseph Stack flew a small plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, believed to be in retaliation to the U.S. Government.

2010 March 28: Nine members of the Hutaree militia indicted in alleged plot to kill a law enforcement official and then bomb his funeral caravan. According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald Waterstreet the group planned to seize several rural counties in southeastern Michigan and use the area to ambush law enforcement officers whom the group believed were agents of the New World Order. On April 1 all nine plead not guilty and several of their attorneys claimed their clients were bragging and were not serious. The groups website claimed that Hutaree means "Christian Warrior."

2010 December 21 Internet radio broadcaster Hal Turner sentenced to 33 months in prison after he published the work addresses and photographs of three judges who had upheld gun control laws and advocated for their assassination.

2011 January 17: Spokane bombing attempt: A small pipe bomb in a backpack designed to be detonated by remote control and spread shrapnel in a specific direction was discovered during aMartian Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Washington. The FBI said a racial connection is inescapable.

Now we can add Shawna Forde's murders to the list.

It is not a coincidence that upticks in domestic right-wing terrorist acts occur during Democratic Administrations. During the Clinton Presidency, more Americans died at the hands of right-wing domestic terrorists than by acts of foreign terrorism. We are certainly on track for that trend to re-emerge during the Presidency of Obama.