Members of the Oath Keepers militia group including Jessica Marie Watkins (far left), who has since been indicted by federal authorities for her role in the siege on the Capitol, stand among supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump occupying the east front steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6. Photo by Reuters/Jim Bourg
oath keepers is a domestic terrorist organization attracting neo-nazis, fascist, racist, authoritarians, dominionist, reconstructionist, basically the voluntarily ignorant and manipulate them to supporting and participating in anti-American actions aimed at the ultimate destruction of our democratic Republic as in the insurrection of 6 JAN 21. You can not be a member of oath keepers and an American patriot, This from the SPLC / Southern Poverty Law Center.....
The Oath Keepers, which claims tens of thousands of present and former law enforcement officials and military veterans as members, is one of the largest radical antigovernment groups in the U.S. today. While it claims only to be defending the Constitution, the entire organization is based on a set of baseless conspiracy theories about the federal government working to destroy the liberties of Americans.
The Oath Keepers, which claims tens of thousands of present and former law enforcement officials and military veterans as members, is one of the largest radical antigovernment groups in the U.S. today. While it claims only to be defending the Constitution, the entire organization is based on a set of baseless conspiracy theories about the federal government working to destroy the liberties of Americans.
ASSOCIATED EXTREMIST PROFILES
In Its Own Words
“Imagine that Herr Hitlery [Hillary Clinton] is sworn in as president in 2009. After a conveniently timed ‘domestic terrorism’ incident (just a coincidence, of course) … she promptly crams a United Nations mandated total ban on the private possession of firearms. … But Hitlery goes further, proclaiming a national emergency and declaring the entire militia movement (and anyone else Morris Dees labels ‘extremists’) to be ‘enemy combatants.’ … Hitlery declares that such citizens are subject to secret military detention without jury trial, ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques, and trial before a military tribunal hand-picked by the dominatrix-in-chief herself. Hitlery then orders police, National Guard troops and active military to go house-to-house to disarm the American people and ‘black-bag’ those on a list of ‘known terrorists,’ with orders to shoot all resisters.”
—Stewart Rhodes, “Enemy at the Gates” column in S.W.A.T Magazine, April 2008
“John [Mc]Cain is a traitor to the Constitution. He should be tried for treason before a jury of his peers – which he would deny you. … He would deny you the right for trial to jury, but we would give him a trial by jury. Then after we convict him he should be hung by the neck until dead.”
–Rhodes, speaking in Tempe, Ariz., May 2015
“This wave of Islamist terror attacks will be part of a ‘perfect storm’ of intentionally orchestrated ‘Cloward-Piven’ chaos — inducing economic devastation, social and political disruption and violence, and the use of intentionally undefended borders and mass illegal and ‘refugee’ immigration as weapons of destabilization (and to provide cover for and facilitate more violence and terrorism by multiple proxy agents of the elites, including the cartels, gangs, well funded Marxist and racist agitators – such as La Raza and Black Lives Matter – and radical Islamist cells and individuals).”
–Rhodes, in an Oath Keepers press release following the mass murder of 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., June 2016
“It is the height of Orwellian perversion of language and logic to say that disarming you of the most effective arms for combat that you still have is somehow not really disarming you, because you still have hunting rifles and shotguns. And you can bet that if you let them take away your military semi-autos, next on their list will be bolt action rifles, which they will call ‘sniper rifles’ (and By God, that is certainly what they are good for!).”
—“My Personal Pledge of Resistance Against Any Attempt to Disarm Us by Means of an ‘Assault Weapons Ban,’” Oath Keepers website, Dec. 19, 2012
“The Republic is on the verge of destruction precisely because Republicans have chosen the lesser of two evils (the lesser of two oath breakers) in each election. … When you take a slightly reduced dose of poison, say 80% poison instead of 100%, you are still poisoning yourself, and you will still die. This Republic has been subjected to a reduced dose of poison over and over, for decades, and is now about to die.”
—Post on Rhodes’ blog, Nov. 6, 2012
Background
The Oath Keepers was formed in 2009 by Yale Law School graduate and former U.S. Army paratrooper Stewart Rhodes in the direct aftermath of the election of the nation’s first black president. Today, it is one of the largest radical antigovernment organizations in the United States. By 2016, the group was claiming an improbable 30,000 members who were said to be mostly current and former military, law enforcement and emergency first responders.
The core idea of the Oath Keepers is that its members vow to forever support the oaths they took on joining law enforcement or the military to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” As a practical matter, what that means to the group is suggested most plainly by its list of the 10 “Orders We Will Not Obey” — a compendium of much-feared but entirely imaginary threats from the government, including forcing Americans into detention camps, imposing martial law, and disarming all civilians. Those supposed threats are all key to the central conspiracy theory of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement of which the Oath Keepers is a part. Basically, Patriots believe that the government will at any moment impose martial law, probably with the aid of foreign or United Nations troops; that all guns belonging to normal citizens will then be seized; that resisters will be thrown into concentration camps; and that, in the end, America will be forced into a one-world socialist government, “The New World Order.”
In 2010, Rhodes and his Oath Keepers deployed in public for the first time, traveling to Quartzsite, a small Arizona town, to defend local residents who were ejected after refusing to leave a town council meeting on alleged government corruption. The group’s website called Quartzsite a “pivot point” for Americans to finally see the looming danger of the “New World Order.” In the end, the Oath Keepers got a lot of headlines, but accomplished virtually nothing — other than Arizona officials censuring Rhodes for practicing law in that state without a license by writing letters threatening a lawsuit on behalf of the ejected residents. He was fined $600.
In a more serious episode, Daniel Knight Hayden, an Oklahoma man who identified himself as an Oath Keeper, was indicted by a federal grand jury after tweeting messages threatening a violent attack on Oklahoma state government officials on April 15, which is Tax Day. Hayden was sentenced to eight months in prison in 2010. Another troubling example: Matthew Fairfield, a suburban Cleveland man described by prosecutors as the president of a local Oath Keepers chapter, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for storing bombs at his and a friend’s home and for obstructing justice. After Fairfield’s 2011 sentencing, a county prosecutor said it would be fair to call the local Oath Keepers leader a potential terrorist.
In a widely publicized case, another Oath Keeper was sentenced to 30 years in prison for raping his own 7-year-old daughter. After failing to appear for trial in 2010, Charles Dyer, an ex-Marine, led police on a multi-state chase and began issuing threats against law enforcement, warning that they’d better not catch up to him. Although Dyer had spoken on behalf of the Oath Keepers and online videos identified himself as the group’s liaison to the Marines, Rhodes claimed after the charges were brought that Dyer wasn’t actually a part of his organization.
That wasn’t the only time that the Oath Keepers has sought to put distance between itself and members who bring it bad press. In 2015, the group censured prominent member Jon Ritzheimer after Ritzheimer suggested that he planned to travel from Arizona to carry out a citizen’s arrest of U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D. Mich.). Ritzheimer was angry that Stabenow had signed an agreement between the U.S. and Iran on limiting the Iranians’ nuclear program. Ritzheimer also said he would go on to arrest all of those involved in making the deal, including President Obama.
In 2013, four years after its formation, the Oath Keepers announced the planned formation of “Citizen Preservation” militias, which are meant to defend Americans against the New World Order. The real goal of these militias, which have since been renamed Civilian Preparedness Teams, is to prey upon the fears and concerns of local communities and revitalize the American militia movement, all under the guise of neighborhood watch and self-sufficiency. “We want to see a restoration of the militia in this country,” Rhodes explained on a “God and Guns” podcast. “We think a good first step is to have the veterans stand up in every community and go help form and train neighborhood watches, to get the people to take back into their own hands their own personal self-defense and security.”
In April 2014, Rhodes and several fellow Oath Keepers traveled to the Nevada ranch of Cliven Bundy, answering a nationwide call Bundy had made asking militiamen to join him in standing up to federal officials seeking to seize his cattle because he had refused to pay federal grazing fees for some 20 years. But the Oath Keepers made fools of themselves that day, excitedly telling Bundy’s rag-tag army that they had received “intel” that President Obama was about to attack the Bundy ranch with drones. The Oath Keepers fled, leaving Bundy’s other supporters to mock them as cowards and delusional paranoids. Because the government ultimately stood down in the face of armed threats from Bundy’s defenders, the standoff wound up being a highlight of the radical right — but one that the Oath Keepers got no glory from.
Four months later, white, heavily armed Oath Keepers showed up in Ferguson, Mo., during the racial unrest that followed the shooting death of Michael Brown, a black man, by a police officer. The heavily armed group members were seen on rooftops patrolling in what they said was an effort to protect businesses from rioters. Though they later claimed to have protected one black woman’s business, it seemed clear that they were really there to protect white businesses against black protesters.
The Oath Keepers also has been involved in a number of confrontations between the federal government and militants in disputes over public lands.
In 2015, an Oregon chapter of the Oath Keepers acted in support Rick Barclay and George Backes, two Oregon gold miners running an illegal mining site. The miners received a “letter of noncompliance” from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) telling them they either needed to clear out of the mine within 60 days or file an appeal of the noncompliance ruling. Instead, the miners appealed to the Oath Keepers, and what followed was an Oath Keepers nationwide call to action, put out by Joseph Rice of the Josephine County Oath Keepers, to help the miners fight the BLM. Operation Gold Rush, as it was called, was dubbed a “security operation” because owner Rick Barclay insisted that the BLM was notorious for burning down miners’ cabins in the backwoods, and he said later that they would have destroyed his mine if he had not called for help. BLM spokesman Jim Whittington told the Southern Poverty Law Center that these accusations were groundless.
Regardless, according to the local Oath Keepers chapter, at least 700 supporters responded to the call to action. Josephine County Sheriff Dave Daniel told High Country News that he wasn’t worried about conflict between law enforcement and the miners. But the militia, who effectively turned the mountains around the mine into a heavily armed patrol base, was a different story. “I was [concerned] in that there were militia, Three Percenters and Oath Keepers from around the country that had come in and were potentially unpredictable. [A group spokesman] will tell you that everyone was vetted properly. I have a difficult time believing that 100 percent of the people were cleared or were 100 percent controllable.”
Ultimately, there was no standoff. James Roberts, an administrative law judge with the Interior Board of Land Appeals, issued a stay which stated that the miners were allowed to operate the mine while the board deliberated. This was seen as yet another victory for the Oath Keepers and the antigovernment movement.
Also in 2015, Oath Keepers in Montana put out another call to action, summoning members to help another local miner fight the government– even though the Forest Service had been working with the miner for some time to resolve the issue. “Obviously, we’re not in a confrontation,” David Smith, regional spokesman for the Forest Service, told the Southern Poverty Law Center. “It’s not the people who are there I’m worried about – it’s the ones from the fringe who want to join in. And I’m worried about the safety of the people up there. We don’t want to see things escalate, especially over an issue that we have been working all along in a very cooperative way to resolve.” Ultimately, again, no real standoff developed.
But that wasn’t the case in early 2016, when members of the same Bundy family that was at the center of the 2014 Nevada standoff got interested in another conflict with the federal government, this one in Harney County, Ore.
The cause that drew the Bundys — Ammon and Ryan Bundy, sons of Cliven — was two ranchers near Burns, Ore., who had recently been ordered back to prison for arson of public lands after an appeals court decided they had initially been sentenced to terms that were too short by law. The Bundys and other sympathizers tried to get Dwight Hammond, 73, and his son, Steven Hammond, 46, on their side, denouncing both the Hammonds’ resentencing and the management of public lands by federal agencies. But the Hammonds said they were planning on reporting to prison, did not want their help, and asked them to return to Nevada. Despite this, the Bundys and a number of other heavily armed militants decided suddenly to break away from a pro-Hammond rally in Oregon and occupy the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a famous birding location. The standoff with federal and other law enforcement agencies that followed lasted 41 days. It was broken up only after officials arrested the Bundys and others at a roadblock near the refuge.
The Oath Keepers did denounce the Malheur occupation — not so much because it was an illegal armed invasion but, as Rhodes wrote, “specifically because it is not being done with the consent of the locals or at their request, without the request of the Hammond family . . . and because it is not in direct defense of anyone.” Another group official, associate editor Brandon Smith, said he opposed the occupation because “starting this fight from a much stronger position is more than possible.”
While criticizing the occupation, the Oath Keepers did take part in a coalition of militias in the Pacific Northwest called the Pacific Patriots Network, which served as a “buffer” between the occupiers and government forces. The Pacific Patriots Network also includes antigovernment extremist groups aligned with the Three Percenters, and the Oath Keepers’ contingent is the very same chapter that took part in Operation Gold Rush in Oregon in 2015.
During the 2016 presidential election, the Oath Keepers were at it again, with Rhodes announcing “Operation Sabot 2016” as a method to prevent the election from being stolen from Donald Trump, something the candidate had predicted numerous times. “[W]e call on you to form up incognito intelligence gathering and crime spotting teams,” Rhodes said. “And go out into public on election day, dressed to blend in with the public … with video, still camera, and notepad in hand, to look for and document suspected criminal vote fraud or intimidation activities.” And he made clear that it was the Democrats, not the Republicans, who might steal the election. “[W]e are, indeed, most concerned about expected attempts at voter fraud by leftists,” Rhodes said. “But we will spot, document, and report any apparent attempt at vote fraud or voter intimidation … as is our duty.”
Well Before The Jan. 6 Insurrection, Oath Keepers Trafficked in Violence and Conspiracy Theories
Since its founding, the antigovernment group Oath Keepers has steeped itself in conspiracy theories and trained for a revolution against the state.
Members’ involvement in the Capitol insurrection was the latest example in a long history of the group bucking government authority.
The Oath Keepers, who derive their name from the Constitution, vowing to protect the U.S. from all enemies foreign and domestic, took part in an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Motivated by Trump’s rhetoric and buoyed by the QAnon conspiracy theory, the group parroted false claims that Democrats stole the 2020 election from former President Donald Trump. In D.C., they collaborated with a violent mob who broke into the Capitol building, intent on stopping the certification of the election. Five people died as a result of the attack.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, in tandem with Alex Jones and Owen Shroyer of Infowars, called on Americans to go to D.C. to “stand up against election theft.” On Nov. 10, Rhodes made an appearance on Infowars, where he is a regular guest, and declared that Americans should converge on D.C. the way they stormed up to the Bundy Ranch in Nevada.
The FBI later charged three individuals associated with Oath Keepers for their role in the insurrection: Jessica Marie Watkins and Donovan Ray Crowl of Champaign County, Ohio, and Thomas Caldwell of Clarke County, Virginia.
Watkins and Crowl belonged to the Ohio State Regular Militia, a subset of Oath Keepers that paid dues to the organization, according to the FBI.
Caldwell, Crowl and Watkins were indicted on charges of conspiracy, obstructing an official proceeding, destruction of government property and unlawful entry on restricted building or grounds.
According to a government's memorandum filed Feb. 11 that recommended Watkins face pre-trial detention, “Watkins joined a violent mob that overwhelmed law enforcement and destroyed government property, re-creating in modern times events not seen in this nation since the War of 1812. In this backdrop, Watkins and her co-conspirators formed a subset of the most extreme insurgents that plotted then tried to execute a sophisticated plan to forcibly stop the results of a Presidential Election from taking effect. And she did this in coordination and in concert with a virulently antigovernment militia members.”
Additional individuals wearing Oath Keepers attire were seen inside the Capitol building. Oath Keepers directed other members to wear plain clothes according to the organization’s website: “As always, while conducting security operations, we will have some of our men out in ‘grey man’ mode, without identifiable Oath Keepers gear.”
Members of the group were also spotted providing security for Roger Stone at a “Stop the Steal” protest in Washington on Jan. 5, the evening before the attack on the Capitol.
Who are the Oath Keepers?
Oath Keepers is a large, antigovernment extremist organization, which was incorporated as a domestic nonprofit in Nevada in 2009 with a number of associated state-level nonprofits. The group’s membership is open to the public, and claims to be principally military veterans, law enforcement officers and first responders. Multiple members are in local government.
Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, also known as Elmer Stewart Rhodes, is an Army veteran and disbarred Montana lawyer. Rhodes has been accused of regularly pulling a gun out during domestic disputes with his wife.
The group has an explicit agenda of recruiting current and former military, law enforcement and first responders to their ranks. The main goal of this focused recruitment effort is to capitalize on the skills and knowledge these individuals obtained during their time of service.
The three Oath Keepers indicted for their insurrection-related activities are all veterans. Watkins served in the U.S. Army, Crowl was a former Marine and Caldwell is a retired veteran of the U.S. Navy.
The group’s name is derived from the oaths taken by military and law enforcement, and is based on following the rules and regulations of those above them in the chain of command. The Oath Keepers mission is to influence its members to obey the group’s own interpretation of the Constitution, even if it means disobeying the orders of their commanders, U.S. lawmakers or judges. The organization has published a list of 10 orders they refuse to obey, including disarming the American people or detaining them as unlawful enemy combatants.
Trump’s volunteer security detail
The organization’s role in the insurrection was the latest in a series of pro-Trump activities the group participated in during his presidency. Oath Keepers and Three Percenters organized to act as volunteer security for Trump’s inauguration in 2017, and for Trump rallies in Minnesota on Oct. 10, 2019, and in Dallas, Texas, on Oct. 17, 2019.
When Trump falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election was a fraud and he won, despite official parties to the vote count contending that he lost, Oath Keepers stood by him, parroting his false claims and making plans to fight back. “We’ll also be on the outside of D.C., armed, prepared to go in, if the president calls us up” Rhodes said during his Nov. 10 Infowars appearance.
Rhodes suggested Trump invoke the Insurrection Act during the same appearance on Infowars. He also claimed: “We have men already stationed as a nuclear option in case they attempt to remove the president illegally. We will step in and stop it.”
Oath Keepers took part in multiple “Stop the Steal” protests, which supported Trump’s claims that the election was stolen. Oath Keepers attended the Nov. 14 Million MAGA March in D.C. and provided armed security for the Nov. 21 rally in Atlanta, Georgia. Many of the same right-wing personalities and white nationalists who stormed the Capitol in Washington weeks later were present at both.
History of defying the government
Oath Keepers first came to the public’s attention on April 19, 2009, when they held a muster at Lexington Green in Massachusetts.
Five years later, on April 16, 2014, Rhodes called his members to action, requesting they come armed to the standoff at Bundy Ranch in Nevada. “This might go down in history as the first engagement of the modern American revolution,” Rhodes said.
Oath Keepers went on to Ferguson, Missouri, inserting themselves into protests that followed the shooting death of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson.
Members descended upon Ferguson in December 2014. They stood armed on rooftops and the street providing unlicensed security to businesses in the area until the police threatened to arrest them.
On Aug. 11, 2015, the group showed back up in Ferguson, armed to the teeth, providing security to an Infowars reporter. “Their presence was both unnecessary and inflammatory,” St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said.
In April 2015, Oath Keepers supported the proprietors of Sugar Pine Mine in Oregon, involving themselves in a second dispute between property owners in the West and the federal Bureau of Land Management. About 700 volunteers, some openly armed, showed up, according to the Josephine County Oath Keepers.
Oath Keepers would later reach out to Rowan County, Kentucky, court clerk Kim Davis. In September 2015 the group offered Davis an Oath Keepers security detail after she was arrested for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The group claimed they could protect her from being re-arrested. Davis turned their offer down.
Conspiracy theorists
Oath Keepers has circulated antigovernment conspiracy theories about QAnon and so-called “globalists,” an imagined shadowy group of prominent individuals, often ascribed to be Jewish, who are working to create a one-world power that would threaten U.S. national sovereignty.
Rhodes regularly uses his Infowars platform to share his bizarre and counterfactual theories, and repeats Infowars propaganda on the Oath Keepers website. Most recently Rhodes has echoed Alex Jones allegations that a globalist Chinese alliance, which Jones calls the Chicom Globalists, is plotting to destroy the country and the world.
In October 2020, Rhodes spoke at the Red Pill Expo, a who’s who of conspiracy theorists, held in Jekyll Island, Georgia.
Recently, the Oath Keepers have promoted QAnon. “I think ‘Q’ is another way for the current administration to communicate with us directly,” wrote Nancy Oakley, a regular contributor to the Oath Keepers website. The post, which included “Q drops,” was published Oct. 10, 2018, under the header “news.”
Since its inception, the group has pointed to nonexistent government tyranny, called former President Obama a dictator, asserted that “globalists want to destroy … cultures and identities” and made claims that Oprah Winfrey, Meryl Streep, the mainstream media and the ever-vilified George Soros are some of the globalists’ most prominent perpetrators.
On June 6, 2018, the group crossed the Rubicon into full-blown conspiracy theorists. One week prior, antigovernment activist Michael Lewis Arthur Meyers found a skull in the Arizona desert, as well as other items including a stroller, a crib, brown hair dye and a tree with restraints. Meyers wrongly claimed it was a child’s skull, the tree was a “rape tree” and the items belonged to child sex traffickers. He would later claim the traffickers were associated with George Soros, Hillary Clinton and a construction company from Mexico.
Meyers and his crew stationed themselves on a lot in South Tucson, preparing for a standoff, and requested people show up to assist. Oath Keepers heeded the call.
On June 6, 2018, the group’s website published an article titled “Oath Keepers Call to Action: Operation Child Shield in Tucson, Arizona,” writing, “We need skilled LEO, military, and search and rescue volunteers to search for, locate, and secure additional suspected child sex trafficking sites in Tucson, Arizona.” The post also attempted to amplify Meyers’ “rape tree” claim.
Local and federal authorities debunked Meyers’ and the Oath Keepers’ claims.
“Based on the department’s investigation to this point, there is no indication this camp is being used for any type of criminal activity, including human trafficking,” the Tucson Police Department said in a statement to Buzzfeed News.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was equally emphatic, stating: “As part of our work investigating criminal smuggling activity on the US/Mexico border, we are familiar with this area and the homeless camps. However, we concluded there is nothing there that would validate the reporting on social media.”
Civil war
The second revolutionary war may not have come about as a result of the Bundy standoff in Nevada, as Rhodes predicted, but the organization has continued to promote the idea of a present or inevitable civil war.
Rhodes made the following statement on the Oath Keepers Twitter account on Aug. 30, 2020, responding to the killing of Aaron “Jay” Danielson in Portland, Oregon:
The first shot has been fired brother. Civil war is here, right now. We’ll give Trump one last chance to declare this a Marxist insurrection & suppress it as his duty demands.
If he fails to do HIS duty, we will do OURS.
“Against all enemies, foreign and domestic”
Stewart
Oath Keepers was banned from Twitter as a result of that tweet, which violated the company’s violent organizations policy.
On Dec. 14, 2020, Rhodes pleaded with Trump in an open letter to him on the Oath Keepers website:
This is your moment of destiny. Will you take your place in history as the savior of our Republic, right up there with President Washington and Lincoln? Or will you fail to act, while you still can, and leave office on January 20, 2021, leaving We the People to fight a desperate revolution/civil war against an illegitimate usurper and his Chicom puppet regime?
In a Dec. 23, 2020, follow-up to the first open letter, Rhodes wrote: “Do your duty, and do it now. Recognize you are already in a war, and you must act as a wartime president, and there is not a minute to lose.”
What comes next
On Jan. 19, Rhodes posted a “red alert” to the Oath Keepers website. It began with a conspiracy-laced rant that labeled the Biden administration as illegitimate and accused it of being a Chinse global elite puppet, intent on enslaving Americans.
Rhodes’ “red alert” shared recommendations, which he called warning orders. He suggested members be careful of false-flag events, start prepping and prepare for “an intentional power blackout” or EMP strike from “Chicom/Globalists.”
He also suggested people create county militias, and muster the militias at the state level “in a friendly ‘red’ county where you have a patriotic constitutional sheriff, county commissioners, county judge, etc.”
Rhodes claimed that the group was not calling for violence, but added a sizable caveat.
“Prepare to walk the same path as the Founding Fathers,” pronounced Rhodes, advocating for his members to condemn, resist and defy the current U.S. government.
No comments:
Post a Comment