The group is rooted in conspiracy theories, including the belief that the federal. Rhodes, in a blog post on the groups website, claimed authoritiesbacked offonce they knew Oath Keepers and others had shown up. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people. Virginia Lobby Day: On January 20, 2020, the Virginia Civilians Defense League (VCDL), hosted a gun rights Lobby Day on the steps of the state capitol in Richmond, Virginia, where a reported 22,000 people demonstrated, including various militia groups and other right-wing extremists. We call on you to form up incognito intelligence gathering and crime spotting teams, Rhodes said. More recently, the Oath Keepers have offered armed security to individuals attending Trump Rallies, Free Speech rallies and other pro-Trump events. This includes attendance at racially charged events, with NBC News reporting a number of armed Oath Keepers turned up at the 2015 protests in Ferguson, Missouri. In 2014, members formed their own patrol in Ferguson, Missouri, after the killing of an unarmed Black man in 2014, and they provided security to an Infowars reporter during the anniversary protest a year later. Some of these have resulted in hostile and violent confrontations with government agents, others have materialized into nothing more than show-of-force demonstrations. The Arizona Supreme Court reprimanded Rhodes andfined him $600. The main crux of the groups messaging asserts that the government is engaged in attacks against its own citizens, working to strip them of their civil liberties. According to their Facebook, Oath Keepers has provided disaster relief in five hurricanes and have also issued calls for action following various other floods, tornadoes and wildfires. These beliefs, which encapsulate the oneworld government conspiracy theories that underpin the antigovernment movement, stoke paranoia, fan antigovernment sentiment and give them purpose. 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 far-right antigovernment groups in the U.S. today. WASHINGTON The founder of a right-wing group whose members have been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol spent about six . However, their decision to retreat from the. Shane Burley, the author ofFascism Today: What It Is and How to End It,wrote forNBC Newsthat the outcome of the trial was undoubtedly "a net benefit" for democracy. On Jan. 6, 2021, members of the Oath Keepers from around the country participated in the insurrection and breach of the U.S. Capitol building. Because the government ultimately stood down in the face of armed threats from Bundys defenders, the standoff wound up being a highlight of the radical right but one that the Oath Keepers got no glory from. We want to see a restoration of the militia in this country,Rhodes explainedon aGod and Guns podcast. On June 21, 2020, Stewart Rhodes wrote in a now-deleted tweet that Black Lives Matter is a communist front organization with the central goal of the destruction of the United States and repeatedly refers to the movement as a communist insurrection. The main message of these events is the false notion that Muslims are attempting to replace the American legal system with Sharia law. The group argued that the election was stolen from Trump and participated in several Stop the Steal protests. Throughout 2020, the group has also posted several calls to action in places like Washington D.C., New Orleans and Texas, looking for volunteers to protect monuments across the United States, arguing that these measures were needed to protect the monuments from Marxist domestic enemies who were seeking to destroy American history. ). Stewart Rhodes, My Personal Pledge of Resistance Against Any Attempt to Disarm Us by Means of an Assault Weapons Ban, on the Oath Keepers website, Dec. 19, 2012. Also in 2015, Oath Keepers in Montana put out anothercall 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. Based on its monitoring of the Oath Keepers, ADL estimates that the group has up to several thousand members, though the Oath Keepers have claimed far more. Rhodes formally launched the Oath. The popularity of Oath Keepers social media accounts illustrates clearly that many more people support the Oath Keepers without ever officially joining (which requires paying dues). Stewart Rhodes has spoken at anti-lockdown protests in Texas, New York and California. Springdale, Washington, December 2015: Schuyler Barbeau, who was filmed in at least one video while wearing Oath Keeper attire and shared several posts in favor of Oath Keeper Charles Dyer (see below), was arrested after he tried to sell a short-barreled rifle he had converted into an illegal machine gun to an individual secretly working with law enforcement. Under his leadership, the Oath Keepers are essentially an updated and more successful version of a similar 1990s group, Police Against the New World Order, started by retired police officer Jack McLamb, who died in 2014. Kokesh entered an Alford plea and was given a suspended sentence for the initial drug and gun charges. For a dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist who had been planning for dystopian collapse for . Brentwood, New Hampshire, February 2013: Federal authorities charged open carry activist and Oath Keeper Johnathon Irish with five felonies stemming from an investigation into the alleged sales of homemade assault rifles to undercover agents. FILE - Stewart Rhodes, founder of the citizen militia group known as the Oath Keepers speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington, on June 25, 2017. As part of a December 2014 plea agreement, Irish admitted to lying to authorities. In February 2015,Matthew Opaliski, a member of the Oath Keepers, previous leader of the Sussex County, Delaware, Republican Party, and former three-time Delaware state Senate candidate wasindicted on gun charges, including dealing firearms without a license and unlawfully transferring firearms. The Oath Keepers are labeled as a "large but loosely organized militia" by the U.S. Department of Justice. The Nevada-basednonprofitwas founded by Yale Law School graduate and former U.S. Army paratrooperElmerStewart Rhodes. The group was founded by Stewart Rhodes, a Yale Law School graduate who had previously clerked on the Arizona Supreme Court. In a separate incident, the U.S. Park Police arrested Kokesh for bearing arms at the Freedom Plaza in violation of Washington D.C. law by loading a shotgun. CNN A lawyer with close ties to the right-wing militia group the Oath Keepers has been charged with four counts related to the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack, including conspiracy to. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, April 2009: Daniel Knight Hayden, an Oath Keeper supporter, was arrested by the FBI after posting a series of Twitter messages threatening to attack Oklahoma officials (including police officers) on April 15 (Tax Day). Oath Keepers, along with many of thesame right-wing personalitiesat these events, took part in the Capitol insurrection weeks later. Oath Keepers have made continuous, baseless claims that antifa is an arm of the Democratic Party and that they are working together with the goal of a socialist takeover. Nine seconds after that, Rhodes merged the two calls. This change brought them in line with other militia groups that were taking a hardline approach in opposing public health efforts to curb the pandemic. The Oath Keepers are a large but loosely organized collection of right-wing anti-government extremists who are part of the. The Oath Keepers' founder, a former Army paratrooper and Yale Law School graduate named Stewart Rhodes, invited Dwyer to speak at the group's kickoff rally they called it a "muster" in Lexington, Massachusetts, the site of the "shot heard round the world" that started the Revolutionary War in 1775. The Oath Keepers urge military and law enforcement personnel to step up to stop the conspirators. [1] In the United States, one of the largest forces of social conservatism is . Members patrolled the site of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, and polling locations in 2016 and 2020, allegedly to discourage and report voter fraud. Please dont do it. The Oath Keepers declared theirmission accomplishedand ended the security operation in what they touted as a victory against the government. SPLC is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization (EIN: 63-0598743), Local Policing and Immigration Enforcement, Request for Legal Assistance Economic Justice, Stewart Rhodes, during an interview on Infowars The Alex Jones Show, Jan. 20, 2021, Stewart Rhodes, posted on the Oath Keepers website, Jan. 4, 2021, Stewart Rhodes, Open Letter to President Trump: You Must Use Insurrection Act to Stop the Steal and Defeat the Coup, on the Oath Keepers website, Dec. 14, 2020, Stewart Rhodes, during an interview on Infowars The Alex Jones Show, Oct. 27, 2020, Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers Call to Action: Border Operation, on the Oath Keepers website, Dec. 4, 2018, Stewart Rhodes, in an Oath Keepers press release following the mass murder of 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, June 13, 2016, Stewart Rhodes, at an event in Tempe, Arizona, May 5, 2015, Stewart Rhodes, My Personal Pledge of Resistance Against Any Attempt to Disarm Us by Means of an Assault Weapons Ban, on the Oath Keepers website, Dec. 19, 2012, providing security without first obtaining a license., David Smith, regional spokesman for the Forest Service. In January 2019, Fairfield had an additional four years added to his sentence after officials determined that he interfered with another investigation. Since 2015, various Oath Keepers CPTs have held militia-like training sessions on topics such as weapons use, patrolling techniques, first aid, and emergency communications. It was incorporated in 2009 by founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes, a lawyer and former paratrooper. The Oath Keepers belief that the allegedly tyrannical American government will use law enforcement and military personnel against its people leads to their avowed purpose of opposing such conspiracies. Massachusetts the site of the first battle of the American Revolutionary War. The group also has a long history of engaging in and promoting their own form of vigilantism by providing voluntary armed security, not affiliated with any law enforcement entity, at various protests and venues. At the beginning of the pandemic, Oath Keepers used COVID-19 to spread fear to their followers, warning that the virus was worse than government officials were saying and pushing people to do whatever they needed to do to remain safe themselves since the government would be unable to help them. He warned about a possible Benghazi-style attack targeting President Trump and said that the Oath Keepers will be stationing its best men outside of Washington, D.C. around the election because they are anticipating the government to enable a coup against Trump. We dont 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 confrontation occurred. In the run up to the election, the group openly posted aboutplans to go to polling locationsto stand up against and protect voters from anti-Trump left-wing groups. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances. Since then, the Oath Keepers have become a household name across the country. A large part of Rhodes' and the Oath Keepers' defense was that they believed the attack on the Capitol was based on eventual orders from former President Trump. At least 20 members of the group were eventually accused of conspiring to block President Biden's election certification, including Rhodes and four of his top associates. Its not the people who are there Im worried about its the ones from the fringe who want to join in. Fairfield was indicted on 97 charges, including unlawful possession of explosives, receiving stolen property, perjury and child pornography.
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