{"id":7403,"date":"2021-01-12T18:56:42","date_gmt":"2021-01-12T18:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=149144"},"modified":"2021-01-12T18:56:42","modified_gmt":"2021-01-12T18:56:42","slug":"oath-keepers-mobilize-police-and-militia-members-nationwide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/12\/oath-keepers-mobilize-police-and-militia-members-nationwide\/","title":{"rendered":"Oath Keepers Mobilize Police and Militia Members Nationwide"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Oath Keepers, founded in 2009, is a right-wing militant group that now has some 25,000 members. Founder Steven Rhodes told journalist Mike Giglio, who reported for The Atlantic<\/em> in November of 2020, that the group \u201csupports and defends the Constitution against all enemies.\u201d Giglio\u2019s report was based on interviews with Rhodes and other Oath Keepers, conducted over a period of several months, and information from a leaked membership database.<\/p>\n

In 2009, Rhodes launched the Oath Keepers with a blog post that Giglio described as \u201cboth a manifesto and a recruiting pitch.\u201d Responses \u201cpoured in,\u201d Giglio reported, and Rhodes published them on his blog. Today, about two-thirds of the Oath Keepers come from military or law enforcement backgrounds, according to a leaked database compiled by several of Rhodes\u2019 deputies. Members included a \u201cgrunt\u201d from Afghanistan, two individuals working in the FBI, and a Secret Service special agent. Members tagged their cars with the Oath Keepers logo, which occasioned conversations with others about the group, one of the tactics employed to recruit new members. To avoid having the group seen as a threat, Rhodes refused to call it a militia; instead he registered the Oath Keepers as a nonprofit organization.<\/p>\n

Giglio paraphrased part of Rhodes\u2019 message to a gathering of Oath Keepers: \u201cIt\u2019s the people themselves, not any one group, who are the real militia.\u201d Rhodes suggested to members that they organize locally and he \u201curged them to build a militia for their community,\u201d Giglio reported. \u201cDon\u2019t call yourselves Oath Keepers or Three Percenters,\u201d Rhodes told one gathering in Tennessee. \u201cCall yourselves the militia of Rutherford County.\u201d His vision is for the Oath Keepers to serve, like the military\u2019s Special Forces, as a \u201cforce multiplier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Images of Oath Keepers standing on rooftops in Ferguson, Missouri, armed with semi-automatic rifles after the police killing of Michael Brown became \u201csymbols of an America beginning to turn on itself,\u201d Giglio wrote. When President Trump faced impeachment in 2019, Rhodes threatened \u201ca public show of force if the Senate elected to remove Trump,\u201d as Rhodes told Casey Michel, for Michel\u2019s August 2020 article in The New Republic<\/em>. During this time the Oath Keepers also declared that they would organize \u201ccapable patriots\u201d to provide security at rallies to support Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

More attention has focused on the Oath Keepers since pro-Trump supporters occupied the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2020. Before then, however, corporate news coverage of the Oath Keepers has been limited. In November 2020, the New York Times<\/em><\/a> published a video report focused on how \u201cpolice officers gave the benefit of the doubt to armed far-right groups and individuals\u201d in policing racial justice protests across the US since the killing of George Floyd in May 2020. The Times\u2019<\/em> video report included a recorded statement by Steven Rhodes in a segment about how Oath Keepers in Louisville, Kentucky, worked to recruit new members and \u201ccoordinated closely\u201d with local law enforcement.<\/p>\n

Sources: <\/strong><\/p>\n

Mike Giglio, \u201cA Pro-Trump Militant Group Has Recruited Thousands of Police, Soldiers, and Veterans,\u201d The Atlantic<\/em>, November 2020,\u00a0https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2020\/11\/right-wing-militias-civil-war\/616473\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Casey Michel, The \u201cOath Keepers\u201d Are Today\u2019s Blackshirts, The New Republic<\/em>, August 31, 2020, https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/article\/159174\/oath-keepers-militias-trump-fascism<\/a> .<\/p>\n

Student Researcher:<\/strong> Sierra Wisman (Sonoma State University)<\/p>\n

Faculty Evaluator:<\/strong> Diana Grant (Sonoma State University)<\/p>\n

The post Oath Keepers Mobilize Police and Militia Members Nationwide<\/a> appeared first on Project Censored<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Oath Keepers, founded in 2009, is a right-wing militant group that now has some 25,000 members. Founder Steven Rhodes told journalist Mike Giglio, who reported for The\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":667,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2035],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7403"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/667"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7404,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7403\/revisions\/7404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}