Members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group, are on trial in one of the most high-profile cases stemming from the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol. In response, the group posted acall to actionon its website. The group claims to have tens of thousands of members across the country and has notably directed most of its recruiting efforts toward people in public safety positions whotend to lean conservative. I have a difficult time believing that 100 percent of the people were cleared or were 100 percent controllable.. Two elected officials in Wilbraham and Cape Cod are listed as being members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right extremist group. During the pandemic, and the installation of public health safety measures, Oath Keepers responded by claiming to protect and supportbusinesses and business ownerswho reopened in defiance of these guidelines. The far-right paramilitary group the Oath Keepers claims to have thousands of members across the country. Founder Stewart Rhodes is a former Montana attorney and Army veteran who acts as the groups main spokesperson. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people. The events of Jan. 6 also highlighted fresh . Opaliski was given a prison sentence of one year and a day. Some Oath Keepers have claimed that the government may even stage a terrorist attack or other incident as an excuse to declare martial law. The groups fears around government overreach are most clearly exemplified in its list of 10 Orders We Will Not Obey a compendium of perceived but unrealized threats from the government. These beliefs, which encapsulate the oneworld government conspiracy theories that underpin the antigovernment movement, stoke paranoia, fan antigovernment sentiment and give them purpose. The driving theory behind the Oath Keepers is that the federal government has been overtaken by a mass liberal conspiracy in an effort to strip Americans of their rights. 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. Meanwhile, they are doubling down on conspiratorial claimsthat the election wasstolenand that the Biden administration is a nefarious entity seeking to destroy the American way of life.This signal the return of the militia movements traditional animosity towards the federal government which they largely downplayed during the Trump administration. 2022 Anti-Defamation League. These include: Impending Takeover of the U.S. by the Marxist Left: On September 10, 2020, Twitter announced that it had banned the accounts belonging to the Oath Keepers for violating the platforms policies on violent extremist groups as part of the platforms wider effort to limit the presence of militias on its platform. The officer towed the vehicle after a check revealed that the vehicle registration and insurance had been cancelled. A few days later, he was arrested after police found a shotgun and illegal drugs in his Virginia home. McLamb warned of postCold War chaos perpetrated by an elitistcontrolled New World Order, while Rhodes warns of an insidious global oligarchy bent on destroying Americas constitutional republic. Members told us at least 40 Oath Keepers were at the January 6 rally with some seen providing security to Trump associate Roger Stone. Tied into the fact that conspiracy theories and the far-right movement have become more mainstream in the past few years, and it is unlikely that the Oath Keepers will disappear, even without their leader. Though the Oath Keepers will accept anyone as members, what differentiates them from other anti-government extremist groups is their explicit focus on recruiting current and former military, law enforcement and first responder personnel. Antigovernment rhetoric energized his defense and underpinned his lack of cooperation in the case. The groups website called Quartzsite apivot pointfor Americans finally to see the looming danger of the New World Order. In the end, the Oath Keepers got a lot of headlines, but accomplished virtually nothing. Later in 2014, members of the Oath Keepers showed up in Ferguson, Missouri, during the unrest that followed the death of Michael Brown, a Black man, by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. Stewart Rhodes, the leader of . Rhodes wasdisbarredafter practicing law in Arizona without a license by writing letters threatening a lawsuit on behalf of the ejected residents. In 2015, Rhodes said they would protect notorious Kentucky clerk Kim Davis from arrest. Throughout his presidency, Oath Keepers fully embraced Trump, including Rhodes, who was seated in the VIP section at Trumps 2019 rally in El Paso, Texas. Though it is not alleged that Rhodes entered the Capitol building, Rhodes led Oath Keepers planning and coordination in advance of January 6 which included the formation of armed teams prepared to use force and he was at the building and allegedly in communication with members of the group during the insurrection. Eleven Oath Keepers, including Rhodes, were indicted by a federal grand jury on Jan. 12, 2022, and charged with seditious conspiracy, which is defined as a crime against the state. In 2014, the Oath Keepers highlighted the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa on their web site, questioning the Obama administrations response and raising concerns that it could be used to justify medical martial law in the U.S. As early as January 2020, Oath Keepers began posting about the seriousness of COVID-19, which was spreading at the time within China, and in the first two months of the pandemics spread in the U.S., they provided advice and information regarding COVID-19 to their followers. Members of the group were also indicted by the House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6. Longtime former Wilbraham Planning Board member David A. Sanders and former Barnstable County Commissioner Ron Beaty Jr. were both listed among the 550 members that live in Massachusetts. 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. In January 2017, the Oath Keepers, along with Three Percenters, coordinated volunteer security operations forTrumps inaugurationto protect against any possible violence from jihadist terrorists or radical leftist groups. Oath Keepers provided similar armed security details for Trump rallies inMinnesotaandTexasin October 2019. At the beginning of the global pandemic, Oath Keepers called on President Trump to immediately shut down all commercial airline traffic as well as schools and public places in order to slow the spread of the virus, but by April the organization adopted anti-lockdown rhetoric. 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. 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.. C. Ryan Barber. Since shifting their approach, the Oath Keepers have provided security to businesses that have refused to follow state lockdown orders while maintaining a presence at anti-lockdown rallies across the nation. In December 2018, the Oath Keepers website advertised acall to actionfor a Border Operation, encouraging engagement in paramilitary activity to prevent the invasion of illegals into the country and to provide security for border ranches and families, presumably against immigrants, another exaggerated and unsupported claim propagated by the group. During the 2016 presidential election, the Oath Keepers were at it again, with RhodesannouncingOperation Sabot 2016as a method to prevent the election from being stolen from Donald Trump, something the candidate repeatedly predicted. Three individuals associated with the Oath Keepers, a paramilitary organization focused on recruitment of current and former military, law enforcement, and first responder personnel, were indicted today in federal court in the District of Columbia for conspiring to obstruct Congress, among other charges. 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. Once these thugs turned to burning, killing and looting, they became domestic enemies.. 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. 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. Label it pretend legislation like the Founding Fathers did.Stewart Rhodes, during an interview on Infowars The Alex Jones Show, Jan. 20, 2021, It is CRITICAL that all patriots who can be in D.C. get to D.C. to stand tall in support of President Trumps fight to defeat the enemies foreign and domestic who are attempting a coup, through the massive voter fraud and related attacks on our Republic. They are also proponents of the sovereign citizen movement, believing that they are not subject to any laws of the U.S. government. At 2:31 p.m.18 minutes after rioters breached the west front of the Capitol buildingthe Oath Keepers' operations leader that day, Michael Greene, called Rhodes. Oath Keepers founder used money donated to the far-right group for holiday travel and personal expenses: January 6 trial. But the files showed that Rhodes had tapped into a deep current of anxiety, one that could cause a surprisingly large contingent of. In January 2010,Charles Dyer, an ex-Marine and rising member of the Oath Keepers, was arrested for raping his 7-year-old daughter. The group has also long warned that voluntary UN sustainable development plans like Agenda 21 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which was implemented in 2015 will be used to take away private property and civil liberties in the name of sustainability. Since the election of President Trump, the Oath Keepers have routinely stoked fears regarding the Democratic Party, stating that the party is in fact a Marxist-Islamist organization, where an unholy alliance of communists and jihadists aim to defeat their common enemy Western Civilization. He was charged with conspiracy to impede officers of the U.S. from discharging their duties via force, intimidation or threat. At a rally in Lexington, Massachusetts on April 19 . Fairfield was indicted on 97 charges, including unlawful possession of explosives, receiving stolen property, perjury and child pornography. He eventually reached a plea deal on local charges against him, pleading no contest to one charge in exchange for the state dropping other charges. "Back in 2014, they appeared to be a pretty solid conservative group, I can't speak to them now," he said. The most recent is the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when members of the group, including its leader, Stewart Rhodes, were arrested and accused of conspiring to oppose the presidential transfer of power by force. The Oath Keepers rose to prominence when handfuls of heavily armed members showed up at racial justice protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, and their profile grew thanks to a series of . The ADL noted that the Oath Keepers have adhered to the general tenets of the militia movement, and believe the goal of this conspiracy is to form a tyrannical New World Order to enslave Americans. Over a dozen members of the Oath Keepers who were present on Jan. 6 were charged with conspiracy for planning to obstruct an official proceeding, along with other related charges. Each theory goes back to the idea that the U.S. government has fallen under global governance and will at some point use police and military members to enforce the New World Orders plans. AntiUnited Nations Sentiments: Oath Keepers view the United Nations (UN) as a tool of the New World Order trying to undermine American sovereignty by imposing a globalist agenda. All told, at least 25 Oath Keepers are facing various charges in connection with their actions on January 6, 2021. The Oath Keepers urge military and law enforcement personnel to step up to stop the conspirators. Mack is a founding member on the Oath Keepers board of directors. Obviously, were not in a confrontation,David Smith, regional spokesman for the Forest Service, told the Southern Poverty Law Center. Armed confrontations with federal authorities during land disputes: The Oath Keepers have issued calls for action during disputes between ranchers or miners and federal agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. "While legal methods like lawsuits have proven effective, and prosecutions have dismantled some of the most dangerous far-right terrorist groups, the effort to fully unseat the rise of white nationalism willonly come from a mass wave of organized resistance. . They even ventured into QAnon territory, adopting and circulating QAnon-related conspiracies on their website. 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