September 2, 2020

By David Neiwert

Daily Kos

The Oath Keepers—those paranoid “Patriot” militiamen who recruit from the law ranks of military veterans and law enforcement—have a plan for responding to the death of a far-right protester Saturday in Portland at the hands of a self-described antifascist: Donald Trump needs to declare a national emergency and an insurrection in the city, send in troops, and arrest anyone they identify as “antifa.” And if he fails to do that, they will organize “constitutional” militias to go there and do it themselves.

The organization’s Twitter account, which is overseen by founder Stewart Rhodes, has been in full war-declaration mode since the Portland shooting. “The first shot has been fired brother,” he tweeted Sunday. “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.”

The Oath Keepers were only one of many voices vowing revenge for the shooting death of Aaron Danielson, 39, of Portland. Commenters on social-media sites were especially violent in discussing plans for revenge: “Looks like hunting season just opened up early this year MAGA,” tweeted a follower responding to a tweet by “Gateway Pundit” Jim Hoft describing antifa as “pure evil.”

Right-wing actor James Woods tweeted: “This is civil war now. Democrats are fine with conservatives being murdered for wearing a hat they don’t like. They are going to keep attacking law-abiding Americans in frenzied mobs, until they are dealt with the same way all bullies finally are.”

Of course, Rhodes’ and the Oath Keepers’ ability to influence Trump—as well as to actually organize a militia response in Portland—is not at all clear, and probably dubious at best. The organization has made apparent connections with the Trump reelection campaign in the past, by providing ad-hoc “security” to a couple of campaign events.

But their response was representative of the sentiments running rampant in pro-Trump circles, particularly among far-right "Patriot” militiamen and other armed extremists. Some saw the relative lack of any appearance or response by right-wing activists on Sunday in Portland, the day after the shooting, as a sign of sorts: “The fact that the patriots are not back in town wiping the floor with these commies means that they’re staying home to get organized and make a devastating plan,” one tweeted.

Another commenter agreed on calling out the National Guard: “Send troops, 90 days ago and don’t let up. It’s past time for our president to put an end to all this. I don’t care what it looks like to those who believe he’s a dictator. He needs to stop the threats and do it. Do it now!”

Moreover, as Casey Michel adroitly explained at The New Republic: 

Rhodes’s comments are hardly a surprise. But they are explicit confirmation that America’s militia movement is a vehicle for far-right forces to coalesce and coordinate armed pushback against protesters of anti-democratic policies in the U.S. They confirm that these armed, conspiratorially minded men’s “support and defend the Constitution” rhetoric was empty air, vacuous word salad meant to paper over the violence these men thirst for. They confirm that, in the end, America’s militia movement is little more than the heir to the white vigilantes that preceded it—the white rifle clubs and night-riders terrorizing Black Americans, the settler-colonial vigilante groups leading America’s ethnic cleansing campaigns across the American West. These supposed “oath keepers” are now Fascist for a would-be American Duce, Blackshirt shock troops in the campaign to maintain the nation’s racial hierarchy, no matter how much bloodshed that goal requires.

Oath Keepers’ credibility within far-right movement circles is somewhat thin, due primarily to Rhodes’ erratic behavior and his failure to deliver on a number of promises. A number of hardcore rightists suspect him of being a federal informant as well. He might have difficulty getting people to respond to his call to arms.

But his views echoed those voiced by hundreds of commenters on far-right Facebook and Twitter pages and chat platforms: Rhodes is certain that not only should Trump call out the National Guard, he also should call out what he calls “constitutional militias”—which is to say, private groups of armed vigilantes who claim they represent the will of the people. And he wants them to attack antifascist groups wherever they can be found.

“This was a terror attack, on US soil, by a member of an international terrorist organization—Antifa,” he wrote. “And the terrorist gunman’s Antifa comrades celebrated the murder and continue to plan more of the same. President Trump must declare there to be a Marxist insurrection. And he needs to declare that Marxist insurrection to be nationwide, carried out by both Antifa and BLM, with the goal of terrorizing Americans into submission in furtherance of their attempt to overthrow our Constitution, as they plainly state is their goal.”

Trump, Rhodes insists, has “both the power and the duty to call the militia into federal service to suppress this rebellion/insurrection.” And he makes clear that he’s not just talking about the National Guard: “And, he further has the power to call US, the American military veterans, into federal service as well, as militia. And we will answer his call.”

Rhodes, like many other right-wing extremists, has been waxing rhapsodic about the prospect of a second civil war in the United States for a long time. In October last year, he posted a long thread in support of a Trump tweet warning that “civil war” would erupt if he were impeached: “We ARE on the verge of a HOT civil war,” Rhodes wrote. “Like in 1859. That’s where we are.”

He similarly has been urging Trump to call out the militias to stop various threats to the nation—such as immigration, as he did in April of last year. Now, he wants both the National Guard and the militias called out to confront the threat of “Marxist takeover” at the hands of “antifa.”

For his part, Trump seemed receptive to the idea in a Sunday night tweet: “Our great National Guard could solve these problems in less than 1 hour.”

Whether Oath Keepers and the revenge-hungry militias actually have Trump’s ear is anyone’s guess. But the Oath Keepers’ history—which is riddled with criminals, unstable hangers-on, support for white nationalists at their protests, and volatile situations involving armed standoffs with federal authorities—should raise concerns if Rhodes’ running efforts to engage in a “civil war” action showed any signs of fruition.

From the very outset, the Oath Keepers’ brand has been associated with violent, threatening extremists. One of the first prominent members of the group was a man named Charles Dyer, whose online nom de plume was July4Patriot, and who represented the Oath Keepers at early tea party events in 2009, when he wasn’t producing ominous videos urging his fellow “Patriots” to prepare themselves for armed civil war and violent resistance to the newly elected Obama administration.

About a year later, Dyer was arrested for raping his daughter and eventually convicted. Police found a missile launcher in his personal armory. Stewart Rhodes and the Oath Keepers claimed he actually was never really a member and distanced themselves from Dyer as fast they could.

Rhodes has always attempted to present Oath Keepers as a mainstream organization, but the façade was thoroughly exposed in 2009 by Justine Sharrock at Mother Jones, whose in-depth report revealed a cadre of armed and angry extremists with paranoid ideas and unstable dispositions behind the claims of normalcy and civic-mindedness.

There are scores of patriot groups, but what makes Oath Keepers unique is that its core membership consists of men and women in uniform, including soldiers, police, and veterans. At regular ceremonies in every state, members reaffirm their official oaths of service, pledging to protect the Constitution—but then they go a step further, vowing to disobey "unconstitutional" orders from what they view as an increasingly tyrannical government.

The Oath Keepers played a prominent role in the 2014 Bundy ranch armed standoff in Nevada. A significant number of Oath Keepers responded to Cliven Bundy’s initial plea for support that April in his conflict with the Bureau of Land Management, and so the organization wound up playing a key role both in organizing the armed resistance to federal officers in mid-April, as well as in the nearly lethal mess into which the scene devolved later that month, in the weeks after the initial standoff.

That was when a paranoid rumor of an imminent drone strike on the encampment began circulating. The team that primarily circulated the drone-strike rumor—namely, Rhodes’ Oath Keepers—also began advising people to pull out, which sparked the wrath of militiamen.

Those militiamen voted to oust the Oath Keepers, and a couple even spoke of shooting Rhodes and his men in the back, which they deemed the proper battlefield treatment of “deserters.”

Rhodes replied to their accusations in a video in which he teamed up with fellow Oath Keepers Steve Homan, Robert Casillas, and Brandon Rapolla (the latter of whom are also affiliated with Mike Vanderboegh’s so-called “III Percent” movement) to attack the “nutcases” that Rhodes claimed had assumed control of the militia camp at the Bundy ranch.

The situation slowly defused as more participants became disillusioned and left. However, their involvement was far from over: One of Rhodes’ longtime allies, a New Hampshire militiaman named Jerry DeLemus, who also happened to be the state chair of Veterans for Trump, was later arrested by the FBI for his role in the Bundy ranch standoff, then convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison.

We got a clear view of their version of accountability when Rhodes and his Oath Keepers organized “vigils” outside military recruiting stations around the country after right-wing media concocted the claim that the Obama administration was leaving such stations vulnerable to terrorist attack by insisting that recruiters be unarmed. At one of these vigils, a would-be “protector” mishandled his rifle and dropped it, discharging a round that narrowly missed bystanders.

Rhodes quickly waved off any responsibility, claiming that the man wasn’t a member: “Thankfully, not one of ours,” he said in an article posted to the group's website. “Good intentions on the part of volunteers are not enough, because we all know where the road paved with them leads,” the article mused.

They next made their presence felt in Oregon, at an attempt at recreating the Bundy ranch situation, this time at a mine near Grants Pass. The standoff fizzled, however, and the Oath Keepers wandered away from the scene in the two weeks after a rally outside federal offices. Many of its participants, however, were on the scene just a few months later in Burns, Oregon, when Cliven Bundy’s son Ammon organized the monthlong armed standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

The Oath Keepers were also present at some of the earliest far-right rallies on the West Coast in 2017, notably the ultraviolent riots in Berkeley, California, in April, as well as the large Patriot Prayer rally in Portland, Oregon, that followed the murder of two commuters on a MAX train by a far-right extremist. At the Berkeley event, Rhodes spoke to the crowd in front of an alt-right “Kekistan” banner, and he was followed on the dais by notorious white nationalist Brittany Pettibone.

Subsequently, Rhodes’ reputation among his far-right cohorts has waxed and waned, particularly as the Oath Keepers have increasingly backed out of participation in various events. They failed to appear, for instance, at a protest against Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters that they themselves had organized. At the most recent Proud Boys march in Portland on Aug. 17, Rhodes raised hackles by loudly announcing he was pulling Oath Keepers out of the event because of the likely presence of racist bigots among the Proud Boys and their allies, notably the American Guard.  

“We do not, and cannot, knowingly associate with known or suspected white nationalists,” he claimed then; apparently his April 2017 Berkeley appearance fell into a different category.

Rhodes’ vision for the Oath Keepers appears to be to attempt to legitimize their paranoid vision not just by distancing them from overt racism, but also by becoming increasingly associated with the Trump campaign. After all, it has been in service as a kind of ad hoc security force to counter “antifa” ever since Trump’s inauguration in 2017.

The endpoint of this vision is for Oath Keepers to become an unofficial adjunct paramilitary force that could be deployed by President Trump at his own discretion—say, if he were to be impeached. Rhodes was explicit about this when he announced plans to provide a kind of specialized “Spartan” training program to prepare Oath Keepers for combat with “antifa” and whatever evil leftists might be lurking out there.

We’re going to have our most experienced law enforcement and military veterans, as well as firefighters, EMTs, Search and Rescue — guys that we’ve vetted that are qualified to teach, to go and train average Americans in how to organize their own neighborhood watch, their own security teams, their own event security, and walk them up the ladder in proficiency, so that they are available for the sheriff as a posse, under a Constitutional governor to be a state militia, or if it was called out by the President of the United States to serve as a militia of the United States to secure the schools, protect our borders, or whatever else he asks them to do to execute our laws, repel invasions, and to suppress insurrections, which we’re seeing from the left right now.

So we want to see a militia, basically, reestablished in this country and trained up. So we’re calling them training groups, we’re not calling them militia, because we believe that we want them to be a pool of people that can be utilized by the governor, by the sheriff, or by the president of the United States.

The key point—frequently lost in Rhodes’ pseudo-legal babble—is that the Oath Keepers are not only well outside the realm of any kind of authoritative law enforcement entity, but they are also a private army that has no accountability to anyone. If anyone is injured or harmed by any Oath Keepers at these events, their past history indicates that Rhodes and his group will simply disavow whatever member has been involved in the transgression, as they have in the past.

And if Trump ever were to empower them—officially or unofficially—it would be an authoritarian disaster in the making.

[For more information about the Oath Keepers, check out Sam Jackson’s authoritative text, Oath Keepers: Patriotism and the Edge of Violence in a Right-Wing Antigovernment Group (2020, Columbia University Press).]

Posted with permission