Two elected officials in Wilbraham and Cape Cod are listed as being members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right extremist group. The organization has publicly labeled lockdown measures Orwellian violations of liberty and urges their members to defy these measures. 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. Stewart Rhodes, the leader of . We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people. Several Oath Keepers, including founder Stewart Rhodes, have been hit with seditious. In response to the racial unrest that followed, Rhodes postedthe following statementto the groups Facebook account: I see some of you conflicted about how to handle whats going on in the streets of this country, I too was conflicted but let me say this. He was tracked down and arrested the following week in Houston, Texas, extradited back to Oklahoma, where (after several abortive attempts) he finally stood trial, was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison. 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. The Oath Keepers have also amplified conspiracies regarding antifa, for example an August 2019 post on their website details allegations that antifa attempted to purchase weapons from Mexican cartels to advance an uprising within the U.S. and that antifa was planning to target Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents in El Paso, Texas. The groups response to the 2020 outbreak of the coronavirus is discussed in more detail below; however, it is worth noting that the national organization initially shared material on its website and Twitter account calling for increased state government involvement in stemming the viruss spread before shifting its messaging and labelling the virus as a weapon used by leftists to attack President Trump and by the government to strip away Americans rights. Then after we convict him he should be hung by the neck until dead. Stewart Rhodes, at an event in Tempe, Arizona, May 5, 2015, 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. 0:57. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies. UPDATE: OnJanuary 13, 2022,federal authorities arrestedOath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes oncharges ofseditious conspiracyfor his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He was subsequently convicted of knowingly transmitting a threatening communication and received an eightmonth sentence. Ritzheimer pleaded guilty and received a prison sentence of one year and a day. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, author of Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right Jackson provides the most detailed examination of Oath Keepers that we have, developing our understanding of how . The "oath" they have sworn to keep is the oath they once took as police officers and soldiers to "support and defend the constitution and laws of the United States against all enemies foreign. Thats why Oath Keepers will be posted outside of D.C. Weve got some of our best men working on the plan right now for where were going to be. According to the local Oath Keepers chapter,at least 700 individuals responded, setting up perimeter security teams, providing armed escorts for outside members of the press and blocking off the entrance road to the mine. Various Oath Keeper adherents attended the protest, carrying signs and publicly showcasing their dislike for Governor Northams attempts at gun legislation, calling him a coward and a tyrant while also violating the states ban on firearms. In February 2015, Irish was sentenced to 18 months in prison. For example, the Oath Keepers believe that a UN Small Arms Treaty will be implemented to bypass the second Amendment and prohibit firearms. 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 . Despite this, the Bundys and a number of other heavily armed militants decided to break away from a pro-Hammond rally in Oregon and occupy the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a famous birding location. Though there is a formal national leadership, on the local level many Oath Keepers are essentially selforganized, forming official, semiofficial or informal groupings of Oath Keepers in specific, sometimes even overlapping, geographic areas. 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. Stewart Rhodes has spoken at anti-lockdown protests in Texas, New York and California. According to Jacksons book, the group has engaged in real-world activities in response to events they perceive as threats to Americans rights and liberties, claiming to be pushing back against a government they see as tyrannical. As part of a December 2014 plea agreement, Irish admitted to lying to authorities. The center. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes is seen on video during the hearing of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, on Capitol Hill in . When two ranchers near Burns, Oregon, were ordered back to prison for arson of public lands after an appeals court decided their initial sentences were too short, Ammon and Ryan Bundy, sons of Cliven, got involved. Oath Keepers explain that if the federal government issues an unconstitutional order often illustrated by extreme hypotheticals such as mass gun confiscation or illegally mass detaining Americans in concentration camps it is up to the military and law enforcement to enforce these edicts. 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 Oath Keepers have claimed that the government may even stage a terrorist attack or other incident as an excuse to declare martial law. 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. But they chose Massachusetts as the site for the group's formal launch in 2009. In June 2020, a police officer who was on duty and policing a George Floyd protest inCosta Mesa, California, was caught donning a Three Percenterpatch with the words Oath Keeper.This is one example of a larger trend and strategy among antigovernment extremist groups to recruit and infiltrate law enforcement and military organizations. Following a 2011 no contest plea, Fairfield received a 16year sentence. And Im worried about the safety of the people up there. These supposed threats from the government are all key to the central conspiracy theory propagated by the antigovernment movement, namely the New World Order. Groups that are part of theantigovernment movement, including the Oath Keepers, believe the government is secretly planning, along with foreign countries and the United Nations, to impose martial law, seize all Americans guns, force resisters into concentration camps and install a one-world totalitarian government known as the New World Order.. Instead, many simply dismiss the events of January 6thas the work of antifa or a false flag operation. It was incorporated in 2009 by founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes, a lawyer and former paratrooper. We want to see a restoration of the militia in this country,Rhodes explainedon aGod and Guns podcast. Dallas, Georgia, and Madisonville, Tennessee, April 2010: Darren Huff, a Georgia militia member and Oath Keeper, traveled to Tennessee with an AK47 and a .45 caliber Colt handgun in order to make citizens arrests of government officials who had refused demands to indict President Obama. The Oath Keepers was officially launched with a rally in Lexington, Massachusetts, onApr. 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. The standoff with federal and other law enforcement agencies lasted 41 days. 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. C. Ryan Barber. 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. The group was founded by Stewart Rhodes, a Yale Law School graduate who had previously clerked on the Arizona Supreme Court. This aid includes providing bottled water and food, clearing roads and helping with rescue missions. 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. Barbeau pleaded guilty to possessing a machine gun and was sentenced to 27 months in prison in September 2017. Following the 2020 election, in which former President Donald Trump lost to President Biden, the Oath Keepers began working on a weeks-long campaign to have the election overturned. Well, I think what we have to realize is that, you know, Trump actually failed. Minuta later was connected to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, acting as a security guard for Roger Stone earlier that morning before participating in the insurrection himself later that day. Opaliski subsequently pleaded guilty to one count of dealing firearms without a license and was sentenced in July 2016 to one year and one day in prison. During an inventory search of the vehicles trunk, police found nine largecapacity ammunition magazines along with 2,156 rounds of ammunition. On May 16, 2020, Stewart Rhodes spoke at a rally in Palestine, Texas, organized in opposition to pandemic safety mandates, and the group hosted a similar event on May 23 in Austin, Texas. 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. The number of active duty police and military personnel who have publicly admitted to being Oath Keepers is very small; the number of closeted members may be larger. Support MassLive.com, Heather Morrison | hmorrison@masslive.com. 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. The group gained notoriety for their armed participation in disputes between ranchers or miners and federal agencies, particularly in 2014 and 2015. Do NOT concede, and do NOT wait until January 20, 2021. Huff was given a four-year prison sentence. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a state of emergency on a state. Stoking Fears about Antifa: Oath Keepers use the specter of antifa as a substitute for their former foe, the federal government. 2022 Anti-Defamation League. On May 30, John Shirley, a constable in Hood County and a member of the Oath Keepers board, issued a call to action, encouraging members toshow up armedwith rifles to provide security outside Luthers salon. 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. Members have provided security for events and individuals promoting Stop the Steal after the 2020 election, including Roger Stone. The group has attracted considerable media attention in 2020 for providing vigilante-style security for local communities and businesses during Black Lives Matter protests, for their aggressive rhetoric in the lead up to the 2020 election (including asserting that the Marxist left is trying to seize control of the United States which led Twitter to de-platform the group) and for participating in various anti-lockdown protests. This invasion/coup must be stopped, and with the ongoing failure of the RINO dominated Republicans to finance a wall, stopping it will now require full scale military action, which we strongly encourage President Trump to take under his authority as Commander In Chief. Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers Call to Action: Border Operation, on the Oath Keepers website, Dec. 4, 2018, 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). 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, John [Mc]Cain is a traitor to the Constitution. The Oath Keepers, founded in 2009 by Stewart Rhodes, is a loosely organized conspiracy theory-fueled group that recruits current and former military, police and first responders. Recent investigations have found direct ties between major police departments and the extremist right-wing militant group the Oath Keepers, which was a major player in the January 6 attack on the Capitol and regularly participates in violent intimidation of left-wing protesters.. American insurrectionist and Oath Keepers leader, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Polar bear kills woman, boy in remote Alaska village, Just hours before the Idaho murders, another grisly scene unfolded outside Bryan Kohberger's window, In Montecito, the Million-Dollar Views Still Come With Mudslide Risks, Channing Tatum says parenting with ex-wife Jenna Dewan made them realize they were so different, Hawaii fisherman overboard, missing after hooking large ahi, A failed GOP candidate accused of orchestrating shootings at Democratic officials' homes once called for 'civility' between the parties, Bobcat Insider: Montana State basketball teams had busy stretch ahead of rivalry games vs. Montana, Biden to visit California as severe storms fade. 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. 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