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LNP/Lancaster Online: Who are the Oath Keepers?

  • January 10, 2022

By Carter Walker, January 9, 2022

 

The Oath Keepers are a right-wing group founded in 2009 by Stewart Rhodes, a U.S. Army veteran from Montana. The name stems from the oath all U.S. armed service members take to defend the U.S. Constitution from “all enemies, foreign and domestic,” according to the nonprofit Center for Strategic and International Studies.

A membership list obtained and published in September by Distributed Denial of Secrets — a nonprofit that describes itself as a transparency collective and has published a variety of leaked or hacked material it believes is too important to remain secret — shows at least 38,000 people nationally have made donations or membership payments at some point over the years, including 1,500 in Pennsylvania and 65 in Lancaster County, although the Anti-Defamation League pegs actual national membership at between 1,000 and 3,000.

The group’s “declaration of orders we will not obey” shows its members view themselves in the same light as the patriots of the American Revolution and are ready to disobey or push back against a tyrannical government if they believe its actions violate the Constitution.

The Anti-Defamation League describes the group as a militia, and although Rhodes has avoided that phrase, he has in the past advocated the group form armed “citizen-protection” teams and said the Oath Keepers were ready to act as a militia if called upon to do so by former President Donald Trump following the 2020 election.

In a letter posted on the Oath Keepers website on Election Day 2020, Rhodes also told members to stock up on ammo and be prepared for “full-on war in the streets,” and in another letter posted the next month said Trump must use the Insurrection Act to “stop the steal” or else “the people will have to fight a bloody civil war and revolution.”

Rhodes, along with several Oath Keepers, traveled to Washington, D.C., on January 6 when Congress was set to certify Joe Biden’s victory. The U.S. Department of Justice has alleged that the Oath Keepers formed “Quick Response Forces” for the day, with weapons cached in nearby hotels.

More than 20 Oath Keepers have been arrested for their role in the January 6 Capitol riots.