A Pro-Trump Militant Group Has Recruited Thousands of Police, Soldiers, and Veterans

[PSPS]

A Pro-Trump Militant Group Has Recruited Thousands of Police, Soldiers, and Veterans

Mike Giglio - November 2020 Issue of The Atlantic

Stewart Rhodes was living his vision of the future. On television, American cities were burning, while on the internet, rumors warned that antifa bands were coming to terrorize the suburbs. Rhodes was driving around South Texas, getting ready for them. He answered his phone. “Let’s not fuck around,” he said. “We’ve descended into civil war.”

It was a Friday evening in June. Rhodes, 55, is a stocky man with a gray buzz cut, a wardrobe of tactical-casual attire, and a black eye patch. With him in his pickup were a pistol and a dusty black hat with the gold logo of the Oath Keepers, a militant group that has drawn in thousands of people from the military and law-enforcement communities.

Rhodes had been talking about civil war since he founded the Oath Keepers, in 2009. But now more people were listening. And whereas Rhodes had once cast himself as a revolutionary in waiting, he now saw his role as defending the president. He had put out a call for his followers to protect the country against what he was calling an “insurrection.” The unrest, he told me, was the latest attempt to undermine Donald Trump.

Over the summer, Rhodes’s warnings of conflict only grew louder. In August, when a teenager was charged with shooting and killing two people at protests over police brutality in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Rhodes called him “a Hero, a Patriot” on Twitter. And when a Trump supporter was killed later that week in Portland, Oregon, Rhodes declared that there was no going back. “Civil war is here, right now,” he wrote, before being banned from the platform for inciting violence.

The rest: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/right-wing-militias-civil-war/616473/

[ClusterFreak]

1. This is chilling stuff. I only hope Mr. Giglio is overstating things. n/t

[Midnight Writer]

2. "Founded the oath Keepers in 2009". Wonder what happened in 2009 to set him off?

These Oath Keepers are all around here. The guy next door has an Oath Keeper sticker on his windshield, and there are two others in the next block over. I hired a fellow to trim my tree a couple years ago, and he had an Oath Keepers sticker on his truck.

[SWBTATTReg]

3. Coming out of their Mommy and Daddy's basement, these thugs might as well turn around...

and go back down into their basements. They're way overreacting, just like reports seemingly saying that Portland had riots all over, it was only six blocks or so. The people in the cities can take care of themselves. What we don't need, is thugs like this coming to cause violence and damage to businesses like some of them got caught doing (and then attempting to blame the mostly peaceful protesters).

[redstatebluegirl]

4. They will head for the hills when the military come

Calling. These are toy soldiers and putting them down will be easier than you think.

[dware]

6. And I served in the U.S. Marines for 30+ years as a combat engineer,

and the military will not facture, matter of fact, the military will stay out of any unrest, civilian LEA's are quite capable of taking down these traitors, as they will find out very quickly if they try to start some shit.