oath keepers massachusetts

Springdale, Washington, December 2015: Schuyler Barbeau, who was filmed in at least one video while wearing Oath Keeper attire and shared several posts in favor of Oath Keeper Charles Dyer (see below), was arrested after he tried to sell a short-barreled rifle he had converted into an illegal machine gun to an individual secretly working with law enforcement. The main crux of the groups messaging asserts that the government is engaged in attacks against its own citizens, working to strip them of their civil liberties. Oath Keeper member and tattoo shop owner Roberto Minuta requested the groups presence for the reopening of his business. They even ventured into QAnon territory, adopting and circulating QAnon-related conspiracies on their website. 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. The group is rooted in conspiracy theories, including the belief that the federal. With help from Infowars host Alex Jones, the group increasingly promoted far-right conspiracies as the 2020 election approached. But they chose Massachusetts as the site for the group's formal launch in 2009. The Nevada-basednonprofitwas founded by Yale Law School graduate and former U.S. Army paratrooperElmerStewart Rhodes. Oath Keepers across the country have engaged in a wide array of activities, some of which have gotten considerable media attention. Men sporting gear identifying them as Oath Keepers are among the massive crowds gathering in Washington, DC, on Jan. 6, 2021. The Oath Keepers are a large but loosely organized collection of right-wing anti-government extremists who are part of the. This includes attendance at racially charged events, with NBC News reporting a number of armed Oath Keepers turned up at the 2015 protests in Ferguson, Missouri. Throughout 2020, the group has also posted several calls to action in places like Washington D.C., New Orleans and Texas, looking for volunteers to protect monuments across the United States, arguing that these measures were needed to protect the monuments from Marxist domestic enemies who were seeking to destroy American history. Such behavior was in line with the Oath Keepers efforts to focus on opposing state governments rather than the Trump administration. Barbeau pleaded guilty to possessing a machine gun and was sentenced to 27 months in prison in September 2017. 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. The pledge, which refers to the honorable vow of service given by those in uniform, reminds Oath Keepers that they swore an oath to defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. By taking this pledge, Oath Keepers vow that they will refuse to cooperate with the tyrannical government by making a declaration that there are certain orders from superiors that they will refuse to obey. Oath Keepers have advertised various anti-lockdown events and calls to action, for example protesting outside of a Dallas-based judges home to demand the immediate release of a business owner who had defied lockdown orders. 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 . WASHINGTON - A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia has returned an indictment, which was unsealed today, charging a member of the Oath Keepers with conspiracy and other charges for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. In 2015, an Oregon chapter of the Oath Keepers acted in support of Rick Barclay and George Backes, two Oregon gold miners whose operations the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) alleged were in violation of government regulations. For a dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist who had been planning for dystopian collapse for . 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. 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. Rhodes insists the government wants to track gun owners like it does sex offenders and uses mass shooting incidents as an excuse to violate Second Amendment rights. 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. 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. Rhodes "saw this titanic struggle between people like him who wanted individual liberty and the government that would try to take away that liberty," Matt Parry, who clerked alongside Rhodes, toldAP. The Oath Keepers did denounce the Malheur occupation because, asRhodes wrote, It is not being done with the consent of the locals or at their request, without the request of the Hammond family and because it is not in direct defense of anyone.. Membership has never actually required current or former ties with military, police, or first responders. t. e. Social conservatism in the United States is a political ideology focused on the preservation of traditional values and beliefs. 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. 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. However, the outlet also noted that the tactics of the Oath Keepers were constantly shifting in an effort to evade law enforcement. The Oath Keepers' founder, a former Army paratrooper and Yale Law School graduate named Stewart Rhodes, invited Dwyer to speak at the group's kickoff rally they called it a "muster" in Lexington, Massachusetts, the site of the "shot heard round the world" that started the Revolutionary War in 1775. The ADL has summarized the Oath Keepers' main points, noting the group mainly adheres to a general anti-government plan. 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. The name Oath Keepers comes from the groups core principle that members vow to uphold the oath they took as law enforcement or military personnel to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The Oath Keepers urge members to obey the Constitution, as they understand it, even if that interpretation goes against that of U.S. lawmakers and judges. In cases of an Alford plea, a defendant does not admit guilt, but acknowledges that prosecutors have enough evidence for a conviction. Its better to wage it with you as Commander-in-Chief than to have you comply with a fraudulent election, leave office, and leave the White House in the hands of illegitimate usurpers and Chinese puppets. Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site. Eventually, 10 Oath Keepers, including Rhodes, were indicted on seditious conspiracy charges. 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. We Oath Keepers are both honor-bound and eager to be there in strength to do our part. Stewart Rhodes, posted on the Oath Keepers website, Jan. 4, 2021, You must act NOW as a wartime President, pursuant to your oath to defend the Constitution, which is very similar to the oath all of us veterans swore. The Oath Keepers are an anti-government, right-wing political organization committed to supporting and defending their interpretation of the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. 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. They would eventually form "community preparedness teams" to monitor anti-government sentiments across the country. When questioned, Phillips allegedly told the officer that he was exempt from having to register or insure his vehicle. This includes conspiracy theories involving the confiscation of Americans' guns and rounding people up into concentration camps. This activity mirrors the Oath Keepers behavior in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, when a small of group of armed local Oath Keepers, led by Sam Andrews, took to the streets during the unrest following a grand jurys decision not to charge a former police officer for the shooting death of a Black teenager, Michael Brown, Jr. He formally launched the Oath Keepers in Lexington, Massachusetts, on April 19, 2009, where the first shot in the American Revolution was fired. 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. The Oath Keepers fled, leaving Bundys other supporters to mock them as cowards and delusional paranoids. This includes disobeying any law that would "disarm the American people," any efforts to impose martial law, any orders to invade a state that "asserts its sovereignty," any efforts to confiscate property from Americans, and more. They also routinely offer protection to individuals, including to Ann Coulter at a UC Berkeley Free Speech event in 2017. 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. Im going to use my training and become one of those domestic terrorists that youre so afraid of from the DHS reports. He still has many supporters within the Patriot movement. 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. "Back in 2014, they appeared to be a pretty solid conservative group, I can't speak to them now," he said. Since then, the Oath. In 2013, four years after its formation, the Oath Keepers announced the planned formation of Citizen Preservation Teams, which now are called the more sanitized name ofCommunity Preparedness Teams(CPTs). Their first major showdown with the government occurred in 2011 in the town ofQuartzsite, Arizona. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as unlawful enemy combatants or to subject them to military tribunal. Their overt opposition to President Trump made them a target for anti-government extremists, and Oath Keepers were quick to label antifa the modern day Brown Shirts. They have repeatedly called on President Trump to put an end to the terrorist insurrection of antifa, particularly in response to their alleged involvement in the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, and they have offered protection to various individuals who have been doxed by supposed antifa supporters, including ICE officials and their families. Members of the Oath Keepers have been arrested in connection with a wide range of criminal activities, including various firearms violations, conspiracy to impede federal workers, possession of explosives, and threatening public officials. This eventually led to a number of Oath Keepers, including Rhodes, allegedly participating in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And Im worried about the safety of the people up there. The Oath Keepers, which claims tens of thousands of present and former law enforcement officials and military veterans as members, is one of the largest far-right antigovernment groups in the U.S. today. While criticizing the occupation, the Oath Keepers did take part in a coalition of militias in the Pacific Northwest called the Pacific Patriots Network, which served as a buffer between the occupiers and government forces. Oath Keepers also claims that the reason Democratic leaders support gun-control legislation is to allow for easy gun confiscation and make the American people both dependent and vulnerable to a takeover. After failing to appear for his trial, Dyer fled Oklahoma as a fugitive, leading police on a multi-state chase that ended with his capture in Houston, Texas. 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. When executing a search warrant, law enforcement officers discovered a live napalm bomb and dozens of other explosives in a storage locker; he eventually was indicted on 97 different charges, including 18 counts of unlawful possession of dangerous ordnance, 23 counts of receiving stolen property, 23 counts of possession of criminal tools, 10 counts of failure to secure dangerous ordnance, one count of perjury, and 21 counts of pandering obscenity involving child pornography. As Rhodes tweeted in early March 2020, Its critical that towns and counties do all they can with their own resources now to prepare. The main message of these events is the false notion that Muslims are attempting to replace the American legal system with Sharia law. However, those who knew him said he soon started using his time at the court to express his disillusioned views and complain of government overreach,The Associated Presswrites in its history of the group. The group's name refers to the oath to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic," sworn by members of the U.S. military and police force. We are already in a fight. Prior to his arrest, Kokesh claimed to be an Oath Keeper and promoted the Oath Keepers through his radio talk show, Adam vs. the Man.. As a result, Rhodes argued, the Oath Keepers could not be found guilty because they were simply following their president's orders. For example, following a July 2015 attack on two separate Tennessee military facilities by Mohammad Abdulazeez, the Oath Keepers launched Operation Protect the Protectors. During this shortlived call for action, members of the Oath Keepers (as well as some others) armed themselves and stood guard outside various military recruitment centers around the nation under the pretense of guarding unarmed military recruiters. Seven of the defendants were visible wearing combat gear and participating in a tactical stack as they moved through the crowd towards the Capitol. Examples of these orders include the government imposing martial law, confiscating citizens guns and forcing Americans into concentration camps. Though Twitter has not stated which specific posts they determined violated their policy, in the weeks leading up to their ban, the Oath Keepers Twitter account declared in the wake of the murder of Patriot Prayer member Aaron Danielson that there is a Marxist rebellion against the United States, with the oft stated intent to overthrow its government under the Constitution. The account urged President Trump to declare that there is an ongoing Marxist insurrection led by antifa and Black Lives Matter and to respond by calling the militia into federal service to suppress the rebellion.. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a state of emergency on a state. 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. Two elected officials in Wilbraham and Cape Cod are listed as being members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right extremist group. Rhodes formally launched the. However, as the pandemic progressed, Oath Keepers changed their narrative, shifting from concern about the government failing to contain the virus to fearing government involvement altogether. A few days later, he was arrested after police found a shotgun and illegal drugs in his Virginia home. 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.. Oath Keepers responded and were stationed in Granbury, Texas, outside Lift the Bar gym, supposedly to protect the owner from arrest for violating COVID-19 orders. He had a duty and responsibility to step up. 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. Oath Keepers showed up atBlack Lives Matter protestsduring protests in summer 2020 following the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man. But it remains to be seen what the effects will be of putting Rhodes behind bars. 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.. Founder Stewart Rhodes is a former Montana attorney and Army veteran who acts as the groups main spokesperson. WASHINGTON The founder of a right-wing group whose members have been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol spent about six . 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. In March 2011,David Phillips, a Massachusetts Oath Keeper, was arrested on firearm charges. Rather than the Trump administration training and become one of those domestic terrorists youre! 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