Ruthless J6 Prosecutions Confirm the Ones Afraid of Oath Keepers are Oath Breakers

“[T]here are others in power who know perfectly well what the implications of ‘10 orders we will not obey’ are, and that’s something they cannot allow to be considered,” this correspondent observed in a Thursday AmmoLand column. “That it could spread scares the hell out of them, no doubt because there are some orders in Oath Keepers’ list they retain the power to issue when it suits their purposes. So, any thought of disobeying them must be destroyed – along with anyone daring to spread the idea that the oath is to the Constitution, not to a regime and its unlawful orders.”

That was the second installment in what has turned out to be a three-part analysis of a renewed concerted effort by the government and its establishment media amplifiers to utterly destroy the organization and everyone who believes in the principles of a limited government of delegated powers established “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” (Part One documented how those with Oath Keeper ties are being relentlessly purged from public service.)

You can’t attain those blessings by making “consent of the governed” irrelevant, starting off by disarming a population of traditional Americans who remember Patrick Henry’s fierce admonishment to “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty.”

One way to keep a balking population in line is through the time-tested method of tyrants – cowing it into submission by making a highly publicized example of prominent members, which the J6 “uprising” at the Capitol more than provided. And no one was more high-profile in Oath Keepers than founder Stewart Rhodes, sentenced to 18 years in prison for “seditious conspiracy” and “obstruction of an official proceeding and tampering with documents and proceedings.”

Here’s what Rhodes didn’t do. He didn’t enter the Capitol. He didn’t bring firearms into Washington DC. That’s some “insurrection.”

Does anyone seriously believe that an experienced veteran (Rhodes was a former paratrooper), at the helm of a network of tens of thousands of active and retired military and police Oath Keeper members, would attempt to overthrow the government of the United States by deploying with an unaffiliated mob comprised of yet-unknown numbers of informants and provocateurs, all of which Rhodes was certainly cognizant of from previous experiences at Malheur and the like, all the while unarmed?

“January 6 protestors were not insurrectionists,” Rep. Thomas Massie tweeted (xed?) explaining why he “voted to table a censure resolution of Rep Tlaib in part because it was modeled after legislation that condemned J6 protestors.” To those who disagree with his position, just keep in mind that cheapening the definition of actual insurrection means those in power can exploit such charges more readily against political enemies.

January 6 protestors were not insurrectionists, nor were those led by Rep. Tlaib.

I voted to table a censure resolution of Rep Tlaib in part because it was modeled after legislation that condemned J6 protestors.

Also: Free speech means protecting even the speech you don’t like. pic.twitter.com/Bvgyt2k8gV

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) November 2, 2023

As to the reason many felt a passionate need to demonstrate, a significant percentage of Americans do not believe Joe Biden is the legitimately elected president of the United States.

But rather than openly and thoroughly exploring concerns about ballot fraud, voting machine reliability, election workers covering windows to exclude observers, “drop off” boxes, tossed ballots, “Russiagate,” the FBI suppressing Biden corruption evidence, social media collusion, and a myriad of serious allegations meriting impartial public investigations, instead questioners are confronted with gaslighting accusations of being “deniers” (often by the same people who denied Donald Trump’s win in 2016) and identical narrative “assurances” by the press that all such concerns are “baseless conspiracies,” with counterarguments ridiculed (or called “treasonous”) by the Democrats, suppressed by the media, and disallowed by social media.

In the absence of transparent investigations, people not inclined to believe Democrat agenda apparatchiks will not be inclined to drop their suspicions.

Add to that the aforementioned CIs and provocateurs egging the crowd on, Capitol Police waving people in, the doors being open with an angry crowd forming outside (has the mag lock question of their being controlled from the inside ever been answered?), and questions about National Guard deployment that would have kept protestors outside. Don’t expect citizens who aren’t doctrinaire Democrats to accept the trials and the sentences as anything other than what they appear to be: revenge-driven judicial excesses to intimidate those who would challenge election legitimacy.

They do nothing to turn down the heat with headlines from leading “progressive” publications like Salon declaring, “MAGA and Christian nationalism: Bigger threat to America than Hamas could ever be.” That comes right from the top, from Merrick Garland, along with the scarcely veiled smear job that such Americans (and even “moderate” Republicans) are de facto “white supremacists.”

Forget the border and the military-age men from points unknown, including lands hostile to the West, pouring in by the thousands. Forget the internecine war brewing in the Democrat party, with the old guard trying to keep its traditional substantial Jewish donors from bolting while the “River to the Sea” Gen Z university faction calls for their extermination. And these are the people who call anyone not on board with the Antifa/LGBTQ+ agenda Nazis.

What’s amazing to me is that Stewart Rhodes actually thought he might be called upon by Donald Trump to mobilize, if that’s what he did. With the way information is controlled, who knows what he thought? He’s savvy enough – or I thought he was – so that his entertaining such a belief seems ludicrous.  If any credible lines of communication or alliance between Trump’s people and Oath Keepers have ever been revealed, you’d think it would be headline news.

This is where I need to insert myself into the story because, as indicated in the previous parts of this report, I wrote Second Amendment articles of Oath Keepers for years.  I was friends with Stewart. He and others in Oath Keepers leadership have been guests in my home on multiple occasions.  And I would swear under an oath of my own that I have never heard him or any Oath Keeper that I’ve known ever engage in anything even remotely resembling sedition. The talk was always about fidelity to the Constitution and protecting unalienable rights from unlawful abridgments.

So let’s stipulate that I have my own biases that color my narrative because he and I had a falling out some years back that I haven’t talked about before, centered around a brief blog post responding to shocking allegations of bizarre abuse by Stewart’s wife in a restraining order petition.

“Just don’t lose sight that the key mission — to make first responders aware of the significance of their oath and their lawful duty to refuse to obey unlawful orders — is an honorable and necessary one that all Americans who value liberty should support regardless of who is promoting it,” I wrote. “I need to find out more before saying more. My prayers will be with the entire Rhodes family tonight.”

As an aside, not knowing what actually transpired to drive this family irreconcilably apart, it would be inappropriate to comment or to take sides except for one observation: Grievances against Stewart as a husband and father do not invalidate the principles upon which Oath Keepers is founded.  And its enemies joyfully exploiting the breakup of his family are trying to do just that. It’s understandable that his wife and children feel compelled to have their story told, and laudable that the son is protective of his mother. It’s also fair to caution about who they tell that story to and to understand that opening up to people who aren’t their friends and just want to use them will only advance “progressive” interests.

Stewart called me the next day, very upset with what I had posted. He felt that by doing so I had betrayed him and given credibility to the allegations.

I countered that those allegations were already all over the news, and his enemies were reveling in it and assigning guilt to all Oath Keeper members and supporters by association. I told him my intention was to remind everyone that the importance and rightness of the mission should not be allowed to be discredited because of accusations against any individual. I urged him to issue a public statement correcting the record if the allegations against him were false, and he replied he didn’t want to say anything that would attack his wife. He hung up, clearly unsatisfied, and after that, cut off all communications with me.

That was five years ago, and unable to do anything about it, I put it behind me and went on with my own work and my own agenda. And then, I read a book that helped me understand that my experience was a piece of a larger puzzle that explained it in light of a pattern of alienating supporters that Stewart, and the way he singularly demanded to control the organization he founded, was driving away.

Franklin Shook, writing under the pen name Elia Alias, became friends with Stewart before Oath Keepers came into being when the latter began posting on Alias’ The Mental Militia forum. He was there at the beginning of the group and became the editor for the Oath Keepers website, now only accessible via the Internet Archive.

Shook has penned a comprehensive recollection of his time at Oath Keepers and of the reasons he felt compelled to leave, including why Stewart’s management of the organization and treatment of people in it were the driving factors.

“I received a lot of phone calls from news agencies in the summer of 2001 after the People went to visit their Capitol on January 6. I decided to write a book that would not be subject to Internet deletion or MSM spin. It took me over a year, which explains my lengthy silence — I was immersed in it! Now it’s published, almost 600 pages on paper,” Elias explained in an email introduction to that book, Oath Keepers: Targeted Red. “Get ready for a new writing style that is a unique blend of fact and fiction, parapsychology and metaphysics, inspection of overt totalitarianism and clandestine mind control. Enjoy the storyline as the book takes readers into the mysterious realms of 21st Century Schizoid Statecraft and the targeting of Oath Keepers as the new domestic enemy.”

The fact part of the book is what interested me because it not only corroborated my own experiences but exposed human flaws with the same motivation I had: Not to tear Stewart down or to kick a man when he’s down, but to give a truthful account of what happened, to above all honor the principles of Constitutional fidelity that are the soul of Oath Keepers, and to acknowledge his genius in codifying the one thing tyrants fear above all else: That their enforcers could come to understand the rightness of freedom and wake up to their duty and power to say “No” to unlawful orders.

Any truthful book review — since some of you may buy a copy after learning of it — should also include what didn’t work for the reviewer. Elias is a man of integrity and would want me to share my honest impressions, so let’s start with that.

The “blend of fact and fiction” he referred to is an acknowledgment that the story takes place within a scenario where a fictional East Coast journalist has been sent on assignment to interview Alias and get the truth about Oath Keepers. With a ubiquitous narrative out there for the media to parrot, I couldn’t name one national news organization that would expend resources to do this or would care to honestly report on Oath Keepers’ “side.”  I also don’t buy that a “liberal female journalist” would be receptive to the truth and end up being persuaded that the Oath Keepers cause is one to convert to. That to me is the real example of fiction.

I also don’t grok his constant dope smoking, but that’s just me. To each his own. Also, as mentioned, the book is long and takes a while to get through. The guy loves to write.

None of these subjective criticisms (some of you may dig what I did not) overshadow the value of this book, through the insights that it offers and the way it deconstructs the overwhelming misinformation and media bias presented with the goal of discrediting patriots by smearing them as a terrorist militia (which Oath Keepers is not and never has been). In particular, he does a great job taking apart academic Sam Jackson’s Oath Keepers – Patriotism and the Edge of Violence in a Right-wing Antigovernment Group and pointing out its many false assumptions and conclusions. (That in turn, along with SPLC propaganda, is used by groups like Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown to ridicule “conspiracy theories” that the government wants to take our guns, or that the Second Amendment is a safeguard against tyranny. They do and it is.)

So I recommend Oath Keepers: Targeted Red as a valuable resource for anyone wanting honest information about what Oath Keepers stood for and what internal pressures and human factors led to where we are today You can order it from Amazon as a Kindle file or a paperback, or per Alias (I still can’t get used to calling him “Shook”):

“For those who prefer to buy with checks or money orders through the mail, be sure to include your snail mail address and the name to whom you wish to have me autograph the book. Make $25.00 payable to “The Mental Militia, LLC” and mail to: The Mental Militia, LLC, P.O. Box 916, Eureka, Montana, 59917.”

The other thing to do, for those so inclined, is to pray for Stewart Rhodes and also for his family. Perhaps if the Republicans don’t blow the ‘24 elections and manage to retake the White House, they can be pressured to conduct real hearings and to look at reevaluating the draconian civil rights denials and politically weaponized sentencing that Rhodes and so many of the J6 defendants have been subjected to by a regime bent on destroying all who oppose its edging toward tyranny.

About David Codrea:

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.