MilitiaWatch
Almost the end of July, the sixth month since the Capitol storming. This week, some updates on:
Another Monday, another MilitiaWatch weekly. This week, we feature some of the following news events:
Happy July, y’all. Here’s a two-week update after MilitiaWatch took last Monday off. There’s a lot to cover here, but here are some included:
Unicorn Riot just hosted a leak from the III% Security Force’s Discord server, which is available to researchers here. Alongside the leak, they put out a very detailed analysis and context article that is well worth the read, too. The leaked messages cover January through April of 2021, totaling 8,358 messages.
This MilitiaWatch article, therefore, is intended to be a short companion piece to a Unicorn Riot leak and article. The group’s Discord served as a brief but important tool for the group after waves of bans and deplatforms spanning Facebook, Zello, YouTube, and more. This MilitiaWatch article serves to provide some background context but will briefly engage with the leaks further below.
After the storming of the US Capitol Building on 6 January 2021, media has been trying to figure out who the Oath Keepers are. 60 Minutes, 3 months after the riot, interviewed 4 members of a group calling themselves the “Arizona Oath Keepers”. In mid-June 2021, 60 Minutes re-aired the segment, providing the group more airtime. These Oath Keepers were four members of a Prescott, Arizona area organization known as the Yavapai County Preparedness Team.
Who are the Yavapai County Preparedness Team (YCPT)? The YCPT is an Arizona Oath Keepers chapter, previously directly part of the Stewart Rhodes-led national organization but now autonomous and independent. They still, however, call themselves Oath Keepers and use Oath Keepers iconography and ideology to describe themselves. This article explores their structure, their relationships to the right, and where it looks like they are heading.
This is a very long article, so MilitiaWatch has prepared a first “TL;DR” (too long; didn’t read) that hits at some of the core points from this investigation without the goose chases and too-in-the-weeds writing the MW audience might be accustomed to at this point. You can read that here:
Another short weekly update, covering some of the following:
This week, a brief update covering some of the following:
This week, an update featuring some of the following:
Happy June! Here’s another week’s update on what militias and the associated far-right has been up to, including: