MilitiaWatch
Seasons greetings, reader of MilitiaWatch! Here’s yet another MW Monthly, this time covering November 2023. Here are some hors d’oeuvres about what is covered here:
The previous MW Monthly (October 2023) can be read here:
Hey y’all and happy July. Here’s the MilitiaWatch Monthly for June 2023, featuring some such stories as:
Last month’s MW Monthly (May) can be read here:
Another month, another MW Monthly. Here’s some news from May 2023 (the past month). If you’d like to read about April 2023, that post is available here.
Some things this month include some major Oath Keepers sentencings, a VT paramilitary site organizer refusing to comply with state orders, and a transphobic prankster joining a militia patrol of the US-Mexico border.
Greetings, MilitiaWatch readers! Here’s a review of militia activity in March of 2023. Apologies for the delay in publication. Last month’s update (February 2023) is available here. This month’s updates include more Oath Keepers convictions, Kenosha militia appointments, more updates in the Southwest, a late update on a militia leader running for mayor, and some discourse on a county militia in Virginia.
Hello, MilitiaWatch readers! Here’s the monthly update for February 2023. This one’s another brief update, with the first sections covering Boog, Borders, and Bundy. Read on for more!
Last month’s update covering January 2023 is available here.
After another hiatus (as is our pattern), we’re back with a MilitiaWatch Monthly–but dropping the podcast. Here are the broad strokes of November 2022. Read our last monthly (from March) here.
Also, feel free to follow us on Mastodon, where we share news excerpts in longer form than Twitter allows! We can be found here.
This post is a follow-up from a previous MilitiaWatch exploration of the Yavapai County Preparedness Team, a dissident Arizona Oath Keepers chapter. The previous piece is available here:
As mentioned in the above piece, MilitiaWatch collected and transcribed the meetings of dozens of YCPT gatherings in the Prescott area. Most of the speaking is done by the YCPT’s founder and leader, Jim Arroyo. This post is meant to show the group leader’s public discussion of the founder and national leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes.
Almost the end of July, the sixth month since the Capitol storming. This week, some updates on:
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: