MilitiaWatchThe Oath Keepers are a far-right national militia organization formed in 2009 in reaction to Barack Obama’s 2008 electoral victory. The group arose from the broader far-right reaction to the United States’ first Black president that also drove the rise of the Tea Party and a resurgence of the contemporary militia movement. The group’s members are also well-steeped in the prepper community and many members thereby also hold extremely conspiratorial worldviews. Since 2009, the group has been highly active in paramilitary operations, bomb threats, and more.
Below, you will find all MilitiaWatch articles mentioning the movement.
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.
Hello, MilitiaWatch readers! Here you’ll find the monthly update for January 2023, the first of a new year for militia activity. This one’s another brief update, with some legal updates and a few key moments of mobilization that are worth knowing about.
Last month’s update, December 22, is available for your reading pleasure here and all other updates can be found 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.
After a break in weekly updates, MilitiaWatch returns in 2022 with a monthly format instead. If you’d prefer to listen to a version of the information contained below, you may also want to check out the MilitiaWatchMonthly podcast here. All MW updates (monthlies now and weeklies before) can be accessed via this link.
This guide is intended to be a resource for community organizers and members of communities expecting to have far-right militia groups and their ilk entering their area in the near future. It is not a comprehensive guide but should provide a basic outline for identifying actors, deducing the politics of rallygoers, and assessing risk when coming up against these actors. A one-page black-and-white printable flyer is available for download for the 18 September 2021 DC rally here.
One-page flyers containing some of these images are available for download ahead of the DC rally here: Color | B&W
Note: This page was put live incomplete in order to make sure the information is out there ahead of time. Please refresh to read the most up-to-date copy.
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.
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:
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: