Summary: The Right wing of America is active on all fronts: shutting down abortion, disenfranchising voters, and holding America’s credit rating hostage. Now we add to that list something small, but disturbing and with the potential to grow explosively: the Oath Keepers, one of the many militia-like groups, are “going operational”. This is a follow-up to About the Oath Keepers: boon or bane for the Republic?

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Contents

The Oath Keepers go “operational” Who are the Oath Keepers? History is a tale of reoccurrence: about the Freikorps Articles about the Oath Keepers For More Information

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(1) The Oath Keepers go “operational”

This cannot be good news: “Oath Keepers to Form ‘Civilization Preservation’ Teams in Anticipation of Societal Collapse“, Ryan Lenz, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), 2 October 2013.

Think of this as COIN brought home, as blowback from our wars. It is an old story, but one that seldom ends well: methods that we use on foreigners return with the veterans, who then lead in applying them at home. If this catches on, it probably will not end well for America. Future historians will see this as a logical evolution following the militarization of the police, alienation of conservatives from American society, and the transformation of law enforcement agencies into security services.

The SPLC is looking at this “Oath Keepers is Going ‘Operational’ by Forming Special ‘Civilization Preservation’ Teams” posted at the Oath Keepers website, 1 October 2013 — Bold emphasis in the original. Excerpt:

Oath Keepers is instructing its 30,000 members nation-wide to form up special teams and sub-teams in each Oath Keepers chapter, at the town and county level, modeled loosely on the Special Forces “A Team” (Operational Detachment A ) model, and for a similar purpose: community security and support during crisis,

to be both a potential operational unit for community security and support during crisis, but also,

as mission #1, to serve as training and leadership cadre, to assist in organizing neighborhood watches, organizing veterans halls to provide community civil defense, forming County Sheriff Posses, strengthening existing CERT, volunteer fire, search-and-rescue, reserve deputy systems, etc., and eventually

to assist in forming and training town and county militias (established by official act of town and county elected representatives). We want our chapters to organize themselves as a working model that we can then take to other veterans organizations, such as the VFW, American Legion, Marine Corps League, etc. in each town and help them establish such teams within their already existing veterans halls. And likewise, to serve as a model and training cadre to help churches, neighborhood watches, and any other civic organization organize. We are basing this on the Special Forces model, which has a twelve man “A team” of specially trained soldiers who are inserted into a community to train and lead that community in resistance to oppressive regimes (hence their motto: “De Oppresso Liber“). SF’s primary mission is to teach, organize, and lead, rather than to directly fight. They can fight, of course, but they are most dangerous as a force-multiplier by helping an entire community to fight. We will do the same – be force multipliers to help prepare communities so they can preserve civilization by providing their own security, disaster relief, infrastructure preservation, emergency communications, strategic food reserve, and medical care.

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Oath Keepers is using that successful model and adapting it to our mission, to form Oath Keepers “Civilization Preservation Teams” (we have already received critical input from some of our Special Forces members, and are actively seeking more input from others within the Special Forces community). … Like SF, all Oath Keepers will be expected to learn light infantry skills. They will all be encouraged to attend an Appleseed Rifle Program and shoot to “Rifleman” standards. Just as the Marines say that every Marine is a Rifleman (even the cooks) so will every Oath Keeper be a rifleman. After learning solid rifle marksmanship, they will learn individual movement and tactics, then buddy team, fire-team, and squad movement and tactics (shoot, move, communicate). All of you infantry veterans need to step up and teach these skills to everyone else. So, it is not just the Scouts who will learn those skills – everyone on a field team will learn them, and even the support team members should at least train in the basics so they can defend themselves. All will learn land navigation, basic wilderness survival, basic first aid and combat lifesaver skills, and basic patrolling and small unit tactics. … WHY WE ARE DOING THIS: In addition to this being part of our mission anyway, we feel like we are flat running out of time and we need to get as prepared as possible as fast as possible. The Oath Keepers national Board of Directors war-gamed what we think is the most likely move by our enemies to scrap the Constitution. On the BOD at the time were a Special Forces Major, an Army Ranger, and a Marine Scout-sniper veteran, as well as a retired Navy Commander and several Vietnam combat vets, and several other combat arms veterans. Playing devil’s advocate, and putting themselves in the enemy’s shoes, we estimated that the most effective course for “them” to follow would be to: 1. Intentionally trigger a catastrophic economic collapse as an economic “neutron bomb” … The US government is spending billions of dollars on ammunition, armored vehicles, and weapons for DHS and local police. It is spending nothing on food for the people. They are preparing to control and contain us, and to shoot us, but not preparing to feed us. Why is that? You know the answer. 2. Let the country descend into chaos. … 3. Ride in like the cavalry, to “save” us by means of martial law and scrapping our constitution once-and-for all. … ADDITIONAL ANALYSIS: To the above, we now add Brandon Smith’s insight that with a war in Syria, the elites can trigger an economic collapse with a war – with Russia and China using economics as a weapon in retaliation. All China would have to do is dump US treasuries and refuse to trade with US dollars. That would begin the final death-spiral of the dollar. It is because of the systemic weakness of the American people, and our strategic checkmate position of having no strategic food storage and no effective local security, that we feel the need to take Oath Keepers operational and put our focus on each chapter being a training cadre to get their communities as prepared and organized as possible in whatever time we have left. We urge you to presume the worst in the short term, and to work in three or four month sprints – assume that a collapse will be triggered this fall/winter and do all you can to get yourselves and your communities ready. If it doesn’t happen in the next four months, then do another sprint, of three or four more months of preparation. And keep going until it happens – which it will eventually, no matter what anyone does. The dollar is doomed.

Some of this is accurate and reasonable. Some of this is wrong. Some of this is mad, extreme even for the right-wing extremists (e.g., birthers, gold bugs, believers in ObamaCare death panels, and Obama’s apology tour).

This kind of thinking results from the closed circle of the right-wing information cycle. Slowly these people’s world view has disconnected from reality, and all the sources that could keep them tethered are dismissed as false (of the enemy). Slowly they’ve drifted into madness.

Liberals laugh. They might not laugh for long. This could spread fast and wide under some circumstances, such as a downturn in the economy or another large terrorist attack. We do not need Nostradamus to see how this could go bad, despite their good intentions.

(2) Who are the Oath Keepers?

They were incorporated in March 2009 by Stewart Rhodes as a non-profit corporation. From their website:

Oath Keepers is a non-partisan association of currently serving military, reserves, National Guard, veterans, Peace Officers, and Fire Fighters who will fulfill the Oath we swore, with the support of like minded citizens who take an Oath to stand with us, to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help us God. Our Oath is to the Constitution. Our motto is “Not on our watch!”

Read the complete description here.

(3) History is a tale of reoccurrence: about the Freikorps

The history of the militia in Anglo-American history mirrors that of the Freikorps in Germany. The Freikorps (Free Corps) were lightly trained men recruited by the Prussian government during the Seven Years War and the Napoleonic Wars. Britannica explains the better known meaning:

Freikorps: Any of several private paramilitary groups that first appeared in December 1918 in the wake of Germany’s defeat in World War I. Composed of ex-soldiers, unemployed youth, and other discontents and led by ex-officers and other former military personnel, they proliferated all over Germany in the spring and summer of 1919 … Most were nationalistic and radically conservative and were employed unofficially but effectively to put down left-wing revolts and uprisings … Their members were involved in several political assassinations, of which the most dramatic was the 1922 murder of Walther Rathenau, the country’s foreign minister. At first sanctioned, or even supported, by such figures as Defense Minister Gustav Noske and General Paul von Hindenburg, the Freikorps finally came to be viewed as a nuisance and a threat, and their activities were eventually supplanted by regular army and police work or assumed by the new units of the Nazis and other political parties. Ernst Röhm, a Freikorps commander, later became head of the Nazi SA, or Brownshirts.

(4) For more information about the Oath Keepers

Background information:

Other articles about the Oath Keepers

Articles by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Given the history of American para-military organizations oppressing Blacks, their concern is understandable.

(5) For More Information

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