This is not surprising...
Anti-Defamation League
The Oath Keepers have long claimed to have members of the U.S. military among their ranks, and until recently advertised on their website that they had members in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and others. Despite these claims, it has been difficult to determine the extent of Oath Keeper participation in the military.
However, the recent hack provides some insight into this question. A review of the recently released membership rolls found 133 individuals who allegedly provided e-mail addresses with the suffix “.mil”, including individuals in the Army (evidenced by an “us.army.mil” email), Navy (us.navy.mil), Marines (usmc.mil) and Coast Guard (uscg.mil). A few went further and made comments on the membership rolls expressing support for the Oath Keepers and their willingness to further the group’s “cause”:
- “I took an oath in 1987 to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We now have a gov’t full of domestic enemies and our Constitution and republic are under attack.”
- “I would like to help with outreach. I’m a trainer for the MSNG [Mississippi National Guard]. I’m AGR [Active Guard Reserve] for the state of Mississippi and work with 56 soldiers that need this Info [sic]. Thank You.”
- “If the time comes I will execute my duty as a III percenter and OathKeeper.”
- “I’m currently deployed to the middle east as an air traffic controller and hopefully I will be home soon to defend the Homefront.”
- “I’m surrounded by well meaning Soldiers [sic] who are totally ignorant of the Oath, the Constitution, and the concept of natural liberty. Intuition and training guide them generally well, but they lack the education to recognize and resist unlawful orders.”
It’s… societal
Anti-Defamation League
ADL has consistently expressed concern about the issue of right-wing extremists in the military for many years. In July 2009, ADL wrote to then-Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates specifically to urge the Secretary “to take appropriate measures to deal with the problem of extremists within the ranks of our armed forces.” Over the previous three years, ADL had reported 72 suspected white supremacists to the various branches, including thirty-eight in the Army, two in the Army National Guard, four in the Navy, nineteen in the Marine Corps, two in the Air Force, and one in the Coast Guard, as well as six with an indeterminate service branch. ADL advocated “a renewed emphasis and increased attention to this issue.” More recently, in February 2020, an ADL expert testified before a Congressional subcommittee on the dangers of extremists in the military.
Put simply: Extremists exist in the U.S. military because extremists are present in American society. The military is a broad enough institution to reflect American society in many respects. Some people have postulated that most extremists who join or attempt to join the military do so as “infiltrators” attempting to obtain skills or training they can bring back to their movement. However, ADL observation of extremists on social media suggests most actually joined the military for the same varied reasons non-extremists join. Regardless of their motive(s) for joining, once in the military, extremists regularly cause problems. And when right-wing extremism experiences surges in American society, those surges are also reflected in the military and evinced by increased problems.
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Though the military has consistently experienced problems stemming from right-wing extremism for decades, and even though the armed services have no sympathies for such extremists, the military has not implemented systematic reforms designed to deal with this problem on a long-term, ongoing basis.
We’ve seen it manifest...
Buzzfeed
In the days after the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, the Oath Keepers gained notoriety almost overnight as a symbol of right-wing extremism in America.
Images of members in battle armor pushing their way into the Capitol went viral, clips of the group’s leader challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election surfaced, and within weeks FBI agents began arresting members of the Oath Keepers as part of the largest and arguably most important conspiracy case to come out of the insurgency.
Some active police officers and members of the US military apparently liked what they saw. In some cases ignoring strict policies prohibiting their membership in such groups, many reached out to the organization seeking information, according to leaked emails from the group.
We know it’s cause...
USA Today
The Oath Keepers trade in conspiracy theories and wild interpretations of the U.S. Constitution. Its members have been involved in armed standoffs with the federal government. Some face charges in connection with their role in the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
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Founded after the presidential election of Barack Obama in 2009 by Yale Law School graduate Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers refuse to acknowledge the authority of the federal government. Members issue a conspiracy-laden declaration of orders they will refuse to enforce, including disarming the American people.
Rhodes has long claimed that the group, which experts said is the largest unauthorized militia in the country, is made up primarily of active and retired law enforcement officers and military personnel.
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More concerning is the fact that the Oath Keepers make their members swear an oath of allegiance, much like the police and military, (Daryl Johnson, a security consultant and former senior analyst for domestic terrorism at the Department of Homeland Security) said. That creates a dangerous conflict of interest.
Authorities are aware...
Reuters
The U.S. military on Wednesday (2/3/21) acknowledged it was unsure about how to address white nationalism and other extremism in its ranks, and announced plans for military-wide stand-downs pausing regular activity at some point in the next 60 days to tackle the issue.
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Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Austin ordered the stand-down after a meeting with the U.S. military branch leaders, who are under pressure to show progress in combating extremism after current and former military servicemembers were found to have participated in the siege of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
The Pentagon has yet to define how it will deal with extremism or offer data estimating how many service members hold white nationalist ideology. It has also not disclosed how many troops have been disciplined for extremism.
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The Pentagon did not define whether stand-downs pausing regular activity across the U.S. military might last minutes or hours, or what commanders would do during that time to express opposition to extremism.
There are solutions…
Military Times
The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and the subsequent revelations that many veterans were involved, pushed the Defense Department to start addressing the issue of extremism in the ranks from the top down.
In addition to holding an extremism stand-down and tasking a working group to look at the issue, DoD also funded a Rand Corp. effort to create a framework for preventing, detecting and addressing extremism views among troops.
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To counter that behavior among service members, and by extension veterans, the paper suggests four focus areas: recognizing the scope of the problem, preventing future views/activities, detecting and intervening and measuring trends to evaluate whether interventions are working.
Though the paper recognizes DoD’s efforts in 2021 to clarify its messaging on extremism ― including that political beliefs, in and of themselves, are not considered extremism, though acting on them or espousing them could be ― it asserts that “the military could better leverage existing violence prevention programs to prevent service members from becoming involved with extremist groups.”