I've been closely monitoring the Oath Keepers since 2009.
My cat was a member at one time because I wanted to see if they were screening applicants for veteran or law enforcement status.
The same cat, by the way, earned a Doctorate of Divinity from a phony church and was licensed to officiate at weddings.
@jjmacnab I knew Stewart Rhoads very, very vaguely. I think it was around 2000-2005. At the time Oath Keepers weren't incorporated, didn't have tax exempt status. They were just a bunch of weirdos on the American Prepper Network.
When a few people called them on the seditious shit they were saying, the admin set up a private board only for official, vetted members of the Oath Keepers.
If I'd know what a threat they'd become, I would have joined to monitor.
@jjmacnab It's funny, but at first they sounded reasonable-ish. They were building a network of former police & soldiers to defend the Constitution if the government collapsed. With force if necessary.
I didn't think the govt would collapse. Then again, I didn't think the Cascadia earthquake would hit and there I was, prepping for it anyways. So who was I to judge?
But when you paid attention, there was always a weird, seditious undertone. Like maybe the govt would have to be put down.
@Myana Whenever I ran into veterans who were on the fence about the Oath Keepers, I tried to divert them to Team Rubicon.
@jjmacnab Team Rubicon is awesome!
I ended up leaving American Prepper Network. Headed over to Zombie Squad, which forbade politics and religions. We all pretended we were prepping for the Zombie Apocalypse.
I still prep but these days I don't go to prepper web sites at all. They've grown tremendously racist and creepy since Trump. I mean, we were always weirdos, all of us. 😜 But things just turned dark.
A few years ago, I was on an OK conference call where they discussed a photo of my home they'd pulled up from Google Earth and where they could place a sniper in the tree line to shoot me before I could walk from the garage to my back door.