The best illustration of the threat posed by far-right extremist groups such as the Oath Keepers can be found in the 48-page indictment of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes.
Rhodes and 10 others were charged with seditious conspiracy for their alleged role in the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. Their indictment details how the Oath Keepers, a group that actively recruits military and law enforcement officers, trained and organized its members that day as if they were preparing for battle. This included basic training to get recruits “fighting fit for inauguration;” a reconnaissance team deployed to Washington to outline the planned insurrection; and marching towards the Capitol in “stack” formations designed to breach a building.
If the precision and actions of the rioters attempting to subvert democracy that day don’t shake you to your core, perhaps this sobering fact will: more than 3,000 Texans, including elected officials and law enforcement officers, have been card-carrying Oath Keepers.
The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism published a report last week, based on leaked Oath Keepers membership rolls, finding that Texas has had the most members of any other state who were either elected officials, law enforcement officers, military members or first responders. Texas is a big state, certainly, but more troubling than sheer numbers are the positions held by Texans who have been members of the radical group: six law enforcement officers across the state who lead their departments and four current elected officials, two of whom are county commissioners, including Joe Giusti, a Republican in Galveston County.
At minimum, these officials showed extremely poor judgment in not thoroughly researching the origins and actions of the Oath Keepers before joining. At worst, those who remained even after the group was exposed as key architects of the Jan. 6 attacks for their violent role in advancing President Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen, could be viewed as an implicit endorsement of violent radicalism.
Being a member of the group alone doesn’t necessarily indicate a desire to overthrow the government. It’s certainly possible that some of the Texas officials questioned about their membership, such as Steven Glenn, an alderman in the North Texas town of Quitman, are being truthful that they knew little about the group when they enrolled as members.
“I saw exactly what the founder was all about. I cut ties with them immediately,” Glenn wrote in a statement to the Texas Tribune.
Yet that benefit of the doubt requires at least some suspension of disbelief. As ADL notes in its report, the Oath Keepers “have espoused extremism since their founding, and this fact was not enough to deter these individuals from signing up.”
The Oath Keepers are not merely a fringe political organization. They were founded by Rhodes with the aim of combating the conspiratorial threat of the U.S. becoming “a totalitarian police state,” promoting the idea that under certain conditions, removing the government by force is justified. A quick Google search by any of these Texas officials would have revealed the extent of the Oath Keepers’ anti-government activities, which include armed standoffs with federal agents, vigilante voter intimidation, and threats of violence against the governor of Oregon.
The ADL report makes it clear that some of the Texans who enrolled in the Oath Keepers were not simply doing so out of passive curiosity but rather with the intent of using their positions of power to advance the group’s goals. One member of the Idalou Police Department — serving a town outside of Lubbock — said he would use his position to introduce other law enforcement officers to the Oath Keepers’ ideology.
Others, such as Collin County Constable Joe Wright, went as far to say that he “felt pressured” to join the organization for political support.
“The Oath Keepers, if you didn’t support them, you were going to get bad reviews,” Wright told USA Today.
Wright’s comments are alarming, though sadly not surprising. There is a well-documented history of law enforcement officers supporting extremist ideology and white supremacist groups infiltrating police departments. A 2006 FBI intelligence assessment warned that skinhead groups were actively encouraging members to “avoid overt displays of their beliefs to blend into society and covertly advance white supremacist causes.” A 2019 investigation from the Center for Investigative Reporting found that hundreds of active-duty and retired law enforcement officers are members of Confederate-sympathizing, anti-Islam or anti-government militia groups on Facebook.
Unfortunately, even minimal efforts to expose extremism in law enforcement have become a partisan issue on the national level. Every House Republican voted against a recent amendment to a national defense bill to compel government officials to prepare a report on combating white supremacists and neo-Nazi activity in the police and military.
Meanwhile, several states have proposed new laws to give law enforcement agencies more power to exclude officers with ties to extremism. A bill enacted in Washington state last year allows the state to revoke officers’ certification if they are affiliated with those organizations. With so many law enforcement members listed as current or former Oath Keepers members, we urge Texas lawmakers to craft similar legislation to stamp out extremism from local law enforcement ranks.
There is a simpler solution to hold the Texas elected officials exposed as Oath Keepers members accountable: vote them out.
Texans should have the confidence that those we vote into office and those who take an oath to protect us aren’t secretly members of a group that organized an attempted coup against our nation. If our leaders can’t meet that minimal standard, if they don’t believe in the basic tenets of democracy, they don’t belong in public service. They don’t even belong on the ballot.
And for regular folks out there inclined to look the other way at such reports because you supported Trump’s policies overall and believe those acting radically on Jan. 6 are an insignificant subset of Republican voters, we urge you to ponder the words of the Collin County constable who said he was pressured into joining the Oath Keepers for political support.
“I’m not into radical,” he said. “I’m into doing my job.”
It appears, in the eyes of many other public officials all across this land, the two things have perversely become one.
Houston Chronicle
