The GOP's Militia Problem: Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Lessons from Abroad

[Nevilledog]

https://www.justsecurity.org/81898/the-gops-militia-problem-proud-boys-oath-keepers-and-lessons-from-abroad/


The January 6 Select Committee hearings have been framed as an effort aimed at accountability and posterity. But their findings are at least as important to the future. The Committee’s disclosures that Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson tried to hand-deliver a slate of fake electors to Vice President Pence, that Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs asked Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers to decertify their state’s electors the morning of January 6, and that some Republican Members of Congress sought pardons from then-President Trump for their roles are further signals that co-conspirators in the schemes to thwart the democratic choice for president remain in power. They are not the only ones maintaining and seeking power. Former President Donald Trump is eyeing a return in 2024. The Proud Boys and Oath Keepers — militias the Committee has highlighted for their roles as ring leaders for the violence that day — did not see their strength ebb after January 6. On the contrary, violence, first used as a political tool and now partially mainstreamed, has spread.

The events on January 6 are not past. They are prelude.

As a researcher on violence and democracy around the world, I have studied party-linked militia groups for years. In countries like Iraq, Nigeria, Lebanon, and Colombia, politicians outsource violence to specialists in the trade, just as they hire consultants for robocalls and direct mail. In the past, googling these terms brought up countries just escaping from conflict or descending into it. Now, the United States, where militias have been embraced by GOP leaders at the national, state, and local level (as I discuss in detail below), appears among the early search results.

Trump’s flirtation with militia groups began well before the events recounted on January 6. The Oath Keepers assembled to “protect” the polls after then-candidate Trump’s claims of potential fraud – in 2016. Multiple militia groups mobilized in response to Trump’s statements surrounding his inauguration and in response to his calls for more border security. The Oath Keepers provided security to Trump campaign rallies and events in Texas, Minnesota, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere at regular intervals between 2016 and 2020. After Brad Raffensperger, the Republican Secretary of State of Georgia refused to “find 11,780 votes,” he faced death threats that increased after Trump declared him an “enemy of the people.” The family went into hiding following multiple threats, including the appearance of out-of-state Oath Keepers at their home. Speaker Bowers testified that at least one of the crowd members protesting viciously at his home while his daughter lay inside, dying, wore Three Percenter insignia. On Jan. 5, photographs showed Oath Keepers wearing “All access” passes on lanyards as they escorted Roger Stone to a speech he gave by the Supreme Court. And on January 6, militias not only breached the Capitol; Stone appeared to use Oath Keeper militia members as part of his personal security outfit that morning.

The January 6 testimony to date has focused on Trump and the ways he has encouraged and instrumentalized militia members. But support for vigilante violence has spread to other parts of the Republican Party. In 2017, the Portland branch of the Republican Party voted to allow militia groups, including members of the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, to act as security at their public events; a Colorado county GOP has also hired militia groups for security. In Michigan’s Grand Traverse County, local officials at a zoom-based public meeting were asked to denounce the Proud Boys after the insurrection – instead, the county commission’s vice chair stepped off-screen and returned with his rifle. In Texas, Allen West, then-Chair of the Republican Party, offered an oath to “swear in” militia members at a Stop the Steal rally in November 2020, posed with armed militia members just days after the January 6 riot, and appeared alongside other Republican state politicians at a rally with the leader of the Oath Keepers militia in March after the latter was under investigation for his involvement in the January 6 attack. This winter, a militia-backed recall election ousted the Shasta County, California Board of Supervisors; the new leaders owe their positions to militia support. In Arizona, Mark Finchem, a sitting member of the House, trumpets his membership in the Oath Keeper militia. The chairman of Wyoming’s GOP – engaged in a fierce battle against Liz Cheney, the January 6 Select Committee Vice Chair – is a member of the Oath Keepers.

*snip*

[Hermit-The-Prog]

1. This cancer on democracy is metastasizing.