The Oath Keepers militia has for years targeted law enforcement officials as top recruiting targets, and Anti-Defamation League extremism researcher Alex Friedfeld tells Rolling Stone that their major recruiting pitch is a "fever dream" conspiracy theory about standing up to a tyrannical government.
Interestingly, says Friedfeld, the oath that the Oath Keepers swear to is an oath about orders that they will not obey, which include orders to "blockade American cities" and turn them into "giant concentration camps" for American citizens.
"It's actually an oath of orders that they will refuse," he explains. "It's a list of 10 orders that are just a right-wing fever dream of what they think is coming down the pike."
While it's obviously fine that law enforcement officers are swearing to not put Americans into concentration camps, Friedfeld says that it's insidious because it makes them loyal to the separate militia organization more than the oath they swore as police officers to uphold and defend the United States Constitution.
"These guys are diverting their allegiance away from the oath that they signed to the United States and then putting their faith in this other organization that has its own warped agenda," he explains. "When you're operating in the military, or as part of law enforcement, you need everyone on the same page."
This also leads to Oath Keepers taking the law into their own hands rather than following the laws that are written by legislatures.
"Throughout the Oath Keepers history, they have this pattern of vigilantism," Friedfeld says. "Of basically deciding that they know what the law is and that they are the ones who will enforce it — whether it was during the BLM protests or whether it was storming the Capitol because they believed that the election was stolen. These guys have demonstrated that they're not afraid to get their hands dirty."
