The
Oath Keepers - Are they an extremist organization? The
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the
Anti-Defemation League (hereafter, ADL) certainly thinks so.
Do you have an opinion?
The ADL has described them extensively in many of their publications and articles on their website. The following is merely a small sample of their take on the organization:
Oath Keepers and Three Percenters Part of Growing Anti-Government Movement - ADL
"... Oath Keepers is a group that deliberately targets police officers and military personnel for recruitment into the extreme anti-government movement. Its basic pitch is to remind such people that they swore an oath to defend the Constitution “from all enemies, foreign and domestic,” and to suggest that now is the time to live up to that oath by resisting an allegedly tyrannical government."
"... The Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, both part of an anti-government extremist movement that has grown since President Obama took office, promote the idea that the federal government is plotting to take away the rights of American citizens and must be resisted.
The two groups are apparently trying to make inroads in the U.S. military...."
Nifty little diagram courtesy of the folks at the SPLC:
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For reference, this encapsulates what the organizations official position entails:
Oath Keepers » Blog Archive » Declaration Of Orders We Will Not Obey
1. We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people.
2. We will NOT obey any order to conduct warrantless searches of the American people, their homes, vehicles, papers, or effects -- such as warrantless house-to house searches for weapons or persons.
3. We will NOT obey any order to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to trial by military tribunal.
4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state, or to enter with force into a state, without the express consent and invitation of that state’s legislature and governor.
5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union.
6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.
7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control” during any emergency, or under any other pretext. We will consider such use of foreign troops against our people to be an invasion and an act of war.
9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies, under any emergency pretext whatsoever.
10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.
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