Texas GOP Features Oath Keeper Founder Stewart Rhodes at Anti-Immigrant Rally

Final week, 19 U.S. Republican Senators, led by Ted Cruz, crowded into gunboats in McAllen, Texas as a part of a cynical political stunt to fear-monger in regards to the border. About 150 miles west in Laredo, Cruz’s Texas GOP colleagues had been at one other anti-immigrant rally that includes the founding father of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes.

Rhodes based the Oath Keepers in 2009, as a militia motion that gathered steam alongside the Tea Get together in opposition to President Obama’s election. Removed from the patriotic heroes they declare to be, the Oath Keepers have a lengthy historical past of racist, xenophobic, and violent rhetoric that has no place sharing a stage alongside one of many two main political events. Even earlier than the Oath Keeper’s participation within the January 6 rebellion, that they had participated in at the very least two armed standoffs with federal authorities. 

Final night time, the Washington Submit reported on the investigation of Rhodes’s interactions with a number of defendants indicted over their alleged roles the January sixth assault on the U.S. Capitol:

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, his deputy and three members who guarded Roger Stone exchanged almost 20 telephone calls over three hours on Jan. 6, coinciding with the primary assault on police barricades defending the U.S. Capitol and spanning the time the three members breached the constructing, prosecutors charged Thursday.

In a brand new indictment including beforehand charged Stone guards Joshua James, 33, of Arab, Ala., and Roberto Minuta, 36, of Prosper, Tex., to an Oath Keepers conspiracy case that now has 12 defendants, prosecutors bluntly laid a path to Rhodes and an individual they stated he put in control of his group’s operations that day.

On the occasion, Rhodes indicated he anticipated to be arrested over his position within the January 6 rebellion. Naturally, this didn’t deter the GOP from giving him a platform. 

Rhodes’s personal language is tied to a few of the most threatening rhetoric of the previous couple of years. Most notably the dehumanizing characterization of migrants, principally households of authorized asylum seekers, as an “invasion.” In December of 2018, SPLC reported that Rhodes and his group had been concentrating on the border:

Within the meantime, the anti-government group has additionally inspired its members to marshal on the southern U.S. border to thwart a perceived “invasion” of migrants fleeing for security. Rhodes sees migrants as a nationwide safety risk and a part of a plot by the political left and the fictional so-called Deep State to alter demographics in its favor.

And, it wasn’t the primary time, as documented by The Atlantic in November 2020:

In 2016, when Trump had warned of election fraud, Rhodes put out a name for members to quietly monitor polling stations. When Trump warned of an invasion by undocumented immigrants, Rhodes traveled to the southern border with an Oath Keepers patrol.

Within the wake of the bloodbath in El Paso the place a shooter who used anti-immigrant rhetoric, David Nakamura on the Washington Submit wrote about the usage of related language between the shooter and the anti-immigrant teams.

Sadly, this facet of the GOP seems to be extra of the norm, not an aberration. The GOP has repeatedly proven a willingness to rub shoulders with the Oath Keepers, despite their racism and violence. Rep. Andy Biggs (AZ-05) attended an occasion in 2015 the place an Oath Keeper known as for the hanging then Sen. John McCain. Rep.Gosar (AZ- 04) additionally attended two native Oath Keeper conferences, with Gosar parroting the group’s language saying we had been already in a civil conflict however “we simply haven’t began capturing but.” In 2018, Rep. Lauren Boebert (CO-03), recorded a video to advertise an occasion organized by the Oath Keepers. In 2020 Frank Pallotta ran a failed bid for the NJ-05 seat and had an Oath Keeper as certainly one of his political advisors and vigorously defended the group when instantly challenged on the matter. The Multnomah County GOP in Oregon despatched out a fundraising letter in the summertime of 2019 to their members soliciting donations to pay for “non-public safety” from the Oath Keepers. Lastly, in December 2016 Sen. Ted Cruz spoke to a crowd in D.C. in entrance of a big Oath Keeper’s flag and gave sympathetic feedback to the armed occupation of Malheur Nationwide Wildlife Refuge, wherein the Oath Keepers performed a key half in. 

The Texas GOP and State Chair inviting and amplifying somebody so intently tied to racialized political violence is deeply regarding, however not stunning. The GOP Senators driving in gunboats was simply one other instance of their lengthy historical past of border-related stunts with out providing any options past extra Trump-like cruelty. These incidences simply display that all of us must reckon with the truth that that is who the GOP is. The reality is certainly one of our main events is keen to make outstanding allies out of those that courtroom racialized political violence. We can not ignore this reality and we should begin treating the Get together accordingly.