Oath Keepers would broadcast a message of hope, at least in the early years, and retain something of the emotional core of the activist outsider politics spirit that had given the Ron Paul following its animus. In the ensuing panic and dissolution of the nascent Liberty Movement, my father would seize the time and place to found Oath Keepers and redirect the considerable grassroots energy that was now aimless and directionless, playing on his particular background to secure a niche. More charitably, it could have been considered an attempt to convert the GOP from the inside. In events, connections, strategy, and policy, the Libertarian right would continue to align itself with big government conservatives as a holding action against democrats. The GOP, being fervently against socialism, must therefore be on the lighter end of the government authority spectrum, despite its decades-long love affair with militarized police and the surveillance state. Socialism, after all, is when the government does stuff, the more stuff the more socialist, with communism as its natural endpoint.
#Boycott advance keeps crashing full#
Left Anarchists would simply skip the intermediary and go to Full Communism immediately, ironically instituting the most government-ful of all governments. By our ideology even Left Libertarians would inevitably bring about socialism by introducing clear tools of statism like progressive taxation, environmental protection, and dreaded death-panel Socialized Healthcare, setting off the brief half-life of all socialist government systems as they actively decayed into communism.
Implicit in everything was the sense that even the GOP, with its authoritarian tendencies and bloodthirsty enthusiasm for the global war on terror, was inherently more closely aligned with ‘us’ enlightened souls than anyone on the left. There was something that would echo later in a much worse year, the belief that only bringing in an outsider candidate, even a crazy one, could fix the system. I gained political consciousness attending sign-making parties with all the weirdos and misfits who felt out of place in the mainstream GOP, even some crossover democrats from the Occupy Wall Street crowd, but still undeniably steeped in right-wing ideology. Stewart asserted authority by banking off his law degree, military background, and former staff position at the office of Paul himself. My political life started in the Libertarian Right explosion that was the 2008 Ron Paul campaign, caught as a child in the wake of my father’s ambition, even before Oath Keepers, as he made a name for himself as a campaign organizer. To begin with, I wasn’t always what most people think of when they picture the current crop of Alt Rite frat bros and angry bitter Incels (I was never that bitter). If there’s a chance my story will be of any help to millions of people who have lost family and friends to right-wing cult behavior, then I have an obligation to tell it. If tracing the stumbling, fumbling path to independent thought taken by the son of an insurrectionist militia leader contains a valuable lesson, I have a responsibility to show you all. But I’ve been told that this might be valuable to those interested in how I went from a teenage militiaman who believed in Pizzagate to casting off my birth name of Dakota Stewart Rhodes and joining BLM and pro-choice protests. I have only my niche experience to offer from a very odd life.
It is now undeniable that radicalization and the draw of right-wing extremist thought is a significant problem facing the nation, perhaps a fatal crisis, and in this context, there’s a lot of interest in the stories of people who came back from the right-wing fringe. And unfortunately for both of us, I may be relevant to you.
Unfortunately, I am Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes’ son.
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