A national online network of thousands of self-styled “Oath Enforcers” on the right is threatening to launch harassment tactics at elected officials and government officials across the country, the Guardian may reveal.
While the network’s founder insists that the group is neither violent nor a militia, internal chats indicate that some members are planning clashes with security forces and their supposed political enemies.
Chats also indicate that white supremacists and others linked to the militia movement aim to leverage the group’s success in recruiting disillusioned supporters of former President Donald Trump and the “QAnon” conspiracy movement, which are being exposed to a wide range of conspiracy theories, white nationalist material and right-wing legal theories within groups.
The group’s founder, who makes videos and organizes under the name Vince Edwards, lives off the grid in a remote corner of Costilla County, in the high desert region of Colorado. The 2016 prison records indicate that he also used the name Christian Picolo, and other public records associate him with the name Vincent Edward Deluca.
Experts say Edwards’ personal story reflects the potential danger in spreading the sovereign citizen’s ideology – along with the massive online propaganda, this story includes an armed confrontation with Costilla County sheriff’s deputies in 2016.
Edwards initially published videos and a printable pamphlet promoting the formation of “oath enforcement teams” of at least 30 people in all counties across the country during the end of January 2021, just weeks after his own self-documented participation in a rally at the National Capitol on January 6.
His opening videos explicitly appealed to QAnon supporters, pointing out that “Q”, the alleged insider of the Trump administration whose gnomish forum posts animated the conspiracy social movement, had not communicated with the movement since December, and that instead of “trusting on the plane, ”as adepts are told to do, they must start to act.
In the wake of the Capitol attack, his efforts appear to have resonated with a growing group of grassroots right-wingers. The Guardian found more than 3,100 members in 50 state Telegram chats and a national chat. Some state groups – like Texas, Washington and Alabama – were very active and had hundreds of members.
The group’s stated goals include publishing leaflets designed by Edwards, forming “constitutional enforcement groups” so that each person distributes 1,000 Edwards leaflets, and creating local hotlines to help “enforce the contract we made with our audience servants ”through live broadcast interactions with them or by filing false lawsuits against them.
In an introductory video entitled “OE Training”, Edwards encourages new recruits to the network to emulate the so-called “First Amendment Auditors” (FAAs).
Professor Brian Levin is the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism (CSHE) at California State University, San Bernardino. In a telephone conversation, he explained that FAAs are a social media-driven movement of libertarian provocateurs who “go to sensitive locations to see if the police, security guards or property owners will interfere with their activities that are irritating, but generally not illegal ”.
Meanwhile, some local groups show that well-known extremists are seeing opportunities in the group’s rapid growth.
The Oregon Oath Enforcers group, for example, joined Chester Doles in Dahlonega, Georgia, on February 5. Doles, a longtime former member of the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazi National Alliance, was arrested in 1993 for assaulting a black man and subsequently marched at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
Doles received media attention recently as he and other members of the organization he currently leads, American Patriots USA, were among an armed crowd that protested outside the capital of Georgia on January 6, an action that prompted Georgia’s secretary of state. , Brad Raffensperger, who had been demonized by the far right for his role in counting the Georgia elections, to flee the building.
In recent months, Doles has sought to build alliances with Three Percenters and other militia organizations in Georgia.
A former member of the far-right Patriot Prayer group, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, joined the Oregon Oath Enforcers chat on February 9. A proud boy, Toese, was a prominent and often violent participant in a long string of violent and violent street protests in Portland during the Trump era. He was arrested in Clark County, Washington, last October, after violating the condition of his probation after being previously convicted of assault in an unprovoked daytime attack on a man in Portland.
In a video message to the Oath Enforcers group, Toese said: “Are you organizing? My people and I will be there to take a stand with you. “
Elsewhere on the Oath Enforcers instructional channel, Edwards and others have shared documents from a number of organizations across the country that promote false legal and constitutional doctrines associated with the so-called sovereign citizen movement.
A document is presented as a trial by a self-styled human rights court, which orders the arrest warrant for a number of officials and philanthropists, including Anthony Fauci and Bill and Melinda Gates for the crime of genocide.
The sovereign citizen movement does not maintain a universally consistent set of beliefs, but most adherents believe in a false alternative history of the United States, and that the present, and especially the law, reflects a conspiracy ordered by esoteric rules. Many treat all legal and governmental authority as illegitimate.
In Oath Enforcers chats, sovereign doctrine is presented side by side with false beliefs about vaccinations and masks, claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and conspiracy theories about links between antifascist activists and “Antifa” figures powerful as billionaire George Soros.
Vince Edwards and Chester Doles did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In intelligence assessments and public statements, federal agencies reported that sovereign citizens pose an ongoing and specific threat to police officers.
Levin, the extremism researcher, says of the apparent synergies between sovereign citizens and white supremacists that “there has been a realignment on the extreme right-wing fringe,” where “law enforcement is seen as an arm of a tyrannical government in the same way. the way that sovereign citizens saw them decades ago. ”
Levin adds that “not only is ideology getting a new brand, but also many far-right figures, like former Klan leader Chester Doles”.
In a March 28 post on the Oregon Oath Enforcers page, a user reinstated the white nationalist broadcaster, Vincent James’s comment about a clash between the antifa and the far-right protesters in Salem the day before.
In part, the post said: “Police officers have never been and will never be your friends. They are also the American regime. They are not allies. “