Citizen Quazar and the Oath Keepers

April 24, 2009 10:26 PM

Everybody knows about the Tax Day Tea Parties held earlier this month. Now, thanks in part to the FBI's arrest of a man calling himself Citizen Quazar, we have news of related events called Oath Keeper Rallies. Who are the Oath Keepers and what is their Oath? Will their next rally & oath taking (June 13 in Washington DC as part of the Gathering of Eagles Victory in Iraq ceremony) get any coverage from Fox? (via)
posted by scalefree (72 comments total)

5. I will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.

I thought this sounded pretty good, until I realised that this group is surely only talking about American states. I imagine that their approach to other states would be quite different.
posted by ssg at 10:33 PM on April 24 [8 favorites]

My apologies to Mr. Quasar, I seem to have misspelled his name throughout my post.
posted by scalefree at 10:33 PM on April 24

blog started in March.

A little bit Freikorpsish, but hey that's not a Godwin, izit?
posted by mrt at 10:35 PM on April 24

more like OAF keepers, AMIRITE!?
posted by delmoi at 10:37 PM on April 24 [3 favorites]

Huh. Can't say I disagree with anything in the oath (except maybe #1), but it sure would've been nice if these guys had been around in, say, 2002...
posted by equalpants at 10:38 PM on April 24 [10 favorites]

Black UN Helicopters! Alien abductions! Bring back the X Files!
posted by Artw at 10:41 PM on April 24

My how the pendulum swings. Go back to about 2003 and I guarantee all these idiot teabaggers would be all pitchforks and torches towards anyone reciting this unpatriotic 'oath'.
posted by nudar at 10:45 PM on April 24 [6 favorites]

Ruby Ridge!
posted by Artw at 10:46 PM on April 24

I saw a comment on one of the sites I had to slog through while building the post that said "we are all Davidians now".
posted by scalefree at 10:50 PM on April 24 [2 favorites]

The oath is one loaded statement after the other, intended to shape the conversation and discourse on the terms of an oppressive government not governed by the people.
posted by mrzarquon at 10:50 PM on April 24 [4 favorites]

Oath Keepers, whoever you crazy people are (and you've gotta be crazy to saddle yourselves with a moniker like that one), please don't do anything to frak up my birthday. It's bad enough I was born on a Friday the 13th...I don't need random bozos of any political stripe adding any more crap to it. I can do without further tsuris.

Thanks.
posted by StrangeTikiGod at 10:58 PM on April 24

Timothy McVeigh! Unabomber!
posted by Artw at 11:01 PM on April 24

Where were these guys in New Orleans after Katrina? Oh, wait, I forgot, the Second Amendment isn't for those people.
posted by 0xdeadc0de at 11:03 PM on April 24 [15 favorites]

Where were these militant nutjobs when Bush was around and violating at least half of their oaths. Its only when there are liberals in power do the militants start blowing shit up. Thanks again right-wing radio and Fox News!
posted by damn dirty ape at 11:04 PM on April 24 [15 favorites]

What I want to know is how Quaternions & Oliver Heaviside figure in all of this. Is it a HAARP reference?
posted by scalefree at 11:11 PM on April 24 [1 favorite]

Monica Lewinsky!
posted by Artw at 11:23 PM on April 24

Yeah, the vast majority of these I agree with, but I have a feeling we're going to be dealing with rather unsophisticated interpretations.

And the fifth one is just beggin' for a treasonin'.
posted by klangklangston at 11:42 PM on April 24 [2 favorites]

Hey, awesome, more crazy dudes in tricorner hats. If you want to mimic the conservatives of the revolution, go start a tory party up again. Better yet, coin a new word for your herp-derp saber-rattling malcontention: It's a shame there's no word like illiterate or innumeracy for history for these jerkbags.
posted by boo_radley at 11:50 PM on April 24

Ten gets you twenty that Fox or NRO or Freep gets busted for aiding-and-abetting after being too stupid to separate reporting from material aid for domestic terrorists.

The neo-cons are in total meltdown mode right now, and the GOP is merrily feeding the furnace with the screaming voices of anyone who isn't a Limbaugh-approved neo-con. At this stage of the game, Anarchist-movement style bombings and assassinations are the only hope they got of influencing the new status-quo.

(Well, and a Texas secession. Obama: Have fun kids, and hay, here's Puerto Rico to take over your star and senatorial seats! Oh, and we're taking back Nasa and every military base you got, right down to the bedrock, and giving it to those spanish-speakers. See yas!")

One the one hand, domestic terrorism will be very, very terrible for the time being. On the other hand, it will mean the GOP and the radical right is dead as a political force.
posted by Slap*Happy at 11:53 PM on April 24 [1 favorite]

Dave Freeman, a retired policeman from Nevada, read and administered the 10 Oath Keepers’ resolutions to it new members, which included Richard Mack, the former sheriff who fought the Brady Bill all the way to the Supreme Court. [emphasis mine]

Interesting celebrities in this crowd.
posted by hippybear at 1:38 AM on April 25

And people doubt me when I say that the right-wing "libertarian" militia movement is simply a part of the Republican Party.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:08 AM on April 25 [3 favorites]

Ten gets you twenty that Fox or NRO or Freep gets busted for aiding-and-abetting after being too stupid to separate reporting from material aid for domestic terrorists.

Not sure about that. The authorities in this country just don't go after violent right-wing terrorists the same way they go after non-violent leftists.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:13 AM on April 25 [2 favorites]

Organizations like Oath Keepers seem destined for dramatic growth as the Obama administration has targeted political conservatives and military veterans as potential violent terrorists under a new Department of Homeland Security report entitled Rightwing Extremism (pdf).

Oh, bullshit. The O administration has done no such thing, and that report doesn't, either. Take your paranoid hysteria and get off my lawn Battle Green.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:46 AM on April 25 [1 favorite]

Man I do not want to know what Citizen Quasar has in his pants.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 4:52 AM on April 25 [3 favorites]

Sorry to derail, but what is this talk of a Texan secession about? I don't live in the US and therefore don't know if there is anything to it, but I keep hearing allusions in the last few days.
posted by kolophon at 5:09 AM on April 25

Oh man it's fun watching chickens run around with their heads chopped off.
posted by Jimbob at 5:25 AM on April 25 [3 favorites]

A new patriotic organization called “Oath Keepers” was invited to join a Committees of Safety-sponsored rally on Massachusetts’ historic Lexington Green to renew their oaths to support and defend the U.S. Constitution April 19, the 234th anniversary of the revolutionary war battles of Lexington and Concord. The Committees of Safety is named for the groups that organized in colonial America during the beginning of the War for Independence.

For the sake of my own personal historical LULZ, can they please jump the shark and just go ahead and call it the "Committee of Public Safety"? Or would that be too French?

Kolphon: Houston, We Have a Solution
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 5:25 AM on April 25 [1 favorite]

Where were these guys in New Orleans after Katrina? Oh, wait, I forgot, the Second Amendment isn't for those people.

Standing on the bridge with guns to keep the black people from escaping... isn't that what the 2nd amendment is about?
posted by geos at 5:28 AM on April 25 [2 favorites]

more like OAF keepers, AMIRITE!?

More like Citizen QUAZY, AMIRITE!?

swing and a miss
posted by Ritchie at 5:34 AM on April 25

what is this talk of a Texan secession about?

Texas Governor Rick Perry suggested that "if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that." - which is a bit like a kid no one really likes, threatening to take his slightly flat ball - which no one is really using - and go home.
posted by R. Mutt at 5:34 AM on April 25 [5 favorites]

Sorry to derail, but what is this talk of a Texan secession about?

It's a reference to an ill-considered, ignorant, moronic comment made by Texas governor Rick Perry, a brylcreemed Republican with no real opinions of his own and whose office has no actual power. Texas is not actually going to secede.
posted by DecemberBoy at 5:36 AM on April 25 [4 favorites]

Texas Governor Rick Perry suggested that "if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that." - which is a bit like a kid no one really likes, threatening to take his slightly flat ball - which no one is really using - and go home.

Thank you, R. Mutt. I plan to plagiarize this in the near future, probably in the next few hours.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 5:36 AM on April 25

Sounds good to me. How much do they pay?
posted by Postroad at 5:36 AM on April 25

Man I do not want to know what Citizen Quasar has in his pants.


About 3.5 inches of sovereignty. We all know that's what this is really about.
posted by fourcheesemac at 5:49 AM on April 25 [4 favorites]

while they may seem harmless enough, here is the sort of thing that is beginning to make the rolunds:


posted by Postroad at 5:49 AM on April 25

And if one looks way over to your right...

Ex-Louisiana KKK chief arrested in Prague

Former Grand Wizard of the Louisiana-founded Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, was arrested on suspicion of promoting movements seeking the suppression of human rights, police spokesman Jan Mikulovsky told local media.
posted by R. Mutt at 6:14 AM on April 25 [5 favorites]

leave us rolunds out of this.
posted by kitchenrat at 6:15 AM on April 25

9:14 PM Apr 14th
9:15 PM Apr 14th
9:31 PM Apr 14th
11:49 PM Apr 14th
11:51 PM Apr 14th
11:54 PM Apr 14th
11:56 PM Apr 14th
11:59 PM Apr 14th
11:59 PM Apr 14th
12:03 AM Apr 15th
12:04 AM Apr 15th
12:36 AM Apr 15th
2:49 AM Apr 15th
3:10 AM Apr 15th

...at which point he finally crashed off the meth?
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:19 AM on April 25 [3 favorites]

Oh man it's fun watching chickens run around with their heads chopped off.

Oh man it's fun watching chickens run around with their NUTS chopped off.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 7:09 AM on April 25

Yeah, joining the chorus of "Where were these guys eight years ago?!"

I object neither to the substance of their oaths nor their hats.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 7:19 AM on April 25

I'm confused. Are we hating these guys, and if so for what reason? This comment thread needs to get on point.
posted by TypographicalError at 7:36 AM on April 25 [1 favorite]

Anarchist-movement style bombings and assassinations

Please name me a bombing or assassination connected to the "Anarchist-movement" since Alexander Berkman in the 19th Century.
posted by regicide is good for you at 7:37 AM on April 25 [2 favorites]

What is it that makes people to venerate and get emotional about some specific document? Biblical fundamentalists, these constitution folks, Joyce scholars, and the like seem married to their favorite outmoded text. The constitution is pretty crusty by now, it might be a good idea to move on.
posted by fuq at 7:42 AM on April 25

*bayonets fuq*
posted by Baby_Balrog at 8:00 AM on April 25

I was referring to the 19th century anarchist movement... crazy guys in cloaks running around with bombs that had fizzing fuses, shooting politicians at random, the whole deal. It's a romantic yet stupid archetype.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:28 AM on April 25

Are we hating these guys? Mildly snarky eye rolling. It may be subtle. Cruise MeTa for the crash and burn.
posted by pointilist at 8:30 AM on April 25

From comments on the Oath page:

Hulagu Khan said...

Thank you for your loyalty Joseph, it would be a Honer to stand with you.

I read that as...

Thank you for your loyalty Joseph, it would be a Boner to stand with you.
posted by Jikido at 8:50 AM on April 25

7. I will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.

I wonder if he opposes the War on Drugs.
posted by Afroblanco at 9:04 AM on April 25 [5 favorites]

Former Grand Wizard of the Louisiana-founded Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, was arrested on suspicion of promoting movements seeking the suppression of human rights, police spokesman Jan Mikulovsky told local media.

Hah, I love it when those idiots go to over countries that actually dealt with Nazism and get arrested.
posted by delmoi at 9:05 AM on April 25 [2 favorites]

Gathering of eagles? Shouldn't that be an aerie of eagles?
posted by Harald74 at 9:13 AM on April 25

It's a reference to an ill-considered, ignorant, moronic comment made by Texas governor Rick Perry, a brylcreemed Republican with no real opinions of his own and whose office has no actual power.

Well, it's also a reference to a poll that indicates that 48% of Texas Republicans and 35% of Texans generally would support secession. Now granted, it's a poll of only 600 likely voters, but still, it's not just the buffoonish Rick Perry talking about it.
posted by blucevalo at 9:19 AM on April 25 [1 favorite]

Please name me a bombing or assassination connected to the "Anarchist-movement" since Alexander Berkman in the 19th Century.

earth liberation front
posted by pyramid termite at 9:23 AM on April 25

Gathering of eagles? Shouldn't that be an aerie of eagles?

i think they mean some droppings of eagles
posted by pyramid termite at 9:25 AM on April 25

While ELF certainly has "green anarchist" "eco-anarchist" or "anarcho-primitivist" connections, nothing about ELF in itself is anarchist. While the guiding principles do support direct action (including bombing) to destroy property that threatens the environment and/or wildlife. ELF and ALF guidelines say one must "take all necessary precautions against harming any animal, human and non-human," so a 'bombing' or 'assassination' aimed at human (or non-human) beings technically couldn't be considered an ELF/ALF action. Though Earth First decided against tree-spiking (not a bombing or assassination technique, but still dangerous to humans) once they discovered that logging companies didn't care about the safety of the loggers, the ELF is split on the issue as far as I know from friends in the ALF/ELF communities.
posted by whatgorilla at 9:40 AM on April 25 [2 favorites]

So they're standing ready to defend medical marijuana in California and gay marriage in Vermont? Hello? Anyone?
posted by gimonca at 10:11 AM on April 25 [2 favorites]

All of this just seems like an excuse for people to wear tricorn hats.
posted by orme at 10:12 AM on April 25

God bless the teabaggers, every one.
posted by jester69 at 10:12 AM on April 25

Gawd, what lamers! Whatever war these people think they're fighting, they lost it long ago.
posted by Forrest Greene at 10:47 AM on April 25

Interesting that the tenth oath is a partial restatement of the 1st Amendment, but it doesn't mention protecting the freedom to worship or the free press.
posted by thewittyname at 11:25 AM on April 25

Okay, maybe it sounds a bit naively alarmist - but imagine what would y'all have said if the oath had substituted "I will NOT" with "I WILL...".
posted by IndigoJones at 2:41 PM on April 25

fuq: "What is it that makes people to venerate and get emotional about some specific document? Biblical fundamentalists, these constitution folks, Joyce scholars, and the like seem married to their favorite outmoded text. The constitution is pretty crusty by now, it might be a good idea to move on."

It is particularly hilarious, at least to this non-American, that these types are always focused on amendments to the constitution. That they hold it as self-evident that nothing could possible be gained by amending those amendments is both sad and funny.
posted by ssg at 2:54 PM on April 25

The Oklahoma City bombing is still the most deadly act of domestic terrorism in the U.S., second only to 9/11 without the "domestic" qualifier.

I can understand some nervousness on the governments' parts.
posted by Pronoiac at 3:02 PM on April 25

Well it'll be interesting to see how enshrining the right to let any jack ass buy as many assault rifles as he wants plays out.
posted by chunking express at 8:32 PM on April 25

equalpants: Huh. Can't say I disagree with anything in the oath

Trouble with all of these nutjobs is that 90% of what they say is good c*mm*ns*nse. But its the 10% they don't say that would give you nightmares.
posted by felch at 9:37 PM on April 25

See, I agree that the constitution should be defended. I agree basically with what the oath says.

However, these guys seem to be about a lot more than just the oath. The "no king but Jesus" kicking off the rally or whatever it was in one of the articles says a lot.

Unfortunately, it's hard to be a fellow who believes in the constitution but does not believe in religious nutbaggery and anti-tax tomfoolery.

Let's take the second amendment, for example. I believe wholeheartedly that the constitution gives us the right to bear arms, and NOT just to hunt with. However, 98% of the organizations that I could join to support this cause are right-wing pro-republican, praise-jesus, social conservative types. So I can't really throw my hat into their ring.

Similarly, I'd like to vote in support of the second amendment, but I can't vote for the modern Republican Party. I just can't.

What these people need to do if they ACTUALLY want to defend our constitution is to chuck all the "right-wing crazy" out of their movement so that those of us who believe in the constitution but not in the right-wing social conservativism can join up.
posted by autobahn at 12:48 PM on April 26

gimonica: So they're standing ready to defend medical marijuana in California and gay marriage in Vermont? Hello? Anyone?

Kinda exactly how I feel as well, and that's why these movements are such a farce. These guys are basically into the freedoms that fit their own ideals, which are tinged by religious bias, etc... They don't actually care about true freedom and a real vision of a free America.

Like I said, it sucks that these people suck so bad at what they're trying to do, because there's many of us out there who would love to get behind a movement that supports real freedom, true equality, and fair ideals for everyone in our country.
posted by autobahn at 12:55 PM on April 26 [1 favorite]

(Just had this conversation with a libertarian friend of mine...) It seems that libertarians don't support individual freedoms, per se. Rather, they support the freedom of states to pass whatever laws they want, for example anti gay marriage laws, without interference from the federal government. Somehow, this is supposed to equate to individual freedoms. And, get this, if people don't agree with the state laws, they can always "vote with their feet".

So basically, your individual freedom is protected by the Constitution, except when it's not, in which case you should leave.
posted by LordSludge at 10:54 AM on April 27

What about the gay-married states?
posted by Artw at 11:18 AM on April 27

Yeah, his point was that it's going to be interesting to see how Republicans' "states rights" argument (which I always thought was bogus) stands up now that a number of states have populations that swing non-conservative. And I agree: it is!
posted by LordSludge at 11:35 AM on April 27

It's really hard for some people to think that we are not political. I have been part of this movement since - before they were a movement. Groups of individuals started to react to unconstitutional activities when and wherever they were taking place. The only "Political" problem this nation faces is the political adherence of the public. Governments, tyrants, lobbyists, corporate lawyers and elitists can't destroy a nation without the cooperation of it's people. As long as the "Loyalist" mentality is in play governments can take away liberties. Not parties - elitist governments. Governments don't have parties. They use parties to get wanna be elitists to fight with constitutionalists. As the party groupies grow in number and hostility the myth that we are a Democracy is slipped in. Over time the acolytes have no idea what system of government their nation was founded on. The idea of winning overshadows self preservation and the winners cheer and sneer as they are rendered powerless. The plan is written in books, played out in film, captured in documentaries and covered by authentic journalists. Self determined people listen, investigate and make decisions based on evidence and personal ethics. Those who can be played, those who will love to be led, are swept along in the fervor of romanticism and political fantasy. We all have choices to make. We can decide via emotionalism and avarice, or we can educate ourselves and practice personal autonomy. In the cause of freedom there are no parties, there is no politics. We were given a Republic. We only have "It" to defend.
posted by dgswilson at 7:38 AM on May 9

what
posted by klangklangston at 4:10 PM on May 9

We were given a Republic.

which naturally results in an elected elite to run it, by definition - elitism is an intended result of our constitution and when it was written "democracy" was the dirty word of american politics

no one wanted the common people, like you, to be deciding what that constitution meant

they wanted a legal elite to decide it

i'm not sure that i can say the system is working the way it was designed to - but it's working in a way that someone could have reasonably foreseen - with an elite political class running things that the "common people" aren't worthy enough to deal with

i think a 2nd constitutional convention might be a more useful idea for you to defend
posted by pyramid termite at 8:52 PM on May 9