Keeping up with the hard fash-ians
More Oath Keepers are being sentenced this week. Yesterday Roberto Minuta and Ed Vallego, both convicted of seditious conspiracy, received 4-and-a-half years and three years, respectively. Vallejo got an additional one year home confinement. Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins got 8-and-a-half years. More militia members are set to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta today.
Micah Loewinger has done some stellar reporting for On the Media from WNYC (which also happens to be a former employer of mine). He also unintentionally became part of the story when prosecutors subpoenaed him to testify about recordings he made of Oath Keeper conversations on Jan. 6. I called up Micah to talk about his reporting, his recent conversation with Tasha Adams, who was married to Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes for nearly three decades, and more.
We're in the middle of sentencing. Robert Minuta is being sentenced as we speak. After three years covering this movement, what are you thinking about?
Jan. 6 was a culmination of a lot of conspiratorial rhetoric from the Oath Keepers and the militia movement, much of which either explicitly or implicitly pointed to a violent standoff with the government. And so, in some ways Jan. 6 was shocking, and in other ways, it was very predictable. It's been fascinating to watch people who played a role in fomenting the paranoia and the violent rhetoric in the militia movement face consequences.
Oath Keepers are being sentenced now. Proud Boys will be sentenced in August. Do you have a sense of what this moment means for people in the movement?
I don't think this will have one single effect. It's become a little harder for me to monitor militia activity because I was so focused on Zello, and those networks are gone from the app post-Jan. 6. I do think there's been something of a chilling effect. Some of these militia groups have gone underground. I think they're being a bit more discreet with their organizing and their recruitment. And, I'm wary of predicting what will happen but I do think that the volume and the temperature will rise as we approach 2024.
You recently sat down with Tasha Adams, Stewart Rhodes' ex wife. It was a very moving and revelatory interview about his intelligence, paranoia, and dysfunction. What did you come away with?
Tasha's story is largely about domestic abuse. We have seen some research into the relationship between gun violence and domestic abuse. And her story indicated to me that there's more to learn about the relationship between this kind of radicalization and domestic abuse, and that we have much to learn about the relationships between families and friends and public violence.
Anything that surprised you about the experience?
She struck me as a very optimistic and open person. Some of the details that she described were haunting and deeply disturbing. They kept me up at night. And somebody who's experienced the kind of trauma that she did in her marriage with Stewart, and her attempt to keep her family safe and sane, might cause another person to shut down. And I'm just very struck by this mission that she's on to both understand the 27 years that she shared with Stewart Rhodes, and also build a new life to try and move on.
You got pulled into the Oath Keepers trial, and people can listen and read about that. But one thing that jumped out is that they gave you a toy when you were in the witness greenroom waiting to testify. It's such an odd little detail!
Yeah, they gave me a fidget toy. It was a finger trap with a marble in it. And it was very effective at helping me because I was quite nervous. For me, that kind of illustrated the absurd undercurrent in this very serious situation.
There's a glaring banality to it. The most mundane thing you can imagine an adult doing in a very grave and serious setting. Like, when the Oath Keepers finished up the insurrection on Jan. 6, they went to Olive Garden.
It does speak to the fact that you can be a deeply radicalized person with some dangerous, violent tendencies. You know, go to DC and participate in something truly, truly alarming, and then just seek creature comforts two hours later.
What's something about this movement that most people still don't understand?
I would just point to the fact that when I listened to countless hours of militia chatter and recruitment interviews, the story that the groups would tell themselves and their recruits is that they are defending the country. Everything is framed in terms of protection, which is another way of saying, "We don't start fights. We just stand up to the bad guys." And I think that is a very dangerous way of cloaking and rationalizing the type of political violence that they were participating in.
Don't forget to sign your friends up for Breaking the Vote!
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario