Keeping That Oath

Can we finally stop pretending that Team Dudebro Defector are somehow "liberals" and not right-wing, anti-Obama, anti-government cranks?

Activist Glenn Greenwald posted this today on Twitter, hyping a pro-Edward Snowden advertisement featured at reason.com:

A coalition of current and former military, police, and other public officials place huge pro-Snowden ad in Metro http://t.co/zcqTb0IBJ3
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 11, 2013

Who is this “coalition of current and former military, police, and other public officials” Greenwald is promoting?

Why, that group of "former police and military" folks is non other than Oath Keepers, one of the nastiest right-wing militia groups in the country.

Launched in March [2009] by Las Vegan Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers bills itself as a nonpartisan group of current and retired law enforcement and military personnel who vow to fulfill their oaths to the Constitution.

More specifically, the group's members, which number in the thousands, pledge to disobey orders they deem unlawful, including directives to disarm the American people and to blockade American cities. By refusing the latter order, the Oath Keepers hope to prevent cities from becoming "giant concentration camps," a scenario the 44-year-old Rhodes says he can envision happening in the coming years.

It's a Cold War-era nightmare vision with a major twist: The occupying forces in this imagined future are American, not Soviet.

"The whole point of Oath Keepers is to stop a dictatorship from ever happening here," Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper and Yale-trained lawyer, said in an interview with the Review-Journal. "My focus is on the guys with the guns, because they can't do it without them.

Hey, Las Vegas?  Militia?  Sprung into existence 3 months after Obama took office?  You don't suppose...

An official with New York’s Oath Keepers organization denied the group held “far-right, anti-government views,” and then called on law enforcement officers to disobey orders and join them in their fight against socialist tyranny.  

John Wallace, vice president of the state’s Oath Keepers group, cited an alleged New York State Intelligence Center counterterrorism bulletin reportedly leaked to InfoWars that linked the organization and similar groups to the recent shootings of law 

enforcement officers by extremists. Wallace complains that the document, which has not been confirmed as legitimate, based its conclusions on news reports by “left-wing” and “communist” organizations such as the New York Times, Huffington Post, and CNN.

Oh, these guys backed awesome racist Cliven Bundy and his Ranch of Revolution.

And these are the guys Glenn Greenwald is promoting.

Now matter how much you think that Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald were right. you immediately lose all validity concerning your argument when you decide to make common cause with a dangerous right-wing militia group like Oath Keepers.   Don't ever expect me to take him seriously if he's welcoming the support of these assholes and going after actual liberals.

He just showed his true colors.