How the Oath Keepers turned Pennsylvania into a far-right militia recruiting hotbed

[FakeNoose]

(link) https://www.post-gazette.com/news/crime-courts/2023/01/06/oath-keepers-pennsylvania-capitol-riot/stories/202301060080

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette original story Jan. 6, 2023
By Michael Korsh and Mike Wereschagin

Years after launching a campaign for Congress in Pennsylvania, police sergeant Ted Waga III was thrust into a scandal over a series of tweets from his account with homophobic slurs and calls for “modern day crusades” against Muslims.

The “people of the world are getting fed up” and “will/are going on the offensive” against them, one tweet said.

The Pennsylvania resident who served in the Baltimore County police in Maryland quickly drew the ire of advocacy groups and his own police force, which launched an inquiry into the tirades in 2019. The county government’s top executive called the messages “hateful,” while local civil rights groups said they were “blatantly racist” and demanded that he apologize and be disciplined.

By the next year, Mr. Waga was no longer on the force, but his long stint as a police officer made him an ideal recruit for one of the best known far-right militia groups in the nation: the Oath Keepers.

- more at link, including interactive maps -

Wow! I'm shocked to see how many Oath Keepers are in Allegheny County and City of Philadelphia. I expected them to be living in the rural counties of PA, not the cities.

[TheRealNorth]

1. It would be interesting to compare the numbers as a percent of the total county's population

There are a lot RWNJ's in the urban areas too.

[twodogsbarking]

2. Am I correct that these are head counts? Perhaps a percentage of

total population would be beneficial also.

[FakeNoose]

4. In the first illustration

Delaware county has 100 total Oath Keepers; Bucks County has 92; Allegheny County has 88, etc. Yes these are headcounts, not percentages.

The gist of this article is that the Oath Keepers organization has been recruiting a lot of their members from current and former LEOs. So the cities have much larger police forces than rural areas have.

[twodogsbarking]

7. The rural areas may not carry the banner but there are some

people to be watched.

[Tree-Hugger]

3. I am not shocked

I have lived in PA my entire life, most of that time in my birthplace, Philly. I have brought this up a lot on DU over the years, but there are sizable areas of red on Philly. Growing up in the Northeast section in the 70s/80s/90s we were aware of more than two Aryan nation type households. I saw and heard a lot of white nationalist shit growing up. Not much changed in my neighborhood growing up. My own brother was eventually corrupted by this shit. Also, definitely not surprised by Bucks county - that has always been a hotbed. MontCo isn't far behind. And these fucks are working hard to overturn school boards.

[FakeNoose]

5. Yes we have lots & lots of conservatives in PA

I'd never disagree with you. My "shock" is that Oath Keepers have been targeting police forces and retired LEOs for membership. That's why their city-living members outnumber their rural members.

[Tree-Hugger]

8. I'm not shocked there, either

I can't speak for elsewhere in the state, but I grew up with a lot of cop families. Based on what I grew up with, I can easily see how they'd find members within those forces. I think that is how my brother was drawn in initially. 😔

As always, I continue to hope that progressives in PA keep up their current momentum and build upon it. PA has always been very tricky and can swing either way, but I do believe there are more of us than them - we just need to consistently stick together and vote.

[onethatcares]

14. 60s and 70s, was that more MC gangs

then mainstream citizens.,

Berks for one had a slew of them, Pagans, Breed, Outlaws and others I can't remember the names of.

Pretty much leading back to the Aryan Nation

[Tree-Hugger]

16. I'm a little younger...

I'm not sure on 60s gangs. There was the K and A gang, wgich I believe was Irish initially. There were a bunch of gangs of both Irish and Italian origin with hands in white supremacy. I do not remember a lot of names.

We definitely had Pagans. I went to school with some kids who had Pagans affiliated families. This was Northeast Philly. There were a bunch of skinheads, but I am not 100% sure on the various names I used. Skinheads became more "popular" when I was a teen in the 90s. My husband - same parish, different neighborhood as me - knew a lot. We also had neighborhood gangs. " New1" was one in my area and they targeted by race.

[dalton99a]

6. Kick

[BumRushDaShow]

9. "I'm shocked to see how many Oath Keepers are in Allegheny County and City of Philadelphia."

Remember who just got charged for "seditious conspiracy" - Zachary Rehl, head of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Proud Boys.





Their trial just started this past week (haven't heard a thing on the news about it) -

Jury selection begins in trial for Proud Boys leaders charged with seditious conspiracy

Natalie Neysa Alund
USA TODAY
Published 11:06 a.m. ET Dec. 19, 2022 | Updated 11:07 a.m. ET Dec. 19, 2022


The nation's case against the extremist Proud Boys group is set to heat up Monday, when jury selection is scheduled to begin for the group's former national chairman and its four top associates in connection to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

Leader Henry "Enrique" Tarrio, 38; along with Ethan Nordean, 31; Joseph Biggs, 38; Zachary Rehl, 37; and Dominic Pezzola, 44, face nine charges including seditious conspiracy stand in an organized plot to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden's election. 

All remain detained on the charges.

The trial is slated to start Monday with jury selection in DC federal court. Testimony is expected to begin Jan. 3. All five defendants face a maximum sentence of 20 years in a federal prison.

(snip)

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/12/19/proud-boys-trial-open-monday/10924903002/

I think part of it is the strong "hunting" culture in the state and lax gun laws that gradually attracted the bottom of the barrel scum here.

From a couple years ago by Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) -

[FakeNoose]

10. Most of those who went to Washington on 1/6/21 - including most Pennsylvanians -

... were not Oath Keepers.

Yes we have a lot of gun-loving deer hunters here, that's a given. We have a lot of Chump-loving MAGAts too.
But joining a group like Oath Keepers or Proud Boys, that's a whole 'nuther level, you might say.

[BumRushDaShow]

11. True but the groups who did the "tactical maneuvers"

during the Capitol breach were coming from those organizations and I think they were also working the "Stop the Steal Rally".

Who had initially got much of that membership in the past - at least here in the Philly metro area - were what I'd call the "old school" hate groups - the Skinheads, KKK, etc.

Former Philly skinhead: ‘I was a monster’

By Katie Davis for NewsWorksJuly 20, 2015



This is a story you may know, but it’s worth remembering the details of how a young Philadelphia man can learn to hate. This is an American story — of race and hatred. Frank Meeink grew up scraping the asphalt of South Philly’s streets with his hockey stick. At 10, he played half-ball and street hockey on Fourth Street every day. But home was full of hate and fear; his stepfather beat him constantly and called him “prisoner of war.” “He set it to where I was a violent person,” Meeink said. “I was angry inside.”

When his stepfather kicked him out of his house, Meeink ended up with relatives on a farm in Lancaster County. His cousin, who had a Confederate flag in his bedroom, introduced him to a group of skinheads; they talked for hours about blacks, Latinos and Jews. They told the youth his destiny was to be a white warrior. But all that mattered to Meeink was that these older guys were taking an interest in him.

“There was no secret indoctrination, I didn’t have to give blood over a Nazi flag,” he said. One night the skinheads shaved his head, and, the next day, they give him a pair of Doc Martens. They went to a concert where the skinheads held a man and told Meeink to kick him. He did. “They added water to a seed inside me,” Meeink said. “I had been raised to hate.”

He was 14 and a neo-Nazi skinhead. For the first time, he said, “I felt like I mattered.” By the time he was 16, Meeink had a swastika tattoo on his neck, “Sieg Heil” inked into his head and “skinhead” spelled out on his knuckles. Leading white supremacists in four states, he took part in brutal attacks. Asked about the details, he said only , “I was a monster.” For kidnapping and beating a man, he was sent to prison.

(snip)

https://whyy.org/articles/former-philly-skinhead-i-was-a-monster/

I think once those older groups were heavily targeted by the authorities, what was left that hadn't already been hauled off to prison, eventually dissolved away and went underground. But then thanks to the internet, some of these other groups began to get more attention and recruits. I.e., they were a result of the moniker "Alt-Right".

OathKeepers (founded 2009)
Proud Boys (founded 2016)
3%ers (2008)

[Hermit-The-Prog]

12. This is the result of 24/7 propaganda and the years of assault on public education.

With the level of infiltration in government, I don't think we've hit bottom yet.

[BumRushDaShow]

13. At least many municipalities have acknowledged

that their LEO are littered with these people and we know that a number are either current or former military too. If anything, the info gathered through the trials of the OathKeepers and Proud Boys will continue to reveal more info on the networks of these organizations so they can eventually be targeted and perhaps even bankrupted via civil suits by those who were injured and by the families of those who were killed or committed suicide.

[GenThePerservering]

15. I lived for about 9 years of my youth in a small PA town

outside of Philadelphia. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, racist and redneck. If you stepped one inch outside the narrow path you'd be vilified. I lost my short order cook job at the town truckstop when the owner found I was saving for college, even though I got along great with our trucker customers as well as the families who came in. I did not dare say I didn't like country music. I said nothing about politics. You didn't dare. They were free speech absolutists, alright - absolutely NO free speech.

We tried to have a club for teenagers with some adult supervision for us to have something to do, but the male predators started coming around and it had to be closed down, so all there was to do is hang out in the grocery store/strip mall parking lot and sit on someone's car and talk. I can see it being easy to recruit for anything that gives meaning.

[Initech]

17. Great. We now have our own versions of ISIS and Al Qaeda on American soil.

The War On Terror was a massive failure.