Oath Keepers Are the Nazi Brownshirts Without the Grievances
The Oath Keepers and Proud Boys are whiny wannabes compared to the Sturmabteilung. However, their message of male bonding and violence is the same the SA used to ensnare young Germans into political violence and terror.
Like the Oath Keepers, the Nazi’s Sturmabteilung — literally
“storm army”, SA for short, and also known as brownshirts — were hired goons that initially provided security at rallies and also helped disrupt and fight with Hitler’s political opponents. SAers were mostly German WW I veterans who joined to vent their anger at the new democratic Weimar government — they longed for the days of the Kaiser — and revenge for the humiliating Versailles treaty with the Allies.
Oath Keepers, and their isotope the Proud Boys, have a similar demographic of veterans, as well as small business owners. More revealingly, these and other groups have generalized gripes that would be all too familiar with the SA. Oath Keepers’ CEO Elmer Stewart Rhodes froths at the mouth about betrayals, stolen elections, Marxists, world government, and non-white invaders as threats to the Founding Father-land. His rants translated into German and with appropriate substitutions would have made for a good Nazi stump speech.
More interestingly, Rhodes’ Oath Keepers doesn’t really have a political philosophy, other than being against big government run by a hidden group of bankers, the deep state, and the UN. It’s really unclear what they want. Their “oath” such as it is involves a promise to defend the Constitution — or more accurately their idea of it — and affirming a list of 10 orders they will not obey. The Proud Boys have a similarly vague pledge about defending “Western civilization” and, um, we know what that means.
The SA, on the other hand, did have real grievances about unemployment and impoverishment, along with their beloved Fatherland losing territory to France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and ceding control of Danzig to the League of Nations. On top of that, Germany had to demilitarize the Rhineland.
For the German veterans, the war and its aftermath was a massive blow to their honor and manhood. I’m in no way of course defending the SA and Nazi response to the Versailles Treaty, but you can see the basis for legitimate anger. Contrast this with the Oath Keepers’ zany claims about Chinese takeover of the government and Marxist cabals. In Weimar Germany, there was a worker-oriented socialist party, the SPD, as well as an actual Communist party.
Stewart Rhodes lives in a democracy, with a two-party system, and Biden and the Democrats more worker friendly than the Republicans. But there is no way they can be confused with Otto Wels and the Weimar-era SPD.
The OK and Proud Boys are just whiny wannabes compared to the SA. However, their message of a male empowerment and status enhancement, unfortunately, does resonate.
What these groups seems to provide is a clubhouse where guys can hang out together, drink, and get angry about gays, “wokeness”, “the skirts”, and Communist companies like Target and Disney.
If you had been following the recently concluded Oath Keepers trial — wherein founder Rhodes and his soulmate Kelly Meggs received long prison sentences — you may have noticed that this group was like a frat house where they’d have to booze up for their activities.
Here’s where there is some convergence. The SA also acted as a club in which guys could get together, schmooze and drink, and then go out on group outings involving bicycling, horseback riding, as well as other muscular pursuits requiring blackjacks and brass knuckles.
Sports and intimidation of political opponents was a way to bond and form a community. For those so motivated, they can read Daniel Siemens’ Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler’s Brownshirts, which dives into the SA’s origins and their boozy team-building activities.
However, the OK and PB are more than just all-male clubs. Their vague goals and the nonsensical politics are the obvious tipoff that their leaders are not first-rate thinkers. And that is the point! Their real goal is to attract unformed young men into the arena and get them to throw punches. The machine gunning will come later.
Violence is their means and end — nothings else. Political thinkers — see the aforementioned Stormtrooper book for references — have written about these “communities of violence” where violence is a way of life. Stewart Rhodes former wife Tasha Adams has some revealing insights on this score. In an interview she describes physical abuse in the form of spontaneous martial arts sessions she engaged in with Rhodes when he became angry at her.
Violent acts are also a rejection of a middle class life that has failed them.
I’ve already written a Medium piece about the disproportionate number of home contractors and solo business owners that made up the J6 defendants. They were struggling to make it into the happier realms of upper-middle class life portrayed on the TeeVee commercials but are instead stuck with dreary backbreaking work in non-cool jobs. In an Americans culture that judges you by new cars, vacations, houses, clothes, and gadgetry, it’s shattering when all this becomes out of reach.
For them, violence is an “exit strategy” from the middle class. I was stunned that so many of the J6ers, as they themselves said, were caught up in the moment, having “fun”(?), and didn’t ponder the consequences. As it turns out, J6 was their chance to finally vent steam, break middle-class norms that didn’t make them happy or engaged, and identify with something bigger than themselves. They now have a more convincing reason for their pain: they’re in an epic struggle against dark forces and that will explain their life going forward. Depressing, but true.
There will always be a Stewart Rhodes or an Enrique Tario waiting to ensnare vulnerable young men and grift them in the process. We just have to hope there aren’t more serious economic downturns so that the next Oath Keepers won’t have 30,000 but 1.3 million followers, as the SA was able to achieve at the height of its powers in the late 1930s.
