As prosecutors begin to make their case against five members of the far-right paramilitary group the Oath Keepers in federal court for their involvement in events around January 6, we are gaining a better understanding of the specious defense those on trial apparently intend to make. In an opening statement summarized by The New York Times, one of the group’s lawyers asserted that the accused “had never planned an attack against the government on Jan. 6. Instead [. . .] the Oath Keepers were waiting for Mr. Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act — a move, they claim, that would have given the group standing as a militia to employ force of arms in support of Mr. Trump.” In other words, the Oath Keepers claim to have been waiting for Donald Trump to essentially declare martial law so that they could then act as a paramilitary enforcer of the president’s coup attempt. The idea that the president’s possible invocation of the Insurrection Act might have magically granted a fascistic militia some sort of legitimacy captures in a nutshell the degree to which Trump and his supporters sought to overthrow American government by force of arms and quasi-legal claims aimed at clouding perceptions of their fundamentally treasonous nature. What makes their defense even more preposterous and self-serving is the basic fact that Oath Keepers participated in the violent assault on the Capitol even in the absence of any fictitious legal cover from the president.
Another detail from this NYT article is worth drawing attention to. It notes that, “Another key aspect of the trial will be the Oath Keepers’ relationship to Mr. Trump, a man they often supported as president despite their traditional antigovernment beliefs. The group, which was founded during the Obama administration to oppose what it saw as an overreaching government, mobilized to defend presidential power once Mr. Trump assumed office and embraced the deep-state conspiracy theories that marked his new administration.” This succinctly captures the fundamental bogosity of so many anti-government militia types — they are hell-bent against big government, until that big government is run by a fellow fascism-inclined individual, in which case they’re all in not only on big government, but big government under strongman rule. Dig a bit deeper, and you can see how this apparent reversal is at least consistent with their white supremacist leanings and will to power, particularly on behalf of white males — if it takes a dictatorship to defend white supremacy, then so be it.
Although the defense strategy of trying to “humanize” the defendants isn’t objectionable in and of itself, the detail that at least three of the five defendants are former members of the U.S. military feels like it could and should seriously harm their defense. It is bad enough to engage in insurrection against the American government; it is even worse when one betrays one’s military oath to defend the country, and employs that military training in service of a project so dark and frankly evil as to make the perpetrators a model of contempt for future generations of Americans.