Rally exposes Oath Keepers, supremacists rift
Scuffle between the groups in Houston shows differences.
On the surface, the white supremacists of the burgeoning alt-right movement seem to have a lot in com-
mon with the Oath Keepers, the anti-government militia group made up of former
military and law enforce- ment people from around the country.
They share a deep con- tempt for the federal govern- ment. They loathe political correctness in all its forms. They relish a good fight with left-wing activists. And, generally speaking, they support President Donald Trump.
But a confrontation at a recent rally in Houston exposed some crucial differ- ences between the alt-right’s standard-bearers and the older, somewhat less radical Oath Keepers, and the fallout showed just how far they have drifted from one another.
On June 10, hundreds of protesters supporting the group This Is Texas, reportedly an Oath Keepers affiliate, gathered at a park in Hous- ton after reports circulated that a statue of slaveholder and former Texas governor Sam Houston was going to be removed. The reports turned out to be fabrications, as the Houston Chronicle reported, but a large crowd of demonstrators turned out, many of them wearing camouflage and carrying guns.
A smaller contingent of white supremacists also attended, among them followers of the popular neo- Nazi hate site the Daily Stormer and the National Vanguard, a neo-Nazi splinter organization dedicated to racial cleansing.
At some point, the two sides started arguing, with attendees from This Is Texas denouncing the white supremacists’ message. The tension erupted when a young white supremacist — the Daily Stormer called him “one of ours” — was briefly put in a chokehold by an armed protester, then forced away from the demonstration by one of the organizers, David Amad, and a throng of others. Someone filmed the incident and posted the footage to YouTube, and the confrontation was highlighted by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“Racists are not welcome amongst us, because racism is just plain stupid,” Amad said in the video. “And if you don’t like that, I don’t give a damn.”
The scuffle drew a flurry of attacks this week from the Daily Stormer and the white nationalist Altright. com, which blamed Oath Keepers for the incident and chided the militia group for not beingasracist or radical as they would prefer.
“They are obsessed with not being perceived as ‘racists,’ due to their boomer brain programming, which leads them to believe that a racist is the most evil of all things,” wrote Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin. “In fact, I’m not even sure what their goal is exactly.”
In Facebook posts this week, the Oath Keepers den i ed that the arm ed demonstrator who roughhoused the white supremacist was one of its own. The group said it couldn’t confirm whether members of its Texas chapter had participated in the rally.