Jason Van Tatenhove

Van Tatenhove testified to the Jan. 6 House committee about the group's radicalization and how Stewart Rhodes, the group's founder, used conspiracy theories to ...

"That was for me something I could not abide," he said. He said he finally decided to leave the group was when he heard members talking about how the Holocaust was not real. Van Tatenhove testified to the Jan. 6 House committee about the group’s radicalization and how Stewart Rhodes, the group's founder, used conspiracy theories to increase membership and funding.

Jason Van Tatenhoves' testimony underscored how Donald Trump's rhetoric about “fighting” political opponents was received as an order to mobilize.

The vilification of “the other side” that’s now common in this polarized political environment was ingrained in the Oath Keepers long ago, Van Tatenhove said. He spent around three years promoting the group before growing concerned as he witnessed an embrace of white nationalists and other “straight-up racists.” Van Tatenhove said he finally broke with Rhodes after hearing senior Oath Keepers denying the Holocaust. Members of the committee described Trump’s posts as a call to action for his millions of followers, even “a call to arms.” Still, Van Tatenhove stressed, the group should be considered dangerous because of its ability to widely disseminate violent messaging and radicalize followers. Five people died on that day or in the immediate aftermath, and 140 police officers were assaulted. His grim warnings about the potential for future violence also underlined the House committee’s central theme that Jan. 6 was not a single event, but part of an extremist agenda to weaken public trust in democratic institutions and make political violence more palatable. The sixth hearing featured explosive testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide. Rep. Jamie B. Raskin’s (D-Md.) opening statement portrayed extremist organizing as one of three rings of attack that day, along with political maneuvering inside the White House and the “large and angry” crowd assembled outside. Tuesday’s hearing revealed little new intelligence about the key extremist movements involved in the Capitol attack, but it did underscore how Trump’s rhetoric about “fighting” political opponents on a “wild” day instantly was received as an order to mobilize. “We should recognize them as a concrete example of a broader phenomenon. Sam Jackson, an assistant professor at the University of Albany who wrote a 2020 book about the Oath Keepers, called the committee’s presentation “compelling,” but said he’s eager to hear more details about the planning extremist groups engaged in beforehand, particularly about coordination among rival extremist groups and any potential links to members of the Trump administration. Instead, Van Tatenhove’s role was to lay out the apocalyptic worldview that underpins far-right movements such as the Oath Keepers, which he said dreamed of and trained for the kind of high-profile uprising that unfolded in the waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency.