Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes may be uttering some fresh oaths in his Maryland prison cell after learning that his eldest son is standing for election as a Democrat.
Dakota Adams is selling his share of the family’s rifles, body armor and tactical gear to finance his run for the Montana House of Representatives.
And the 27-year-old is abandoning other aspects of the ‘toxic childhood’ that culminated with his estranged father being jailed for his role in the January 6 storming of Congress.
Dressed in leathers and sporting black eyeliner, the volunteer firefighter said he has finally stepped out from the shadow of his domineering father and is ‘interacting with people as my genuine self’.
‘I spent so long as a child conforming to a little character to enhance my father´s political ambitions and image that I refused to do it ever again for any reason,’ he said.
Dakota Adams, 27, said the January 6 attack prompted his decision to run for office and ‘served as a sobering wake-up call in terms of how much danger we are truly in’
His father Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes is serving 18 years after being convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in he attack on the Capitol
Rhodes became one of the most famous faces of the far-right, but his son said their home life was one of extreme isolation in increasingly paranoid and militant right-wing political spheres
Adams and his five siblings suffered a childhood of ‘extreme isolation’ as they moved from house to house to escape creditors, the law and the threat of a looming apocalypse.
‘Basically until I´m an adult it´s all one continuous gray time of survival and moving boxes,’ he said.
‘We lived in extreme isolation in one particular cultural bubble in increasingly paranoid and militant right-wing political spheres everywhere we moved in the country, until eventually we ended up in Montana.’
Rhodes founded the Oath Keepers in 2009 and became one of the best-known figureheads of the far-right staging a series of high-profile stand-offs with federal and local officials.
But back at home his children were learning little from their ‘home-schooling’ other than the history of the American Revolution, leaving Adams functionally innumerate until he taught himself the times tables at 19.
Two years ago, Adams and his two eldest sisters spoke of the extreme paranoia that operated in their family and how they had to guard what they said with their only acquaintances – their father’s militant friends.
Today Adams has a job in construction and works as a volunteer firefighter as he tries to catch up with his education at college
He believes his background gives him personal insight into what makes his opponents tick
And he insists he will not ditch the black eyeliner and black nail polish for his election bid: ‘I spent so long as a child conforming to a little character to enhance my father´s political ambitions and image that I refused to do it ever again for any reason’
‘That was our only social circle ever,’ Adams said, ‘And we had to be on guard because any loose talk or violation of operational security could damage our family.
‘So we couldn’t talk about our lives, or let unnecessary information slip out even to people inside the movement.
‘It didn’t impinge on our lives – it deformed our lives. Our lives happened in the breathing space left around the Oath Keepers.
‘I was completely hung up on Stewart’s approval of me, and whether I was good enough, and my responsibility to see my family through the apocalypse.
‘Then I shifted 180 degrees to plotting against him.’
The misery finally ended when their mother Tasha gathered her children and fled one morning in 2018.
‘We told him that we were going to the corner store, and he asked us to get steak,’ Adams said.
‘He didn’t think it was weird that I picked up my mom’s dog, or that we got all our stuff in the car and snuck it out past him.
‘We were going to leave early in the morning before he woke up. But he woke up at 4 in the morning and was in a mania all day.
Rhodes’ ex-wife Tasha (left) escaped with Adams and his five siblings in 2018. Two years ago Adams’ sister Sequoia (right) spoke alongside her brother about their childhood telling an interviewer that Rhodes ‘thought he was going to be the new Founding Father’
‘So we snuck our stuff in an overnight bag past him while he was pacing up and down through the one-room cabin.’
He may have lost his family but Rhodes’ star continued to rise in far-right circles as civil unrest under the Trump presidency, culminating in the events of January 6.
Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy and evidence tampering after helping organize the attack and sentenced to 18 years.
Four days after the attack, he was recorded telling a meeting that his ‘only regret’ was that they did not bring rifles.
‘We should have brought rifles, we could have fixed it right then and there,’ he said.
‘I’d hang f***ing Pelosi from the lamppost.’
Adams says it was the attack on the Capitol that helped persuade him to run for office.
‘It served as a sobering wake-up call in terms of how much danger we are truly in and how the Republican Party enabled a president to become an active danger to this republic,’ he added.
‘I was forced to reevaluate a lot of beliefs and face hard questions about what I really stood for.’
He faces an uphill battle in deep-red Lincoln County where the Democrats peaked at 36 percent in 2016.
But he believes he has personal insight into what makes his opponents tick, even if he may appear like an ‘honest weirdo’
‘I’m not starting out from a place of attacking anybody for what they believe,’ he said.
‘Because of how I grew up, I understand a lot of the lexicon.’
‘I feel like being an honest weirdo is a lot better to a lot of people than being a Spirit Halloween cowboy when you´re asking for their vote.’
Today he works in construction while juggling college classes and therapy sessions to tackle the ‘long-term effects of living in a toxic or dysfunctional household’.
Rhodes is an Army veteran and graduate of Yale Law School who later worked as a staffer for Republican Congressman Ron Paul
Twelve Oath Keepers were charged with seditious conspiracy over the January 6 attack
‘It sometimes feels very unreal, because I have a normal life 95 percent of the time,’ he said.
‘And then five percent of the time, my personal life is relevant to a national news story.
‘The disconnect feels incredibly strange.
‘I don´t think I´ll ever be fully caught up to where I would have been in life if I´d had a semi-normal childhood.’
But he insists that he has put his father’s extremism behind him and will seek change through consent.
‘I decided that I´m going to double down on betting on the electoral process,’ he added.
‘Regardless of what happens, I´m trying again. I think this is going to be a lifelong thing.’
