Remember this guy? — Stewart Rhodes, infamous founder of the ultra-radical, anti-government Oath Keepers militia, who is now serving an 18-year prison sentence for sedition stemming from the January 6, 2021, “Capitol Riot.” Now meet his 27-year-old estranged son, Dakota Adams, currently running for a ruby-red local seat in the Montana House — as a Democrat!
Here is an uplifting story of how someone who grew up in an incredibly challenging family environment while living under extremely isolating circumstances could still manage to turn their life around and become a useful member of society once given the right opportunities, courtesy of Business Insider today. Regarding the events surrounding January 6:
"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," Adams told the Associated Press about his father's involvement in the riot.
"I was forced to reevaluate a lot of beliefs and face hard questions about what I really stood for."
He uses his mother's maiden name and told the AP that he was still "figuring myself out" and has gone to therapy to work through the "long-term effects of living in a toxic or dysfunctional household."
He said that he plans to sell the rifles, body armor, and tactical gear he used to wear to anti-government protests with his father.
The linked AP story is well worth reading in full, as it delves more deeply into his background:
Adams, who uses his mother’s maiden name and refers to Rhodes only by his first name, was raised in the shadow of one of the nation’s most notorious conspiracy theorists.
Rhodes graduated from Yale with a law degree, but Adams called him lazy, paranoid and a grifter who had an exaggerated sense of his own importance as a threat to the government. Rhodes started Oath Keepers in 2009 after Democrat Barack Obama was elected president.
In their lives, as Adams tells it, Rhodes had his family living in constant fear that the government was spying on them and that the apocalypse was always just months away. Rhodes sabotaged his children’s home schooling and wouldn’t let them speak about their home lives in public, Adams said.
Side note: though Adams was widely self-read in history, he didn’t manage to learn even simple math like the times table until he was 19 so he could pass a high school equivalency exam!
Rhodes’ “leadership” of the Oath Keepers was inconsistent, even erratic, Adams said. Rhodes burned bridges with members, as well as with employers and creditors, leading to repeated moves for the family of eight.
“Basically until I’m an adult it’s all one continuous gray time of survival and moving boxes,” Adams 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.”
They escaped Rhodes in 2018, when Tasha Adams filed for divorce.
Regarding his current quixotic campaign for local office in a district that tfg won with 74% of the vote in 2020, he has no illusions about his chances against his Republican opponent, Neil Duram, who has a “solid reputation” and even got Adams’ vote in 2022:
While Adams’ campaign may look like a fruitless undertaking, he doesn’t see it that way. For him it’s a chance to tell his own story — that of an “honest weirdo” who emerged from a traumatic childhood to find his own way in life. It’s also a chance to make the case for his own vision of how democracy and personal responsibility intertwine.
Win or lose, Adams’ campaign is built on his belief that people sympathetic to extremist groups might be open to seeing things differently.
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He’s gotten encouragement in his bid for the Legislature from Democrats, and some voters in his district have agreed to put signs in their yard. Scott Rodich, the vice chair of the county Democratic Central Committee, said Democrats have been hesitant to run in the Republican stronghold, so party leaders are glad to have Adams on the ballot.
Adams has also appeared at campaign events with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ryan Busse. Adams met former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, one of the state’s most prominent Democrats, at the party’s Mansfield-Metcalf dinner, and found it “incredibly weird” that Bullock knew who he was.
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Adams has his eye on a threshold set by Bullock, who received 37% of the votes cast in Lincoln County in 2016. But even if he doesn’t meet it, he says he’ll be back.
“Regardless of what happens, I’m trying again,” Adams said. “I think this is going to be a lifelong thing.”