Defining Exit Ramps for Militia Members with Former Propagandist Oath Keeper Jason Van Tatenhove

Cults, Culture & Coercion with Dr. Steve Hassan

Dr. Steven Hassan

Self-improvement, Society & Culture, Education

4.7 • 843 Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2026

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The violent coup attempt of January 6th which sent Oath Keepers to jail was justice. Until Trump pardoned all of those people who were convicted and in jail, including Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes. Now with recent events we are resharing our previous interview with someone who was involved. “America right now needs some exit ramps,” Jason Van Tatenhove said as we discussed his former role as national media director for the Oath Keepers, a group known for its far-right anti-government militia. While Jason would ultimately decide to leave the group in 2016 due to increasing racism and Holocaust denial within their membership, the Oath Keepers would go on to participate in the United States Capitol January 6th attack, led by followers of Donald Trump. Jason eventually testified before a U.S. House Select Committee about his position in media propaganda for the organization. He described their attempts at paramilitary tactics, plans for insurrection, and his relationship with Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, convicted of seditious conspiracy and evidence tampering. Jason publicly speaks about his concerns for continued paramilitary training groups and recruitment tactics in future election cycles. His book, The Perils of Extremism: How I Left the Oath Keepers and Why We Should Be Concerned about a Future Civil War, discusses the unsettled state surrounding extremism in America today and provides an insider view into the tactics used to recruit, train, and further radicalize persons with former military backgrounds, first-responders, and individuals who may otherwise feel disenfranchised by United States Democracy at this time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	happening online and radicalization. I think it's going to be a very interesting interview.
0:06.5	Welcome to the influence continuum, Jason.
0:09.4	Thanks for having me on.
0:11.0	Yeah, I don't really fit the mold all that well. You know, it was more of a almost like a
0:17.9	Chuck Thalnick fight club sense of misadventure that kind of got landed me in
0:23.0	all of this because I come from a very very left household and I was kind of raised by the remnants of
0:28.6	the New York City beat writers and abstract expressionists and hippies right and moved out to
0:34.8	Colorado when I was a younger kid and then you know I had moved up to Montana when I was a younger kid.
0:40.3	And then, you know, I had moved up to Montana. And, you know, I kind of got my start in media back in the early 90s as the art director of like the big underground music magazine in Denver.
0:50.6	So I've kind of always, you know, and I went to three different art schools. I
0:54.8	dropped out of all of them. So I kind of have this, this curiosity, a sense of misadventure.
1:00.8	And when I moved to Montana, I began hearing, being exposed to things like InfoWars and,
1:07.2	you know, harder right-wing media, such as Rush Limbaugh, trying to reconnect with an estranged father.
1:14.4	And, you know, I thought it just was intriguing when Bundy Ranch happened.
1:19.7	You know, we saw thousands of people from all over the country organically go out to this small little rundown ranch in the middle of the desert, you know,
1:28.7	south of Las Vegas and, you know, leave their families, their jobs, bring guns, and, you know,
1:36.5	get ready to square off with the federal government. And I was raised around Colorado State
1:41.8	University right there in Fort Collins. And so, you know, for me,
1:45.2	I spent a lot of time watching independent documentaries at the student center there growing up. So
1:51.6	that influenced me. I saw a lot of stuff, you know, about Ruby Ridge and Waco. And those, you know,
1:58.1	the messaging that was being put out at the time was that this was going to be another Waco, you know, that the family was in danger.
2:06.6	And I think that kind of is what caught a lot of people's attention.
	...

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