Displaying items by tag: Stewart Rhodas

KING OF THE APOCALYPSE

US, 2025, 84 minutes, Colour.

Directed by Daniel Vernon.

Stewart Rhodes, founder and leader of the patriotic militia, the Oath Keepers in 2009, was one of the leading figures at the January 6th 2021 uprising. In 2022 he was found guilty and sentenced to prison. In 2025 he, along with so many of the other participants in the uprising, were pardoned by President Trump.

This is his story. It is also the story of his son, Dakota Adams, and of Rhodes’ wife, Tasha Adams. The film has been directed by Daniel Vernon, director of a wide range of documentaries for 20 years. But, it is very much the documentary by Dakota Adams.

He is initially seen at a microphone, making a pod cast, beginning the narrative about his father, his background, lack of education, the encounter with Tasha, their marriage, his gaining a law degree, practising in Las Vegas. The couple seem very happy. They have six children. Then, during Dakota’s  narration, there is a long interview, interspersed throughout the film, with Tasha herself and her perspective on her life, relationship with her husband, her children, and then working for him, especially when his perspective became more religious, more apocalyptic and the family moved to the wilds of Montana. She worked for her husband, found herself trapped organising his business and connections, more and more alienated. And, then there are some interviews from one of the daughters and her perspective, even more highly alienated, on her father and his beliefs and activities.

One of the visual advantages of the film is that so much of the material is illustrated by home movies, by some animation, by clips from feature films, B-budget of the past, which are obviously now in the public domain but serve as dramatic counterparts to this story of Stewart Rhodes.

Rhodes and his wife were brought up as Mormons, Stewart being baptised in several churches. His perspective became more and more apocalyptic, anticipating the end of the world (with some clips from early Jesus silent films), becoming more and more possessed by his ideas, his son referring to him as increasingly paranoid, and his becoming highly authoritarian in the house, and always promoting his view of loyalty to the Constitution.

In 2009 he established the Oath Keepers, a rapidly increasing group of right-wing patriots, especially with members of the Armed Forces returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many sequences of the Oath Keepers, military style, interviews with Whip Simmons, who worked for Rhodes, is interviewed along with his mother, the significant sequence voicing Trump in ideas and, especially, with his enormous range of guns at home, argument for the Second Amendment and not giving up arms, and was indicted.

This film is an opportunity to look behind the scenes of those involved in January 6. An opportunity to see and hear them.

In the aftermath, Tasha was able to divorce her husband and support her son. Dakota, highly influenced when young by his father and his expectations, moving away from this-patriotism and is seen finally at a meeting, standing for politics and collaboration with people rather than the authoritarian mode.

This documentary can be seen in connection with the continually emerging documentaries about Donald Trump and the Trump era.