OPINION | The far-right militia boss’ descent into violence and madness was a long time coming, his ex-wife tells The Daily Beast.
Rhodes, who is part Mexican, made a show of being opposed to racism. This was unusual in the Patriot and militia movements as they are ideological, one of the most violent, white nationalist outfits in the last 50 years.
In essence, Rhodes became everything he claimed to hate, devastated the people closest to him, and may have destroyed his own life in a mania of grandiose narcissism.Adams says the mind games Rhodes played on her were similar to how he manipulated individual Oath Keepers.From the time they started dating in 1991, when Adams was an 18-year-old ballroom dance instructor in Las Vegas, she was an easy mark for Rhodes. “I felt guilty about having a warm, loving childhood.
Rhodes was hired by Paul’s office after writing “a long, impassioned letter of how Paul inspired him,” despite not knowing who he was until he Googled him, says Adams.—a writer on free market economics and Christian Reconstructionism—in Paul’s office. North warned him about the coming Y2K disaster, predicting the global economy would crash at the stroke of midnight of the year 2000, as computers couldn’t process the date change.
Rhodes’ end-of-the-world visions led him to stockpile weapons, presaging his Jan. 6 siege mentality, according to Adams. Benefiting from excellent grades at UNLV and an unorthodox background as a child of farmworkers, a disabled Army veteran, and older parent, he was accepted at both Harvard and Yale law schools, says Adams.