The Russians are Coming! ‘Patriot’ Paranoia Run Amok

In our time, no foreign army has ever occupied American soil. Until now.

So says the trailer for “Red Dawn,” a Cold War-era movie about a group of American teenagers who resist a Russian invasion, calling themselves Wolverines. Now, some 28 years after the film was released, the antigovernment “Patriot” crowd is having a bad case of deja vu.

This week, Oath Keepers has begun warning that a joint U.S.-Russian training exercise scheduled next month at Fort Carson, Colo., is undeniable proof that the “New World Order” is real and that the federal government is working hand-in-glove with the Russians to usher in a regime of global tyranny.

“Still don’t believe that a one-world government is planning to enforce a military-police state in America? Still have doubts about this Federal government’s planned martial law? ... Still prefer the comfort of denial to the alarming danger of what is now confronting the US of A? This may help nay-sayers smell the coffee brewing,” the Oath Keepers warned, linking to an article posted by Business Insider, a U.S.-based news website, announcing the military exercise.

What’s got the Oath Keepers up in arms isn’t that U.S. Army paratroopers are training side-by-side with their Russian counterparts. The two governments have done that before, as early as 1995, according to the Defense Department. No, it’s that this appears to be the first time the government has actually welcomed Russian soldiers onto American soil.

So is this a real-live “Red Dawn”? Only for the professionally paranoid.