Inside the Pipeline Part 2: How The Duran Slipped Into Oath Keeper Lore
Pro-russian podcasters feed into the Oath Keepers Chats
While The Saker fed the Oath Keepers deep-dive essays and geopolitical manifestos, The Duran acted as a fast-moving, YouTube-friendly delivery system for many of the same Kremlin-aligned talking points.
The leaked Oath Keeper archives contain direct shares of Duran videos, transcript quotes, and paraphrased talking points embedded into internal discussions.
🎥 Who/What is The Duran?
Founded: Mid-2010s, Greece/Cyprus-based.
Hosts: Alexander Mercouris (London-based, ex-barrister) & Alex Christoforou (Athens-based, finance/tech background). Also Peter Lavelle (ex-RT)
Editorial Line: Overtly pro-Russian, anti-NATO, skeptical of Western institutions, and sympathetic to populist right figures in Europe/US.
Style: Long-form analysis and rapid-response “hot takes” on breaking geopolitical events.
📬 The Leak Evidence: Duran Content in Oath Keeper Channels
1️⃣ Ukraine as “NATO’s Proxy War”
“Ukraine cannot win. This is a war fought for NATO’s prestige, not for Ukrainian sovereignty.” — Mercouris (shared verbatim in OK email thread, mid-2022)
Militia Reframe: Swap “NATO” for “Deep State” — turns Ukraine aid into proof the U.S. government is wasting resources to serve a foreign cabal.
2️⃣ COVID-19 as Elite Power Grab
“Lockdowns were never about public health — they were about control.” — Christoforou (clipped into an OK Telegram share, late 2021)
Militia Reframe: Direct plug-in to NWO narratives, reinforcing refusal to comply with mandates.
3️⃣ The U.S. Dollar & Collapse Forecasts
“The multipolar world is here. The dollar’s dominance is ending.” — Duran livestream (embedded in OK chat with “Patriot Prepper” commentary)
Militia Reframe: Adds urgency to “be ready” prepping culture, presenting financial collapse as imminent and deliberate.
🧩 The Pipeline in Action
The flow from Kremlin-friendly media into American militia spaces isn’t subtle — and The Duran has played a central role in shaping how these ideas enter and mutate. By the time they arrive in a Telegram chat, a podcast monologue, or a militia-friendly blog post, the Russian fingerprints are largely gone. What’s left is a rebranded, Americanised form of the same talking points — perfectly tuned to inflame distrust, polarisation, and readiness for confrontation.
Take The Duran’s consistent line that NATO provoked the war in Ukraine. In the militia ecosystem, this isn’t simply an abstract critique of Western foreign policy — it becomes the “Deep State provoked war to enrich elites.” The language shifts from geopolitical analysis to a familiar domestic enemy frame, transforming NATO into just another arm of the supposed cabal. The result is a potent anti-military and anti-foreign aid mobilisation that paints U.S. service members as pawns of corrupt globalists.
During the pandemic, The Duran repeatedly framed COVID-19 as an “elite power grab,” echoing the same lines pushed by other Kremlin-friendly platforms. In militia lore, this didn’t remain a vague libertarian critique. It morphed into “COVID was a dry run for gun confiscation” — welding together public health scepticism with the Second Amendment absolutism that defines much of the movement. This reframing justifies outright defiance of public health rules while positioning armed resistance as a rational and necessary response.
And when The Duran warns that the collapse of the U.S. dollar is inevitable, the militia pipeline takes that economic forecast and weaponises it: “The NWO will crash the economy to control the population.” Here, a speculative macroeconomic scenario becomes a script for economic siege preparedness — stockpiling, barter networks, and readiness for “the day the system falls.” The Kremlin’s strategic interest in eroding confidence in U.S. economic stability gets perfectly repackaged as a survivalist call-to-arms.
🔗 Why The Duran Stuck
Video-first format: Perfect for fast circulation in closed chats.
Familiar faces: Both hosts appear on other alt-media channels already trusted in militia spaces (e.g., Redacted, Viva Frei).
Overlap with Saker themes: Repeats the multipolar / anti-globalist frame but with more immediacy and soundbite value.
📜 Takeaway
If The Saker is the long-form Kremlin essay slipped into Oath Keeper reading lists, The Duran is the podcast version — short enough to watch on a phone, sharp enough to provoke outrage, and flexible enough to slot into whatever “Deep State” narrative is trending that week.
And these stories don’t stay confined to encrypted chats or militia meet-ups. The same reframed talking points — NATO as the aggressor, COVID as a weapon of control, the dollar in terminal decline — are now appearing in the public rhetoric of senior U.S. officials. In Part 3, we’ll follow how these narratives travelled from The Duran and The Saker to the militia pipeline, and from there into the speeches, podcasts, and policy cues of Trump’s 2025 cabinet.