Findings of new report should calm media frenzy about right-wing radicals in the armed forces
Recall 2021… when the Biden FBI deployed counterterrorism resources against concerned parents who showed up at school board meetings, and Gen. Mark Milley told Congress that he wanted “to understand White rage” one month after an enraged father was dragged out of a Loudon County, Virginia school board meeting after his daughter was raped by a transgender boy in the girl’s bathroom – which the school board then covered up.
Remember that?
And instead of addressing the concerns of millions of angry parents who had woken up to a nationwide phenomenon of mentally ill schoolteachers, critical race theory / DEI indoctrination, and transgender boys crushing the dreams of female athletes, the Biden administration turned the whole thing into a ‘white rage’ problem caused by extremist Trump supporters.
In December of 2021, the Pentagon furthered the ‘white rage’ narrative, warning that ‘extremism’ within the ranks was on the rise, which would require ‘detailed new rules’ to prohibit service members from engaging in ‘certain activities.’
The new policy lays out in detail the banned activities, which range from advocating terrorism or supporting the overthrow of the government to fundraising or rallying on behalf of an extremist group or “liking” or reposting extremist views on social media. The rules also specify that commanders must determine two things in order for someone to be held accountable: that the action was an extremist activity, as defined in the rules, and that the service member “actively participated” in that prohibited activity.
Previous policies banned extremist activities but didn’t go into such great detail, and also did not specify the two step process to determine someone accountable. -AP
Turns out that was total bullshit…
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Good news: The U.S. military isn’t packed with violent extremists.”
That’s the gist of a new report commissioned by the Pentagon in 2021 and released quietly with little notice in December. The result won’t surprise Americans who have spent time in uniform, but it should calm the media frenzy about right-wing radicals in the armed forces.
After reports that some service members participated in the Jan. 6 riot, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered an independent study to get “greater fidelity” on extremism in the ranks. The think tank tasked with the report, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), “found no evidence that the number of violent extremists in the military is disproportionate” to U.S. society. A review of Pentagon data suggested “fewer than 100 substantiated cases per year of extremist activity by members of the military in recent years,” the report says.
The researchers found that “the prevalence of extremist and gang-related activity that are reflected in court-martial opinions is limited to fewer than 20 cases” since 2012, for example.
One conclusion was that the military doesn’t need a new section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice to punish alleged “extremists” in the ranks, and that commanders can simply rely on Article 116 (riot or breach of peace), Article 88 (contempt toward officials), Article 109 (destruction or damage to property), and Article 115 (communication of threats), as well as others.
The researchers also found that “fewer than ten” out of more than 700 Jan. 6 cases involved active members of the military, debunking yet another leftist claim.
Let’s see how much attention this debunking receives vs. the original headlines?
