A unique twist on the recent report, Evaluating Extremism in the US Military
A unique twist on the recent report, Evaluating Extremism in the US Military
Whew, it’s Monday and it’s good to be back at the keyboard. As a note, this week’s TAT pieces may be fairly short. It is a week of babysitting a couple of our grandchildren, and school, dinner, activities etc… take precedence, happily.
This first full work week of the year is always daunting and 2024’s ongoing and to come events, will predictably dominate TAT’s pages. The first step is always the hardest, so there is no time like the present, to take that step.
Today I will just scratch the surface regarding a personally sensitive topic. Extremism in the US military. The US Department of Defense, still allows FOX News to play on bases, ships and in squadrons. FOX, is the foundation of modern US far-right extremism and guilty of conditioning their audiences over thirty years, to believe that right wing extremism, is conservative. Now, we have an extremism problem in the ranks. I know, because I have watched this evolve over my career, first-hand.
FOX and similar blare non-stop in government spaces, galleys of Naval Vessels, day Rooms and squadron rooms, including SCIFs, where MAGA sycophants, babble far-right conspiracy theories rather than acknowledge the truth that they can read for themselves, on classified systems. At the height of the public becoming aware of what the IC/ Intelligence Community had long known, I had team members denying that Russia had a role in the 2016 election, while others blamed far-right terrorist acts on Islamist extremists. None of this was true but they had zero reason or policy constraints on expressing such nonsense.
This problem has existed for a few decades and has grown exponentially worse, in the Trump era. To be clear, this is still a minority, but it is also, a higher rate by recent reporting, than in non-military communities. Conspiracy theories are not intelligence and commanders should never have to wonder who their troops are loyal to. We all swear the same exact oath of service.
I take no pleasure in the following analysis but if someone does not speak out, we are leaving an untreated cancer, deep in the heart of American values. This cancer was almost lethal on January 6th, 2021. It’s time to treat this cancer with every available treatment, established or experimental, or risk the drastic consequences.
The numbers of violent extremists by percentage, are higher in the military than outside. If we are to protect our troops so that they can protect us, we must start by separating those who believe the far-right ideology, theocracy and authoritarianism from truly patriotic American service members. In America, you can believe as you wish, but what serves as GOP ideology today, does not allow you to, honestly swear to uphold the US Constitution, as is a sworn oath by all US military and government workers.
Today’s piece is a tough one to pen but it must be addressed, for the sake of our national security and in fact, our nation. There are plenty of right-wing articles out there claiming that this 262-page report, says that there is no extremism problem in the military. These articles are categorically false. I highly recommend reading America’s least biased and most credible news source, USA TODAY, for the real story.
Here are a couple of quotes from the USA TODAY investigation by reporter Will Carless on the 27th of December, 2023.
“The report offers scant new data on extremism in the military
Experts on extremism had been waiting for this report, hoping it would shed new light on how bad the military’s extremism problem is. The report’s primary focus was to gain “greater fidelity on the scope of the problem,” according to Austin’s memo in April 2021.”
“The report says extremism appears to be becoming more common in the military
The report concludes that extremism in the military is rare but dangerous.
“The participation in violent extremist activities of even a small number of individuals with military connections and military training could present a risk to the military and to the country as a whole,” it says.”
“But the report appears to offer almost nothing in terms of new data on the scope of the military’s extremism problem. Instead, it collates existing data from sources including the military’s inspector general.”
I am in agreement the observations in the USA TODAY article. In fact, since extremism is a very deep part of my professional expertise, I would even go further. The IDA, Institute for Defense Analyses report issued just this week, was in my opinion, still short of the requirements set by SECDEF Austin in 2021. I give them the benefit of the doubt and just say that their work, leaves professional extremism experts, myself included, with a lot of unanswered questions. I wrote on this topic back in April of 2023 and in-depth.
In fact, several prestigious experts and think thanks of repute, have written on this topic as well. Here are just a few:
The Military, Police and the Rise of Terrorism in the United States/ CSIS
Extremism in the ranks and after/ START, Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, Department of Homeland Security, UMd.
Assessing the Penatgon’s Progress on Countering extremism in the military/ CSIS
To close this section, let’s just say that the final report is really not final. It’s still unfinished business, and that we really don’t know where we stand right now. What we do know and as this latest report indicates, is that we still have a problem and it is growing, faster than the world outside of the military.
Another critical and poorly understood factor, is that what passes today for what serves as Republican, not conservative beliefs, is precisely far-right extremism. This is not a political statement but my professional, fact-filled analysis as an expert in CT/ counterterrorism, radicalization and all forms of extremism. In fact, just last week I wrote a long-detailed comparison of principled conservatism vs MAGA ideology. Yes, far-right extremism is quite literally the platform of today’s GOP. My proof is in the embedded link, supported by content, copied and pasted out of original documents.
This single factor changes the calculus of any reporting… dramatically. Here’s the short summation of how this goes: For the past thirty years, right wing media, led, championed and patterned on FOX media, has conditioned right wing audiences to slowly evolve their political identity. With baby steps, they conditioned the right, to believe that today’s extremist identity markers in right wing platforms, is conservatism. This means those who’ve been so conditioned, still have identities that can be subconsciously triggered to have them react to extremist triggers, while erroneously believing that they are conservative.
Pavlov proved this with his dog and a certain set of conditions. Today, the best example is the GOP’s political identity which bears zero resemblance to President Eisenhower’s, principled conservatism.
It is no secret that the military has in the past few decades, been substantially right leaning. If that right side of the aisle has now been conditioned, as is the case, we have a majority of those with harder right views, on the threshold of falling over the line into public displays of far-right extremist activities, including those which can often include violence. The best way to investigate would be for multiple professional disciplines to track the evolution of right-wing audiences’ identity over three decades.
Comparisons between trigger words, phrases, symbolism, ideological themes of January 6th etc. to the bizarre, un-American rhetoric of Republican leadership today, would at least be a way to determine a threshold or redline in the belief systems of service members. This in fact should be determined for all significant extremist belief systems. We did it post 9-11 but now, the only real threat to national security regarding extremism, is the far-right or MAGA movement and further right, such as the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3 % crowd, “Constitutional Sheriffs” and worse. There are well over a hundred of other similar, far-right groups.
This last factor discussed is a sensitive issue and cannot be solved exclusively by isolation, punitive measures or dictate. This requires a complete identity shift in half of the US population. That half of American voters have been influenced/ conditioned to accept false patriotism and fake American values by adversaries and power mongers, should terrify us all. Extremism in a position as important as serving our nation in uniform, and conditioned by extremist beliefs while believing that they are actually patriots, is a unique and serious threat.
We must, with all expediency begin the rehabilitation of our national security community, to be able to recognize, understand and operate effectively against the threat of mis and disinformation, especially when it comes at us from all sides; foreign, domestic, political, unethical marketers and influencers etc. Any nation that operates on conspiracy theories and false information, will fail. We came close in 2016 and we must never go there again.
The US and the West have become victims of Narrative Warfare and no one in the current US national security community that has a decision-making role, knows about Narrative Warfare, and will not listen to those who do. There are plenty of reasons for this and among them, is a lack of leadership married to nepotism in the defense contracting world. I am not saying that these are necessarily bad people or organizations, but the bottom line is that they have failed at ethical influence for more than forty years. Why are we still paying for failure.
Summary
The bottom line here is truly short and sweet. American values don’t belong to any party, they belong to all Americans who believe in those values. I’m talking about our actual American values, not the made up new Republican identity that FOX and their ilk, have imposed on all of us. The countless numbers of Americans who fought and will fight to uphold our constitution, have a solemn duty to do so, against “all enemies foreign and domestic.” Not the ones that adversaries like Russia, far-right extremists and unethical marketers, make up to suit their own oligarchical, greedy wants and needs.
It is this simple, today’s GOP is an extremist movement mostly and occasionally, a violent extremist movement. Their ideology is un-American and unconstitutional. Most of today’s GOP has been conned into believing in an alternate republicanism that is extremist. They may believe that they are acting patriotically and are subconsciously triggered to fight for those beliefs. If that person is in uniform, misinformed and still vulnerable to such triggering, yes, we have a serious national security risk in the ranks. If this is not taken into account by the Pentagon, they cannot solve the extremism problem.
If we cannot protect the minds of our own military, the rest of the nation remains at worse risk to adversarial influence. This is called resilience. You can’t get to cognitive resilience for our citizens without understanding a person’s identity. You can’t do that, unless you understand narrative and Narrative Warfare. We don’t, hardly anywhere in the national security community, let alone know how to operate with it. We’d better learn because the military, who should be doing a great deal of protecting, is apparently losing ground faster than the general public.
Yes, extremism is always a threat to democracy.
My very best for your week,
Paul