Extremism in the Military Debunked
Photo by Joel Rivera-Camacho. Cpl. Charles Ferris, a 0621 Tactical Transmissions Operator with 1st Supply Battalion, 1st Marine Logistics Group performs a radio check during a Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluation (MCCRE) on Camp Pendleton, California, March 12, 2021.
Is the United States military riddled with white supremacists and racist extremists as claimed by President Biden and his Defense Secretary? On February 3, 2021, just two weeks into the new presidential administration, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced a “pause” across the entire Defense Department. NBC News reported that this action was taken so that commanders could “discuss the threat posed by white supremacy and similar extremism.”
At the time, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters that the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol was a “wake-up call” for the Defense Department. According to NBC News, “current and former members of the military took part in the siege, and the Pentagon is under scrutiny over how it vets recruits and tracks extremism within the ranks.”
This “stand down” order was issued by Secretary of Defense Austin after meeting with the leaders of each military branch, as well as the then Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley and Vice Chairman General John Hyten. According to John Kirby, “there wasn’t one being in the room that didn’t agree that there wasn’t a problem” with extremists.
In response to this plan to ferret out these alleged extremists within the ranks, the House of Representatives approved an amendment to the annual defense spending bill in July of 2022 that compelled government officials to prepare a report on instances of white supremacy and neo-Nazi activity in uniformed services and federal law enforcement. The measure required the FBI director, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Secretary of the Defense to publish a report analyzing white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity within their ranks and present ways in which to thwart it.
These were serious allegations, and one would expect that both the media and the public would be anxiously awaiting the outcome of such a report – as all Americans are rightly concerned about the fitness, loyalty, and readiness of our military forces. Instead, the report was issued with no fanfare and almost no media coverage at the end of 2023, easily buried while most Americans were busy celebrating the holidays. In fact, a search for news of this report on the internet requires the reader to scroll through at least a dozen articles from 2021 before locating any information about the issuance of the final report.
The internal study by the Defense Department’s Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) found that Representative Andy Biggs (R-Arizona) was correct when he stated on the House floor that “This amendment attempts to create a problem where none exists.” The 262-page report entirely debunked the talking points promoted by President Biden and Secretary Austin, concluding that researchers “found no evidence that the number of violent extremists in the military is disproportionate to the number of violent extremists in the United States as a whole.”
And as for the alleged “wake-up call” of January 6, the researchers reported that “there is no evidence that service members were charged at a different rate than the members of the general population”. In fact, “of the more than 700 federal cases in which charges were publicly available a year after these events, fewer than ten” were cases of citizens actually serving in the military at the time the riot broke out.
The report’s summary explained that “Anecdotal accounts of military participation in violent extremist events . . . draw public attention and may create the impression that the military has ‘an extremism problem.’ Such accounts magnify the actions of a few and provide little information on the overall scope of the problem.”
“Moreover”, the report continues, “As the Department responds to such events, it should remain cognizant of the fact that violent extremism does not appear to be any more prevalent among service members than it is in American society as a whole and avoid steps that risk unnecessary polarization or division in the ranks.”
The report pointed out that Secretary Austin’s Pentagon never developed a clear definition of “extremism.” Leaving it open to interpretation allowed extremism to be defined however the administration chose. The report touched upon the ripple effect created by the lack of clarity, cautioning that it could divide troops against each other and the nation against the military.
“The U.S. military draws on the strengths of the American public and appropriately reflects the full range of political, ideological, and religious backgrounds that shape American society today. As Americans, service members have every right to their own opinions, including opinions that may appear extreme or even distasteful to others. Diversity of views, like diversity of race, gender, and ethnicity, is both a necessity and an asset for the Department, providing an aggregation of strengths, perspectives, and capabilities that transcend individual contributions.”
With no real evidence of systemic problems, CNN claimed the military “long had an extremist problem.” MSNBC’s Cynthia Miller-Idress said that “Extremism in the military is a serious national security threat.” For almost three years the media and the military’s investigative agencies have been scouring the barracks, the bases, the ships, the submarines, and the training fields for those extremists whom they were sure must be out there somewhere.
But despite all of the claims of white supremacy and neo-Nazism, the three-year investigation has concluded that there are very few extremists in the military. Shouldn’t military leaders be relieved at this conclusion, and anxious to announce this good news to the public? Isn’t this news worthy of being shared at a press conference? Instead, the story has been buried or ignored and no apologies from President Biden, Secretary Austin, or those in the media who promoted this claim have yet been offered. The very accusation itself has been an insult to every patriotic American and to all those who have served in uniform and the families that have sacrificed alongside them.
But perhaps military members are extremists, if you consider it extreme to voluntarily put oneself into harm’s way and to put one’s life on the line protecting fellow Americans whom you don’t even know. Hundreds of thousands of these brave men and women never returned from their quest to help preserve the freedoms that we all enjoy. What a bitter pill it is to have their service and sacrifices denigrated by their leaders.