It was around noon and I was texting a friend about who-knows-what when I added, almost afterwards, “But they seem to be invading the Capitol on Monday.” I wasn’t as smug as it might sound on January 6th, especially as it became increasingly clear who “they” were and what they were doing. Five people would die in the attack on the Capitol, including a police officer, and two more would commit suicide after the incident. One hundred and forty cops would be wounded (lost eye, heart attack, broken ribs, broken discs, concussions), and the collateral damage itself would be difficult to take.
I’m not particularly sentimental about someone who can grow up to be president and all of that – in 2017, someone did – but damn it! This was democracy under actual, not rhetorical, attack.
As the list of people charged in connection with this riot grew, the methods of analyzing their possible motivations became increasingly creative: at least nine of the rioters who broke into the Capitol had a story of Violence against women ;; Almost 60 percent had had Money problems ;; and most importantly, 50 or 14.5 percent of the 356 people arrested most recently had military ties, as did the woman who was killed by a police officer that day. (Veterans and active-duty personnel make up 7.5 percent of the US population.) More than a fifth of veterans arrested have been charged with “conspiracy”.
The need to understand why an estimated 800 people raided the Capitol, attacked the police, and threatened elected officials, journalists, and the very functioning of American democracy is both practical and emotional. The thought that we know what motivated the rioters makes their rebellion a little more manageable (at least for me) and could only help prevent something like that from happening again.
Given my background – I’ve been writing about soldiers and veterans for years – my management technique has been to examine the military links to this attack.
I am hardly alone. At one of the few times this century, other than Veterans Day, when American journalists seem to have remembered that our military was vital to our national experience, some of them began cover this link . A regularly updated NPR list shows that almost everyone with military connections in the Capitol that day were veterans. Some had previously been stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan; one had worked on the President’s helicopters and would therefore have received a top-secret security clearance (like another of the rioters); One person who wasn’t actually at the Capitol but the FBI is looking for conspiracy allegations was an employee of former Congressman Ron Paul. and one had even been in the Peace Corps. Almost all of them were men and almost all of them were white. Two were citadel cadets, but only two were on active service. ((One of these had come to work in a New Jersey Navy yard adorned with a Hitler mustache and hairstyle in the past and reportedly made anti-Semitic comments on a daily basis. He was admonished about the mustache; the comments continued.)
I admit I was surprised by all of this, although I probably shouldn’t have. After all, the FBI even opened in the age of Trump 68 last year Investigations domestic extremism involving current or former military personnel.
I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that there were a lot of these veterans connected Much has been said with far-right Proud Boys or Oath Keepers about why such groups want to include people with military experience, the training, skills, possible access to weapons, and the twisted credibility of government-issued heroic status. Far less talk was about why people in the military might be attracted to far-right groups.
The link between extremist culture and the military A week after the Capitol invaded, 14 Democratic senators signed one letter Call on the Inspector General of the Pentagon to investigate “white supremacy” and “extremism in the military”. A House subcommittee held one for the next month Listen under the heading “Alarming incidents of white supremacy in the military – how to stop it?” Meanwhile, on February 5, the first black Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, directed Commanders at all levels to conduct a one-day shutdown before April 1 to combat extremism in the military and provide training on how to avoid participation in extremist groups. At the same time, the Pentagon admitted that it had no control over the scope of the problem or what steps were taken to address it.
The link between extremist culture and the military goes back a long way, as do efforts to persecute and deal with them. The names of the groups have changed over the years – they used to sound German, now they sounded moral – but it doesn’t have the problem. For example, Operation Vigilant Eagle, an FBI program focused on the recruitment of veterans by white supremacist groups, emerged in 2009, and in the same year an evaluation by the Department of Homeland Security warned that “right-wing extremists will try to get themselves.” to recruit and radicalize returning veterans ”- return, that is, from America’s distant, never-ending wars. Conservative politicians, media outlets and veteran groups have found that the DHS has insulted and withdrawn veterans.
Remember that active duty members are officially restricted in their political activities. So there were undoubtedly many in uniform who did not appear at the Capitol but would have liked to. And although the Proud Boys have focused their recruitment on the military and law enforcement, there is little need to join such loosely structured groups to support their ideology and goals. A 2019 military Times survey For example, it was found that 36 percent of respondents in the military had seen “examples of white supremacy and racist ideologies” in the ranks.
Military rules usually describe the rights that soldiers no longer have than what they have, but rather the Department of Defense Directive 1325.6 Gives active duty members the right to participate in political demonstrations as long as they are away from the grassroots, not in uniform within the United States, only representing themselves, and not defaming the president or senior officials However, activities like fundraising for, distributing the political material of, or wearing the totem clothing of white supremacists and other extremist groups could actually kick you out of the military, as could certain types of social media posts.
Congressman Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) Was push to keep track of the social media activity of all participants and the Pentagon Expectations that it is looking for a “scalable way” to include this in background checks.
Members of the armed forces are required to report such behavior, but do not expect it as it is likely to be viewed as snitching. Commanders also have considerable leeway when it comes to how they might react to the prohibited actions.
It goes without saying that soldiers are not allowed to exercise any kind of violence – other than the violence in which they are supposed to participate as soldiers.
It’s not OK The American military was designed to be politically neutral and pride itself on being non-discriminatory and performance-oriented. These traits are theoretically critical to maintaining a volunteer force (albeit racially over the years) anything but at least when it came to the high command). All branches now pretend to screen for involvement of supremacists, extremists or criminal gangs at the time of recruitment, and military leaders who are unlikely to want troublemakers in their commandos are reportedly trying to confirm such extremists will not be tolerated .
Unless they are.
The design of military justice makes it difficult to track down proponents of extremist violence because there is no centralized record for such things and such behavior is often enough simply brushed aside.
In my own unscientific poll, I recently asked two active duty soldiers and three Iraq war veterans if they had encountered right-wing extremism while on duty. Four initially said no – the fifth, a black sailor, had a noose dangling from his face at some point – but then shared stories about what was allowed or considered normal behavior: A US-based paramedic spoke of being a black neighborhood avoid, in which he would encounter “animals”; a call from a friend and Stryker train driver in Germany who found work sets you free the slogan at the gates of the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz, which is engraved on the interior of some of his unit’s vehicles; A recruit in basic training reveals a huge swastika on his back. He was soon sent to pack but had made it through the hiring process where such things are supposed to be caught. (My source believed his quick release was only because his instructor was Black. He didn’t think such a reaction was typical.)
Nobody I spoke to agreed, but one active duty soldier admitted, “When I was most brainwashed, I found it cathartic to be comfortable without worrying about picking up To have to make culture. ”
Extremism in a world of endless war Organization within the military is not easy. At least it wasn’t for anti-war activists during the Vietnam and Iraq war years (as I found out when researching my book War is not a game: the new antiwar soldiers and the movement they built
As separate as the military may be from civil culture, it is far from immune to the vicious discord that now plagues this country. But the military was fertile ground for right-wing sympathy long before Donald Trump became president or the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers came along. The conversion of the military into a voluntary force after the Vietnam War appears to have only exacerbated such tendencies. An army captain emailed me: “The military is heavily recruiting from the same populations as extremist organizations – socially isolated, downwardly mobile and economically vulnerable young men.” Jonathan Hutto, a black veteran who questioned the racism he encountered in the Navy, wrote that his shipmates did not need to be “inculcated with racist-fascist ideology” because their families and communities had arrived prepared for it .
A former Marines captain told me that veterans often compete with the VA for benefits and services they believed were promised to them when they went to war and that they feel bitter against the government. Their difficulty in even speaking honestly about their war experiences, not to mention the PTSD they may experience, often leaves them feeling out of sync with the country – and so they get ready to recruit for extremist and white -Become supremacist groups that offer them a sense of belonging.
Active service members also often feel betrayed by promises of recruitment that never materialize and repeated assignments in distant war zones that do little or nothing. Garett Reppenhagen, managing director of Veterans for peace Says, “You just can’t pinpoint where it’s coming from. The frustration is legitimate. It’s just wrongly focused.”
Kathleen Belew, a historian much quoted After the January 6 uprising, he investigated the attraction to veterans of white power groups after the Vietnam War. In her book Bring the war home
It’s noteworthy, after all, that the veterans who joined the Capitol uprising weren’t exactly children. In fact, so far only seven militarily affiliated rioters arrested are 30 years or younger.
Unlike in Vietnam (as long as it was), where wars never end but continue, like on a Mobius strip of war and repeated missions is No consequences, no recovery. People old enough now to get involved have never known a United States not at war. As a result, the pressures currently on the military leading to extremism in the military could be seen as related to what one veteran I interviewed described as a major “cultural project” that, however unchecked, is aiming at it to create an increasingly militarized project (that also means an increasingly extreme society.
War is being sold here, not only as acceptable, but also as necessary to maintain the vaunted American way of life. In the meantime, its actualities are largely obscured from examination until they shimmer into a very expensive subject loved by both parties. It’s called the Pentagon budget .
An increasingly militarized legacy How many military figures broke into the Capitol on January 6, what if the violent extremism tendency for that military is more endemic than we’d like to think? What if the very purpose of such a military is creating the conditions for the racism and violence we see now? What if far-right radicals aren’t an enemy out there, but a seamless growth of the institution we consider so categorically American? And if that’s all like that, then what were we really? Thank you Service members for so devotedly all these years?
The military, of course, is inherently hierarchical, authoritarian, and controversial, and war is by definition terror. Basic training principles – honoring tradition, idealizing heroism, evaluating action for the sake of action, equating masculinity with militarism, and viewing anyone who disagrees with you as potentially treasonous – are eerily similar to the ideology of far-right groups. And don’t forget: American wars for the past 70 years have worked by reducing the enemy to Gooks , Sand n *** s and hajis (the last, a term of respect in Islam that has been perverted into an epithet by American troops) – in other words, dehumanizing enemies and making it easier to hate and kill with branded racism.
Do not get me wrong. In no way am I saying that everyone in the US military is racist or violent, or that they condone or support racist, violent ideologies. What is true, however, is that the actions of the military are based on dividing the world into friends and enemies: the first is protected out of proportion to the threat, the second is humiliated and defeated in out of proportion to necessity – although ironically, in this century exposed the vanquished we to be .
Such overkill in attitude and approach naturally affects society as a whole (even if its members pay remarkably little attention to wars in distant lands). About the treatment of Palestinians by his country, the Israeli writer David Grossman wrote: “I could not understand how an entire nation like mine, an enlightened nation by all accounts, can train itself to live as conquerors without making their own lives miserable.”
Only a small crew of military personnel actually join right-wing groups, and there is no question that the leadership cares for those who do. But there is a legacy of violence in our increasingly militarized country that should affect us all.
