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SPLC WARNS OF EXTREMIST INFILTRATION OF THE ARMED FORCES.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has picked up my friend Matt Kennard's Columbia J-School graduate thesis, an investigative report on racist extremists infiltrating the Armed Forces and the absence of any real effort to prevent them from joining. Two years ago, members of Congress urged former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to do more to prevent such people from gaining access to military training, but according to the SPLC, neither he nor replacement Robert Gates has given much attention to the matter. Kennard notes that extremist groups have been taking advantage of relaxed recruiting standards to gain the kind of training they believe they need to bring about a "race war."
The National Socialist Movement (NSM) is explicitly interested in using the military to gain training. “We do encourage them to sign up for the military,” says Lt. Charles Wilson, spokesman for the NSM. “We can use the training to secure the resistance to our government.”
Lt. Wilson says the party has 190 members currently serving in the military. “Every one of them takes a pact of secrecy,” he says. “Our military doesn’t agree with our political beliefs, they are not supposed to be in the military, but they’re there, in ever greater numbers.”
The frightening thing is that it isn't being an extremist that disqualifies one from serving in the military but rather "public display[s] of allegiance" that are barred, such as tattoos. And extremists should be excluded, not out of political correctness, but because they have in the past used military training to devastating effect. As David Holthouse of the SPLC points out, years ago Alabama Republican Senator Richard Shelby noted in an open letter to Rumsfeld that “[w]e witnessed with Timothy McVeigh that today’s racist extremist may become tomorrow’s domestic terrorist.”
--A. Serwer
COMMENTS (4)
I generally tend to take anything from the SPLC with a grain of salt. They spent much of the '90s -- especially after the OKC bombing -- warning about the threat posed by supremacist gangs and ultranationalist militias. Yet, much of this never materialized did it? This is due in large part for that the SPLC finds marginal characters willing to talk race war; then the organization rather uncritically packages them for a liberal audience who take swallow much of what is given them by the center due to SPLC's remarkable history as a fierce opponent of racism.
The Center's main problem seems to be an obsession with white supremacist terrorism. We need to spend our times focusing on the rather shifting and nefarious yet powerful effects of race in this country, then search for bogeymen to fear. Let us not get suckered into alarmism of our our co-ideologues.
Posted by: Philippe Duhart | August 28, 2008 6:20 PM
We have to second Philippe's criticism of the SPLC. It's a very misguided and dysfunctional institution. Sure, it's called some extremist threats correctly, but then as Aristotle said, it's almost impossible for someone to be completely wrong all the time. That doesn't mean they're right very often.
Posted by: C & L | August 28, 2008 9:43 PM
I don't really see how one can "be" an extremist. Either you engage in acts of "extremism" or you don't. If they enter the military spouting extremist rhetoric all the time, say, I imagine that would be grounds for dismissal. I don't think the military is known for individual autonomy at the peon level. Military hierarchy is another thesis, but certainly not everyone is prepared to take on that issue.
Posted by: Anonymous | August 29, 2008 11:58 AM
Oh why would you even post something from the SPLC.The SPLC are bigots. Extreamist now its extreamist to serve your nation because you are proud to be white. The SPLC bigots are the only extreamist.
Posted by: L | September 8, 2008 7:57 PM