The Pentagon has good news for racists who want to serve in the military. They can be card-carrying members of the Ku Klux Klan. The dreaded white supremacist organization founded by Southerners defeated in the Civil War has always had its closet sympathizers in its barracks.
But support for the invasion of the Capitol by a small group of military personnel belatedly turned the red light, and the Defense Department released new guidelines on extremist associations to more than 3 million active and active members on Monday (20th). reservation.
It is permissible to be a member of the KKK, but distributing or liking posts that promote violence or the overthrow of the government will incur disciplinary punishment. What’s the difference? The Pentagon spokesman recognized the dilemmas in drafting the standards and argued: the social network has introduced a fluidity into the extremist fringes that makes a focus on stable organizations like the KKK, founded more than 150 years ago, futile.
Today, groups practice rebranding, and the neo-Nazi of the 1980s may be the “nationalist” of the moment.
The other finding in cases of extremism among the military is that the majority does not engage with just one group. Many are radicalizing or cooking up an ideological hodgepodge of various factions that would make it difficult to investigate cases on the basis of organizations. It’s the radical behavior the Pentagon wants to identify.
The focus on groups could also lead a president with autocratic impulses like Donald Trump on steroids to try to criminalize membership of traditional civil rights groups.
But the fact is, the federal government doesn’t have the time or resources to be a social network beadle. The sewer of radical content facilitated by Facebook or Twitter emerges on the radar when users catch the behavior of people who identify themselves as the military. Last year, more than half a million people supported a petition calling for the KKK to be classified as a terrorist organization. Once again, the fragile boundary of hypocrisy. Tolerance of white Christian extremism would not be reserved, for example, for a Muslim soldier who corresponded with Al Qaeda.
As the anniversary of the Capitol’s invasion approaches, there is a climate of dismay with the realization that January 6th was a rehearsal, that those responsible may not face justice, and that radicalization has only grown. Last week, three retired generals published an op-ed piece in the Washington Post under the headline “The military must prepare for the 2024 insurgency.”
The reference is to the upcoming presidential election, whose security is being systematically undermined by the Republican Party in state executives, in which control of the vote and counting has narrowly failed to make Trump’s plan to steal Biden’s election successful.
The authors denounced a climate of insurgency, citing the recent refusal by an Oklahoma National Guard general to comply with an order from Biden, the commander of the Armed Forces under the Constitution, about vaccination. Officials ask the Pentagon to carry out military drills to prevent a new, better-organized coup attempt. And they do not rule out the possibility of riots in barracks due to dissatisfaction with the result of the election.
It’s the dream scenario of a cornered reserve captain in Brasilia.
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