In case you were wondering why President Trump’s appointees to US service academy boards were asked to resign (and fired if they didn’t resign) by President Biden a few weeks ago, it’s now becoming clear. It seems that, with their influence removed, the service academies are to be transformed into ideological-indoctrination sausage machines.
… it seems that the “woke revolution” has infiltrated the War College with the latest issue of Parameters that features an article entitled “The Alt-Right Movement and U.S. National Security,” by Matthew Valasik, associate professor of sociology at Louisiana State University, and Dr. Shannon Reid, associate professor of criminal justice and criminology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Their article examines what the authors call “the disconcerting connection between the US military and the White power movement,” … The authors allege that “there is an overrepresentation of military veterans affiliated with far-right groups and the broader White power movement.” Military veterans, they write, have a “greater willingness to join far-right groups than the average civilian.”
. . .
To combat the White power movement, the authors recommend that the military “suppress the far-right activities of both active-duty and retired service members.” They seem to believe that the Uniform Code of Military Justice would permit the monitoring of all digital communications of active-duty service members and veterans, though they acknowledge that the ethics and legality of such monitoring would be “problematic.” … The authors … suggest, couched in sociological terminology … reprogramming or re-educating our soldiers, sailors, and airmen as they leave the services. There is a need, they explain, to identify those who are “susceptible to White power . . . groups.” Someone —perhaps the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — would institute policies to assess whether the former soldier is “vulnerable to extremism,” and following such an assessment, the soldier would be “required to participate in the prosocial support groups or one-on-one therapy or risk losing benefits.” In other words, they will be required to submit to struggle sessions where they would have to confess to their White power viewpoints or risk losing benefits they earned defending their country.
As for active-duty soldiers, if they support White power groups, they should be criminally prosecuted instead of simply disciplined, according to the authors. The Army needs to prevent “casual engagement with White power viewpoints” and ferret out the far-right extremists, labeling them as villains who “seek to undermine and corrupt American democracy.” Penalizing “viewpoints” is as Orwellian as it gets.
There’s more at the link.
Note that until the Biden administration, nobody saw the US military as a hotbed of white power propaganda or beliefs. It’s a shibboleth of the progressive left, designed to provide an ideological fig-leaf under which to change the US military into yet another arm of the hydra of power of the “nanny State”. I wouldn’t be surprised if right now, there weren’t serious discussions about how to use the US armed forces against the US people if necessary, to destroy any attempt to restore the democracy that the far left has stolen from us.
This is yet another development of the anti-military propaganda war that the progressive left has been waging for decades, in the military academies as well as wider society. Spenser Rapone didn’t emerge in a vacuum, and the professors who aided and abetted his radicalism didn’t arrive at West Point with him – they were already in place.
This is the November 2020 election playing out. Having stolen power, the Biden administration is stealing anything and everything it can to maintain its illegitimate power. If that includes co-opting the US armed forces to buttress their power, to keep them in office despite the will of the people, they’re OK with that.
Speaking as a combat veteran, and with 18 years under my belt of living in or near a combat zone, I suspect the powers that be haven’t thought this through – or are viewing it through ideological spectacles. I don’t think they bothered to ask the US armed forces what they thought about it. I suspect they may find out in due course.
Peter
The Left understands the point of power is to use it. They don't nancy about when they attain power, the dig trenches and improve their position for the next push, while using the heavy artillery of propaganda and lawfare to prepare the next battle space.
https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2021/09/02/fired-marines-question-about-leader-accountability-should-not-be-dismissed/
I can't lie – I'm beginning to hate Joe Biden.
Servicemembers swear an oath to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It's fairly straightforward and understandable, and a lot of the folks in the military are part of a culture that takes oaths seriously.
Since the progressives consider the constitution an obstacle to progress, and they reflexively demonize those with dissenting points of view, it follows that those who are sworn to defend the constitution and professionally trained to do so must be marginalized and de-fanged. I suspect the next step may be a subtle re-wording of the oath of office/enlistment to something less threatening to the current officeholders.
Easy to find white supremacists in the military and veteran community when you equate white supremacy with liking America. Our culture is, by definition, majority white. Majority white is, by their definition, white supremacist. For decades they have been trying to destroy our culture by importing people with views contrary to American culture and since these people are mostly non-white, ipso facto, those of us who want to keep our culture find ourselves labeled. And who is most likely to join the military? Yup, people who love the country.
The great mystery — to me, at least — is: why is our ruling class so willing to destroy the country where they have had such great success? In the past, great empires — the French, the Russian — have been brought down by people who felt excluded from power. But no one can say that Mr Soros, Mr Gates, the whole Silicon Valley elite — are excluded from power.
One level down, in the 'cultural apparatus', a section of our intelligentsia do feel that way — as they have for the last century and a half. But they typically wanted to take over the country, with the support of those lower down — not destroy it. But the current Left despise those lower down, if they're white.
Surely it is obvious that the current course of actions by our elite will end up — in a way not yet predictable in detail –in destroying the country, as they work to dissolve the only social glue which can hold such a diverse country together, American patriotism.
Working against collapse — temporarily — is our position as a global empire, with thousands of nuclear weapons. But this makes the final collapse even more fraught, with possibly terrible consequences for the whole world.
However, it's not necessary to have a detailed diagnosis of our illness, to know that it's going to have a very bad outcome.
So … we have to start organizing ourselves at the lowest possible level, to be able to deal with the consequences of the coming social collapse. First, being individually prepared to be able to sit out a prolonged seizure of the economic gears; and secondly, to be able to deal with the consequences of a breakdown of the social and legal order: this means being organized — interpreting literally Edmund Burke's praise of the 'little platoons' that make up society.
Some people who seem to know what they're doing here are the former Arizona branch of the Oathkeepers [https://YCPT.org]. They wisely avoid the toxic 'M'-word, understanding that a rose by any other name, would smell as sweet.
We all need to start doing what they're doing.
It would be an awful shame if those two professors suddenly got Arkancided. Mysteriously.
Just saying.
When the leadership of government changes (as it inevitably will someday) can't you just hear the screams of rage when this type of thing gets turned 180 degrees, and they start giving DD's to any military personnel associated with Leftist organizations. Like BLM, for instance. Or the ACLU. Or the Democrat Party. And monitor the communications of any veterans from the Leftist era.