It’s been a couple days, but I can’t get over this incredibly disturbing article on Salon about the infiltration of the U.S. military by white supremacists. Struggling to recruit enough troops to fight two wars, the military has turned a blind eye to its once stringent regulations about who can enlist. These days—when veterans suffering from PTSD are being re-deployed for multiply tours of duty—nobody is stopping ex-convicts, gang members, and neo-Nazis from joining up.
A 2008 FBI report found that white supremacist groups actively recruit members with military experience and “have encouraged members to enlist in the U.S. military as a way to receive state-of-the-art combat training, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer, in preparation for a domestic race war.” Their leaders are strikingly upfront about this: “’We do encourage them to sign up for the military,’ says Charles Wilson, spokesman for the National Socialist Movement. ‘We can use the training to secure the resistance to our government.’” Some white supremacists have even used their military status to steal weapons and equipment for their extremist groups.
Although Melissa at Shakesville points out that this is old news, after the flurry of right-wing terrorism this month—Dr. Tiller’s assassination, the shooting at the Holocaust museum, and just yesterday the murders by Minutemen leaders in Arizona —reading this really shook me. As Miriam wrote in her post today , for someone in their early twenties, this kind of extremist violence is new, scary—and apparently what we can look forward to for the next 4-8 years.
Perhaps even more troubling—if that’s possible—is that racism is so pervasive and accepted in the military that white supremacists barely even stand out:
"Racism was rampant," recalls vet Michael Prysner, who served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 as part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. "All of command, everywhere, it was completely ingrained in the consciousness of every soldier. I've heard top generals refer to the Iraq people as 'hajjis.' The anti-Arab racism came from the brass. It came from the top. And everything was justified because they weren't considered people."
There’s so much to question about the wars we’re currently waging—and a lot to dislike about the military culture in general (i.e. the sexism and shockingly high rates of sexual assault )—but this is pretty unbelievable. Apparently, the “War on Terror” is at once training domestic extremists for a race war at home, teaching U.S. soldiers to dehumanize an entire people, pushing ordinary Iraqis and Afghanis towards the extremist elements of their own societies, and fueling the fire of Islamist extremism worldwide.
I was recently accused of being naïve and ungrateful for not understanding that these wars are helping to keep American civilians like me safe. Seriously? Because I feel quite the opposite.
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Although this is disturbing, I'm not surprised either. Despite what the US government says, its military (or ANY country's military) always prefers soldiers who can blindly follow orders. Having the conviction that he/she is in the right and that the enemy is not human but a word always make for tougher and more obedient soldiers. In this aspect, white supremacist groups are no different. Why should they be, when the group charged with protecting an entire nation prefers the same thing?
As long as they're not gay, I don't see what the problem is. *eye roll*
inyd, I have friends in the military, and from what I've been told, the current military is sergeant-centric, meaning that the individual units are given a great deal of latitude. Because of that, they actually need smart people who can understand an objective and make intelligent decisions in the service of that objective.
These kinds of soldiers are extremely bad for the kind of army we have now.
Occupation dehumanizes both the soldiers doing it and the civilian population being occupied.
In every war soldiers call the enemy racist or degrading names--how else are you going to convince thousands of young people that killing is ok when their entire lives they've been taught it's wrong?