"Recently, my Navy unit held an “extremism stand-down” training...the purpose of the training was “to ensure service members and civilian personnel clearly understand the damaging effects of extremism and begin developing more effective, sustainable ways to eliminate the corrosive impacts extremist activity can have on our Force.”
That aim, of course, is laudable...
...But that’s not actually what the training says.
...Extremism was narrowly defined as “supremacist” beliefs only. That’s it. Nothing else. Nothing about anarchism, nothing about any group that might be found on the left. Everyone in the room – of every race, incidentally – had a collective hush as the chilling effect of this clearly biased definition dawned on our team. As one person on our team put it, “Why does the DoD only care about one kind of extremism? Why do they refuse to talk about antifa? Why is it extremist to attack a Capitol police officer, but not extremist to attack a Portland police officer?”
We were further lectured that “supremacists” were seeking to join the military to gain skills and proficiency with weapons. But, of course, we know that inner-city gangs have been trying this for years, and yet there was no discussion of this. Nor was there any mention of antifa, which explicitly and often openly promotes violent activities. It seems odd that in 2020, when we saw 1,000 riots with varying levels of violence, our training would be centered on the one riot connected to the right and ignore the 999 connected to the left...Read all.
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