PENTAGON ROOT OUT EXTREMISM RANKS MOVIE
PENTAGON ROOT OUT EXTREMISM RANKS FULL

'No one policy change, no one administration is going to do this,' Goldsmith said. Pentagon Accelerates Efforts to Root Out Far-Right Extremism in the Ranks. 'In defining extremist activity and behavior and giving an affirmative way for commanders to measure it - we've got the most important step,' he said. One does not take up arms to vote or protest rulings of Federal Courts on.

Goldsmith also noted that, on the whole, the report is a positive step. 'If you … don't focus on the primary prevention side, you're always going to be playing whack-a-mole,' he said Mines said that the next step would be for the Pentagon to focus more on prevention than punishment. 'You can give commanders all the training you want, they're still never going to be at the point where they have the same kind of competencies and expertise that folks with mental health background, with kind of generalist backgrounds in extremist organizations and extremist ideology.' Mines, who is also wary of leaving the issue to commanders to solve, noted that this approach would alleviate much of that criticism. focusing on nonpunitive measures first,' Mines said. 'I really think the best option for their side of things would be to kind of create more of a centralized office that is staffed by a bunch of case managers. The report recommends centralized centers dedicated to the issue of extremism, something that Mines believes could be particularly helpful for supporting service members who have become entangled in extremist ideologies.

PENTAGON ROOT OUT EXTREMISM RANKS FULL

Kirby said that leaders in the Pentagon 'have full confidence in our commanders' ability when something's reported to them to treat it appropriately and to look into it in the manner that they see fit.'Īndrew Mines, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, said in an interview with that some of the suggestions and recommendations in the report show promise for future action.

The Corps held a hearing in September on whether to let him keep serving but has yet to reach a decision on the matter. Fellow soldiers and his commander wrote letters of support ahead of his sentencing.Ī major in the Marine Corps was arrested in May for his part in the Capitol riot but is also still on active duty. 6 is still serving in Wisconsin despite having been sentenced by a federal court to probation and a fine for his actions. 'Just like in incidents of sexual assault, if you have people in charge who are not specialists, you are going to do a very, very poor job of addressing the problem,' Goldsmith said.Īnd with extremist rhetoric and even action becoming an increasingly prominent feature of the political sphere, commanders may not always take action.Ī National Guardsman who was part of the mob that rampaged through the U.S. Years of failure by leaders to deal with an epidemic of sexual assault has led to congressional efforts to remove commanders from the equation. The military's reliance on unit commanders to address problems in the ranks has not always been successful. Kirby stressed that the newly prohibited behavior 'wouldn't be something that the command or the department's going to be actively fishing for.' 'These individuals with extreme views on race and anti-government sentiment … their ability to camouflage is a survival tactic,' he added. In early February, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin directed commanders and supervisors at every level of the military to conduct a one-day “stand down” - a pause in normal business - by early April to discuss extremism in the ranks.Īs the discussions have gone on, Colón-López said troops have expressed confusion about various groups and questioned why those involved at the Capitol are different than those involved in the racial protests in Seattle, for example, in the wake of the death of George Floyd.Goldsmith explained that much of the online extremist activity that he has tracked and studied 'is encoded language that the average person is not going to understand.' “They were geniuses about making sure that they target certain populations to go ahead and get that membership.”Ī recent Pentagon report noted that members of the military “are highly prized by these groups as they bring legitimacy to their causes and enhance their ability to carry out attacks.”

PENTAGON ROOT OUT EXTREMISM RANKS MOVIE

“We've seen this movie play before,” he said. He said the Pentagon has to take the threat seriously, noting that the Islamic State and other terror groups in the Middle East used social media to recruit followers.

Pentagon root out extremism ranks