PieFedExtremism in US military is ‘sleeping danger’ says author of Pentagon report
submitted by
MicroWave@lemmy.world
MicroWave@lemmy.world
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/09/militar…
Summary
Bishop Garrison, a former Pentagon official who led a 2021 investigation into military extremism, warns that recent New Year’s Day attacks by military personnel highlight the ongoing threat of radicalization and distress in the armed forces.
Despite a report recommending counter-extremism measures, its policies were never implemented, facing backlash from right-wing figures, including Trump’s defense secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth.
As Hegseth aims to dismantle counter-extremism programs, Garrison stresses the risks of neglecting the issue, citing cultural and mental health challenges within the military.
2nd time in a week I get to post this. Not that I think it's a harbinger or anything... 😬
Remember when every single house Republican voted against investigating the depth of white supremacist penetration into the armed forces and police departments? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/house-republicans-vote-against-neo-223633093.html
I would love the two magas who downvoted me to have the courage to share the opinions they always say they aren't allowed to share.
LOL, downvoted again but still no reply. MAGAs are fucking cowards.
Lmao I wasn't sure if I saw that other comment until I saw "Pepperidge Farm Remembers"
Sleeping, really? It seems wide awake to me.
Every service member I personally know is pretty open about it, it doesn't seem very asleep to me
I was attached to MARSOC early on when they were forming the groups and recruiting from Raiders and Force Recon. I was usually attached when they needed to plus up for DMRs. Being 0317 gave me a lot of job opportunities in the early GWOT.
Anyways, we would often deploy in joint efforts with the Green Beret ODAs and almost always it was the tertiary POGs that were the most gung ho assholes. They’d always let you know how smart they were and how stupid the government was for letting all the fat purple hairs into the general ranks. This guy was the POGest of POGs as he was a glorified drone operator. I have doubts he ever left the FOB.
SOF/SF tier one units are filled with embezzling wife beaters who deal fent. I’ve rubbed shoulders with plenty of them. Plenty of them who rotate back to civ div end up robbing banks and selling their training services to militias. It’s the perfect setup for domestic terrorism.
Excerpt from another thread on the Tesla Truck bomber
I mean. Okay. But you wrote that knowing that very few people reading it would know what MARSOC, DMRs, “being 0317”, GWOT, ODAs, POGs (let alone the POGest of POGs), FOBs, SOF/F mean. And, plot twist, it was all an excerpt?
What are you on about, man?
I used to train shepherds to shoot opium dealers
I couldn’t be more proud of you.
What's even more impressive is that they're talking about German Shepherds. GSDs don't even have opposable thumbs!
Well at least someone is. Don't join the military if you can help it.
Military lingo is easily searchable
You're out of your mind if you think anyone reading this cares enough to find, copy, and paste each term to decipher them. Or that it's easier than writing out each term in a non-military community.
How do you feel about context clues?
We. Don't. Know. Your. Acronyms.
WDKYA
Extremism is born from the real sleeping danger of poor education and information standards which allow people to latch onto and be swayed by simplistic nonsense touted all too loudly on social media. When the rest of the world wore masks to protect the person next to them a loud section of the US population believed it was a plot to turn them Muslim. Similarly when the world understood the value of the developed vaccines a large part of the US thought it was a plot to implant tracking microchips - while carrying phones that were actually capable of tracking their activity. Every country has factions of this sort and the American population might have more reason than most to suspect government instructed mass vaccination programs but for a country with so much wealth the USA seems particularly prone to the sort of demagoguery that can take root in a poorly informed population. To put it more succinctly every day the film Idiocracy gets a little less funny.
It hasn't been funny for years, probably more than a decade at this point for anyone paying enough attention.
The premise of being outpopulated wasn't necessary: all we had to do was decide to become a country based around "reality" TV - completing the shift that really kicked off when we elected Reagan, screen actor, to massively restructure our tax system and eliminate our mental health institutions rather than reform them.
The war on education and intellectualism is over. We lost.
It wasn't even just *while* carrying the phone, they were literally posting the nonsense *from the device that actually did the thing they were worried about*. They had to be *looking at an actual tracking device* in order to accuse the creators of the vaccine of secretly trying to do what the phone companies already got them to do willingly, and spend money on.
As difficult as it is to imagine a reality where a post as scathing as yours was actually giving them to much credit, and that reality is the exact one we unfortunately have to live in.
Idiocracy is a movie about eugenics. The issue isn't that "smart people aren't having kids," the issue is that our public education system is broken.
The children of intelligent people aren't automatically born intelligent, and likewise, the children of stupid people aren't automatically born stupid. It is almost entirely down to the material circumstances.
That's pretty reductive. The intelligent couple don't have kids because they understand the effects it'll have on their careers. Nothing in that movie is about the inherent intelligence of the parents. It's about the people that are having kids are less likely to make other decisions in their best interests like funding education or breaking up monopolies.
Did you miss the entire opening scene?
You must have watched a different movie with a much more nuanced message than I did...
I'm not saying it's not a funny fucking movie.
Although most of what I said put forward the idea that the primary cause was indeed that the education system is not fit for purpose and in a wider sense post-school age education in the form of dissemination of reliable information to the population is similarly flawed, it is also somewhat true in trivial reference to Idiocracy that eugenics do play a minor additional role in that the middle classes are finding it increasingly difficult to find both time and the finances to raise children. The second point you made is vaguely contrary to the ideas of organic evolution, although admittedly intelligence is only one of many selective traits to the point where as you say any attribute of the parent is in no way guaranteed to be passed to the child.
They have been saying this for decades now. The GWB era FBI was complaining about this in regards to future domestic terrorism.
The problem with extremism is that today they may be on Trump's/GOP's side, and the Trump and the GOP think that's great and look to exploit these individuals. The problem comes that at some point -
1) he (Trump) won't live forever.
2) when a rabbit hole takes them in another conspiracy theory fueled direction.
3) someone covets the power enough that they make a move to remove/replace Trump.
This is just a few, but there are so many more bad outcomes that I'm certain the GOP has no plan on how to counter them.
"When riding a tiger, the hard part is the dismount."
That's why trump et al want to get rid of the brass and replace them with their cronies
The only bad extremism is right wing authoritarianism.
Left wing extremism = the civil rights movement
You can't be that naive to believe that... The only extremism that is bad is the one I don't like?
Do you even understand that words mean?
Would you fear a jainist extremist?
Would you tremble before an extremist pacifist?
Different ideologies have different extremists.
I would worry about any extremist, no matter their race, belief system, sexual orientation, or whatever.
Extremists are not around for reasoning, they will implement what they want, no matter the cost, be it left or right wing
Left wing extremism is also authoritarianism
moment of truth: does this guy double down or learn more about what the political spectrum represents
I double down in the absence of convincing arguments
We're not your parents or your teacher, you have to learn the value of educating yourself.
Did you seriously just tell him to do his own research? I think that's how we got here in the first place…
Lmao. You're the one making claims about me being wrong, so you have to provide arguments for why that is. Saying "i know why you're wrong, but that's for you to find out" is lazy debating
And what percentage of violence in the US has ever been caused by leftists? like less than 1% right. GTFO of here with your rightwing lies.
In the 60s and 70s there was a lot of it. Really went away in the 80s
Weather Underground, Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), and New World Liberation Front. You should look into them.
Leftwing extremism = communist = authoritarianism. I genuinely don't know which type of leftism you think I'm talking about.
Please tell us your definition of communism.
How about no?
No it's not. Is your little brain thinking of Soviet-branded communism? Cause that's not left-wing extremism lol
The Red Army murdered every anarchist they could find
If "soviet-branded communism" isn't left wing extremism, then what pray tell IS left wing extremism?
Lol. Fascist apologist
Labelling everyone you disagree with isn't good argumentative sportsmanship
Take it off my scorecard
Time for another spying bill!
Guys I think the freikorps might be a fascist paramilitary 🤓
Maybe pumping faux Spews into them for 2 decades was a mistake?