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My friend Matt Kennard has an important piece in Salon today about the proliferation of white supremacists joining the armed forces to obtain military training. Kennard writes that the military has basically instituted a de-facto "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to allowing militant racists into the ranks.
Following an investigation of white supremacist groups, a 2008 FBI report declared: "Military experience — ranging from failure at basic training to success in special operations forces — is found throughout the white supremacist extremist movement." In white supremacist incidents from 2001 to 2008, the FBI identified 203 veterans. Most of them were associated with the National Alliance and the National Socialist Movement, which promote anti-Semitism and the overthrow of the U.S. government, and assorted skinhead groups.Kennard points out that obtaining military training in this matter has always been a goal of the white supremacist movement--one that's become even more accessible as the military has had more difficulty meeting its recruiting goals. This extremist fringe is the type of veteran that DHS report was concerned with--not military veterans as a whole. Of course, if we weren't training them in the first place, there would be less to worry about.Because the FBI focused only on reported cases, its numbers don't include the many extremist soldiers who have managed to stay off the radar. But its report does pinpoint why the white supremacist movements seek to recruit veterans — they "may exploit their accesses to restricted areas and intelligence or apply specialized training in weapons, tactics, and organizational skills to benefit the extremist movement."
-- A. Serwer
