White Nationalism Weakens the U.S. Military, DEI Strengthens It and the Country
Why would they be loyal to a Democratic president?
The dangers associated with the explosion of racist, Far-Right, Christian Nationalism or '“Populism,” are beyond cavil.
Indeed, if history teaches us anything - and it does, especially in this area - the growth of hypernationalism, whether in Italy, the U.K., France, or the United States inevitably leads to war.
There has never been a war fought between two democracies. Regular voting people in one country don’t war with regular voting people in another.
There have been wars fought within democracies and externally against autocrats who absorb the country into their identity, "l'état, c'est moi.” Or, Donald Trump heaping praise on China and Chinese policy while noting “I’ve never been treated better.”
Foreign policy relations dictated by the luxuriousness of the visit.
As the United States moves ever closer to autocracy, at least from the movement on the Right, we become ever more vulnerable to violence, a possible civil war (that would look like a guerrilla war, see below). This racist nationalism creates such a hyper-partisan military that it compromised secrets and military actions. A small few will intentionally damage or weaken the United States under a Democratic president.
Say what now?
I understand the reaction.
But United States foreign policy and military policy, including classified secret material, have already been dumped into the public domain due to racist white nationalism in the U.S. military. One could even include ex-President Donald Trump’s hoarding habit as applied to Top-Secret SCI material to the dangers.
You may have heard the name. Jack Teixiera, the man who A) Couldn’t qualify for a gun permit due to threats made on the internet, B) Did qualify, somehow, for a security clearance in the military, and C) Did spill American secrets on the internet as a racist white nationalist, likely opposed to the war in Ukraine while interacting with other military members that shared his views.
U.S. foreign policy disagreements between President Joe Biden with 50 years of experience and National Guardsman Jack Teixiera, aged 21, put Ukranians in danger while also risking United States’ security by leaking material that perhaps demonstrated that the U.S. was a little more involved in helping Ukraine than the Russians (and public) knew.
The military fears this subculture will pose a permanent security threat.
You know the drill.
Take your average Republican’s disdainful view of the military and its intensive Diversity, Equality, and Inclusiveness training as weakening the United States. An example from The Hill:
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said the Biden administration was “hellbent” on politicizing the military and slammed the under secretaries for the Navy, Air Force and Army for defending an “obsession with this equity agenda.”
“The offspring of identity politics, which is incredibly divisive, has now made its way through DEI trainings in these branches,” Schmitt said. “It is naive to believe this is not divisive among recruits or people in the military.”
Naive to not believe this is “divisive”?
Dunno. Racism is pretty divisive, too. Hell, even in the military, maybe the Republican gets hauled off the battlefield first. Equality and inclusiveness among a diverse group (including LGBTQ troops, religious affiliations… ) sound pretty good and in line with military history.
From the moment a new recruit enters basic training, the military’s primary goal is to teach the new servicemember that he or she is part of an organization now, something bigger than them, same uniform, same haircut, same answers, same training. “You are an individual but you are also one unit, one Army, Navy, Air Force, or Corps. Either fight as a unit where everyone is equal or die as a bunch of individuals with cliques and shaded priorities.
You will have diversity. Thus you better damned well have equality and inclusiveness or your military is - by definition - already divided and already politicized. Sen. Eric Schmitt, quoted above, is the one making this political. If the Pentagon didn’t think it had a problem, it wouldn’t waste time on an unnecessary solution.
No one needs to tell Sec. of Defense Austin or the Joint Chiefs that they have a busy job and yet they’ve made this a priority. Perhaps now we see why.
Indeed, the Right’s emphasis on the “political,” may have directly led Teixiera to believe he had a political duty to release classified material. The MAGA Right also has a certain Russian affinity and blames Biden for the Ukrainian war.
Putin has no agency among this crowd.
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Couldn’t qualify to buy a gun, entrusted with access to U.S. secret military info.
Teixeira is unique in that he shared classified material on the net that found its way into the public.
But he’s not as unique as you might think. From Rolling Stone:
“I don’t think we should be surprised at all,” says Don Christensen, a retired Air Force colonel who served as the Air Force’s chief prosecutor. “It’s clear that we at least have a subculture of racism and antisemitism within the military, and that there are people who are willing to act out by sharing classified information or making terroristic threats against those minorities or Jewish people.”
And:
Teixeira’s racism appears to have been more of an individual project, rather than organized, like other racist members of the military who have recently faced charges. A video of him at a shooting range obtained by The Washington Post showed the Air National Guardsman yelling racist and antisemitic slurs while popping off rounds at a shooting range.
In no way am I saying that every MAGA is a racist, white nationalist. But - let’s be honest - the racist, white nationalists that exist in our country are within the MAGA movement.
And so if you are going to have these people in your military - and you are - it sounds like they need to be reprogrammed so as to not be an inside threat. Maybe the Pentagon knows what it’s doing with DEI as “non-political.” Think closely. Maybe it’s more important than learning to fire a gun. A person fires a gun singularly. A unit can only fight if it’s acting as one.
It sounds like Republicans will make anything political even if it is a threat to the nation’s stability internationally and more importantly, intra-nationally.
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Not the United States military. A Michigan informal militia.
To revisit our thesis, how racist, Christian nationalists imperil the nation. We’ve demonstrated above the security risk, probably only undertaken during a Democratic administration, and whether the country is so polarized that one wonders if the nation could ever form a singular “unit” - as diverse as it is. Disseminating secrets is bad enough.
There is another level.
Barbara F. Walter literally wrote the book on: How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them.
You will note that as to “how civil wars start,” we are well down a well-worn path. Get ready, this is a horror story: Collected by the Guardian:
One: The key concept is that of “anocracy”, a transition stage of government between autocracy and democracy. The transition can be made in either direction, and it is during the transition that MOST civil wars erupt.
Two: A crucial development in the road to civil war is the emergence of factions. We also know who tends to start civil wars, especially those fought between different ethnic, religious and racial groups.
Three: When resentments are stoked by ethnic entrepreneurs, they are much more prone to violence than other groups.
Four: And the most important driver – the “accelerant” – of recent civil wars has been social media. “Social media is every ethnic entrepreneur’s dream,
In conclusion:
She notes that on the scale researchers in her field employ, the US in the last few years has slipped into the range of anocracy. The slide commenced in the 1990s with the emergence of partisan television networks; it continued with the efflorescence of Facebook, Twitter and weaponized talk radio. And then: “Into this political morass stepped the biggest ethnic entrepreneur of all: Donald Trump.”
We come full circle. Racist white nationalism in our military undermines U.S. security, both abroad and here at home.
One very short summary as to why the “here at home,” thing matters beyond just saying that civil war isn’t inconceivable. It is how a civil war would be fought that brings the military back into a central role.
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If violent civil war breaks out, it won’t be blue coats versus grey, Colorado invading Texas. No, Walters says it will be a guerilla war. The type that scares me, for writing columns like this and having an unusual last name: LINK
If a second civil war breaks out in the US, it will be a guerrilla war fought by multiple small militias spread around the country.
Their targets will be civilians – mainly minority groups, opposition leaders and federal employees. Judges will be assassinated,
Democrats and moderate Republicans will be jailed on bogus charges, black churches and synagogues bombed, pedestrians picked off by snipers in city streets, and federal agents threatened with death should they enforce federal law.
The goal will be to reduce the strength of the federal government and those who support it, while also intimidating minority groups and political opponents into submission.
What does all that have to do with DEI in the military and white nationalism? The answer is obvious. These guerrillas fighting this war? Where are they most likely to get the required training? And unless changes are made, fast, where are these small groups - with a willingness to be violent - form?
It is bad enough to think about people so politically polarized that they’ll leak American intelligence to the detriment of a Democratic president. It is even worse to think that their resentment over equality and inclusion training - politicized by the GOP, near ensures that factions such as this form. Try to imagine the difference if, just on this issue, the GOP supported DEI training in the military, to make it a smarter, more inclusive military.
This, all this, is why I have filed papers to affirm my daughter’s birthright to Canadian citizenship. I am trying to fight now, before it all breaks out (and hope you do, too). If things begin to look physically dangerous… well, that’s when my job is to pack the car, drive northwest, and be “dad.”
That’s my option. I hope you start to consider yours. Some are planning theirs and you are not on their side. Just start to consider what you might do when a bomb goes off in a building in your city or “patriot patrols” start controlling intersections in your town, now declared “independent” of the federal government.
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My training is almost over as an associate editor and features for Occupy Democrats. I will put out a post on Wednesday and may report from Chicago and St. Louis next weekend as I’m assigned to cover a Democratic movement to… try to unite the country.
Sigh.
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And where ELSE are you going to get a twice-a-week BEACH? Fiji