NeoNazis are infiltrating the military

Bad news from the New York Times:

[R]ecruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military... The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines...

The report quotes Scott Barfield, a Defense Department investigator, saying, "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members."...

The 1996 crackdown on extremists came after revelations that Mr. McVeigh had espoused far-right ideas when he was in the Army and recruited two fellow soldiers to aid his bomb plot... the rules were meant to leave no room for racist and extremist activities within the military. But the report said Mr. Barfield, who is based at Fort Lewis, Wash., had said that he had provided evidence on 320 extremists there in the past year, but that only two had been discharged... "They're communicating with each other about weapons, about recruiting, about keeping their identities secret, about organizing within the military," he said.

"Light infantry is your branch of choice because the coming race war and the ethnic cleansing to follow will be very much an infantryman's war," [The National Alliance's "military unit coordinator"] wrote. "It will be house-to-house, neighborhood-by-neighborhood until your town or city is cleared and the alien races are driven into the countryside where they can be hunted down and 'cleansed.'"

He concluded: "As a professional soldier, my goal is to fill the ranks of the United States Army with skinheads. As street brawlers, you will be useless in the coming race war. As trained infantrymen, you will join the ranks of the Aryan warrior brotherhood."

Digby nails it, as usual:

I'm not sure there's anything more stupid than hiring a bunch of neo-nazi's [sic] to occupy a foreign country. But it is par for the course with the Bush administration...

But regardless of the strain of racism that already exists in that warzone, putting white supremecists in their midst and allowing them to spew their Nazi propaganda among those frustrated, frightened, bored soldiers is a recipe for disaster. Instead of the sort of common tribal hatred you might see in any dangerous warlike environment, you suddenly have someone providing a whole philosophy and intellectual structure for it. It's the perfect recruiting ground for white supremecy and gives certain types permission to act out their violent fantasies against those they already consider racially inferior. And they are also training them to think of it in ways that are very dangerous when they come back to the US.

I don't know if these any of these atrocities we've recently heard about are related, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Me neither.

And frankly, the way this administration has conducted their war so far, I also wouldn't be surprised if they haven't loosened the rules on this on purpose. I'm sure they think skinheads are tough guys. And we know how the chickenhawks love the tough guys.

I'm usually less cynical than Digby, and I'll choose not to believe that part. But the possibility is really chilling.

As Dave Neiwert has pointed out, the scariest home-grown terrorists of the last ten years were the products of the Gulf war. I'm not looking forward to seeing what comes back home after this longer, more dangerous, more badly mishandled war is over.

Categories: military, war, elimination, race, america, bush, terror, iraq,