Biden's extremism in pursuit of alleged extremists

 Andrea Widburg:

The Biden Pentagon is obsessed with “extremism.” The moment Lloyd Austin was confirmed as Biden’s Defense Secretary, he put the entire military on a 60-day stand down to purge “extremism” in the ranks. Apparently, that stand down was ineffective because Austin is back again, this time with new rules that are again meant to counter “extremism” by preventing troops from engaging in “extremist” activities. The wise and/or paranoid among us believe that those new rules are an effort to clear the ranks of conservatives, especially Trump supporters (and, I bet, DeSantis supporters).

Ostensibly, the newly issued rules for “handling protest, extremist, and criminal gang activities in the Armed Forces,” state some obvious things that troops aren’t allowed to do, such as political violence, supporting terrorism, etc. These general descriptions of bad things allow the Pentagon enormous leeway in penalizing troops who have political views that are inconsistent with the Biden administration’s goals. We already know that, for help figuring out what extremists are, the Pentagon relies on the Southern Poverty Law Center, a hard-left organization that defines anything that’s not leftist as terrorist or extremist.

We also know that the obsession that requires a whole new set of rules is inconsistent with the current data about actual “extremism” in the ranks. Although the U.S. military has around 1.3 million active-duty personal, the AP article breaking the news about the rule changes concedes that only about 0.008% of the military is official “extremist”:

According to the Pentagon, fewer than 100 military members are known to have been involved in substantiated cases of extremist activity in the past year. 

Nevertheless, there’s that fear about “recent spikes in domestic violent extremism, particularly among veterans.” Who believes, as I do, that both the AP and the Pentagon, when they speak of “domestic violent extremism, particularly among veterans,” are thinking about the imaginary insurrection on January 6?

...

If there was evidence of an insurrection by those arrested after the Jan. 6 events someone would have been charged with it instead of being charged with trespassing and "parading."  If there was real evidence of a plan, the Jan 6 committee would not need to be altering evidence to suggest one.

See, also:

Pentagon Finds ‘Fewer than 100’ Troops Engaged in Extremist Activity in Past Year