‘Let Your Plans Be Dark’

How prevalent is white supremacy in the U.S. military? Lecia Brooks on the Pentagon’s struggle with a troubling and uncertain question. “There’s still denial. The heads of U.S. Strategic Command and Space Command told Congress they had ‘zero’ extremists in their forces.” The Devil You Don’t Know How prevalent is white supremacy in the U.S. military? Lecia Brooks on the Pentagon’s struggle with a troubling and uncertain question. The U.S. Department of Defense said it was “[a wake-up call]( when current and former members of the American military took part in storming the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on January 6th. Since then, the military has increased efforts to identify and fight “extremism” in the armed forces. A “voluntary, confidential online survey” from Military Times last year [found]( that “about one-third of all active-duty respondents said they saw signs of white supremacist or racist ideology in the ranks.” How serious is the problem? According to Lecia Brooks—the chief of staff for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has been working with the military on the issue— “the overwhelming majority of military personnel have nothing to do with extremist activity.” The situation in the U.S. is much smaller-scale than what we’re seeing in Germany, Brooks says, where a [government report last year]( found that the country’s “security services recorded more than 1,400 cases of suspected far-right extremism among soldiers, police officers and intelligence agents” over a three-year period. In March, Brooks [told Congress]( that “the number of extremists associated with the [U.S.] Armed Forces who engage in hate crimes and criminal extremist activity is relatively small,” but “their capabilities and specialized weapons training make them prime targets for extremist propaganda and recruitment.” She further notes that recent investigations “have identified dozens of veterans and active-duty service members who are affiliated with white-supremacist activity.” Brooks says it’s a “game-changer” to have Lloyd Austin, the first Black defense secretary in American history, focused on this issue. But the military needs better data, screening, and training. Even if there’s no plausible danger of the U.S. military being captured by white supremacists, the possibility that it’s a tactical training ground even for a relatively small number of them is a serious one. Systematic study, Brooks says, is the only way the military can turn a chilling specter into a knowable challenge. ——— Graham Vyse: How would you describe the phenomenon of white supremacy in the U.S. military today? Lecia Brooks: Well, the sad truth is that there’s not enough data to fully articulate what the threat is. We’re not doing adequate data collection. We’re left to guess based on anecdotes. The Southern Poverty Law Center began to track white-supremacist activity in the military back in the 1980s. Again, it’s anecdotal, and that’s the primary problem. This issue first came to our attention related to Ku Klux Klan activity, when it still occurred pretty regularly across the U.S. and especially across the Deep South. We weren’t surprised, though certainly we were alarmed, to discover people who belong to Klan groups who also had some connection to the military. We learned something that remains true today: The specialized training in weapons, surveillance, and tactics that military personnel are afforded makes them prime targets for white-supremacist groups or other extremist groups. I wish I could say with more certainty what the extent of the problem is, but we can look at the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, in which 10 percent of the arrests were of people with military service in their backgrounds. That’s an outsized number in a country where only seven percent of the adult population has served in the military. More from Lecia Brooks at The Signal: “The Department of Defense doesn’t want to name ‘white supremacy’ or ‘white nationalism’ as a distinct terroristic threat. That hesitancy is one of the big reasons why we don’t have data. They want to talk about extremism broadly. If we continue to look at it that way, we’ll never be able to adequately understand and address the threat of white supremacy specifically.” “The military being the poster child for a colorblind society, these aren’t conversations they ever have. They promote the cohesion of the whole unit and do everything they can to erase individuality, which I understand.” “There’s been a problem of white-nationalist infiltration in the German military, and they’ve done nothing, and this group continues to grow. They could take over at any moment, because they’re so deeply ingrained in leadership and among the rank and file. That isn’t the case in the U.S. military. There’s no indication that there’s some coordinated leadership among the upper echelon of the military to carry out a white-nationalist terror campaign, but there is a lack of appreciation for where the current threat could take us.” ——— To the Ends of the Earth How can we vaccinate enough people to create global herd immunity to COVID-19? Merrill Goozner on patents, production, and prices. (Originally published 2021 | 05.20) As COVID-19’s Delta variant spreads, and new variants still emerge, global vaccination has only become more urgent. A great deal of debate has meanwhile focused on the patents that large pharmaceutical corporations, commonly known in the U.S. by the collective Big Pharma, hold on the coronavirus vaccines—and on how these patents represent an obstacle to accelerating their global production and distribution. In May, the U.S. government [announced]( that it supported waiving intellectual-property protections, which would allow manufacturers anywhere to access the vaccine recipes. But other countries’ governments and Big Pharma’s representatives opposed such waivers, with the outcome of this conflict still uncertain. In this context, knowing the pandemic will never truly be over in any country until its controlled globally, how can we make enough vaccines to inoculate the world? According to Merrill Goozner—the author of [The $800 Million Pill]( a book on the pharmaceutical industry—patents represent only one of the issues in this question, and the history of global vaccinations suggests multiple ways to resolve it. The tougher challenges, Goozner says, are transferring technical expertise, acquiring vaccine ingredients, and assembling production equipment. As Goozner sees it, supporting compulsory vaccine licensing signals that the Biden administration might be more willing than previous administrations to force drug prices down, even as Big Pharma maintains significant allies across both parties in the U.S. Congress. ——— ——— [The Signal]( is a new, independent digital publication exploring vital questions in democratic life and the human world—and sustained entirely by readers like you. To support The Signal and for full access: We recently resolved a broken-link issue with our opt-out function. If you’ve received this in error, our apologies—you can immediately unsubscribe below. Thank you. © 2021 The Signal The Signal | 717 N St. NW, Ste. One, Washington, DC 20011 [Unsubscribe {EMAIL}]( [Constant Contact Data Notice]( Sent by newsletters@thesgnl.email