JUDY WOODRUFF: Today, the
Pentagon announced new initiatives
and a new working group
to counter extremism in the ranks.
As Nick Schifrin reports, the
military admits there's a problem,
but advocates say it hasn't taken
the necessary steps to tackle it.
MAN: This is going to be the
stand-down training for extremism.
NICK SCHIFRIN: From a Marine Corps base in
California to an Air Force base in Texas.
MAN: Our purpose is to address a concern
that has likely been around for decades,
and has either been
dormant or simply ignored.
NICK SCHIFRIN: The military's two million
active-duty and reserve men and women were
all recently ordered to pause
their day jobs and stand down
to admit they had a problem.
MAN: Never has this been more
important than now, as we face
potential threats from within.
LLOYD AUSTIN, U.S. Secretary of Defense:
Hello, everyone. I'm Lloyd Austin.
NICK SCHIFRIN: In
February, Defense Secretary
Lloyd Austin required every unit
to discuss extremism in the ranks.
LLOYD AUSTIN: Views and conduct
that run counter to everything
that we believe in, and which
can actually tear at the fabric
of who we are as an institution.
NICK SCHIFRIN: The stand-down was
sparked by the January 6 insurrection.
But the military's problems
run deeper than the
15 percent or so of insurrectionists
who were current or former military.
CAPT. GEOFFREY EASTERLING (RET.),
U.S. Army: The reaction that you
get just when you tell somebody you're a
Black West Pointer, they're like -- one,
they're like flabbergasted,
like, how did you make it?
NICK SCHIFRIN: Former Captain Geoffrey
Easterling was a West Point graduate and
Army field artillery officer
who deployed to Afghanistan.
He left the military in 2019.
Easterling remembers confronting
a fellow officer wearing a
patch for the Three Percenters,
the far right militia group whose
members were among the insurrectionists.
CAPT. GEOFFREY EASTERLING:
I was like: "That seems to
be like an extremist group."
And he's like: "Oh, that's just what
people say, but it's not extremism."
If I had a Black Panther anything,
there'd be a lot of questions,
if not some outright fix yourself. But
name your favorite white Oath Keeper-type
organization don't get policed,
or at least they didn't
when I was in the military.
RICHARD BROOKSHIRE, Executive Director,
Black Veterans Project: You're going to
the military for an opportunity
to grow. These microaggressions
can tear at you. They're like
psychological whippings. And they're
really meant to pacify you, to
kind of put you in your place.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Richard Brookshire is a
former Army sergeant and combat medic.
RICHARD BROOKSHIRE: Hello, I'm
Specialist Brookshire with the
218 Infantry deployed
to Northern Afghanistan.
NICK SCHIFRIN: He says the military
never welcomed him as a Black gay man,
and he calls the racism, homophobia,
and sexism he says he witnessed
stepping-stones to extremism.
RICHARD BROOKSHIRE: There's
building blocks to get to
extremism, right? And, certainly,
if you become -- if you're xenophobic, if
you're -- if you hold racist proclivities,
if you are a fascist, and you're
kind of building toward actually
activating around those issues.
You know, by way of January 6, I
wasn't surprised at all. When I served,
conspiracy theories were rife,
right? It's this open -- this
openness and this kind of is
tolerance that I think is most
damning on the military's part.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Last month, the Pentagon
made public a 2020 report that admitted:
"White supremacy and white
nationalism pose a threat to
the good order and discipline
within the military and individuals
with extremist affiliations
and military experience
are a concern to U.S. national security."
But it also concluded: "We believe
we have been effective at screening
for individuals who possess or
advocate extremist ideologies."
LECIA BROOKS, Chief of Staff,
Southern Poverty Law Center: We're
happy to see that the Pentagon
agrees that there's a problem,
but we completely disagree that
they're doing anything about it.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Lecia Brooks
is the chief of staff for the
Southern Poverty Law Center.
Her father joined the military
shortly after it was desegregated
and deployed to Korea.
LECIA BROOKS: In joining the
military, he wanted something other
than the experience that he had
as a Black man growing up in Mississippi.
NICK SCHIFRIN: The military
is proud of the history it's
tried to provide Black
enlisted service members.
But it hasn't always lived up to promised
opportunities. And the SPLC has been
calling out extremists in the ranks for
decades. In 1986, a letter to Secretary
of Defense Caspar Weinberger
said active-duty troops were
rallying with the Ku Klux Klan.
The SPLC has sent letters
warning of white supremacy
in the military about
every five years since.
LECIA BROOKS: The military seems to
respond when something horrific happens.
They feign interest, and
then do not implement the
recommendations that we offer.
NICK SCHIFRIN: The military admits
it doesn't even know the scope of
the problem. It has no
centralized system for monitoring
extremism-related incidents.
And advocates argue recruits
aren't screened well enough and
regulations are inconsistent.
LECIA BROOKS: We should know
how many people have been
separated from military service
based on their extremist activity.
We don't know. There's also
inconsistencies among command in terms
of taking this problem seriously,
and just buying into the romanticized
notion that all is equal in the military.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Right now, the military
doesn't prohibit service members from
belonging to extremist
organizations, so long as they
don't conduct prohibited activities.
When Brookshire was deployed to Germany,
he was stationed on a former Nazi base
and noticed his fellow soldiers'
fascination with Nazi culture.
After he separated, he realized a
veteran who'd killed a Black man hoping to
start a race war had been in his brigade.
RICHARD BROOKSHIRE: It kind of
brought home the point that these
things these -- these things
weren't just being made up in
my mind. There were people being
radicalized right alongside me.
NICK SCHIFRIN: This stand-down
was held at a chapel on Fort Lee,
named for the Confederacy's top general.
CAPT. GEOFFREY EASTERLING: It
starts at the top. If a post
is named after an extremist,
Fort Hood, Fort Bragg, Fort Lee,
it kind of sets the tone
that a radical with the right
morals can still be honored.
WOMAN: Against all enemies...
MAN: ... foreign and domestic.
NICK SCHIFRIN: The Pentagon says
the stand-down has focused on
the morals of its mandatory oath.
MAN: That I will support...
MAN: ... and defend...
MAN: ... the Constitution
of the United States...
MAN: ... against all enemies...
WOMAN: ... foreign and domestic.
JOHN KIRBY, Pentagon Press Secretary:
the number ought to be zero,
given the fact that you
take an oath to defend the
Constitution of the United States,
that you make a promise to the American
people about what you stand for.
But even though the number is small, it
can have a corrosive, outsized effect.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Today, Pentagon
spokesman John Kirby unveiled new steps,
including a new military-wide
definition of extremism,
standardizing extremism screening
among recruits, and training service
members as they leave the military on
extremist groups that recruit veterans.
JOHN KIRBY: More needs to be
done to educate and inform
transitioning members about who and what
are waiting for them on the other side.
We have evidence that some extremist
groups are actively recruiting
active-duty members as they get
ready to transition, because
they value their leadership
capability, their organizational
skills, their weapons training.
NICK SCHIFRIN: Richard Brookshire's
organization, the Black Veterans Project,
uses advocacy and storytelling with
famous veterans to organize and support
Black veterans. And he fights what he
calls systemic bias and exclusivity.
Geoffrey Easterling believes solutions
should also focus on veterans who don't
feel supported when
they leave the military.
CAPT. GEOFFREY EASTERLING: How could
you feel so rudderless and so unheard
in a society that you helped create, you
helped defend? How are we ensuring that
they have the tools and resources to have
community, financial stability, and family
stability for the rest of their
lives, so they're less likely to
buy into conspiracy, insurgency,
NICK SCHIFRIN: And ensuring that all
who've served are less likely to buy
into extremism's building blocks won't
be accomplished in a single stand-down.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Nick Schifrin.