All thorough out Hollywood and the media’s depiction of the military, we’re shown a bunch of mooks beacuse the military is teh evilz!
Part of this meme is that the US military is/has/trains/recruits rabid racists. They become “veterans” who are planning to/training to/stocking up guns for/working for INSERTSINISTERPLANSHERE.
Jackasses like Timothy McVeigh get branded about every so often (a SF washout and marginal soldier who was demoted from E-5 to E-1).
“Frazier Glenn Cross, also known as Frazier Glenn Miller, is accused of killing three people outside a Jewish community center and Jewish retirement community on April 13, according to media reports. The Fayetteville Observer reported that Miller is a former Ku Klux Klan leader as well as a retired master sergeant who served in Army Special Forces. He was forced to retire in 1979 for distributing racist materials.”
— Veterans slam New York Times piece linking vets to hate groups, Militarytimes.com
Yep, another “veteran”. And here is the MSM stock narrative:
“The number of Vietnam veterans in that movement was small — a tiny proportion of those who served — but Vietnam veterans forged the first links between Klansmen and Nazis since World War II. They were central in leading Klan and neo-Nazi groups past the anti-civil rights backlash of the 1960s and toward paramilitary violence. The white power movement they forged had strongholds not only in the South, but also in the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, California and Pennsylvania. Its members carried weapons like those they had used in Vietnam, and used boot-camp rhetoric to frame their pursuit of domestic enemies. They condoned violence against innocent people and, eventually, the state itself.”
— Veterans and White Supremacy, By KATHLEEN BELEW, NYT.com
Plenty of “weasle words” there, I’ve highlighted them. She goes on to say:
Mr. Miller obviously represents an extreme, both in his politics and in his violence. A vast majority of veterans are neither violent nor mentally ill. When they turn violent, they often harm themselves, by committing suicide.
And here is the epic smack down:
“Make no mistake—if there were extremists in the ranks, commanders would be quick to give them the boot; the Army’s regulations give them plenty of latitude to do so. In fact, that actually happened in the case of Frazier Miller,
…
Finally, understand that Mr. Miller represents just one of over 20 million veterans in America—roughly the entire population of the state of New York. One person does not make a trend.”
—
Racists in the ranks? Not in this Army., Crispin J. Burke, Medium.com
As both XBradTC, the Military Times and the Department Of Defense are quick to point out, being a racist nutjob gets a soldier back on the street with a quickness.
Tattoos are inspected, background checks are done. Sure there are some idiots who fall through the cracks. But contrary to what liberals, progressives and places like the Southern “Poverty” Law Center think, there is no mass movement of racist “vets”.
Extremist groups try, they send pamphlets, use the internets and attempt to use social media. And the IG, the DoD’s special law enforcement agencies and the FBI are quick to find them.
I suspect that this “meme” is more battlespace prep for 2014 and backlash over the fail of progressive causes. Expect to see Tea Party rallies peppered with “racist milita” and veterans running for office smeared with this.
The left hates the military and this is one way they have to swipe at recruitment and the treatment of vets.