by John Perazzo, David Horowitz, and Mark Tapson
No institution in America – from government offices to schoolrooms
to corporate boardrooms and beyond – is safe today from the poisonous
racism of Critical Race Theory and the “1619 Project” which posit that
United States history is rooted in slavery and white supremacy, and that
“whiteness” is an incurable disease. The institution whose subversion
poses the greatest threat to our national security is the military, now
overseen by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a determined advocate of these repulsive anti-American views.
Austin has required both Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project as core elements of the Pentagon’s military training programs – concealing their sinister agendas under the innocuous-sounding “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” label. He has ordered a purging of the military ranks of what he calls “extremists,” defined as opponents of these noxious views and supporters of Donald Trump and the Capitol protest of January 6th. This transformational focus of our military forces is the Biden administration’s answer to the growing threat of a heavily-militarized China - a purging of “whiteness” and patriotic pride from the ranks of our frontline defenders.
Lloyd Austin III, nominated in late 2012 for CENTCOM commander by President Barack Obama, who openly sought the “fundamental transformation” of America, spent his eight-year tenure politicizing the military command. When Austin retired from active duty with the U.S. military in 2016, he was a four-star general. He spent the next few years in the private sector as a founder and/or board member of various corporations until last December, when President Biden nominated him for the position of U.S. Secretary of Defense. The Senate subsequently confirmed Austin on January 22 by a vote of 93-2, making him the first black Defense Secretary in American history, and also the most radical – even though most black Americans are patriots and not radical.
Austin was a natural choice for an administration that seems to value the skin color, gender and politics of its appointees over all other characteristics, and – like the President, the Vice President, and the Democratic Party generally – views America as a nation so scarred by its racist history that nothing short of a radical transformation would make it worthy of celebrating and defending. Like Obama, Austin is intent on transforming the American military with dangerous consequences for the 330 million Americans whose mission it is to defend.
During Austin’s Senate confirmation hearing on January 19, he vowed to rid the U.S. military of the many “racists and extremists” that allegedly have infiltrated it. “The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies,” he said. “But we can’t do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks.”
Or, if they preside over those ranks. When the military command divides its soldiers along racial and gender lines, demonizing some and making permanent victims out of others, the divisive effects of such guidelines can have a devastating impact on unit cohesion and troop morale. When this training includes videos lionizing Democrat presidents like Obama and Clinton as civil rights heroes but omits the gains made by black, Asian and Hispanic Americans under Trump, further seeds of division are sewn in the ranks. And when a maliciously false history of America as a nation born in slavery in 1619 is presented as truth, and the true American founding in 1776 as an avatar of equality and freedom is erased, the consequences for morale are destructive and dangerous.
If your military commanders tell you that your country was a racist nightmare from its inception, how does that affect your calculation as a 19-year-old when you are considering risking your life to defend it?
On April 9, 2021, Secretary Austin issued a memorandum announcing the establishment of the Countering Extremism Working Group (CEWG) to spearhead the military’s witch-hunt to locate and stamp out “extremism” in its ranks.
To lead the CEWG, Austin appointed as his senior adviser on Human Capital and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, a black American named Bishop Garrison, who has made no secret of his profound contempt for former President Trump and the scores of millions of people who voted for him. In July 2019, for example, Garrison said in a tweet: “Support for him [Trump], a racist, is support for ALL his beliefs. He’s dragging a lot of bad actors (misogynist, extremists, other racists) out into the light, normalizing their actions. If you support the President, you support that.” “There is no room for nuance with this,” Garrison added. “There is no more ‘but I’m not like that’ talk.” This is the man in charge of purifying our military.
Austin's decision to appoint Garrison to head the CEWG is even more significant in light of the fact that Garrison is a vocal supporter of the 1619 Project. Garrison put forth a passionate defense of the 1619 Project in an August 2019 essay in which he wrote that America's “hatred of communities of color and other vulnerable groups” is “deeply rooted in slavery, the treatment of African slaves, and the continued struggle of the black American community for equal treatment.” No acknowledgement, of course, of the tremendous contributions to racial equality for blacks in the founders’ declaration of equality for all, the ultimate sacrifices made by President Lincoln and 350,000 Union soldiers to free the slaves, or the white majorities in Congress who passed the Civil Rights Acts. Instead: “Now, arguably more than at any time in recent history, we need to recognize that extremism, racist policies, and white supremacy stand as existential threats not only to American life but to the future of our country and others around the globe,” added Garrison. No evidence needed of racist policies of white supremacy or the “existential threats” they are alleged to pose to America and the globe.
Of course, Austin claims preposterously that the CEWG “is not about politics or political views.” Yet, nearly all of the panel's 18 members supported Joe Biden and the Democrats in the 2020 elections. “And that,” observes author Daniel Greenfield, “makes this look even more like a political purge of the military by a radical administration.” Greenfield further points out that no fewer than 6 of the CEWG's 18 members are radical Islamists, including a Pakistani national, who also view the United States as a racist cesspool. Training films shown to the troops under Austin’s leadership feature an anti-Semitic Black Lives Matter leader who conducted a pogrom in Los Angeles’s Jewish quarter, attacking synagogues and voicing support for the terrorist organization Hamas.
By no means is the CEWG the only vehicle by which Lloyd Austin has set out to purge America's military of members who would dare to hold political opinions that differ from his. In his early days as Secretary of Defense, he ordered hundreds of former President Trump’s appointees from at least 31 Pentagon advisory boards and panels, to resign.
Central to the worldview of the race-obsessed new Defense Secretary is a belief that racism is America's most salient and enduring feature. That belief animates Austin's passionate crusade to impose racial “diversity” – by force – upon the military that he oversees. As Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said last month about Austin, he “believes there’s a sense of urgency here. The time is now to start to grow that [nonwhite] talent and develop that talent and provide opportunities for that talent to continue to advance of the ranks.” A worthy objective if “diversity” is not a cover for recruiting non-whites who share Austin’s racist views. Of course, there are no racial barriers for non-whites who wish to enter the armed services.
A more pressing question is whether “diversity,” which already has no barriers, should be the primary goal for an institution whose main purpose is to defend a nation rather than to serve as a social laboratory for leftwing dogmas. If “whiteness” and “white supremacy” are perceived as the chief national security threats – as President Biden has recently said, into what category does that put our real global adversaries, Communist China and Islamist Iran?
Biden, Austin, and members of the administration generally, have already made it clear that the scary catch-all term “extremist” refers not to Islamic fundamentalists or Antifa anarchists, or pro-Chinese infiltrators (none of whom the current administration regards as a national security problem) but to the 75+ million supporters of former President Trump, Republicans, and anyone who resists the anti-white racism currently rampant in our political discourse.
Austin’s remarks about extremists in our midst were a clear reference to the January 6 protest at the Capitol, which Democrats denounced as an “armed insurrection” even though there were no arms found, and therefore no insurrection. Under pressure from Black Lives Matter radicals, the incident was also denounced absurdly as a “white supremacist coup.” The incident itself was, in fact, far more “peaceful” than the more than 600 riots conducted by Democrat supporters and encouraged by Democrat mayors over the summer of 2020.
In fact, the only person killed on January 6 was an unarmed Trump supporter, a 14-year air force veteran named Ashli Babbitt who was murdered by a Capitol police officer. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi jailed the Hispanic reporter who videoed the murder, revealing that Babbitt was standing by herself and menacing no one. The journalist was charged with the crime of appearing at the event. Pelosi has concealed the identity of the officer. Attorney General Merrick Garland, revealing himself as a partisan extremist, called the whole event “the most dangerous threat to our democracy,” and refused to charge the officer who shot and killed an unarmed woman with a crime.
To justify their witch-hunt in the ranks, Austin and the Biden administration voiced concern that 50 of the individuals arrested for being present at the Capitol on January 6 were, as CBS News reported, “current or former military members.” Actually, only one of the 50 was an active-duty service member at the time, along with four who were current part-time troops in the Army Reserve or the National Guard. The crucial point is that American citizens have every right to challenge an election result, and the Democrats have done that every time a Republican has won the presidency since 1980. Under the Biden-Pelosi new order, which resembles nothing so much as fascism, questioning the 2020 election is a “threat to democracy” – treason. The Democrats wasted no time in smearing these current and former military members as domestic terrorists.
On February 3, one month after the Capitol demonstration, Austin announced a 60-day “stand down” order, during which commanders and leaders across every branch of the Armed Services could search for evidence of domestic “extremism” among uniformed personnel. This process would include interviews with every service member about their observations of extremist ideology and behavior among their peers. Distrust of the man or woman in the foxhole next to you is the very opposite of the unit cohesion that is the core of an effective military. Being trained to regard yourself as a victim of white America is sabotage of the unity required of any military force if it is to be effective.
Austin and the Biden administration decided that in order to help them determine who is, or is not, a dangerous “extremist,” they would rely on the judgment of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) — a notorious fact-challenged smear operation that routinely conflates traditional, respectable conservative organizations like the Family Research Council and the American Enterprise Institute with fascist, skinhead, and neo-Nazi fringe groups. Ben Carson, Ayan Ali Hirsi and other defenders of human rights and civility have been defamed by the SPLC as “hate-mongers.”
On February 10, 2021, the SPLC’s President and CEO, Margaret Huang – a long-time head of the leftist Amnesty International - sent Austin an unsolicited letter applauding the stand-down order and offering to assist in “this important effort.” Huang wrote, “We deeply appreciate your leadership and early action to address and eliminate hate and extremism in the military. We would welcome an opportunity to meet with your staff to discuss initiatives, resources, and programs we believe could help in your mission.”
On May 10, 2021, Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, a commanding officer with the U.S. Space Force, released a self-published book titled Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military. The book warns that Marxism and Critical Race Theory have gained a firm foothold within the U.S. military in recent years. As author Bruce Bawer has written, Lohmeier's book notes that after the death of George Floyd last spring, military personnel were shown videos that: depicted all whites as racists; described American history as, in the words of one video’s director, “400 years of white supremacy”; cast contemporary American society as a “system of oppression”; accused President Trump of promoting “systematic racism”; portrayed Barack Obama and the Clintons as champions of the “anti-racist” cause; and promoted a picture of America that, in Lohmeier’s view, seemed intended “to justify … violent riots.”
“As a commander of young military professionals, all of whom have taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution,” writes Lohmeier in his book, “I became concerned that race-based identity politics would erode the trust and confidence these young people have in their country and in the Constitution.” Lohmeier recounts stories of white officers who left the military because they grew tired of being told that “they are racists solely based on the color of their skin.” He describes high-school students reluctant to join the armed services because “they are unsure what their country stands for anymore.” And he cites black West Point cadets who, as a result of the Marxist propaganda with which they have been indoctrinated, are “conflicted about swearing an oath to defend a white supremacist country.”
In a May 7 podcast interview to promote his forthcoming book, Lohmeier criticized Austin’s decision to have the military “stand down” against “extremism.” “I don’t demonize [Austin],” said Lohmeier, “but I want to make it clear to both him and every service member [that] this agenda—it will divide us. It will not unify us.”
One week later, Lohmeier was removed from his post as commander of the 11th Space Warning Squadron – whose task is to identify ballistic missile launches - because, as a Space Force statement put it, his “public comments” may have “constituted prohibited partisan political activity.” In other words, only partisan leftwing partisan political activity will be allowed in the new U.S. military under the leadership of Lloyd Austin and his commander-in-chief.
The deadly perils of what Lohmeier describes in his book are obvious. He describes an arrangement that pits people against one another based on their political orientation and their skin color. It maliciously divides people who should, to the greatest possible extent, be working in an atmosphere where they feel a deep and reflexive sense of mutual respect, harmony, and benevolence toward one another. And it destroys the unit cohesion that is indispensable to the ability of military personnel to perform the one sacred duty to which they have pledged their very lives: the defense and protection of the United States and its Constitution.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) shares such concerns. In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on June 10, Cotton told Austin that “several hundred” whistleblowers among service members “have come forward to tell us that they have been forced to watch videos about systemic racism and documentaries that rewrite America’s history as a fundamentally racist and evil nation.” He added, “We’re hearing reports of plummeting morale, growing mistrust between the races and the sexes where none existed just six months ago, and unexpected separations and retirements based on these trainings alone.”
Austin responded that he did not believe the military is fundamentally racist, but added that “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is important to this military now and it will be important in the future.”
Cotton shot back, “This is not about diversity in general, though. This is about a very specific kind of anti-American indoctrination that is seeping into some parts of our military based on the whistleblower complaints we have received.”
Sen. Cotton is correct: the issue isn’t diversity. The issue is an administration in Washington so partisan, and so dedicated to defaming their own country, that they are jeopardizing the security and safety of all Americans.
Two Republicans voted not to confirm Lloyd Austin as Secretary of Defense. It should have been 50, and all 50 should be calling now for the resignation of the first black Secretary of Defense and for his replacement by an American patriot like Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice, or an American hero like Lt. Colonel Matthew Lohmeier.
From FrontPage Mag, 6/14/21
