Militarized Extremism: The Radical Right and the War on Terror.

• Author: Hall, Abigail R.

On January 6, 2021, a group of rioters breached the U.S. Capitol building. The mob, supporters of outgoing president Donald Trump, sought to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election (Healy 2021). As media circulated and individuals began to be arrested following the riot, one photo drew attention. The picture shows several men walking up the Capitol steps in a line, each holding onto the back of the man in front of him. Known as a "file formation," this is a well-known military tactic used in areas of restrictive terrain, under conditions of low visibility, or when a rifle team is unlikely to come under enemy fire (U.S. Department of the Army 1992, 330). Writing on the photo, journalists Michael Biesecker, Jake Bleiberg, and James Laporta said, "The formation ... [is] instantly recognizable to any U.S. soldier or Marine who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. It was a chilling sign that the vanguard of the mob ... either had military training or were trained by those who did" (2021, including a copy of the photo).

This is not the only indication that members of the U.S. Armed Forces participated in the Capitol riots. An analysis of Pentagon records found that a full 14 percent of those arrested had a military connection (see Snider, Rappard, and Cohen 2021). For perspective, it must be noted that only 7 percent of American adults are veterans (see Vespa 2020). Those arrested include seven army, eight marine, and two navy veterans; an active-duty member of the air force; and several National Guardsmen (Vespa 2020). The FBI questioned retired navy Seal and Iraq and Afghanistan veteran Chief Petty Officer Adam Newbold regarding his involvement in the mob (Kenney 2021). Air force veteran Ashli Babbitt was killed by Capitol Police during the riot. She had completed tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as deployments to Kuwait and Qatar (BBC News 2021).

Perhaps more concerning than the presence of so many military members among the rioters was how many of them are also known far-right extremists (FREs) or members of far-right extremist groups (FREGs). Authorities arrested army reservist Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, described in a police affidavit as an "avowed white supremist and Nazi sympathizer" for his involvement in the riot (qtd. in Diaz and Treisman 2021). Former marine Dominic Pazzola faces federal charges. Fie is a member of the Proud Boys, an "alt-right" hate group of self-described "Western chauvinists" (Levy and Ailworth 2021). Another Proud Boy, Joseph Randall Biggs, a thirty-seven-year-old army combat veteran, was also arrested (Sidner, Rappard, and Cohen 2021). Thirty-eight-year-old army veteran Jessica Watkins, navy veteran Thomas Edward Caldwell, and former marine Donovan Crowl have been charged with conspiracy (Lynch 2021). All three are members of the Oath Keepers, an antigovernment rightwing fringe group (Anti-Defamation League 2015).

This connection between far-right extremism and individuals with military experience is not new. In 2017, for example, James Alex Fields Jr. made headlines at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, when he ran his car into a crowd of counterprotestors, killing one woman. A member of the white-supremacist group Vanguard America, Fields had completed a brief stint in the U.S. Army (Stapley 2017). The event's organizer, Nathan Damigo, is a marine veteran who completed two tours of duty in Iraq before returning home and founding the white nationalist group Identity Evropa (see Branson-Potts 2016).

The purpose of this paper is to explore an important dynamic between far-right extremism and the U.S. military in the United States in the period after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11) by highlighting the mechanisms through which military personnel integrate their unique skills and military organizational structure into FREGs. We argue that changes within the military resulting from the war on terror--namely, an increase in deployments and a relaxation of recruitment standards--provided an avenue for FREs to acquire military training more easily. We identify the mechanisms through which this training and military structures have been integrated into FREGs. The rest of this paper proceeds as follows. In the first section, we provide a brief overview of the relevant literature related to FREs, FREGs, and the U.S. military. The second section describes how after the 9/11 attacks and the launch of the war on terror, changes in military operations allowed for FREs to join military ranks and made military veterans appealing recruits to FREGs, and it offers the available evidence regarding direct military connections. This section's three subsections examine the integration of individual human capital into FREGs, discuss how FREGs have incorporated the military's organizational dynamics into their organizations, and describe the data concerning the rise in far-right incidents since 9/IE

Current Literature and Our Contribution

For the purposes of this paper, we employ the following definition of far-right extremism offered by Joshua Freilich, Steven Chermak, and David Caspi: "The domestic far-right is comprised of individuals or groups that subscribe to aspects of the following ideals: they are fiercely nationalistic [and] ... anti-global[,] ... believe in conspiracy theories that involve grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty and ... that one's personal and/or national 'way of life' is under attack.... ([S]ometimes such beliefs are amorphous and vague, but for some the threat is from a specific ethnic, racial, or religious group)" (2009, 499).

Research on FREs and FREGs is relatively limited. Most available research comes from psychology and sociology and falls primarily into two categories. The first area analyzes the psychological pathologies associated with FREs and their groups (see Arena and Arrigo 2000; FForgan, Shortland, and Abbasciano 2018). The second category examines the social connections in FREGs and the ramifications of extremist activity (see McVeigh and Cunningham 2012). Other discussions of FREGs come from profiles of or memoirs by former extremists (for example, see Saslow 2018).

Although religious extremism has been studied in economics (see Iannoccone 2006), the connection between extremists and military personnel has received little attention. Examining Ku Klux Klan (KKK) membership in the 1920s, Roland Fryer and Steven Levitt (2012) include veteran status in their analysis, but the data are sorely limited. In previous work examining the links among veterans, the military, and criminal justice, the literature focuses either on the relationship between veterans and subsequent employment as police officers or on veterans as inmates (see Logan and Pare 2016; Shernock 2017). In the context of the military-FRE connection, Brent Smith and his colleagues found that FREs were "more than four times as likely to have military training as leftist terrorists ... and more than twice as likely to have military training as international terrorists" (2011, 354). Kathleen Belew (2018) offers the most detailed analysis to date of veterans in FREGs, examining the integration of military personnel into the white-power movement after the Vietnam War. Her analysis, however, focuses on the period between 1975 and 1995. Government organizations provide other data on FREGs and the military. In 2008, for example, the FBI issued a report on extremist organizations and the recruitment of current or former military members (Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] 2008).

Our analysis contributes to existing literature by examining the links among FREs, FREGs, and the U.S. military. Our work relates most directly to that of Belew by illustrating how war, in this case the war on terror, and changes to the military landscape allowed for the establishment and growth of FREGs in the period after 9/11. We identify and discuss avenues through which these groups have become more militarized.

The War on Terror and Its Connection to FREGs

War on terror is the term used to describe the U.S.-led global counterterrorism campaign following the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 (Jackson 2019). As part of this "war," the U.S. government has engaged in numerous foreign operations in the name of combatting terrorism, including most notably wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These two wars as well as other military operations abroad resulted in a marked increase in military deployments (Wenger, O'Connell, and Cottrell 2018). In addition, concerns within the military regarding recruitment and attrition resulted in the relaxation of military enlistment standards (Kennard 2012). We contend that the policies implemented to address these issues are important for understanding how FREs and FREGs have progressively militarized.

Although the number of U.S. military personnel remained relatively constant between 1999 and 2018 (between approximately 1.3 and 1.5 million active-duty members), foreign deployments have become "a key aspect of military service, especially in the post 9/11 era" (Defense Manpower Data Center 2019, quoting Wenger, O'Connell, and Cotrell 2018, 2). Between September 2001 and September 2015, some 2.77 million military personnel engaged in more than 5.4 million deployments (Defense Manpower Data Center 2019). From September 2001 to September 2011, members of the U.S. Armed Forces...