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The Far Right Are Infiltrating the Military | Decade of Hate - YouTube
Channel: VICE
[5]
The military and the police
have a far-right problem.
[8]
Across North America and Europe,
[9]
far-right extremists are actively
recruiting both military personnel
[14]
and law enforcement officers.
[16]
In Germany, extremist groups
have stashed explosives
[19]
and thousands of rounds
of ammunition.
[21]
Trump, wooo!
[23]
In the US, serving soldiers
are beginning to fight against
[27]
the very government
they’re sworn to serve.
[29]
We’re in the fucking Capitol, bro!
[31]
This is how the far right
are using troops
[34]
with state-of-the-art training
and high-grade weaponry
[37]
to carry out violent attacks
and spread their messages.
[44]
[DECADE OF HATE]
[45]
Our message to the patriots
in Virginia is stand up,
[48]
muster your people together.
[50]
This is Stewart Rhodes,
founder of the Oath Keepers,
[54]
an armed far-right militia
[56]
known for showing up at protests
around the US with heavy weaponry.
[60]
The St. Louis County Police
were out last night
[61]
saying that they were
“unnecessary and inflammatory.”
[64]
They claim to be entirely made up of
[66]
both serving and former police
and military personnel
[69]
and to provide protection for
businesses during civil unrest.
[74]
We have an outstanding team—
[75]
Brian Carruthers
is a combat engineer veteran.
[77]
Jose Rivera, he did
Civil Affairs in the army.
[79]
We have Ivan,
our Urban Ranger veteran.
[80]
Dave’s a combat veteran, US Army.
[82]
Scott, our cop, also.
[84]
So we've got a great crew.
[86]
But behind the facade,
[87]
the Oath Keepers promote
a web of conspiracy theories
[90]
that suggest the government
is planning to impose martial law,
[93]
send them to concentration camps,
[96]
and install a global
totalitarian government.
[99]
One thing they fear most
is all of us coming together
[102]
and standing up united
and refusing to comply.
[106]
They fear the mass non-compliance.
They also fear the US military.
[109]
Which is pretty ironic,
[110]
given they’re made up of
so many former state employees.
[115]
<i>Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco</i>
[117]
<i>is one of hundreds of
law enforcement officials</i>
[119]
<i>caught on a list of leaked membership
records for the Oath Keepers,</i>
[124]
<i>the far-right extremist group</i>
[126]
<i>the FBI calls
“an anti-government militia.”</i>
[129]
<i>A police lieutenant is under
internal investigation.</i>
[132]
Some of New York’s finest
may be linked to the Oath Keepers,
[135]
a right-wing extremist group.
[137]
And there will be
a full investigation.
[139]
They will talk about things like
[141]
global governance organizations
like the United Nations
[144]
being a vehicle for tyranny
[146]
that is orchestrated by some
murky cabal of international elite.
[152]
It’s a place driven by this
fight between good and evil.
[156]
In January, Rhodes was
arrested for sedition,
[159]
relating to the Oath Keepers’
key role
[161]
in last year’s Capitol riots.
[163]
If you look closely at these images,
[165]
you can observe members
of the Oath Keepers
[166]
in a military formation
known as Ranger File.
[170]
This is a standard military
procedure for clearing a building,
[173]
which would be instantly
recognizable to any US soldier.
[178]
But here it’s being deployed
against the US government itself.
[183]
<i>A D.C. police officer witnessed</i>
[184]
<i>some rioters using military-style
hand signals to communicate.</i>
[188]
<i>Small unit tactics used by
the US military in urban warfare.</i>
[194]
But the Oath Keepers are just
a snapshot of a much wider problem.
[197]
In fact, one in ten of those
charged with storming the Capitol
[201]
was either serving in the military
or a veteran.
[205]
And there are similar groups
right across the US,
[209]
such as the Three Percenters,
[211]
another far-right militia known for
their large contingent of police
[214]
and military veterans.
[216]
Disturbingly, the authorities
have been aware of this threat
[219]
for a long time.
[220]
By 2006, the FBI had actually
recognized this issue.
[225]
They authored a report about
[227]
white supremacist infiltration
into law enforcement specifically,
[230]
and they focused on this idea of
what they called ghost skins.
[234]
The basic idea of a ghost skin is
people that do cover up your tattoos,
[238]
you know, grow your hair out,
basically hold the same beliefs
[241]
but mobilize
in a more secretive fashion.
[244]
Unfortunately,
that FBI report was shelved,
[247]
and even now, more recently,
the FBI have essentially
[250]
de-emphasized
the relevance of the report.
[253]
In February 2021,
the Pentagon released a report
[256]
on the issue of white supremacists
infiltrating serving military units,
[260]
but they have so far failed
to take meaningful action.
[264]
This is not an accident.
[266]
Extremist groups go out of their way
to cynically recruit
[269]
and exploit military
and law enforcement personnel,
[272]
and they know how to do it.
[274]
They may be having to deal with PTSD
[276]
and traumas related to
if they’ve been in combat.
[280]
And just generally, any time
you have to reintegrate into society
[284]
from another way of life,
[286]
that's always going to be
somewhat difficult.
[288]
And what the far right will offer
[291]
a veteran trying to
reintegrate into society
[294]
is they will valorize their service
uncritically, unquestionably.
[298]
They will see them as someone
who possesses certain skills,
[302]
certain experience,
certain expertise, certain knowledge.
[305]
They will attach status to that.
They will see that as valuable.
[309]
They will give them the thing
that we're all looking for,
[312]
which is acknowledgement, respect.
[315]
And though individual
troops and officers
[317]
may be vulnerable
to this type of exploitation,
[320]
there may well also
be something in military
[322]
and police cultures themselves
[324]
that leaves them exposed to
right-wing infiltration
[327]
and, crucially,
to cover it up when it occurs.
[330]
Because these institutions
again historically
[333]
have been very much white male
heterosexual dominated institutions
[339]
doesn’t mean every individual
white male heterosexual
[342]
in the military or police
is a misogynist or a homophobe
[346]
or a white supremacist.
[347]
But it does create a certain
kind of climate and culture
[350]
within these institutions
[352]
that has certain parallels
to the far right.
[355]
And this is not just
an American problem.
[358]
In July 2019,
police in northeast Germany
[361]
uncovered a huge cache of weapons
belonging to Nordkreuz,
[365]
an underground
extremist far-right network.
[368]
The stash contained
over 50,000 rounds of ammunition,
[372]
explosives, and body bags,
[374]
as well as a list
of political enemies.
[376]
So far, only one member of the group
has actually been imprisoned,
[380]
and he only got 21 months
for possession of firearms,
[383]
not for his part
in any larger conspiracy.
[386]
And in January, federal prosecutors
[388]
dropped the case against
other members of the group
[390]
for plotting a violent attack
against the state,
[393]
citing insufficient evidence.
[395]
The decision to drop the case
[396]
is nothing short of scandalous.
[398]
They made detailed plans
for exactly what they would do—
[401]
how they would round up
political enemies,
[403]
how they would transport them
in a lorry.
[405]
They had body bags.
[407]
They had quicklime.
[408]
They even had
a special system of patches
[410]
they would wear on their uniforms.
[411]
They could identify other members.
[413]
No one really understands
why the German authorities
[416]
are so reluctant to get tough
with these guys.
[419]
If you compare it to
the Islamist scene,
[420]
they would have put them
away a long time ago.
[422]
Nordkreuz was later discovered
to have grown out of
[425]
a huge, nationwide
encrypted chat network
[428]
of far-right sympathizers amongst
military and police personnel.
[432]
This was codenamed
the “Hannibal network,”
[435]
founded by an officer in the KSK,
[437]
the most elite unit
of Germany’s special forces.
[440]
We have very small group of soldiers
called the KSK.
[443]
One of the guys, who was
a soldier for 12 to 13 years
[446]
and his code name was Hannibal,
[448]
started to set up chat groups
all over Germany,
[451]
where he recruited people
[453]
to prepare for the Day X,
for the uprising,
[456]
for the day that right-wing people
would take control of the country.
[459]
After an investigation,
it was decided that the KSK
[462]
had been so deeply penetrated
by far-right extremists
[465]
that an entire fighting unit
within the KSK had to be disbanded.
[470]
That’s the equivalent of the US
deciding to dissolve
[473]
part of the Navy SEALs for having
too many Nazis.
[476]
The special forces in particular
require a basic trust
[480]
not only of their political and
military leadership
[484]
but also of parliament as their
employer as of society as a whole.
[490]
Special forces, usually you use them,
[493]
send them behind enemy lines,
and cause mayhem.
[496]
So this is really like a nightmare.
[497]
Those guys are the last guys
you want to turn into right-wing guys
[502]
because they have this special
knowledge about weapons,
[504]
about explosives, about tactics.
[506]
They have a lot of good connections
in the security apparatus.
[508]
It’s very easy for them
to get information,
[510]
to get blueprints of buildings
and all that.
[512]
It’s a real nightmare.
[515]
Meanwhile, in Belgium,
[516]
a soldier triggered
a 35-day manhunt in 2021
[520]
after stealing four rocket launchers,
several guns,
[524]
and threatening to attack
the country’s leading virologists
[527]
in response to COVID restrictions.
[528]
And in the UK,
[530]
a British soldier who vowed he would
“die committed to the white race”
[534]
was jailed for being a member
of the neo-Nazi terrorist group
[538]
National Action.
[539]
He’d been trying to recruit
fellow soldiers into the group
[542]
in preparation for a race war.
[544]
We know that this is a problem
that has existed for a long time
[549]
in multiple ways.
[550]
The whole point of infiltration
[551]
is for it not to become
public knowledge
[553]
and for us not to become aware of it.
[555]
All this raises serious concerns
for national security.
[558]
So far, though the far right
have infiltrated forces
[562]
and some individual military
personnel may harbor extremist views,
[566]
security services themselves have
stayed loyal and followed orders.
[571]
But some experts have begun
to wonder what might happen
[574]
when extremist beliefs come into
direct conflict with their orders.
[579]
It undermines the legitimacy of both
the military and law enforcement.
[583]
It’s hard to say you have
a democratic institution
[587]
when you have active neo-Nazis
making up that institution
[591]
or interested in
undermining the government
[594]
or essentially advocating for
various kinds of vigilante violence.
[599]
And these concerns
have historic precedent.
[601]
During Germany's Weimar Republic,
[603]
right-wing military units attempted
to overthrow the government.
[607]
And one of the turning points in
the lead-up to the Spanish Civil War
[610]
was when fascist commanders became
willing to attack Spanish civilians
[614]
as if they were a foreign enemy.
[616]
The potential is that
they’re going to have access
[619]
to some of the most
high-powered weapons
[621]
and be potentially involved
in active combat situations
[625]
where that mindset
may really cloud their behavior.
[629]
And even to the point of not only
posing a threat to others,
[633]
but internally,
it’s an insider threat as well.
[637]
This time, the insurrection failed,
and Stewart Rhodes was arrested.
[641]
If the infiltration of the military
[643]
and security services
is allowed to continue,
[646]
next time, the outcome could be
much, much more dangerous.
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