SPLC Finds New Evidence of Extremists in the Military, Urges Congress to Investigate

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) today urged Congress to investigate growing evidence that racial extremists are infiltrating the U.S. military and take steps to ensure that the armed forces are not inadvertently training future domestic terrorists.

In a letter to committee chairmen with oversight over homeland security and the armed services, the SPLC said it recently found dozens of personal profiles on the neo-Nazi social networking site, NewSaxon.org, which listed “military” as the poster’s occupation. NewSaxon is run by the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement and serves as a sort of racist version of Facebook for “People of European Descent.” These profiles are just the latest in a string of evidence the SPLC has provided since 2006 to the Pentagon of extremist infiltration of the military (for SPLC’s reports, read here, here, and here).

The NewSaxon profiles include an individual who says he is about to be deployed with the Air Force overseas and is looking forward to “killing all the bloody sand n------!” Another poster who claims to be currently serving in Iraq writes that he “hate[s] illegal immigrants with a passion and feel[s] every true red blooded, white American should do whatever it takes to stop the foreign invasion.” He lists Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as one of his favorite books. Another poster currently serving in Afghanistan lists as his favorite book The Turner Diaries, which was written by neo-Nazi leader William Pierce and served as a blueprint for the Oklahoma City bombing. Many of the profiles include pictures of the posters in military uniform.

These profiles provide further evidence that current Department of Defense regulations prohibiting “active participation” in extremist groups are inadequate because they can be interpreted to allow members of the armed forces to be “mere members” of hate groups or to engage in unaffiliated extremist activities, such as posting racist and anti-Semitic messages to social networking websites and E-mail lists or maintaining online profiles filled with racist materials.

An article posted yesterday on Stars & Stripes’ website about SPLC’s call for congressional action reported that “military officials gave conflicting answers this week when asked how policies governing racist behavior are being enforced.” A spokesman for the Department of the Army told Stars & Stripes that allegations of racist behavior are dealt with “on a case-by-case basis at the unit disciplinary level or in the military justice system” and have not been “addressed as an Army-wide problem.”