Joe Biden’s Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has issued an unprecedented “stand down” order for the entirety of the United States military over the course of the next 60 days, for the purpose of addressing alleged “extremism” in the military’s ranks, as reported by Breitbart.
Austin announced the decision in a Tweet on Wednesday, saying that he “met with senior leaders to discuss extremism in the military. As a first step, I’m ordering a stand down to occur over the next 60 days so each service, each command, and each unit can have a deeper conversation about this issue.”
Austin did not provide any specifics on what kind of “extremism” he expects to find within the military, nor did he present any proof that such “extremism” even exists. During his confirmation hearings, he said that he would make it his mission to “rid our ranks of racists and extremists.”
Even the FBI has presented evidence that such alleged “extremism” is barely a problem in the military. In 2020, 143 criminal cases were opened into current or former service members; of those cases, 68 were due to cases of alleged “domestic extremism,” with only about one-fourth of those 68 cases involving “white nationalism.” This means that the “extremism” that Austin is referring to accounts for only about 17 individual members out of the more than 1.3 million active-duty members and reservists in the United States armed forces.
The Biden Administration, as well as many of its Democratic allies in Congress, have been baselessly asserting for weeks that there is a rising threat from the “far-right” and “white supremacists” in America today. They often point to the January 6th protests at the United States Capitol, which were mostly peaceful, as proof of this so-called “domestic terrorism threat.” Congressman Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) falsely asserted on CNN that because the National Guard that was called in to protect Biden’s inauguration consisted almost entirely of White men, it was more likely that members of the Guard could secretly be domestic terrorists.