“There has to be amplification of the message,” a defense official told reporters. But any engagement with that page - including “liking” its posts - likely would be. In other words, simply viewing an extremist page isn’t necessarily a violation of the policy. While previous extremism policies lacked specifics as to what is and isn’t allowed on Twitter, Facebook or other avenues, the new guidance zeroes in on social media engagement designed to promote the message. The most notable changes come in the realm of social media. Moving forward, officials believe the new policy will make it easier to identify cases of extremism while also clarifying the rules of the road, both for commanders and the men and women in their units.įor example, simple membership in a group isn’t outlawed, but officials said the rules are strict enough that it will be impossible “for someone to be a member of an extremist organization in any meaningful way.” In all of 2021, officials said they identified about 100 cases of extremism among active-duty military personnel, up from the “low double digits” across each of the services in prior years. Promoting terrorism or actively working to overthrow the government are among the banned activities laid out in the new Pentagon policy, which comes amid fears that extremism is spreading in the ranks as American political and cultural divisions seemingly grow deeper. … There’s always going to be this balancing going on.” “We have more flexibility than we do with the civilian population, nevertheless we’re aware of trying to protect service members’ rights. “It’s threading a very fine needle when we’re engaging in prohibiting conduct that may be protected by the First Amendment,” a senior defense official told reporters on a conference call Monday afternoon.
#Pentagon root out extremism ranks free#
The Pentagon has vehemently denied that politics plays any role in the initiative, and officials said they went to great lengths to protect free speech rights to the extent possible. The definitions of active participation, meanwhile, focus more on specific actions an individual might take toward those broader aims, such as demonstrating, rallying, attending meetings, sharing information, recruiting others, sharing literature or displaying words or symbols known to be associated with extremist groups. laws and advocating discrimination based on, race, color, religion and other factors. The definitions of “extremist activity” include: advocating or engaging in unlawful force or violence to deprive others of their constitutional rights advocating or engaging in unlawful force or violence to achieve a political or ideological goal advocating or supporting terrorism advocating or supporting the overthrow of the government encouraging military or civilian personnel to violate U.S. The commanders then will use those definitions, along with other factors, to determine whether service members in their unit violated the policy and should be subject to discipline. Instead, they identify broad classes of extremist activities and then provide more than a dozen definitions of “active participation” to military commanders.
The new Pentagon rules do not offer a specific list of extremist organizations.
Austin’s first initiatives after taking office in February.
The military’s anti-extremism push was one of Mr. 6 Capitol riot had a military background, including at least one active-duty Marine. The issue attracted more urgency after it was revealed that scores of participants in the Jan. Some Republicans on Capitol Hill have argued a “woke” military under President Biden is more interested in policing the opinions of those in the ranks than it is in training soldiers and sailors to fight wars. Critics have argued that the Pentagon’s anti-extremism push has often appeared overly broad and could be viewed as inadvertently - or perhaps intentionally - targeting conservatives or Christians, for example. The new policy is sure to be controversial.
0 kommentar(er)
