High and regular-ranked U.S. military personnel are sharing their far-right ideologies in secret Facebook groups.
Facebook, for some time, has been a haven for individuals who share white nationalist, racist, and far-right ideologies. While that may be the norm for some everyday people, NBC News has just released information about military personnel doing the very same thing on the social media platform in secret groups.
NBC News reports the secret groups are meant for special operations forces, and the outlet says you won’t be able to find them unless you are a member of the military. Out of the hundreds of posts, many included racist, sexist, and offensive content and language.
“We sifted through hundreds of posts on these groups, private groups. You couldn’t find them unless you’re a member if you were to search for these. And what we found were things like racist commentary, particularly about the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin. Political leadership. Sexist commentary,” said NBC News White House correspondent Carol Lee. “We found even QAnon conspiracy theories, a lot of support for the false claims that there was fraud in the 2020 election. And so, you know, a lot of Americans think of these troops as the most elite, the most revered. Yet, when you look at what’s happening behind closed doors, among a segment of them, there’s some really disturbing material there.”
NBC News said they spoke with former Army Ranger and Green Beret Jack Murphy, who shared that the posts are “particularly dangerous among special forces given how specially trained they are, the types of training they have and the skills that they have,” Lee said.
Lee spoke with Murphy further, who said the “dual loyalties” some of the personnel in the group have is troubling because you have to take an oath to get into QAnon, and ultimately, they are fighting against the government.
As far as what’s been done about the Facebook group, Lee says the Pentagon and the military is “trying to get their arms around this problem.”
“They don’t have good data about it. They have done a great job of trying to root this type of behavior out. They announced last week some new measures will try to screen recruits better and give veterans outside of the military some information to understand how these extremists groups might target them.
