Survey: Surprising to some, veterans are less likely to support extremism | MPR News
May 23, 2023
Survey: Surprising to some, veterans are less likely to support extremism | MPR News:
The Pentagon continues to investigate the case of Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, accused of leaking sensitive intelligence. The military apparently missed signs that Teixeira was possibly stockpiling guns and preparing for a race war.
Last week Pentagon officials admitted that they only implemented one of six major recommendations to counter extremism in the ranks. And the recent guilty plea of an active duty Marine who broke into the capital on Jan. 6, 2021, gives the impression that veterans and some military fill the ranks of extremist groups in America.
But those individual cases give the wrong overall impression, according to a new nationwide survey of veterans by the RAND Corporation, a nonpartisan think tank.
“We found that support for extremist groups and also extremist ideologies were lower than what we see in representative surveys of the general public,” said Todd Helmus, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND.
Doesn’t actually surprise me – It’s not like they’re cops.
Pocket Realities 