\u201cWe\u2019ve had this narrative the last couple of years that the military has this growing and dire problem of white supremacy and extremism within it,\u201d Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., told the Military Times. \u201cI\u2019ve repeatedly said that we have very little data to back that up,\u201d he said. He said he hoped this report would end Congress\u2019 discussion on the need for more focus on extremism in the ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Veterans\u2019 Affairs, said the report highlighted the need for lawmakers to do more to discredit extremist ideas among veterans and the general population. The level of support for the Great Replacement theory among the American public is particularly concerning, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI would like to work with my colleagues in the majority to find out why a small group of veterans have been drawn to violent extremism and then work with VA and DOD to figure out a concrete plan to address growing extremism among the military and VA communities,\u201d Takano said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The survey by the nonpartisan think tank asked whether respondents supported the following: <\/b>white supremacy, black nationalism, the neo-Nazi Proud Boys, or Antifa, a far-left, anti-fascist group. While just 1% of participants said they supported white supremacists, Antifa saw the most support, at 5.5%. Rand compared the results to a Morning Consult survey of 2,000 registered voters that found 7% support white supremacy, while 10% support Antifa<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe did not find evidence of veterans having a higher prevalence rate for extremism,\u201d said Todd Helmus, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND and the lead author of a report detailing the survey results. \u201cIn fact\u2026 they at least appear to have lower risk, particularly support for groups like Antifa and Proud Boys and the KKK, as well as QAnon views.\u201d He made no comment on the \u201cGreat Replacement\u201d theory results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Veterans\u2019 beliefs in the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon were also less than the general population, at 13.5%. About 17% of the overall American public agree with QAnon theories, according to the 2022 \u201cAmerican Values\u201d survey of 2,500 people by the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Veterans\u2019 support for political violence and belief in the Great Replacement are roughly on par <\/b>with the rest of the country, with 19% supporting political violence and 29% believing in the Great Replacement<\/a>, a conspiracy theory about lenient immigration policies being designed to replace the power and culture of white people in the United States. RAND included the Great Replacement theory as a separate question from the one asked about veterans\u2019 beliefs in white supremacy. To gauge the latter, they asked veterans if they supported the KKK, Patriot Front or Ayran Brotherhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The study didn\u2019t try to determine how many veterans have joined extremist groups or the potentially outsized influence they could bring to those organizations because of their combat training, logistical knowledge and leadership capabilities \u2014 topics that Helmus and the report\u2019s other authors believe are cause for further research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Helmus and his co-authors, Ryan Brown and Rajeev Ramchand, were prompted to conduct the survey after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, when some supporters of former President Donald Trump attempted to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election results. About one in six people charged in the riot had connections to the military, according to data from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, known as START.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The attack drove the Defense Department to hold an extremism \u201cstand-down,\u201d a military-wide training on the potential signs and dangers of extremist ideology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The topic of extremism in the military has since been a source of contentious political debate. Republicans have decried the stand-down as an effort to politicize the military and tarnish the public image of the armed forces. Democratic lawmakers \u2014 and senior military officials \u2014 say teaching troops to identify and eschew extremism is necessary to prevent the few troops with radical views from poisoning the wider force with their hateful ideology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf we had to hypothesize at the start, it may have been that veterans are at increased risk, just because of all the chatter among the elite class about that risk,\u201d Helmus said. \u201cBut we didn\u2019t find that to be the case\u2026 Veterans are not as scary as some may have made them out to be. And they have more resilience than maybe some have given them credit for.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The GOP\u2019s opposition to investigating extremism in the armed forces effectively shut down those efforts already, CNN reported<\/a> Friday. Senior military officials reportedly folded under political pressure from Republicans and didn\u2019t follow through on recommendations to counter extremism made in 2021 by the DOD\u2019s Countering Extremism Working Group. The Pentagon didn\u2019t immediately respond to request for comment about the CNN report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Waltz, Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., the chairman of the House Committee on Veterans\u2019 Affairs, said the report showed the need for Congress to shift its focus away from the issue of extremism in the armed forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor years, my friends on the other side of the aisle alleged that the veteran community is full of extremists,\u201d Bost said in a statement. \u201cToday\u2019s Rand report proves what Republicans have been saying all along. There is no evidence that veterans are more extreme than non-veterans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Rep. Andy Kim, D-N.J. and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee\u2019s personnel panel, said he doesn\u2019t think the survey findings eliminate the need for the military to focus on the problem of extremism in the ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s encouraging that we\u2019re not seeing any sort of higher levels of extremism in our military compared to general society. But it doesn\u2019t mean that we don\u2019t stay vigilant,\u201d Kim said, <\/b>especially as the training doesn\u2019t take that much time out of troops\u2019 schedules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Olya Voytovich, the spokesperson for the Senate Veterans\u2019 Affairs Committee, agreed, arguing that any threat to military security should be addressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese findings make it clear that we need more research into the root causes that have pushed a small group of folks toward violence or extremism,\u201d Voytovich said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brown, another behavioral scientist at RAND who co-wrote the report, agreed that attention to the issue is still warranted, but conversations about the prevalence of extremism should be focused on the entire U.S. population, rather than exclusively on veterans and service members, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe risk is everywhere. We don\u2019t need to unduly focus on veterans, and we certainly don\u2019t need to stigmatize or write these narratives of expectation in our minds that are actually harmful,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n RAND\u2019s report could unwittingly give lawmakers reason to ignore extremism in the <\/b>military, warned Allison Jaslow, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America<\/a>. Jaslow also argued the results were unreliable because the survey relied on people to identify themselves as extremist thinkers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m skeptical of this research because I don\u2019t know that it can be expected of individuals to self-report that they agree with extremist views or are a member of an extremist organization,\u201d Jaslow said. \u201cIt\u2019s much more realistic to ask people if they see problems with other peoples\u2019 views, versus themselves.\u201d IAVA <\/b>conducted its own survey<\/a> last year with the help of Syracuse University. The university asked about 5,000 veterans whether they had witnessed incidents of extremism in the military, and 32% said they had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Leaders of We The Veterans<\/a>, a pro-democracy, non-partisan nonprofit, said they hoped the report would drive the political parties together to work on the issue, particularly because the survey asked about both far-right and far-left organizations. The group works to bolster resiliency against disinformation among military communities and advocates for more civic education and media literacy in the American school system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDepending on what kind of media silo you\u2019re in, you could think that the military has gone way too far to the left or think of the population as way too far to the right,\u201d said Ellen Gustafson, a co-founder of the group. \u201cIt\u2019s wonderful to see the validation in this report that most military veterans are not so far down the rabbit hole of either side of the sort of extremist organizations that are very much trying to target them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This story was produced in partnership with <\/i>Military Veterans in Journalism<\/i><\/a>. Please send tips to <\/i>MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The survey asked about white supremacy, black nationalism, the Proud Boys, and Antifa, as well as the QAnon and Great Replacement conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":107019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":89,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[8,23,89,19],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3410,3222],"class_list":["post-73938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flashpoints","category-home","category-middle-column","category-veterans"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"FK6SBWSQBVH73HGXTX4J6HL2NY","arc_canonical_url":"\/flashpoints\/extremism-disinformation\/2023\/05\/23\/rand-survey-of-veterans-finds-few-espousing-extremist-views\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP22159681993467.jpg.jpg\")
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