The military has a white-power problem

By Juliette Kayyem
March 8 at 3:49 PM

Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama, is faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

It wasn’t long ago that the question of what to call Islamic State-inspired terrorists turned Democrats into verbal gymnasts. The term “radical Islamic terrorists” was shunned by those who feared that it too easily vilified a religion and was too likely to alienate our Muslim allies in the fight against global terrorism. In the Barack Obama years, we were often compelled to use words such as “violent extremism” instead, though the very vagueness of the phrase risked muting the necessary actions needed to counter the threat from those using violence in the name of Islam. It was, from a personal perspective, an exhausting exercise.

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But when it comes to homegrown forms of terrorism, Trump officials not only won’t name the problem; they also will barely talk about it.

It has been several weeks since Lt. Christopher Paul Hasson, 49, a neo-Nazi member of the U.S. Coast Guard, was arrested for allegedly planning attacks “to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country,” according to government charging documents. At his home in Silver Spring, investigators found 15 guns and 1,000 rounds of ammunition but cautioned that their investigation was just beginning. Inspired by the Norwegian right-wing extremist and mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, Hasson had, federal agents said, compiled his own hit list of Democratic leaders and media figures. A key piece of evidence against Hasson: He would allegedly log on to his work computer and search previous mass murders.

But apart from statements by the prosecutors, both the Justice Department and armed services have been exceptionally quiet about Hasson and the problem he represents. Trump, in response to a question, merely stated, “I think it’s a shame.”

For a president who found a way to both-sides a neo-Nazi rally, the hypocrisy is not surprising. But by failing to name Hasson’s white supremacist ideology, the military risks missing dangerous subcultures in its force structure and then finding ways to remove them.

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