A congressional hearing on extremists in the military started off professional enough with House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Washington, posing important questions about how extremism should be defined and how the military should address it. However, it was not long before the hearing descended into a kangaroo court.
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Alabama, acknowledged the issue of extremists in the ranks but questioned whether the issue is inflated by anecdotal evidence and cited a lack of hard data about domestic terrorists in the military. He also raised the issue of protecting the First Amendment rights of soldiers, while also addressing those advocating violence.
Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, expressed skepticism that extremism is really on the rise in the military before kicking off what became one of the main themes of the hearing -- seemingly putting the Southern Poverty Law Center on trial.
"Miss Brooks just a yes or no question for you. Has your organization named the American Legion is a hate group?" Fallon asked one of the witnesses, Lecia Brooks from the SPLC.
"I don't believe so," Brooks answered.
"It did," Fallon insisted. "And how about were you aware that the organization named the VFW the Veterans of Foreign Wars as a hate group?" Brooks said it is not on their current census while appearing confused by the question. Rep. Fallon then launched into a long statement questioning the credibility of the SPLC.
"This isn't a hearing about the readiness of our armed forces. It's nothing more unfortunately than political theater," Fallon said.
The problem of course was that Fallon didn't have his facts straight. The SPLC never designated the American Legion and VFW as hate groups. He was citing an article in The Duffel Blog, a satirical news site geared towards veterans and service members. The article in question, penned in 2017 by "Dick Scuttlebutt," was an obvious joke.
The hearing appeared to get back on track until Rep. Austin Scott, R-Georgia, dialed into the hearing via Zoom from the front seat of his pickup truck.
Skipping to questions from Rep. Scott Desjarlais. R-Tennessee, he picked up with the same theme asking about the SPLC classifying the Family Research Council and the American College of pediatricians as hate groups, and if it was to due to their views on young people having gender reassignment surgery. Brooks said that amongst other reasons, this was true. Desjarlais then wanted to know if they consider Antifa a hate group. Brooks said no because they don't hate or marginalize any particular group of people. It appeared that Desjarlais' main concern was that the SPLC determined what constitutes a hate group and, according to him, seemed to focus only on right-wing hate groups.
A little while later Scott dialed back and quested SPLC about it labeling Ben Carson an extremist while attempting to ask Brooks about how hate groups are defined, then spent much of his time talking about cancel culture and people losing jobs over social media posts.
The chairman attempted to prevent the hearing from coming off the rails, which finally happened when they recognized Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Floria, who launched right into an epic rant about the Chinese Communist Party.
"Today, the House Armed Services Committee is engaged in a review of constitutionally protected expression by our troops. How utterly weak of us. No wonder the Chinese Communist Party continues to gain ground. The entire purpose of this hearing is not what the chairman said. It is to gaslight the targeting of U.S. military patriots who do not share pre-approved politics. This is not about extremism. It is not about white supremacy, it is about woke supremacy. It is about converting the military, from an apolitical institution to an institution controlled by the political left," Rep. Gaetz insisted.
"Today is about nothing more than cancel culture coming for our military and it is disgusting," Gaetz continued. "It is about power and we ought to tread carefully because our fellow Americans do not take kindly to this type of tyranny. I have no questions for the witnesses. This hearing is a joke."
"I respectfully disagree with the gentleman strongly. I think this is an important hearing, a fact finding hearing that we that we need to have," Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.) replied.
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