New research shows a history of military service is a common link in mass casualty incidents in the United States. "We have always been interested in extremism among individuals with military backgrounds," says Michael Jensen, Principal Investigator, START, The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, "really, it was the events of January 6th that made us realize that we had to make this a primary focus of our work because it was clear that so many of the individuals that stormed the Capitol building that day had military backgrounds."
START looked at data on more than 3,000 individuals who committed extremist crimes in the United States and determined that subjects with U.S. military backgrounds are 2.41 times more likely to be classified as mass casualty offenders than individuals who did not serve in the armed forces.
Says Jensen, "It's quite lopsided, you know, about 80% of the individuals that we've tracked in our database with military backgrounds have aligned with far right extremist ideologies. And it's a fairly even mix between those that are affiliated with anti government militia groups, groups like the Oath Keepers or the Three Percenters and those that are motivated to get involved by views of white supremacy."
Jensen is clear to point out -- this is a very small group overall, "we're talking about a tiny, tiny percentage of the military service and veteran populations that get involved in extremism. And what we are not saying is that extremists are more likely to have military backgrounds than members of the general population. In fact, in some of our earlier work, what we found is that's just not the case that individuals with military backgrounds are not more likely to radicalize than somebody without that experience. What the report shows is when they do radicalize, they tend to have an outsized impact."
Jensen's research also looked at why these individualize may radicalize. "One is a story of failing to transition out of the military back to civilian life successfully," he explains. "They're bouncing from job to job and they start to romanticize that period when they were in the military and they had structure, they had stability, they had a sense of purpose, they had camaraderie and they tend to associate a lot of their grievances about their personal situations with changes that are happening in the country. And so a group like the Oath Keepers that promises them that structure, that sense of purpose, that camaraderie and a way to address their grievances becomes very attractive for these individuals."
Based on the research, START is working with the group We the Veterans to develop programs to support veterans and prevent radicalization.
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