{"id":1426044,"date":"2022-04-08T16:29:43","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T20:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1426044"},"modified":"2022-04-08T16:29:47","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T20:29:47","slug":"defense-secretary-lloyd-austin-does-not-say-whether-extremism-is-still-a-top-priority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/defense-secretary-lloyd-austin-does-not-say-whether-extremism-is-still-a-top-priority\/","title":{"rendered":"Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Does Not Say Whether &#039;Extremism&#039; Is Still a Top Priority"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fdefense-secretary-lloyd-austin-does-not-say-whether-extremism-is-still-a-top-priority%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1426044&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p class=\"subheading\">Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin did not say under questioning from a Republican lawmaker this week whether rooting out \u201cextremism\u201d in the military is still a top priority for him, after the Pentagon found fewer than 100 instances of extremism over the past year.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL), an Army Special Forces reservist, reminded Austin at a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday that the \u201crise of extremism, particularly white supremacy within the military, within our ranks, was a top priority for you.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"gmxrevmore\" class=\"H\"><\/figure>\n<p>Waltz added, \u201cIn fact, it was your first memo. Yet, the department released a study this year, a year later, showing that 100 members of the military participated in some type of extremism.\u00a0That\u2019s 100 out of 2.5 million. By my math, that shows that 99.996 percent of our military members have not participated in any form of extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He asked Austin: \u201cSo with that data now being data driven, is that still a top priority for you, or can we move on?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Austin did not say whether it was still a top priority. Instead, he said:<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<blockquote>\n<p>You made a couple of points here, and let me say that my top priority is defending this country. It has been and it will always be. On the issue of the percentages of people that have \u2014 are participating in extremist activities, you\u2019ve heard me say that 99.9 % of our people are doing the right thing every day, and I\u2019m proud of them for what they do. But a small percentage of people can have an outsized impact on our organization.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Waltz warned Austin that he should be careful about pushing the narrative that the U.S. military had extremists.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think we have to be very careful. We\u2019re also seeing in polling a record drop in public confidence in the United States Military. So I think we have to be very careful about narratives. We even had a hearing here in this committee on the rising tide of white supremacy within our military,\u201d Waltz said.<\/p>\n<p>During his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.armed-services.senate.gov\/hearings\/21-01-19-nomination\">confirmation hearing<\/a> in January 2021, Austin pledged to \u201crid our ranks of racists and extremists.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One of the first things Austin did as defense secretary was to order a force-wide \u201cstand-down\u201d for commanders to address \u201cextremism\u201d with their troops.<\/p>\n<p>During the stand-down, troops were told that the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was an example of extremism, but riots related to George Floyd\u2019s death were not.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B3\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<p>According to Military.com, Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Ramon Col\u00f3n-L\u00f3pez told reporters that those conducting the stand-down sessions wanted \u201cto make sure that military members understand the difference between Seattle and [the Jan. 6 riot in] Washington, D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut some of our younger members are confused about this, so that\u2019s what we need to go ahead and talk to them about and educate them on, to make sure that they know exactly what they can and cannot do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Austin also established a Countering Extremism Working Group to combat \u201cextremism\u201d within the military.<\/p>\n<p>However, a year later, the working group found that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/politics\/2021\/12\/21\/pentagon-finds-fewer-than-100-troops-engaged-in-extremist-activity-in-past-year\/\">fewer than 100<\/a> out of the more than two million members of the military force had been found to have engaged in extremist activities.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Follow Breitbart News\u2019s Kristina Wong on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/kristina_wong\">Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/kristinawongreporting\">Facebook<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin did not say under questioning from a Republican lawmaker this week whether rooting out \u201cextremism\u201d in the military is still a top priority for him, after<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1426044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1426044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1426044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1426044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1426044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1426044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}