The Department of Defense released new guidance on Monday that indicates military members who “like” social-media posts could find themselves in trouble.
The report, prepared by the Defense Department’s Countering Extremism Working Group, defines “extremist activities” as those “advocating or engaging in unlawful force, unlawful violence” or those who use violence to achieve political or ideological goals. It also prohibits service members from supporting terrorism or plots to overthrow the government.
However, an official with the Defense Department states that what most would consider innocuous social-media activity is also barred under the policy.
“Liking something with the intent to promote or endorse an extremist activity would be violative of the policy,” a Defense Department official told reporters, according to the Washington Examiner.
The Examiner reports that other activities prohibited under the policy include “posting, liking, sharing, retweeting, or otherwise distributing content intended to promote or endorse extremist activities.”
“The physical act of liking is, of course, advocating, right? And advocating for extremist groups, groups that advocate violating their oath to the Constitution, overthrow the government, terrorist activities, liking is an advocation and that’s laid out clearly in the instruction,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters on Monday.
Kirby added that service members will undergo new training to teach them what activities are prohibited on social media.
“It basically clarifies … that service members are responsible for the content that they publish on all personal and public internet domains, including social media sites, blogs, websites and applications,” a senior defense official told reporters on Monday, The Hill reported.
Unfortunately, these types of policies have historically been used to target posts that espouse conservative values, support President Trump, or make any claims having to do with COVID-19 that have not been sanctioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the World Health Organization.
According The Hill, the guidance was prompted in large part due to the mostly peaceful January 6 protests at the Capitol building that turned violent when a group of individuals, whom some have surmised to be left-wing infiltrators, led a charge into the building. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin used the event to launch an investigation into so-called extremism among the military. The Pentagon claims to have since found “about 100” active duty or reserve members who have “participated in some prohibited extremist activities,” Kirby reported.
This is not the first time the overzealous Left has used the January 6 protests as an opportunity to target government workers who dare to espouse views that go against the Left’s acceptable “woke,” anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-white, anti-male narrative.
The Los Angeles Times reported earlier this year that law-enforcement leaders across the country are looking to expose “far right extremism within their own ranks” following the “Capitol attack.”
Also earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security released a Request for Proposals with a May 18 deadline offering $500,000 to fund research projects to determine how allegedly violent extremists are infiltrating police, the Western Journal reported.
The $500,000 research project appears to be motivated by the January 6 protests.
“Recent events, including the January 6th attacks on the U.S. Capitol, have highlighted that domestic violent extremism poses the most lethal and persistent terrorism-related threat to our country today,” said Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a memo. “As we work to safeguard the Nation and our values, we must be vigilant in our efforts to identify and combat domestic violent extremism within both the broader community and our own organization. Violent extremism has no place at DHS and we will work with urgency and focus to address it.”
Mayorkas went so far as to say far-right organizations and white supremacist groups posed the greatest threat to domestic national security, even as BLM and Antifa spent the majority of 2020 and the start of 2021 terrorizing Americans, and even with the unprecedented flow of illegal drugs and illegal immigrants at the border.
In California, lawmakers introduced a bill this year that proposed to remove police officers engaged in “hate speech” titled the “California Law Enforcement Accountability Reform Act (CLEAR Act), which would “root out” police offers connected to “hate groups.”
State Assembly Member Ash Kalra (D-San Jose), the sponsor of the bill, said the goal is to stop “the infiltration of extremists in our law enforcement agencies,” according to The Federalist.
Kalra claims the bill is necessary to prevent “the apparent cooperation, participation, and support of some law enforcement” in the January 6 protests at the Capitol, ignoring once more the role that leftist organizations likely played in orchestrating those events.
