[RedState] The RAND Corporation is a non-profit firm that conducts Department of Defense research. They recently surveyed 1,000 veterans from all demographics. The results of the survey found that there was no evidence that veterans were more likely to support or be a member of groups labeled as extreme, than any other Americans. The impetus for the study appears to be the supposed number of veterans who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and soon following, a number of Democrat lawmakers pressured Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to call for a “stand down” of the military for 60 days in order to root out the suspected white supremacists and extremists throughout all branches of the military. In 2022, House Democrats still insisted that “Empirical evidence suggests that individuals with military backgrounds have become increasingly involved with violent extremist plots and attacks in recent years.”
Todd Helmus is a senior behavioral scientist at RAND, and he is also the study’s lead author. He said about the study:
Given the anecdotal information about extremist group recruitment preferences and their active targeting of veterans, we would have assumed that these reported prevalence rates would be higher. Those initial reports spurred a lot of fear and concern. But no one’s actually looked at the numbers.
Here are the numbers those Democrat lawmakers get for their assumptions: RAND looked at the support and participation by vets for several groups. Of those groups, there was one percent support for white supremacists, 4.2 percent for the Proud Boys, five percent for black nationalist groups, and 5.5 percent for Antifa. The study also looked at support for things like QAnon and Great Replacement Theory. Veteran support for QAnon was at 13.5 percent and Great Replacement Theory at 28.8 percent. What’s more interesting, is when the numbers of veterans that support these groups are compared to the general public. Antifa support runs as high as 10 percent, and white supremacist groups as high as seven percent. QAnon support was below the general population, and Great Replacement Theory was about equal. Could Democrats be hunting extremists in all the wrong places?
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