U.S. Military Service Is the Strongest Predictor of Carrying Out Extremist Violence
U.S. Military Service Is the Strongest Predictor of Carrying Out Extremist Violence
The mass murder in New Orleans and Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas fit a troubling pattern among U.S. vets, research says.
The two men who carried out apparent terror attacks on New Year’s Day — killing 15 people by plowing a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, and detonating a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas — both had U.S. military backgrounds, according to the Pentagon.
From 1990 to 2010, about seven persons per year with U.S. military backgrounds committed extremist crimes. Since 2011, that number has jumped to almost 45 per year, according to data from a new, unreleased report shared with The Intercept by Michael Jensen, the research director at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland.
Military service is also the single strongest individual predictor of becoming a “mass casualty offender,” far outpacing mental health issues, according to a separate study of extremist mass casualty violence by the researchers.
And it sure doesn't help that Fox News is playing 24/7 on military bases.
Maybe the government should stop radicalizing them with poor to no health care, no mental health care, no financial or job support after the military.
How else are they going to keep their death machines operating?
Military giving people physical & mental health issues, then they release these people back into society and make it extremely difficult to get any help for physical & mental health issues.
Wild.
Not to mention them being trained to use violence to achieve goals
Like, what does one expect to happen?
Military service is also the single strongest individual predictor of becoming a “mass casualty offender,” far outpacing mental health issues,
Far out pacing diagnosised mental health issues...
I found out a friend had been talking to medical about suicidal thoughts for a month, but he didn't tell anyone else. One day he told medical he bought a shotgun, they told him to wait two weeks and then to tell them if he was still thinking about.
Because seeing a shrink would have taken him out of training, and if that happens too much it made the program look bad.
Luckily he told me and some others, we took his gun and another buddy started staying on his couch for the next couple months.
But if he had had shot up somewhere, he'd have had "no mental illness" because the military hides how common it is for lots of different reasons.
That wasn't rare either, SAD was the acronym for "suicidal and depressed" but no matter what, you weren't pulled from training till you attempted. And it wasnt just the training, we had a guard blow his brains out at the flag pole, and they just hosed it down and moved the body. They didn't tell students till we left because it would have been a "distraction".
So, long story short, we know what the problem is, and how to fix it. It's even relatively easy.
But recognizing this is an issue would result in a huge reduction of our most highly trained military members, because that's where it's most likely to be ignored until the last possible second.
That last story is absolutely haunting.
Ban the military?
/jk
unless... 🤔
Which comes first?
Of those who carry out violent acts, were they already violent prior to their military service and attracted to it for the promise of being able to act on these violent urges, or were they mentally damaged through their time serving, turned violent by what they saw and did?Military trains fear. The constant threat assessment required decays a soldier's capacity to operate in civil society.
Things like every door opening, even in public, is a pulse of potential threat of violence. People can't live like that forever and for many it becomes increasingly difficult to break that mindset over time.
The military experience of killing civilians does remove a lot of mental barriers of killing civilians.
I think that framing ignores logistics. Many people have violent thoughts but lack the training. The military gives them the skills to live out their fantasies. It really is that simple.
another example of why the concept of "stolen valor" is so inane, there's nothing valorous about signing up to be a terror agent of empire.
What do you think is going to happen to these people who join the military? I just had one of my friends who is 22 join the US military in Georgia. I'm Canadian but I got to hear their story over the past six months.
Step one ... 2 weeks of indoctrination and psychological training to push you physically and mentally to the point where you are programmed to just listen, take orders and don't ask questions.
Then the rest of your military career is decided on the whims of those above you. You follow orders even if they are wrong. And even if you know they are wrong orders or that you don't want to follow them, they make it so hard for you to gauge that decision that no matter what happens, the majority of everyone just follows orders like robots.
I'm glad the Canadian experience is different from your Georgia story.
Tbf Canadian military personnel stories aren't that much different than American.
I know guys who have military service and they face similar shit as Americans do.
The only difference between CAN and the US is we aren't involved in half the conflicts America is.
He is going to kill innocent people and then get PTSD and write pity stories about how he killed innocent people.
Was the second one a terrorist attack? Certainly doesn't seem like it. Seems like it was a political protest didn't it?
That's a definitional question, but I think a bomb in public that kills others somewhat randomly counts as terrorissm. And yes, terrorism is one kind of protest.
It probably would. Yet that isn't what happened. Only he died.