Washington: The US government released a military extremism report of the Pentagon, which showed that record levels of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate crimes were logged in 2023 across the nation’s biggest cities, but no evidence of any spike in hate crimes within the military was found.
Meanwhile, hate crimes in America’s 10 largest cities hit another consecutive record, according to an annual report from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at the California State University. The study tallied preliminary data that 2,173 hate crimes were reported to police in 2023 in the 10 cities, an increase of 11 per cent from 2022, media reports said .
Anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate crime especially spiked. In New York, anti-Jewish hate crime rose 12.6 per cent and in Los Angeles, it rose 48 per cent. In New York, anti-Muslim hate crime rose 22 per cent and in Los Angeles, it rose 40 per cent, according to the study. In a larger study of 25 American cities, hate crimes also increased an average of 15 per cent from 2022.
The Pentagon finally released a report into the extent of extremism in the US armed forces but there was little evidence or data to support such allegations. The report contained little in the way of new data, and was thin on details about how bad the problem actually is, USA TODAY reported.
This report does not actually exonerate the military, detractors of the army said. But a Wall Street Journal editorial on January 1 titled “The Military’s Phantom ‘Extremists'” claimed: “‘The US military isn’t packed with violent extremists”, a result that ‘won’t surprise Americans who have spent time in uniform, but it should calm the media frenzy about right-wing radicals in the armed forces’.”
The Journal noted the researchers behind the study looked at court martials for extremism and only found one such case a year. But the authors of the report also acknowledged almost no cases of military extremism ever reach court-martials, since “nearly all of these cases were addressed through administrative action, non-judicial punishment, or referral to command for appropriate action”.
The report didn‘t provide any new data but noted that extremism has been rising in the military in recent years. Still, conservative media outlets used the report to conclude there was no evidence for concern about cases of military extremism and that the Biden administration’s concerns in this regard are “unfounded”, media reports said.
Extremism experts who reviewed the report however said: “While it notes that extremist activity in the military vs. the total population of extremist activity isn’t disproportional, there is ‘some indication that the rate of participation by service members is slightly higher and may be growing’.”
“Leaders should be interested in how the authors arrived at that conclusion and what data it is based on,” Bishop Garrison, who headed the military’s Countering Extremism Activity Working Group, told USA TODAY.
Heidi Beirich, who has studied extremism for decades and co-founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said: “Surely the Armed Forces should be held to a higher standard than the public when it comes to extremism, given the danger radicalised active-duty soldiers pose in terms of terrorism. I’d suggest that the Pentagon not consider that comparison to be the appropriate one.”
–IANS