'Veterans are specifically targeted': How white power movements are fueled by warfare

There's a direct correlation between American war and the white power movement, according to a history expert.

Extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, show a huge surge in membership after every major war, and those groups adopt elements of those conflicts, such as uniforms, weapons and tactics, but historian and author Kathleen Belew told a recent conference in Florida that veterans make up only a portion of those new recruits, reported The Conversation.

"The white power movement came together in the late 1970s around a shared narrative of the Vietnam War," Belew said. "In this narrative, the war exemplifies the failure of government, the betrayal of the American people by the government and the betrayal of American men by the state. Disillusioned veterans and civilians alike mobilized around a number of other social grievances, such as dissatisfaction with changes caused by feminism, the Civil Rights Movement and other movements at home, as well as frustrations with economic changes like the farms crisis and the general move to financialization in the 1970s that made it harder to find and keep a working-class job."

The same pattern has played out after each U.S. conflict since then, Belew said, and has drawn men, women and children from a variety of backgrounds around white supremacist ideas and militant extremism, although veterans and active-duty military personnel often play key roles in these movements.

"Veterans are specifically targeted for recruitment into white power groups because they and active-duty service members have a set of experiences and expertise that is very much in demand by these groups," she said. "Veterans have tactical training, munitions expertise and weapons training that the white power movement wants because it is trying to wage war on the American government – in fact, this movement has directed recruitment specifically aimed at veterans and active-duty troops."

"While very few veterans returning from war join white power groups, the groups still feature an enormous percentage of people who are veterans or active duty – or falsely claim to be," Belew added. "This is because those military roles are in high demand among these groups – and their command structure within the movement mirrors military organization."

The white power movement is one of the hidden costs of warfare, Belew said, and represented a social failure to support service members returning to civilian life following combat.

"In the recent past, war has not been at the center of our political conversation," Belew said. "We don't reckon with the massive impact the people who serve in our armed forces shoulder for the nation. In all of these ways, the global war on terror has continued the cycle of generating a recruitment opportunity for extremist groups. We are now in the middle of a massive groundswell of white power and militant right activity, both underground and in public-facing actions."

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