by Lisa Nelson
In 2020, I was chosen to serve as co-chair along with Dr. Ronald Poropatich (University of Pittsburgh) and Noah Fair (University of Pittsburgh) to evaluate claims of veteran extremism under a newly formed “Collaboratory on Hate.” The first effort of the research group was to review the databases that are often used to support the finding that veterans are more likely than the general population to engage in politically motivated violence. The evaluation of these databases revealed that there is disparity in the statistical evidence among the databases used to support the claim that veterans are more likely than the general population to engage in politically motivated violence. The statistical variation is driven by several factors, including the use of indeterminate definitions of extremism used to capture the data, selective inclusion and exclusion of extremist events as well as reliance on internet reporting of events that is inconsistent across the time period that purports to support the rise in veteran extremism. Ultimately, the team did not find that veterans are any more likely than the general population to engage in politically motivated violence and that continued promotion of this narrative is damaging to the veteran community and is not productive for understanding the rise in political violence that is occurring more generally in society.
A second focus of this research was to deploy a thousand-person survey of veterans. The survey, conducted by Amerispeak, explored the issue of extremism and the perceptions of it across groups and institutions in society. Because extremism is not a precise term and possesses no legal definition, the survey was designed to better understand how extremism is viewed by a group often characterized as susceptible to it. In addition to this survey, one on one interviews were conducted with veterans who identified as leaning left, right and center. The initial findings reveal that there are many groups and institutions in society that are perceived as staking out extreme positions or engaging in extremist actions. Extremism was attributed to government, academia and other groups in society, especially when these institutions were motivated by ideology. In addition to the survey work, one-on-one interviews with a cohort of veterans have been conducted to develop an in-depth and contextual understanding of how this segment of society thinks about extremism.