  The Military Says It’s Confronting Extremism. A Prominent White Nationalist Just Finished Boot Camp. A prominent white nationalist joined the U.S. Air Force and recently graduated from boot camp, a HuffPost investigation has found, only weeks after Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued a military-wide stand-down order to address the problem of extremism in the ranks.
Airman 1st Class Shawn McCaffrey, 28, is a well-known white nationalist who for years has hosted a racist and anti-Semitic podcast featuring friendly interviews with some of the most infamous fascists in America. He was also, at one time, a key member of the white nationalist group Identity Evropa. Evidence of his life as a white nationalist was only a Google search away, and he even got thrown off volunteering duties for Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign in 2019 due to his affiliations. The FBI was also aware of McCaffrey’s involvement in the far right, HuffPost has found.
Yet a video from late January, posted to Facebook by the Air Force’s Detroit recruitment center, appears to show McCaffrey solemnly swearing to “support and defend the Constitution” of the U.S. “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” before shipping off to basic military training.
Air Force spokesperson Ann Stefanek said the military branch was not “aware of the allegations” that McCaffrey was a white nationalist before HuffPost reached out for this story. “Air Force officials are looking into it,” she said. The officials will likely now determine whether McCaffrey violated military rules regarding extremist activity and discrimination.
The military has long had a problem with right-wing extremism. A series of HuffPost investigations in 2019 helped uncover 11 members of Identity Evropa in the military, at least six of whom were subsequently kicked out of the armed services. The riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 threw a spotlight on the problem: About 15% of the people arrested for their role in the insurrection had some sort of military affiliation.
Minnesota Officer Who Killed Daunte Wright Resigns Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter offered her resignation Tuesday in a letter to city officials, two days after pulling out her gun and fatally shooting Wright, who was Black. (Potter claims she meant to take out her Taser.) Potter was immediately put on administrative leave after the incident, pending an investigation. Similarly, the Minnesota police chief who oversaw Potter has also resigned. NYPD Retiree Charged In Capitol Cop Attack Shocked He’s Jailed With ‘Inner-City’ Inmates Thomas Webster, who retired after two decades with the New York City Police Department, is unhappy with the “dormitory setting” where he’s held without bail on charges related to the Jan. 6 insurrection, Washington Post reporter Rachel Weiner reported, citing Webster’s defense lawyer.
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