Likes, Shares and Posts Now Prohibited in Pentagon’s New Anti-Extremism Policy

Membership in extremist groups is still not prohibited by the Defense Department, but an updated instruction released Monday seeks to prohibit pretty much everything that one might do in association with an extremist group.

The project of defining extremism for the purpose of punishing those who engage it is like “threading a very fine needle, when we’re engaging in prohibiting conduct that may be protected by the First Amendment,” a defense official told reporters Monday, as the Countering Extremism Working group released its final report.

“We wanted to push forward with the same standard that we had in our previous iterations of this policy, which is that active participation,” an official said. “So it was really important to us that we preserve First Amendment rights to the extent that we could, and that we focus on an individual’s actions, regardless of whether they did that on their own or as part of an organization.”

Instead, the new policy expands the previous definition of prohibited activity, for the first time explicitly including online interactions that might promote terrorism or the overthrow of the U.S. government, as well as attending rallies, fundraising or organizing in support of those ideologies.

In practice, online activity could already be prosecuted by the services. In 2019, the Army began investigating Maj. Jeff Poole, an Army Reserve infantry officer at Fort Benning, Georgia, with a prolific Reddit presence advocating for violent anti-government and anti-military insurrection. (Read more from “Likes, Shares and Posts Now Prohibited in Pentagon’s New Anti-Extremism Policy” HERE)

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