Something is happening in the halls of the Pentagon, and it bodes ill for America's future military.  Wokeness is crawling out of the shadows to neuter America's fighting power.

This is a dangerous move because of the criteria likely to be used to identify "extremists."  These will not only further divide the military ranks, but also diminish our fighting readiness and make us the laughingstock of modern militaries, prominently including existential enemies in Russia and China.

Evidently, secretary of defense Lloyd Austin's military-wide stand-down wasn't enough for the Biden leftists in the White House and Congress, along with appointees now walking the Pentagon's E-ring.  No, they are trending full-rudder left like other federal agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency.  The aim is to make our bloated federal government more "woke" — a slang term meaning alert to so-called injustice in society and especially racism — regarding so-called "extremists."

This isn't a joke.  Recently, our premier intelligence agency's recruiting arm posted on twitter a 36-year-old Latina CIA officer who spouted her wokeness with words like "intersectional" and "cisgender."  The CIA officer confirmed her wokeness by stating, "I am a woman of color.  I am a mom.  I am a cisgender Millennial who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder."  Then she communicates that she is part of mainstream wokeness: "I did not sneak into the CIA.  I earned my way in, and I earned my way up the ranks."  Translation: The agency embraces wokeness.

The Pentagon is close behind.  Although the military brass failed to define non-woke "extremism," leftist media volunteered that it means anyone belonging to a racist or violent ideological group such as the Proud Boys or the QAnon movement. 

The Biden administration has plenty of congressional leftists and members of the administration at the ready to define non-woke "extremism."

Before Mr. Biden's swearing in to the presidency, a group backed by congressional Democrats recommended that the new administration take action against the non-woke.  A 28-page document by "Secular Democrats of America" called on the president-elect to strip First Amendment rights from non-woke extremists like Christians who endorsed traditional biblical positions on life, marriage, and education. 

The Democrats' document, "Restoring Constitutional Secularism and Patriotic Pluralism in the White House," called for educating the "religious right" on the need to keep their "dogma" to themselves.  Further, it called for purging social conservatives from government by labeling them "white nationalists" and "conspiracy theorists."

The administration has a stable of woke leaders, such as Vice President Kamala Harris, who showed her "woke" credentials last fall when she addressed the difference between "equality" and "equity."  She explained that "equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place."  However, "equity" happens only when government uses its power to disadvantage one group over another in order to reach a desired outcome.

Expect the Pentagon's "extremist" review, due out this July, to produce woke-friendly restrictions that align with the CIA's and Harris's ideological leadership.  Their message is clear: fall in line with leftist woke ideology or leave.

The primary driver of wokeness in 2021 is Critical Race Theory, a Marxist revolutionary concept that originated in the 1990s.  In CRT, race is substituted for class in Marx's economic dialectic to create a coalition of the dispossessed based solely on race.

Unfortunately, CRT is spreading across the nation and now infects the Pentagon.  It is camouflaged by euphemisms like "equity" and "social justice."  President Donald Trump eliminated it from government training, but Biden re-introduced it.

Before Trump ended CRT's woke "diversity" training, numerous government agencies mandated participation, such as the FBI, which hosted so-called intersectionality workshops.  The Department of Homeland Security shamed white employees for committing "microinequities," and some employees at Sandia National Laboratories attended re-education camp, where they were told that "white male culture" is analogous to the "KKK" and "white supremacists."

Now that CRT is back in government, according to the Washington Post, the Pentagon is drilling down on mandated woke behavior for our troops.  It is expected to publish regulations that prohibit service members from participating in "extremist" organizations by fundraising, attending rallies, and distributing literature.  Further, it's expected to prohibit even "passive" membership, which includes possessing a group's literature.

What does that really mean?  Will the woke reviewers produce a list of prohibited groups for service members?  It really comes down to who identifies the non-woke "extremist" groups.

Some members of the Democratic Party and some Biden appointees would identify any group aligned with former President Trump as "extremist."  The Democrats are also aligned with radical groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has a list of "hate groups," which include many conservative and Christian organizations. 

Who builds and approves the Pentagon's woke "extremist" list?  A defense official said that if the speech of a group "isn't in line with our values, then it makes it arguably impossible for that individual to be a good teammate."

The pregnant question is, whose values are "our values"?  Are they the values of Vice President Harris, who advocates "equity" as opposed to "equality"?  Are they the values of the CRT crowd, who insist that "white male culture" is analogous to the "KKK"?  Or are they the values of the Southern Poverty Law Center that hates Christians and conservatives?

For now, Pentagon lawyers are taking a cautious approach to new restrictions on service members' First Amendment rights.  But there are lawmakers pushing for expansive woke prohibitions, like Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), who asked Biden to strengthen the military's review of the troops' social media.

The Pentagon's "extremist" review backed by the Biden administration's woke agenda steps dangerously toward ideological indoctrination, where being in the future military could no longer be about merit and expertise, but about ideological purity, where the left's definition of "extremism" rules the day. 

That outcome will produce a weak military and encourage our enemies to view us as an easy opponent.

Mr. Maginnis is a retired U.S. Army officer and the author of Alliance of Evil: Russia, China, the United States and a New Cold War.  His new book, Give Me Liberty, Not Marxism, comes out this spring and chronicles the Marxist threat and how China seeks to radically transform America.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

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