These Veterans Are Combating Extremism at Home

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Now, we turn to a man who has dedicated his life to fighting for his country in a growing war against fascism. Our next guests, Iraq army veteran Kris Goldsmith is the founder of the Task Force Butler Institute. A nonprofit with a mission to tackle right-wing extremist movements, taking hold especially among some of his fellow vets. He joins Hari Sreenivasan now to discuss this phenomenon and the challenges within his work.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Thanks. Kris Goldsmith, thanks so much for joining us. Last time you and I spoke, right before the pandemic, I was thumbing through a folder full of the screen shots that you had of how, essentially, veterans were being targeted with misinformation and disinformation. And given the work that you’re doing now, while we’re having this conversation, you say, that’s almost, kind of, in the back of your mind. Why? What’s the bigger threat?

KRISTOFER GOLDSMITH, FOUNDER, TASK FORCE BUTLER INSTITUTE: Well, really my research into disinformation, targeting veterans is — what I’m doing now is an extension of it, which is studying extremism. And not just studying it but with my nonprofit Task Force Butler Institute. Working with other veterans to actually bring the fight to extremists who are causing harm to vulnerable communities around the country.

SREENIVASAN: So, you know, back in October, we had at the House Armed Services — Veterans Affairs Committee talking about the number of veterans who have been committing crimes. And that has more than quadrupled between 2010 and 2022. We’re focusing specifically related to extremism. Why do you think that is?

GOLDSMITH: This surge in criminal activity among veterans is, I think, reflection of — a reflection of the way that politics is — has radicalized a lot of folks on the right. And now, to be clear, veterans aren’t inherently vulnerable to radicalization, but there has been a very concerted effort to target veterans. The same reasons that the Russians targeted veterans, the same reason why the far-right targets veterans, and the same reason why Fortune 500 recruiters target veterans. That’s because veterans are influential. Americans have a certain respect for veterans that they don’t have for other parts of our society. And veterans are, more likely, when they get out of the military there’s a lot of negative stereotypes like PTSD. But we’re more likely to start our own businesses. When we go to college, we’re more likely to graduate with a higher GPA than our peers, and more likely to be community leaders and that doesn’t mean just getting elected. It also means being things like soccer coach or a girl scout leader. So, veterans have been targeted consistently by external actors and by internal actors who want to prey on the symbolism of military service, of patriotism, and gain the credibility that veterans bring to any movement or any organization.

SREENIVASAN: So, what is it that is kind of the pre-conditioned that they are preying upon to harness this sense of mission to do something that we all now consider bad? I mean, what is the plight of some of these returning veterans who are vulnerable to being influenced by white supremacists or radical extremists?

GOLDSMITH: Yes, so to be clear, there is — I have not seen convincing evidence that says that veterans are particularly vulnerable to radicalization. But extremist organizations and hostile foreign actors recognize that some veterans, their military experiences can leave them vulnerable. Can leave them angry. I left the military after fighting in Iraq. I spent a year there at the end of my teens, my early twenties. And I felt like the war was pointless. A lot of veterans felt like that over the last 20 years between Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ve, you know, seen our friends not just got hurt in combat but also die by suicide. Struggle with untreated post-traumatic stress disorder, or traumatic brain injuries, or divorce. I mean, the instability of military life that can — it can bring to your family is tremendous. And if someone joins the military and just — they are kicked out of the military with a bad paper discharge and they’re denied access to critical benefits that are meant to help veterans transition back into society, like health care, like the G.I. Bill. Those particular veterans, like I was myself in 2007, start to look for answers. And sometimes, conspiracy theories can fill those voids. And in my case, I felt like a military had lied to me. It felt like America had lied to me when they sent me to Iraq. I joined after 9/11. Yes, the Iraq was already going, but I didn’t see why we were there three years in. I thought it was going to be quick, right. That’s what Americans were led to believe. Well, once I felt like the government lied to me, once I felt like America had misled me, I was extremely angry and I was confused. You know, I had dedicated everything to the military, to my country. And I felt betrayed. Now, thankfully, I had access to the VA in over years of therapy. I was pulled out of that dark hole. But there are a lot of folks who experience really terrible things and have legitimate grievances against the government. And those folks can be manipulated into intensifying their anger and intensifying their blame towards others for problems. Now, the things that make a veteran vulnerable to radicalization are the same things that make anybody else vulnerable. And that’s economic instability. It’s societal instability. Now, for some people, that societal instability, if a white organization starts, you know, giving this person a bad guy or a group that is to blame. Whether it be immigrants or refugees or, you know, some sort of secret cabal of any kind, or a — you know, spread antisemitic conspiracy theories towards this person. That can send them into a cycle of self- radicalization. So, we see radicalization happen on mainstream platforms. If a person starts getting kicked off of those mainstream platforms, then they end up in places like telegram and gab and odyssey where there are no longer any dissenting voices. So, their reality, their perception of reality can be altered in a way that can bring them to violence. In a way that can make them feel like they are victims and that they are under physical threat. That they are unsafe. And with that, they are motivated to lash out, to commit violence, to engage in acts of hate.

SREENIVASAN: So, tell me a little bit about the initiative that you’re working on now. What made you kind of flip the switch from documenting how veterans were being targeted and how these different groups are communicating to wanting to do what you’re doing today, which is taking much more active stance.

GOLDSMITH: So, when I worked for a major veteran service organization, the last time you and I met each other, just before the pandemic started. I was given the directive of focus externally. Because if I was writing in a paper or a research paper about disinformation and how it was affecting American veterans, I would have been writing about them — President Trump and all of the lies that he spewed about, you know, elections and COVID and all the rest. Well, because of a pandemic, I get laid off. And then I had a lot of time on my hands. And a buddy who I had served with who has a lot of time on his hands, too. And he’s an interesting guy. Called me up out of the blue and said, hey, Goldie, I’ve joined a neo-Nazi organization and I want you to help me take them down. There was no previous conversation. That’s just the way it happens. And I did. So, he and I were inside of the neo-Nazi group Patriot Front for several months. I documented everything while he played the part of neo-Nazi in-person going out with these people, you know, training to — you know, train in violence, basically. And they sought him out because of his military experience. And I gave all of our evidence to BuzzFeed and an article came out. And our objective was to expose Americans to the fact that there’s a rising organized group of fascists in this country. And I got to learn from inside that is — it is a real threat. And I got to learn how they create propaganda in a campaign. Seen how they radicalized average people. And how they reinterpret reality and use it to plant seeds of hatred all around this country. And since then, I’ve — and, you know, January 6th was just months after that. I had been infiltrating on lawful militias like the Three Percent Security and handing off stuff to the FBI before the insurrection, when they were talking about things like assaulting the capital. And I came to realize that — well, I can’t do this alone. And the evidence that I’m giving to the police is not good enough. So, Task Force Butler Institute was founded so that veterans around the country can work safely and anonymously together on missions to take down extremist organizations, like Patriot Front. In September, we published our first report, Task Force Butler Institute published Project Blacklisted which was based on the Charlottesville lawsuit, the legal complaint. We used that as a template on how someone could hold or plaintiffs or district attorneys could hold Patriot Front accountable in a court of law. To dismantle that hate group. To make it so that they could no longer cause harm to communities. And I think the model has proven effective. You know, within weeks our report was used for a lawsuit in Virginia against several members of Patriot Front, including its leadership. And we are going to continue this fight. Veterans are going to continue serving this country with the Task Force Butler Institute. By gathering evidence of criminal activity, showing how people are radicalized. Working with journalists, working with law enforcement, making sure the people understand the threat and that those posing the threat are held legally accountable.

SREENIVASAN: So, tell me a little bit about the type of danger that you and your family have now faced because of this work.

GOLDSMITH: A neo-Nazi showed up at my mother’s house and dropped off a threat and included a book that was a story of a mother who mysteriously goes missing. It had on the front of it a picture of Adolf Hitler and it said Mein Kampf is available online. On the back, it had a sticker that said antifa plus FBI cooperation. So, establishing that I’m being targeted because of my last name. This sounds Jewish. And because I work with the FBI. That’s two protected classes right there, FBI informants and ethnic and religious minorities. That wasn’t enough for an arrest to happen. That person after the FBI paid that person a visit, that person then took the FBI’s business card, the FBI agent business card and they mailed it to my home address to let me now that he knew where I lived. In it, he pictured — sent a picture of empty shoes, which is meant to symbolize Jews who were murdered in the holocaust. So, that man has sent two threats involving two mailboxes. He still continues to threaten my family. His associates have posted pictures of my family online. They posted voter records to reveal where I live. And I’m already receiving threatening packages in the mail. No one’s been arrested yet.

SREENIVASAN: We recently saw charges brought against neo-Nazi and his girlfriend for plotting, essentially, to attack the electrical grids around of the Baltimore area, a city that has a high minority population. And I wonder if you have any insight from the conversations you’ve been privy to you on how these organizations are planning and what they’re thinking. Are we likely to see more of these attacks?

GOLDSMITH: So, neo-Nazi organizations, fascist organizations, antigovernment organizations have been talking about attacking critical infrastructure for decades. The electrical grid in our modern world is more important than ever. You know, when power gets shut off, people who are in hospitals, people who have medical equipment at home can die as a direct result of that. And the goal of neo-Nazis in these antigovernment extremists isn’t only to create a white ethnostate, it’s to create chaos necessary to build the fascist movement. They want to convince Americans that their government cannot protect them, so that Americans start to call out for something else. They are going to do everything that they can. And that is their life’s purpose to convince Americans that the democracy is not working. And we are there to do just the opposite. We are there to document this kind of criminal activity. To document them sharing information and I’m drawing up plans to do things like attack power grids and to make sure that we can make sure that law enforcement protects — can intercept them before a terrorist attack happens. Now, to be clear, we haven’t done anything like that yet. But I believe that we’ve got a potential.

SREENIVASAN: Kris, in a way, I also fear you kind of taking back the idea of anti-fascism, which over the past few years has become a shorthand to antifa and it’s become for the hyperbole for everything that is the political left. But you are reminding people that really the big first set of anti-fascists were the U.S. military and American veterans.

GOLDSMITH: Yes. The U.S. military is the original anti-fascist organization. We — the U.S. military is the most effective anti-fascist organization in the history of the world. That is a piece of American history that people should remember. You know, I use these terms like neo-Nazi and anti-fascists and fascist, and I want people to understand that I’m not using hyperbole, I’m using my — these terms very carefully because these words have meaning. We’re not going to be able to change this disinformation bubble that has convinced a third of America that antifa is the greatest threat to democracy. I have no interest and changing minds. What Task Force Butler is about is going after the real threat and showing it through our work. Not using hyperbole, but writing reports that, you know, tell stories, that do the analysis and provide the evidence so that it’s not just lawyers in a courtroom who understand this problem, but it’s journalists, and it’s the American people who can understand that democracy is not lost., that we shouldn’t be hopeless. And that if we simply fight back and impose costs on the bad actors who are breaking the law, we can start to feel better about our democracy.

SREENIVASAN: Veteran Chris Goldsmith, founder of the Task Force Butler Initiative, thanks so much for joining us.

GOLDSMITH: Thank you.