The US Army has ordered a ‘handout’ produced by Army’s “Project Inclusion,” which, according to the Army is supposed to ‘improve diversity, equity and inclusion across the force and build cohesive teams.’ Because nothing builds teamwork or inclusion like labeling people who support the Command-in-Chief as racist. This is what one of the handouts looked like:

A U.S. Army employee on Monday sent an email invite to likely thousands of military and civilian members for a U.S. Army 'Operation Inclusion' listening tour, which included a graphic that said saying "MAGA" is evidence of white supremacy. The Army says it was "sent in error." pic.twitter.com/NUvm0lMVMh

— Kristina Wong 🇺🇸 (@kristina_wong) July 9, 2020

At the apex of the triangle are indicators of Overt White Supremacy which are deemed ‘socially unacceptable.’ You have:

Lynching, Hate Crime, Blackface, The N-word, Racist Jokes, Racial Slurs and the KKK. I tried to reach Reginald Denny for comment on lynching, hate crime, and racial slurs as they pertain to white supremacy but he wasn’t available.

The remainder of the pyramid is labeled as symptomatic of Covert White Supremacy and it says these are socially acceptable. Those signs are:

Calling the Police on Black People, White Silence, Colorblindness, White Parent Self-Segregating Neighborhoods and Schools, Eurocentric Curriculum, White Savior Complex, Spiritual Bypassing, Education Funding from Property Taxes, Discriminatory Lending, Mass Incarceration, Respectability Politics, Tone Policing, Racist Mascots, Not Believing Experiences of BIPOC [BIPOC is the current leftist catch phrase for black, Indigenous and people of color, which strikes me as a clever way of ruling out Asians], Paternalism, Make America Great, Blaming the Victim, Hiring Discrimination, ‘You Don’t Sound Black,’ ‘Don’t Blame Me. I Never Owned Slaves,’ Bootstrap Theory, School-to-Prison Pipeline, Police Murdering BIPOC, Virtuous Victim Narrative, Higher Infant and Maternal Mortality Rate for BIPOC [this is only true if Hispanics and Asians are now considered white, but whatever], ‘But what about me?’ ‘All Lives Matter,’ BIPOC as Halloween Costumes, Racial Profiling, Denial of White Privilege, Prioritizing White Voices as Experts, Treating Kids of Color as Adults, Inequitable Healthcare, Assuming Good Intentions are Enough, Not Challenging Racist Jokes, Cultural Appropriation, Eurocentric Beauty Standards, Anti-Immigration Policies, Considering AAVE [African American Vernacular English, remember when this was called, un-ironically, Ebonics] Uneducated, Denial of Racism, Tokenism, English-Only Initiatives, Self-Appointed White Ally, Exceptionalism, Fearing People of Color, Police Brutality, Fetishizing BIPOC, Meritocracy Myth, ‘You’re so Articulate,’ Celebration of Columbus Day, Claiming Reverse Racism, Paternalism [Paternalism is so racist they had to list it twice], Weaponizing Whiteness, Expecting BIPOC to White People, Believing We are ‘Post-Racial,’ ‘But We’re All in One Big Human Family,’ ‘There’s Only One Human Race,’ Housing Discrimination.

It didn’t take long for the feces to hit the fan. Mo Brooks represents the Congressional District that includes Redstone Arsenal.

Wednesday, Congressman Mo Brooks (AL-05) blasted deeply offensive and racist U.S. Army “Operation Inclusion” propaganda U.S. Army personnel distributed to Redstone Arsenal civilian and uniformed personnel in clear violation of the Hatch Act. Congressman Brooks sent a letter to U.S. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy (copies to President Donald Trump; Mark Meadows, White House Chief of Staff; Attorney General William Barr; and others) demanding an investigation into Army personnel illegally using federal government resources to distribute racist and partisan political propaganda in direct violation of the federal Hatch Act and any number of military regulations. Click HERE to view and download Congressman Brooks’ letter to U.S. Army Secretary McCarthy.

The Army email invited “All soldiers and (Department of the Army) Civilian Personnel” to attend “Operation Inclusion” seminars July 8 & 9 at Redstone Arsenal’s Bob Jones Auditorium at the Sparkman Center Complex. The email, sent by “Chaney P. Pickard” (per the emails, Pickard is with the U.S. Army Aviation & Missile Center), via an official government email address: “[email protected]”. The invitation was sent to an unknown number of recipients, but likely in the thousands if the invitation went to all Redstone Arsenal Army civilian and uniformed personnel.

The U.S. Army email further states it is by the “U.S. Army Equity & Inclusion Agency” and “Assistant Secretary of the Army – Manpower and Reserve Affairs”.
…
Congressman Brooks said, “U.S. Army personnel have violated the Hatch Act and any number of military regulations by distributing materials that, among other offensive things, labels president Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan or ‘Celebration of Columbus Day’ as white supremacist. The Hatch Act prohibits federal government executive branch employees from engaging in defined, banned political activity. ALL U.S. Army civilian and uniformed personnel who drafted, approved or sent this racist and politically partisan email, using government resources, should be prosecuted for their Hatch Act violations and summarily fired for blatantly and illegally injecting themselves into partisan political activities on government time using federal taxpayer money.”

Brooks added, “Heads should roll. I ask the U.S. Army to investigate this matter and send me a report of (a) who was involved in these Hatch Act violations, (b) whether they will be prosecuted pursuant to the Hatch Act, and (c) whether they will be terminated for their illegal conduct (as I would expect of any federal government employee who blatantly disregards and violates the Hatch Act). The U.S. Army is not the place for political indoctrination or reeducation experimentation. These vile violators of the Hatch Act should be made an example as a stern warning to other federal employees that no one is above the law when it comes to illegally using federal government resources to promote racial division and advance a partisan political agenda.”

Brooks is right on every single count here. And he has the Secretary of the Army and the Army Chief of Staff running like scalded dogs:

In its statement, the Army did not address how the July 6 handout was put together, but said that it included two unapproved pages and was quickly recalled.

The unapproved pages were copied from a non-government website, the service said, and “included a word cloud with phrases that were intended to spark conversation; however, the document was pre-decisional and inappropriate for the discussion.”

“The Army does not condone the use of phrases that indicate political support,” according to the statement. “The Army is and will continue to remain an apolitical organization.”

The Army is more likely than not lying about the role of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs (ASA M&RA). That agency has been a sh**hole like forever in terms of promoting lunatic schemes. It is utterly impossible to believe that this handout was created with no review or oversight by anyone with a brain. It is no coincidence that the same Army leadership that elected to permit LTC Alexander ‘Sweet Cheeks’ Vindman to be promoted from the secondary zone, that is, ahead of his peer group, after his central role in the attempted coup on President Trump and then decides to label MAGA as a white supremacist slogan. It is barely this side of outright mutiny. The fact that no one will be disciplined over this is all the proof you will ever need that this act was condoned by the highest levels of Army leadership.

Beyond the obvious political dimension of this program, and Mo Brooks is right, this is a clear Hatch Act violation by everyone involved in developing and approving this handout (you can almost imagine them chuckling as they did it), you have the fundamental error of thinking that labeling many very normal activities, like celebrating Columbus Day and actually believing in meritocracy, as white supremacist and forcing people to engage in Maoist Struggle Sessions to rid themselves of wrongthink is a way to build cohesion or mutual respect. Far from it. This buillsh** is going nowhere good.

When I was a young lieutenant, racial unrest was a pretty common state of affairs on military installations in Germany. The Army elected to combat the problem by mandating monthly race relations classes. The topic of discussion cam down from Department of the Army. No officers or NCOs were allowed in the classes because we would stifle discussion. The class was run by a bright young enlisted guy who’d received about 40 hours of practical training in group dynamics. These classes were affectionately known as ‘Friday at the Fights’ by unit leadership. The topics were tough, the instructors were very good at getting that genie out of the bottle but their skill in getting it back in and recorking it was lacking. The result was a program which measurably increased racial discord and racial polarization instead of reducing them. White, black, and Hispanic affinity groups flourished. You stopped seeing mixed race groups of GIs going out together. Bars downtown became unofficially segregated. A unit parties, there was little mixing. People did their jobs but that was the limit of their association with troops that were not of their own race.

The message that this kind of training clearly sends to non-BIPOC (to use the noxious abbreviation) Army personnel, military and civilian, is that you are a white supremacist. Period. Full stop. That message is not going to be well received. What it will cause, just as surely as the race relations classes I witnessed in Germany, is division and distrust.