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NYT Mag is asking for experiences with extremism from military and veterans. I keep thinking about the time on a security contract in Afghanistan when most of our white contractors were scared the black contractors were plotting a race uprising. 1/x https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/magazine/military-extremism.html
I don't know if this is definition extremism, but the situation felt extreme in its surreality. It also wasn't in the military, but it was a DoD contract and the contractors were all veterans. We were also carrying guns in a combat zone, so it felt more military than civilian.
We were a group of a 50-80 contactors guarding a major airfield in Afghanistan. Like the military, the contractors were mostly white, but maybe a third were black and Hispanic. We were all hired on together to stand up the contract and trained together stateside, not strangers.
We had been in country for a couple months or so when a rumor started floating around among the white contractors. It was whispered in small groups. It took some prying to get them to tell me because I was friends with some black contractors. I was so curious to find out!
"Some of the black guys are planning to take over." What? What does that even mean? Who? I was told some names of some of my friends and that they were trying to take over the contract. Then what? I asked. Take over the base? "Maybe, we don't know yet." I was shocked.
Why do you think this? I asked, half pleading. "Look at them right now. They are always hanging out with each other. We heard them talking about [black fraternal organization]. It's suspicious." We are hanging out and talking to each other right now! I said. Are we conspiring?
The thing is, we were! But why? I was truly flabbergasted. I asked around to see who else believe it and it was not an insignificant amount of the white contractors. They would talk about it together as we stood post at a gate or roved around the perimeter in our trucks.
I asked my black friends if they had heard these rumors and of course they had. They were less surprised than me. "This is how it is," one told me. It went on for a couple weeks. At guard mount before our shift, the white and black contractors stopped mingling. Tensions were high
I truly couldn't understand what was happening. We all knew each other, we got drunk together at bars before we came, and it suddenly felt like there was a race war brewing on our security contract in Afghanistan. Leadership was aware but nothing was happening.
Since I never believed it and tried to convince white contractors otherwise during my shifts, many of the white contractors stopped associating with me. We stopped trusting each other. It didn't feel like the military. Rockets still rained down at night. Who had whose back?
It was a terrible contract. People started leaving. I left. I only stay in contact with a few from that contact and none of them are white. It was such a strange time. I feel shame in my stomach when I think about it. But I'm not surprised about wildly racist, idiot veterans now.
If these guys could let racist fear take over—that ancient, powerful American fear of slave revolt—even as they are paid to fight an actual, literal enemy trying to kill them, even when that fear is foolish, counterproductive, and even dangerous to their own safety, then. . .
Well, then I'm just not surprised when I encounter it everywhere else. It's real. It's powerful. We need to guard against it and stamp it out where we find it. I wish I had done more then, but I hope this story reveals a side of American veteranism to you that we all need to see.
