Read on Twitter
There's been a tonne written about the possible links b/w military service and involvement in RWE, especially with some @NPR reporting highlighting that about ~20% of those charged in the aftermath of the riot / attack at the U.S. Capitol had military experience. 1/n
While there’s perhaps a compelling story to be told here, a few things to keep in mind: with some notable exceptions ( @kathleen_belew's book being one) very few authors tell a compelling causal tale about why this may be the case.
While there’s a prima facie logic, it often isn’t made explicit or explored in any depth. Authors making that argument seem to think that military service is in some way explanatory and perhaps more interesting than if, say, 20% of those charged all worked at an ice cream shop.
That’s certainly true, but why? The claim doesn’t stand on its own. Treating RWE as a somewhat predictable outcome of military experience strikes me as a bit presumptuous.
I’ve spoken to formers who said getting into the military actually played an important role in their disengagement from the far right – radicalization is complex!
If that 20% number holds as the denominator grows larger – we need to ask ourselves: why are we seeing this sort of growth? A quick run of somewhat dated (Oct18 release) PIRUS data from @START_UMD shows that nearly 11% of the individuals in their data had military experience.
That seems to be significant if you know that only 0.4% of Americans are currently serving in the military. However, a handy @538 column suggests that closer to 7.3% of Americans (13.4% of American males) have served at some point in time. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-percentage-of-americans-have-served-in-the-military/
Once we’re using the correct base rate, what appears to be a significant variable may not be significant at all – or at least a lot less significant than it looks at first glance
This is not to suggest the links b/w service and RWE aren’t worthy of attention – merely that we ought to approach the question carefully. Base rate issues have vexed terrorism researchers for years, would be a shame to make the same mistakes again. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1556-4029.14282
Final point 1: There’s a paper I recall reading suggesting military experience increased lethality of lone actors – clear casual pathway and helpful for explaining how, if not why, military experience might impact subsequent acts of violent extremism.
There’s tonne of other interesting ‘how’ questions to ask.
Final point 2: We’ve just started a project on this topic – I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this in the near future. /end
