C. Douglas Golden June 13, 2021 at 10:11am

With Joe Biden now the commander in chief, the military is now on a vigorous hunt for extremism within its ranks.

There’s no evidence it exists, but that’s not the point. The Democrats are going to imbue every institution they can with a fair dose of wokeness while the getting’s good, usually waving the bloody shirt of Jan. 6 to justify whatever actions they take.

As Fox News’ Tucker Carlson noted on his Thursday show, during his confirmation hearing, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that he would “rid our ranks of racists and extremists,” and that “we can’t do that if some of our enemies lie within our own ranks.”

“‘Some of our enemies lie within our own ranks.’ He’s right about that, but probably thinking of a different group,” Carlson quipped.

The enemies — some of them, at least — are part of the Counter-Extremism Working Group. The CEWG is being led by Bishop Garrison, the senior adviser to the secretary of defense — and, according to investigative journalist Daniel Greenfield, it’s looking to redefine what extremism is.

Greenfield has been looking into the workings of the new, woke Pentagon. When asked by Carlson what kind of picture his research has revealed, Greenfield said that “[i]t paints a very unpleasant one from the top down.

About the CEWG, Greenfield told the Fox News host: “This was the organization that Austin has set up in order to create a new definition of extremism, because there’s so much talk about extremism,” Greenfield said.

“How do you define extremism? This group is going to define that extremism,” he added.

“It’s going to screen recruits into the military. It’s going to punish them if they lie about their past activities. It’s going to be a point of contact for veterans, warning them about extremism. And it’s obviously going to regulate who gets into what kind of national security positions.”

You may not be surprised to learn that the CEWG isn’t necessarily a military-oriented bunch of individuals, either.

Instead, Greenfield said the administration has “gotten 18 experts to come in and coordinate with this Counter-Extremism Working Group on this definition.

“Only one of them has a military background. Only two of them have a law enforcement background. The vast majority of them are partisan Democrats who have supported Biden,” Greenfield said, adding that, “strangely enough, about a third of them are Muslim or from Islamist groups, two of whom appear not even be United States citizens but who have worked with the United Nations.”

Carlson noted that “these sound like political commissars to me.”

Greenfield said “that is very much the case. They are going to fit a definition of extremism that fits a particular political ideology.

“Bishop Garrison has already said that we’re not going to have any tolerance for this ideology, and then he quickly corrected himself and he corrected to behavior,” he continued.

“But, you know, when you start talking about ideology, beliefs that people in the military can and can’t have, that is very much a political commissar. That’s the kind of thing that the left was accusing McCarthy of doing in the Army-McCarthy hearings. They’re going to tell people in the military what kind of beliefs they can have, what they can think, not just what they can do.”

Carlson then wondered if there was anyone in the GOP willing to push back by reducing the military budget.

“Or for that matter of defunding the actual money that’s going to all these critical race theory diversity programs, because that’s really a huge financial center,” Greenfield said.

But this is our military now. We should have expected it during the inauguration of President Biden, when over 25,000 National Guard troops were called in to the District of Columbia. That wasn’t enough, though — then, the FBI had to vet those troops for extremist right-wing views. There were a dozen or so guardsmen removed from duty for the inauguration for alleged extremism.

Then, as Military.com reported, Austin “ordered [a] stand-down Feb. 5 and gave units across the military 60 days to discuss extremism in the ranks with troops.” That wasn’t enough, again.

Now, progressives are ferreting out extremism however they can. And if the extremism doesn’t exist, they’ll just have to redefine what it means. That’s coming soon — and it should worry every American.