Enter “Shawn Michael McCaffrey” into Google and it doesn’t take long for his white supremacist beliefs to show up. In fact, the first search result is a link about his history of posting extremist views on social media and farther down is a link documenting his membership in the white nationalist group Identity Evropa. Google searches may not be the best way of evaluating a person’s character, but they’re at least worth a follow-up question, especially if you’re an Air Force recruiter determining whether McCaffrey is qualified to wear the country’s uniform and be responsible for its security. But those follow-up questions appear to have never been asked, since the 28-year-old McCaffrey is currently an airman first class in the service, Air Force spokesperson Ann Stefanek said in an email to Task & Purpose. “We were recently made aware of this allegation, and Air Force officials are looking into it,” she said. “We were not aware of the allegations during the enlistment process. No further information or details of this allegation can be released until the facts involving this allegation are fully reviewed.” McCaffrey’s beliefs and his membership in the Air Force were first reported by HuffPost on Saturday in a damning article revealing McCaffrey’s widespread espousal of white supremacist, anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic beliefs. Among the airman’s many extremist posts, tweets, videos and other activities are the following, according to HuffPost:
Helped organize the “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. in 2017. Featured prominently in propaganda material for Identity Evropa. Attended a conference held by Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer in Washington D.C. shortly after the election of former President Donald Trump. Performed white-supremacist insider jokes at an anti-Trump protest. Hosted a podcast called “The Weekly Sweat” where he and other white nationalists lambasted Jews, women, LGTBQ people and Muslims, and interviewed at least five major figures in the white supremacist movement. Said ‘fuck the troops’ in a March 2020 episode of the online alt-right show “The Killstream”. Said “it seems like every Marine is gay” in a “Weekly Sweat” episode where he also said “I really hope we get into a war soon so you fucking faggots have to go defend sand and die and have all your friends die.”. Shortly after he became Secretary of Defense in January, retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin called for a military-wide stand-down to address extremism. But nobody stopped McCaffrey from pledging the oath of enlistment on Jan. 26, HuffPost reported.
As part of the accession process, Air Force recruiters ask questions about criminal activities and extremist activities and associations and use national and local criminal background checks to scan for extremist ties in potential recruits, according to Stefanek. But background checks will detect a person’s extremist ties only if they have been charged with a crime related to their beliefs, according to HuffPost, which means a recruit like McCaffrey would have passed those checks. So what are we to make of this? The military talks a big game about how extremism is a threat to readiness, but recruiters appear to have few tools to screen potential recruits for links to extremist groups or behavior before they join up. Yet McCaffrey isn’t the only one. A Pentagon report released in February cited more than 20 examples of service members and veterans who were either members of white supremacist groups or unaffiliated white supremacists. Separately, Task & Purpose has compiled a list of nearly two dozen current and former Marines who have been involved in extremist activity since 2017, such as two Marine veterans arrested in October for allegedly planning to kidnap Michigan’s governor.
via taskandpurpose: The Air Force just let in a white supremacist that a Google search could have caught
Yes, seriously.