This photo illustration created on April 13, 2023, shows the suspect, national guardsman Jack Teixeira, reflected in an image of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. | Source: STEFANI REYNOLDS / Getty
New reports of racist behavior linked to the Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused of leaking classified Pentagon documents are placing a brighter spotlight on the documented trend of white supremacists infiltrating the U.S. military.
Airman Jack Teixeira, 21, not only allegedly leaked classified U.S. government documents on the internet, but he also did so while being racist, lawyers for the Department of Justice (DOJ) argued on Thursday in a successful attempt to deny bail for the suspect.
The revelation was the third such report of Teixeira being racist since he was arrested last week at his home on Cape Cod.
While none of the reports have gone into detail about Teixeira’s alleged racism, DOJ lawyers made sure to include that the Pentagon’s investigation found that he had made “racial threats,” the New York Times reported.
Teixeira, who is accused of leaking documents that reportedly included confidential information about Russia’s war in Ukraine along with evidence that the U.S. has been spying on its allies like South Korea and Israel, also allegedly said online that he had a desire to kill “a ton of people.”
The report about the “racial threats” came about a week after the Washington Post reported that Teixeira shared a video among a group on the Discord platform with whom he regularly shared classified documents showing him casually expressing racist sentiments as he practices shooting.
The Post’s piece was published in the hours before Teixeira’s arrest and was fueled by a narrative provided by a young member of the Discord group who referred to the Massachusetts Air National Guardsman as “OG.”
From the Post:
In a video seen by The Post, the man who the member said is OG stands at a shooting range, wearing safety glasses and ear coverings and holding a large rifle. He yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target.
The chat room was also reportedly a place where racism was no stranger.
Also from the Post:
OG’s group itself had a dark side. The Discord server’s eventual name, Thug Shaker Central, was a racist allusion, and signaled to members that they were free to hurl epithets and crude jokes. The young member expressed some regret for their behavior but seemed to shrug off the offensive remarks as a clumsy attempt at humor.
Likewise, the Guardian’s coverage of Teixeira built on the theme of racism and reported that the Discord group also peddled “racist memes.” The Guardian described Teixeira in part as someone “with racist and anti-establishment views.”
Notably, Discord is also the online platform where the so-called Unite the Right deadly march in Charlottesville, Virginia, was planned in 2017.
It certainly doesn’t help Teixeira’s case in the court of public opinion that notorious racist Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene defended him on Twitter because, as she said, he is “white, male, Christian, and antiwar.”
If the reports are true, Teixeira would be the most recent member of the U.S. military to be a suspected white supremacist who has infiltrated its ranks.
Notably, in 2019, now-former U.S. Coast Guardsman Christopher Paul Hasson was found with a stockpile of illegal drugs and weapons in his home and was allegedly part of a plot to commit acts of mass terrorism. Hasson even had a hit list that named Black elected officials, including New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and California Rep. Maxine Waters.
More recently, former National Guardsman Francis Harker, a suspected white supremacist, was sentenced last summer to four years in prison for planning to attack police in Virginia.
“Authorities said they found messages and images in which Harker threatened violence, praised Adolf Hitler or disparaged Black people, including one blood-spattered image with the phrase ‘Rape the Cops,’” the Washington Post reported at the time.
To be sure, Teixeira and Harker are far from alone.
“A blue ribbon committee called the Countering Extremist Activity Working Group was quickly commissioned in April 2021 to evaluate the extent of the problem,” Dwight Stirling, a lecturer in law at the University of Southern California, wrote in an op-ed about how the U.S. military is confronting white supremacists in their ranks. “The group found about 100 substantiated cases of extremism in the U.S. armed forces in 2021.”
This is America.
SEE ALSO:
Hate In America: The Many Faces Of White Supremacy
What Is Whiteness? New ‘Show & Tell’ Book Aims To Dismantle Racism And White Supremacy
