Prevalence of Veteran Support for Extremist Groups and Extremist Beliefs: Results from a Nationally Representative Survey of the U.S. Veteran Community
This RAND report tackles the question of whether U.S. veterans are disproportionately susceptible to violent extremism—a concern amplified after early (later revised) reports that as many as one in five January 6 attackers had military ties. Drawing on a nationally representative survey of nearly 1,000 veterans, the authors find no evidence that the veteran community as a whole supports extremist groups or beliefs at higher rates than the general public: support for specific groups ranged from 1 percent (white supremacists) to 5.5 percent (Antifa), generally below comparable general-population figures, and QAnon support was relatively modest at 13.5 percent. The more uncomfortable findings are that support for political violence (17.7 percent) and the Great Replacement theory (28.8 percent) tracked the general population, that most veterans who endorsed political violence did notsimultaneously support a named group—meaning they may be especially exposed to recruitment by new or emerging movements—and that Marine Corps veterans showed the highest support for extremist groups and beliefs across the services.