How Marxism is infiltrating the US Armed Forces

– More and more people are recognizing this problem. Many soldiers, whether active duty or veterans, are reaching out to me. It is evident that resistance to the far-left indoctrination is intensifying – says Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, author of “Irresistible Revolution. Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military”.

PIOTR WŁOCZYK: You seem to have had a very rewarding career in the military. You commanded a U.S. Space Force unit (one of the six types of the U.S. Armed Forces) in Colorado, which deals with early warning of missile attacks. However, you wrote a book in 2021 warning against the propagation of Marxism in the US Armed Forces, and suddenly – professionally – you lost everything. Was it worth it?

Lt. Col. MATTHEW LOHMEIER: Yes, I would go down the same path again. My service in the U.S. armed forces was a source of pride for me and gave me great satisfaction. I held a command position in the US Space Force, and before that I piloted fighter jets in the US Air Force. However, when I wrote a book warning against the propagation of Marxism in our armed forces, and then talked about it in the media, I lost my job and my pension rights. Since then, I have focused on alerting my compatriots about Marxist indoctrination.

What are the results of your work?

More and more people are recognizing the problem. Many soldiers, whether active duty or veterans, are reaching out to me. It is evident that the resistance to the far-left indoctrination is intensifying, so I think that for this reason alone it was worth publishing this book.

You lost your job because your superiors thought you were engaged in politics. Criticism of Marxism is political involvement?

That’s a very interesting point, because it seemed to me that criticizing Marxism, an essentially anti-American ideology whose penetration into our society has tragic consequences, is a fundamentally patriotic and apolitical thing. Simply put, anyone who shares American values, such as freedom, should inherently be highly critical of Marxism. However, it has turned out that some see criticism of the ideology on which communism was built as actively engaging in a political dispute between the two major parties.

The U.S. military is the guarantor of the security of a NATO country, so any weakening of this institution negatively affects the future of Poland, among others. How does Marxism threaten the US armed forces?

Marxist infiltration of the U.S. military is just beginning, but the process is gaining momentum. In the U.S., too many people believed that after we won the Cold War, Marxism and communism were no longer an issue. Unfortunately, it turned out that even in America there was no shortage of bad seeds, planted years ago by followers of the Red ideology.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, many Marxist activists began the hard work – not only in government agencies – but especially in our universities, as they thoroughly plowed America. It would seem that the US military is the last place where Marxist activists would be visible and pose a threat to our country. Not at all. And I say “threat” here for a reason – this is a huge threat to Western civilization.

The American armed forces are simply a reflection of what American society is like. However, this institution is specifically supposed to be apolitical. For a long time it actually was. Politics was not a topic in official contacts between commanders and subordinates.

When did this change?

The watershed moment was what happened in 2020 after the death of George Floyd. The Black Lives Matter movement had been active in the U.S. for years, but by 2020 it was relatively dormant. After Floyd’s death, there was an explosion. Black Lives Matter gained massive support from the left side of the political spectrum, and the protests were radicalized by Antifa activists who vandalized American cities, destroyed businesses and fought with police. The same activist zealotry we saw during the riots, unfortunately, was then also revealed in the ranks of the US armed forces.

Military officers with radical leftist views stopped hiding their views. They felt that a crucial time had come. In my case it was the base commander. This man turned out to be a radical leftist activist and openly supported Black Lives Matter, an outright Marxist organization. This colonel began to ooze anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-capitalist sentiments into the heads of his subordinates. He made it clear that there would be no skepticism of BLM slogans on his base. We heard about the alleged “systemic racism” in the U.S., and the “educational videos” presenting white people as inherently bad, with which the soldiers were to be familiarized.

It’s probably difficult to argue with BLM’s demands, since the proponents of these slogans argue that it’s a matter of basic human rights and not part of a political struggle.

That’s right. Things have been turned on their head here. Anyone who asked for an end to the indoctrination of soldiers risked being charged with political activism!

In any case, my superior used his leadership position to spread leftist propaganda at the base. His zeal for the transformation of society was evident in his actions.

In the Red Army, political commissars played a large role, ensuring that the soldiers were properly molded in their psychology…

This comparison fit perfectly with the situation I faced at my base. Today, after two years, we are already dealing with officially created positions in our armed forces that vividly resemble the responsibilities of political commissars. At the Air Force Academy in Colorado, each cadet squadron has men and women wearing special purple badges that indicate their functions – political commissars. Of course, officially their name is different: “Diversity and Inclusiveness Specialist”. However, everyone in the academy understands their role. These people have the power to enforce new social standards. Their emergence has brought something into the military ranks that wasn’t there before: the fear that someone is judging not only your training performance, but also your views. And if you don’t conform to the prevailing political line in the military, consequences will be levied against you…

The young people training at the academy are 19, 20 years old. They believe that they are becoming part of a big family guarding not only the security of the US, but the entire West. It must be understood that they accept what they hear from their superiors with great confidence. And that’s why these 21st century political commissars have it easy, treating these young people like pawns.

Does this come down to ideological issues only, or do these changes also affect the effectiveness of the armed forces?

This is exactly the point. As long as indoctrination does not affect the state of the armed forces, the problem does not become acute. However, if far-left indoctrination on racial and gender issues begins to ricochet into defense capabilities, we should start sounding the alarm. And that’s something we’re dealing with right now.

At the moment, there is an expectation in the US Air Force to reduce the percentage of white males among pilots from 80% to 67.5%. Such a policy means that we are abandoning purely merit-based criteria in terms of selecting pilots in favor of incorporating race and gender into the process. In the name of seemingly harmless and desirable “diversity”, we are thus demolishing the criteria that have allowed our aviation to become a model for others. We are destroying meritocracy.

Another thing is the glue that has made our armed forces successful. The military works well when it is united. Divisions have a destructive effect. Today, the entire Pentagon is repeating the slogan, “Diversity is our strength”. Is this really true? It depends on what we mean by that. Does it mean that five white guys are not diverse among themselves? After all, that’s crazy. Sometimes five brothers coming from the same parents can have wildly different views and abilities! But ideologues insist that if we don’t forcefully incorporate a racial or gender component into a group, there is no diversity.

There is a reason why soldiers are given the same haircuts and uniforms in which they look very similar. This is to emphasize that they are one team. Until recently, it didn’t matter if someone was black or white, what sexual orientation they had, or what kind of home they grew up in. We were simply one team. What mattered was skill and eagerness to serve. Today, categories that have nothing to do with the military are becoming more and more important. An example? The Air Force Academy has just organized a special program to highlight transgender people. White men who have no problem with the perception of their sexuality are not allowed there. This is artificial segregation.

Why should we hear in the military that white people are inherently racist, that we live under patriarchal oppression? Such topics cause misunderstanding among soldiers, which negatively affects the tasks at hand. Suddenly, it was also noticed in the military that pronouns have become a problem. Words that we have always used have also become bothersome. We’ve even began to remove the words “mom” and “dad” from the language. Instead, concepts like “parental figure” or “guardian” are being promoted.

More and more soldiers are complaining that such ideological admonitions are filling their time, trying to force them to change their behavior. This is becoming tiresome and certainly does not help in the decision to extend military service. Soldiers see what our armed forces are being turned into, and it does not have a good effect on their morale. All branches of the US armed forces are having trouble recruiting new members. This policy will certainly not improve the situation.

You can find videos on the Internet showing the juxtaposition of US Army advertisements with the armies of China and Russia. The Americans are showing a female soldier who stresses that the army does not discriminate against her, even though she was raised by two moms. Meanwhile, the Chinese and Russians rely on traditional messages – physical toughness, classic masculinity, testing one’s abilities, pride in defending their country. Do you see a problem in how the US military wants to be perceived today?

Yes, optics matter. If we want to attract interest in the military among civilians, the optics must be geared toward military service, or service to the nation. Placing emphasis on rainbow flags or racial issues, emphasizing the role of Black Lives Matter activists, will ensure that we do not reach the maximum number of people with such a message. The denominator will simply be too small here, as these issues are not positively associated with everyone and are unlikely to allude to defense of the homeland. Recruitment campaigns must be as apolitical as possible to be effective. But today it is difficult to expect this, since the tone in the military is set by leftist activists. Such aspects of our reality are of great concern to many Americans. Our military enjoyed great national respect until recently. The political games we are seeing more and more in the ranks of the military are causing this trust to begin to erode. That’s why it’s necessary to sound the alarm when the military ceases to be apolitical.

When did you start taking an interest in the problem of Marxist indoctrination?

For me personally, this chapter began in my studies of military strategy. We discussed the Cold War and communist strategy around the world in class. At that time, I started reading about Marxism and was struck by how many similarities there were between what Marx and the communists advocated and what we can hear today from the mouths of “social justice warriors”. I began to watch with concern as Marxist ideology began to triumph more and more in our largest party with a leftist profile – the Democratic Party. However, it was only after the death of George Floyd and the protests that erupted at the time that I understood how much danger we were in. That’s why I wrote a book about it.

You say that these disturbing changes in the military came in 2020, yet the US was still governed by Donald Trump, not Joe Biden. Did the Republican president not see this problem?

Good question. Whether Donald Trump knew it or not, the seeds of far-left activists had been sown across America for years. When the time was right, some very disturbing trends emerged. Trump, however, finally reacted. In September 2020, when the then-President became aware of the fact that federal agencies were conducting training that had a Marxist basis, he issued an executive order that banned stereotyping on the basis of race or gender. In particular, the tools used by proponents of Critical Race Theory were banned. After this decision, there was a relaxation throughout the US armed forces – soldiers were very grateful to the President for deciding to stop these revolutionary changes.

But four months into the White House there was a new occupant.

On his first day in office, Joe Biden issued an executive order revoking Trump’s resolve. What’s more, a policy of mandatory training in the spirit of “diversity” was decreed.

Everything we are talking about is part of a broader problem. After all, far-left activists are active in many other fields, not just the military.

You are right, but the military is an extremely important target for Marxists. If there is a rift in the ranks of our military, all of Western civilization will have a big problem. I think we can agree that the US military plays a very important role in the global context. What I’m seeing leads me to hypothesize that the erosion in the U.S. military is part of a larger plan to overthrow America as we know it from our history– a guardian of stability in the world.

In my book, I warn readers that if we allow Marxism to fester in the US, to introduce ideological divisions in society, we are thereby opening the door to a totalitarian future that could end in fratricidal and genocidal actions. I know this sounds quite extreme, but we must remember that Marxism by its very nature is a very violent ideology, to which genocide is, after all, no stranger.

Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier is the former commander of the 11th Space Warning Squadron at Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado, and author of “Irresistible Revolution. Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military”.