Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members, and Criminals to Fight the War on Terror
Since the launch of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars—now the longest wars in American history—the US military has struggled to recruit troops. It has responded, as Matt Kennard’s explosive investigative report makes clear, by opening its doors to neo-Nazis, white supremacists, gang members, criminals of all stripes, the overweight, and the mentally ill. Based on several years of reporting, Irregular Army includes extensive interviews with extremist veterans and leaders of far-right hate groups—who spoke openly of their eagerness to have their followers acquire military training for a coming domestic race war. As a report commissioned by the Department of Defense itself put it, “Effectively, the military has a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy pertaining to extremism.”
Irregular Army connects some of the War on Terror’s worst crimes to this opening-up of the US military. With millions of veterans now back in the US and domestic extremism on the rise, Kennard’s book is a stark warning about potential dangers facing Americans—from their own soldiers.
Hardback, 288 pages
ISBN: 9781844678808
September 2012
$26.95 / £14.99 / $26.50CAN
Other Editions
Ebook, 256 pages
ISBN: 9781844679058
September 2012
$11.99
Reviews
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“Chilling… Illuminating… Kennard's nonpartisan portrait of martial waywardness is foreboding.”
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“I have been following Matt Kennard’s work for years, with much appreciation. He is a fine journalist and political analyst, acute and perceptive, and his work is based on real insight and understanding over a broad range.”
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“Kennard's book provides the first comprehensive account of the lengths the military went to maintain its numbers.”
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“Irregular Army is an excellent piece of journalism…As a result of [Kennard's] research and fresh angle, it stands out amid the vast sea of literature already published on the failings of the War on Terror.”
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“Irregular Army makes a...strong case that nothing good lies in the future so long as the American government continues to dissolve its standards of human decency to keep the pipeline filled with new soldiers.”
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“Matt Kennard is a fluent, powerful and authoritative writer whose debut book will surely establish him as one of Britain’s best-known investigative journalists.”
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“Faced with declining enlistment numbers as fighting dragged on year after year with no clear end in sight, Kennard shows that the American armed forces looked for alternatives to populate its ranks. In the process, regulations were weakened, rewritten and in some cases, not enforced…If the Sikh temple massacre is any indication of what may be in store, Kennard's argument that the United States faces an uncertain future as these veterans return from home from war couldn't be more urgent.”
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“Irregular Army goes into great narrative detail to illustrate an unfolding disaster that has engulfed the U.S. military, particularly the Army and Marine Corps…[Kennard] demonstrates a serious weakness in America’s ability to recruit a long- or even medium-term occupying force.”
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“Kennard joins an important, and all too small, tradition of military analysis from the position of logistical capacity and strategic effects, in the tradition of a writer like Jeremy Scahill…[Irregular Army] is exhaustively written, and based in incredibly thorough documentation.”
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“A startling new investigation that reveals the depths of the extremist and criminal elements that have infiltrated the US military over the past two decades. Irregular Army is a powerful investigation that exposes both the roots of defective military recruitment and its deadly aftershocks. Kennard’s book issues an urgent warning to the American public.”
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“Matt Kennard's new book expertly exposes the effect of the American colonial capitalist war machine on poor American soldiers as well as the stricken peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan living under them. I hope it is read by many people.”
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“An exceptional author. Matt Kennard never tries to paint a pig pretty. Thanks, Matt, for keeping it ugly.”
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“Matt Kennard is a creative and dogged investigative reporter whose probe of hidden realities inside the U.S. military promises to be a revelation.”
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“Irregular Army is a grim but compelling reading, a book which exposes the apparently irredeemable position the US military has created. The reader is indeed left with a deeper sense of the horrors of the last decade of futile wars, and an understanding of how far-reaching their implications have already proven themselves to be.”
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“In inauspicious news for foreign and domestic populations alike, investigative journalist Matt Kennard’s recent book Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members, and Criminals to Fight the War on Terror reveals the extent to which racist extremists have been welcomed into the nation’s armed forces despite the fact that they openly view enlistment as a means of training for a race war at home.”
Blog
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Noam Chomsky interviewed by our own Matt Kennard
Matt Kennard, author of Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members and Criminals to Fight the War on Terror, recently interviewed linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky, who had a thing or two to say about the media:
"My impression in general is that the business press is more open, more free, often more critical, less constrained by external power and external influences."
Latin America:
"Latin Ameirca has begun to address its horrendous internal problems. This is an area of the world that ought to be pretty rich and successful. [...] Compare it with East Asia which is far poorer in resources, many faced with hostile powers and internal conflicts, which South America isn't - but it's grown extensively and developed."
and US-backed coups:
"The first was in Venezuela in 2002 when the US quite openly backed a coup attempt which was successful for a few days but was then overturned. [...] The second was in Haiti in 2004 when the traditional torturers of Haiti, France and the US, combined to give not-so-tacit support to a military uprising, and intervened to kidnap the elected president and send him off to central Africa [...] The third case was Honduras, where the elected president, Zelaya, was expelled by the military."
Visit the FT to read the interview in full. -
Matt Kennard discusses the erosion of military recruiting standards on MSNBC
Over the weekend, Matt Kennard, author of the forthcoming Irregular Army, appeared alongside Ret. Col Jack Jacobs on MSNBC to discuss recruiting standards—or the startling lack thereof—in the United States military. "The fact is that the US military does have regulations to govern the recruitment of neo-Nazis and white supremacists," Kennard explains, "and they were completely torn up during the War on Terror because the army was failing to recruit sufficient troops."
Visit MSNBC to watch the episode in full. -
In the polls, in the streets and in the Army: the fortunes of contemporary fascists
"Forget about ideas and think about selling them" was Nick Griffin's advice to the BNP party faithful at the beginning of his decade long campaign to make fascism bland enough for the British political palate. In Bloody Nasty People journalist Daniel Trilling follows the BNP from its electoral heights to its human depths, as Griffin attempted to cover-up his "boots and fists" past as a street-fighting thug and rebrand himself, and his party, in the model of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Front National, France's successful fascist organisation.
Discussions
Begin a discussion about this book-
....that we've had Nazis in the military off and on since WWII. The was a book written in 1943 called “Under Cover” by John Roy Carlson; you can get it on Scribd. In it, Carlson relates how he spied on natavist, fascist, and Nazi groups from the late 1930s until the book was published, and many of the goons he knew joined the Army in 1941 to both stop draft harassment by the government and to spread defeatism. During the Vietnam War era there were a small number of crypto-Nazis in the Army, one of the outspoken ones* was interviewed in the early 1970s documentary “The California Reich.” Finally, I can say that I've heard of skinheads and neo-Nazis being in the Army before September 11th; CBS News did a report on them during the late 1990s (1997 or 1999.) They had infiltrated the paratroops at Fort Bragg, and one of the Nazis had his girlfriend living illegally on base. In the past such soldiers have been drummed out either through court-martial or dishonorable discharge, but the last decade has seen the Army or the Marines hanging on to these clowns because they have no replacements, as Kennard points out.________________* That soldier, a sergeant, was being investigated by the Army during the making of the documentary. Carlson's Nazi soldiers were also discharged.