Dissident Purge: Adviser Warns Pentagon ‘Counter-Extremism’ Effort Targeting ‘Constitutionally Protected Speech’

An adviser to the Pentagon’s Counter-Extremism Working Group (CEWG) is warning the Biden administration’s efforts to purge the military of “extremists” could violate individual First Amendment rights.

Mike Berry, general counsel for First Liberty Institute and Marine Corps reservist, first sounded the alarm in a recent op-ed that said the CEWG is looking to formulate a new definition of extremism that could include constitutionally protected speech. He wrote in the Washington Examiner on June 19:

Instead of monitoring external threats, the Pentagon is on a mission to identify and remove whomever it labels as extremists from America’s armed forces. Ironically, the CEWG has yet to define what it means by ‘extremism.’ Extremism is usually defined as the threat or use of violence to achieve an ideological agenda. But the Pentagon is now poised to expand upon that definition to include constitutionally protected speech. In other words, sticks and stones may break our bones, but words are the biggest threat.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin set up the Counter-Extremism Working Group (CEWG) in April after vowing to root out extremists and ordering the entire military force to spend a day discussing “extremism.” Since there is no Pentagon definition for “extremism,” Austin tasked the CEWG, led by Bishop Garrison, to come up with a definition and to define activities that would be considered “extremist.”

Berry, who is part of an outside group of experts appointed to help the CEWG, told Breitbart News in a recent phone interview some of the things the group discussed on a recent hour-long conference call were “eyebrow raising or alarming.” He said members of the advisory group are bound by “Chatham House rules” in where they can discuss what was said on the call, but not who said it.

Berry said he asked the CEWG how it intended to define “extremism” and the answer he got was something to the effect of: “We’re still working on that, we’ll probably take the existing definition and expand it.” Berry said that response was “problematic.”

“The existing definition — which has been around for years and has developed really through a law enforcement perspective — it seems to be pretty adequate,” he said. “It sufficiently captures what needs to be captured. And if they want to expand it, they’re really going to expand it to things that have been traditionally protected by...

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