The Associated Press investigation of extremism among members of the U.S. military and veterans starts out with a vignette of a veteran named Chris Arthur, who was posting during a surge of far-right extremism in the years leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Arthur wrote warcraft training manuals for any wanting to organize their own militia. He offered sessions at his farm in Mount Olive, North Carolina, that taught how to kidnap and attack public officials, use snipers and explosives and design a “fatal funnel” booby trap to inflict mass casualties. He manufactured and store explosives around young children and train another extremist who would attack police officers in New York state and lead them on a wild, two-hour chase and gun battle.
“Arthur isn’t an anomaly,” the AP writes. “He is among more than 480 people with a military background accused of ideologically driven extremist crimes from 2017 through 2023, including the more than 230 arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection. " To undertake its investigation, the AP received exclusive access to data collected and analyzed by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland. The bigger picture: while the pace at which the overall population has been radicalizing has increased in recent years, people with military backgrounds have been radicalizing at a faster rate.