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Marine Corps expels recruit from its Delayed Entry Program after discovering his ties to ‘neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic groups’
- A young man with ties to multiple extremist hate groups was fired in December from a Marine Corps training program.
- Christopher Semok, who enlisted in September, was found to have been a member of various white nationalist and anti-Semitic organizations.
- Said he had disaffiliated from each organization before enlisting
- The US military has continued to try to remove far-right extremists and others from its ranks.
The Marine Corps fired a man from its Delayed Entry Program after he admitted he had been a member of extremist groups before enlisting to serve.
In September, Christopher Semok became a poolee, a recruit training with Marine Corps Recruiters, but in November, images surfaced on social media of Semok appearing to be attending a rally for the white nationalist group Patriot Front.
The photos were published in a Twitter account which belongs to the Atlanta branch of Antifa.
After the images surfaced online, a Marine Corps Recruiting Command spokesman said the institution had become aware that a poolee may have ties to extremist groups.
This week, the Corps announced that the executive officer of the Marine Corps Recruiting Station Tampa had “conducted a preliminary investigation” into the poolee’s past affiliations that began in December.
“During the investigation, Mr. Semok admitted that he had been affiliated with neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic groups, active on social media and at activist rallies,” the Corps statement said.
Semok also claimed that the reason he did not tell the Marine Corps about his affiliation with the groups is because he allegedly severed ties with them a month before his original enlistment.
The statement added that it takes “accusations of racism, fascism and other forms of discrimination” seriously.
‘In the case of Mr. Semok, RS [Recruiting Station] Tampa found that it was in the best interest of national security not to allow Mr. Semok to remain within the DEP. [Delayed Entry Program,’ it went on.
Semok was allegedly part of several white supremacist hate groups including Patriot Front, the National Socialist Movement, and the Goyim Defense League.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Patriot Front has been responsible for the ‘vast majority’ of white supremacist propaganda distributed in the United States in recent years.
It roots its behavior in the belief that its European ancestors conquered America and that it, therefore, belongs to them, alone.
The National Socialist Movement is a small neo-Nazi group that is primarily known for holding public rallies and protests dressed in Nazi-styled uniforms.
The Goyim Defense League is a small group of scattered individuals responsible for dozens of anti-Semitic propaganda events each year. The loose network is united by its hatred of Jews.
The young appears to have gone by several different names, including Christopher Leblanc and ‘Ryan FL’
In December of 2021, the Department of Defense updates its definition of what constitutes participation in extremist activities.
A previous definition, according to Task and Purpose, allowed military members to belong to extremist groups so long as they were not active participants.
The Defense Department’s attempts to eliminate the presence of far-right extremists from its active-duty roster became even more pronounced in the aftermath of the January 6 Capitol breach.
There remains, however, a challenge in attempting to implement a social media vetting process to identify extremists during the recruitment process.
Katherine Kuzminski, the program director at Center for a New American Security, told Military.com that the social media vetting responsibility was primarily that of recruiters and unit-level commanders.
But it is unclear exactly how stringently it must be implemented and what precisely it should entail.
‘What happens if someone has an anonymous account? How many searches on Google are they supposed to go through? Everyone says a like is not an endorsement, but what if they like a neo-Nazi page?’ she said.