‘The country needs you’: Enlisting veterans to fight extremism

Veterans are revered in American culture, making them prized recruits for far-right and supremacist groups. Following the Capitol siege, some former service members hope to use their stature to counter violent nationalism.

Kristofer Goldsmith’s discharge from the Army following a suicide attempt in 2007 sent him spiraling into anger and alienation. The Iraq War veteran, diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, reentered civilian life bereft of purpose. He found refuge online, where political antagonism and anti-government conspiracy theories gave shape to an alternate reality.

“I became a pretty hardcore libertarian and almost a 9/11 truther,” he recalls. “It was a self-destructive time.”

Mr. Goldsmith regained his equilibrium with the aid of therapists at the Department of Veterans Affairs and later enrolled in college as he discovered a new life path as an activist. The former sergeant founded High Ground Veterans Advocacy in 2016, and since has earned a national reputation for exposing online disinformation that targets former service members.

In 2019, appearing before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, he detailed the findings of a two-year investigation he conducted for Vietnam Veterans of America. He unearthed hundreds of fake accounts for veterans and veterans groups on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms that promoted extremist content through caustic memes and bogus news articles, attracting hundreds of thousands of followers.

Mr. Goldsmith, who traced many of the pages to operatives in Russia, Nigeria, and other countries, warned lawmakers that failing to protect veterans from online manipulation could further inflame the country’s political tensions.

He waited a year for the government to act. Finally, days before the November election, federal officials launched a public awareness campaign to educate veterans about the problem.