Last week, 124 retired generals and admirals signed an open letter denouncing the “hard left turn toward Socialism and a Marxist form of tyrannical government” taken by “a Democrat Congress and the Current Administration,” and urging citizens to reverse what they claim to be adopting the right wing’s most prominent conspiracy theory the fraudulent election of 2020.
Was this, as some have argued, a disturbing sign of extremism in the armed forces the kind of act of insubordination, bordering on coup-plotting, that many more moderate or apolitical officers feared during the weeks leading up to President Joe Biden’s inauguration, a concern heightened in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection?