I call it “Jews on the brain.”

My takeaway is that my friend had a serious conversion experience which was contaminated by bad beliefs.

Such experiences are accompanied by high energy, feelings that one is illumined and can see so much more, and that one must change one’s life accordingly.

There is a strong tendency to overvalue everything associated with the experience. I believe my friend had been drawn into white supremacist circles and that became the meaning of his experience.

Indeed.

Richard Aubrey:

S. was a gung-ho guy. I doubt he had problems with what Special Forces did. If anything, he felt the military was hamstrung by the liberals.

I’m sure my Green Beret friend was also motivated by the same dissatisfactions Reagan voters felt in the 70s/80s.

My friend was brought up in a strict Christian family. He always had chores to do. It was always, “Yes, Ma’am” and “Yes, Sir” with his parents. He became an Eagle Scout. His father was a high school principal.

S. liked to have a good time and he loved to surf, but he didn’t go hippie or New Left. Nor did he do drugs to my knowledge.

AesopFan:

As far as I know, my friend — let’s call him S. — bore no particular grudge against Jews or Blacks. Much of his story is based on the same concerns conservatives have. However, he reached different conclusions.

I have a thirteen-minute video interview of my friend for Christian Identity, another right-wing, racialist, Christian group. I’m summarizing from that interview.

While in the Army S. became aware the that the US government was not what it claimed and in fact was being “sold down the river to the communists.” Searching for answers, he started reading history and politics. At the same time he had been spurred to read the Bible by born-again Christians trying to convert him.

I don’t know the details, but somehow out of those ingredients, he had a born-again experience based on the Bible and racial politics. He heard a voice which told him he must become a minister for Yahweh the Most High. Later at introductory meetings with new Klan recruits he would tell them:
_________________________________

We are the True Children of Israel of the Holy Bible, America is the latter-day Promised Land, and our mission is to establish the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth…. I say the Klan and the Bible go hand in hand.
_________________________________

It was a sincere conversion. S. changed his life. His mother was skeptical of the transformation, but told me that S. had become a better person in everyday ways.

Be careful what you believe because you will believe it.

Indeed.
Um, see under “Geert Wilders”…

Not to over-egg the pudding, whatever that means, but I thought I’d provide some further info on the Green Berets.

They were a follow-on to the US’ WW II Office of Strategic Services and the similar Brit “Jedburgh Teams”.

These were small groups, maybe two or three, frequently including a resistance leader who’d escaped occupied territory and a couple of our operatives. Their mission was to organize such resistance as could be found and coordinate with Allied forces. “We need a dozen Sten guns and a thousand rounds. Call back to arrange….”

Once the Cold War was on, the same issue was raised and the idea of the Special Forces came up. Indeed, early on, many of the recruits were nationals from Warsaw Pact countries, who knew the culture and the language and even the accents.

The action group was the A Team. Ten NCO, in five pairs, each having a specialty; medicine, heavy weapons including the enemy’s, light weapons ditto, communications, intel. And two officers.

These were not to be used as commando teams as small combat units, although they’d have been good at it. But when bullets start flying, your level of training becomes less relevant.

Point was, organizing irregulars and in this role they were active in Viet Nam. They were among the first to go to Afghanistan after 9-11 to work with anti-Taliban forces.

Their training involved language, of course, and at least a bit of cultural anthropology.

But they were awarded the Green Beret back before there was any headgear much different from WW II. And they had status, especially in the eyes of those not in the military.

But everybody wanted some counterinsurgency money so the Air Force had Air Commandos whose role I never found out.

The Navy has the SEALs who might work with the locals but who make their PR by doing unit ops by themselves.

And, for commando stuff, the Army has Delta Force, since the Green Berets are doing other stuff, and can draw from the 75th Ranger Regiment for conventional combat units. See Operation Kayla Mueller on youtube–“liveth forever”. Lots of info on putting together a task force.

Anyway, it would be interesting to know if your friend had in mind sneaking around the hills of Slovakia with a bunch of ragged locals looking to blow up an arms cache.

Or maybe it was the GREEN BERET which drew his notable talents and drive and then….now what?