Support Revolver By Going AD-FREE
CHECK OUT THE NEWS FEED — FOLLOW US ON GAB — CHECK OUT THE MERCH STORE
A U.S. Army veteran married to a New York Times editor is launching a new career: narcing on fellow veterans for “extremism.”
Kristofer “Kris” Goldsmith denounces his fellow soldiers and demands the creation of a new, 100% woke combat force. In other words, he is the press’ favorite kind of veteran.
In February, one month after the January 6 incident and just a few weeks after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a stand-down order against extremism in the armed forces, Goldsmith founded Sparverius, LLC. He describes Sparverius as a “veteran-owned open-source intelligence firm” focused on fighting “disinformation” and “domestic extremism.”
But Goldsmith’s company won’t be stopping extremism. Instead, it will be providing cover to the real agenda: A sweeping ideological inquisition and purge of the armed forces. Goldsmith has a long association with the Truman Project, a left wing national security think tank once run by none other than the Pentagon’s new anti-MAGA hatchet man, Bishop Garrison.
Already, Sparverius has been profiled by Military.com, which treats Goldsmith as a specialist expert in fighting “extremism.”
Goldsmith on Thursday launched Sparverius, a firm that analyzes domestic extremism. He said that extremists are growing more sophisticated, adding that modern leaders of far-right groups probably aren’t what people imagine. They’re often physically fit and financially successful, practice martial arts, and can be relatively well-read, he said.
He spends much of his time on radical message boards consuming extremist content in hopes of educating Congress, the media and potential clients about the dark corners of the internet.
…
Goldsmith has spent years sniffing out extremism, online scams and disinformation. He has testified before Congress and published a 200-page report after a two-year investigation finding that foreign actors, most notably Russia, targeted veterans in 2016 election ads.
One example he found was a Facebook page called “Vets for Trump,” which was run by foreigners and had 131,000 followers. It posted pro-Russian propaganda and anti-FBI content and frequently attacked top Democratic figures, he said.
Grift abets grift, so it’s no surprise that Goldsmith’s organization is already a favorite of The Lincoln Project’s executive director before it has even produced a single report.
I am really excited about this venture from my old friend @KrisGoldsmith85 after years of dedicated work understanding the online radicalism ecosphere. Good luck, brother. https://t.co/lIGYxqr7zd
— Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) May 28, 2021
So, who is this figure who has been appointed as the veteran expert on extremism and how to fight it?
Astute political observers like the readership of Revolver won’t be surprised to learn that the real volcano of extremism and intolerance is Goldsmith himself. Goldsmith’s career boils down to taking his disturbing personal rage and hatefulness and projecting it against the one target the American ruling class deems it acceptable to loathe: supporters of President Trump.
To read Goldsmith’s Twitter feed is to read an endless deluge of the most hysterical anti-conservative and anti-Trump rhetoric that can be imagined.
Repeatedly, Goldsmith has denounced the entire Republican party as a “fascist” movement, whose leaders are guilty of treason (a capital offense):
Prolonged exposure to Goldsmith makes it clear he is utterly consumed with hatred of “fascists” and “Nazis” he sees around every corner. Goldsmith himself proudly declared “I am ANTIFA” in early June 2020, five days after antifa extremists burned down a police precinct in Minneapolis.
I am a New Yorker who endured 9/11 in high school
I am a soldier who fought in Iraq
I am the advocate who changed the way we treat veterans kicked out of the military with PTSD
I am the man who thought up the budgetary trick to make the “Forever” part of GI Bill
I am ANTIFA.
— Kristofer Goldsmith (@KrisGoldsmith85) June 2, 2020
Having labeled half of America to be the political faction of fascism and racism, Goldsmith is clear that nearly half of America that supports Trump deserves homelessness, poverty, and the complete loss of all rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.
Goldsmith has called for Breitbart to lose its White House press credentials and has implied that other conservative outlets like The Daily Caller should be blocked by social media (he also blamed them for Kyle Rittenhouse’s self-defense incident in Kenosha). An aggressive proponent of Russia hysteria, Goldsmith has even suggested that The Daily Caller could a foreign disinformation front.
Attributing political rhetoric he doesn’t like to foreign powers is the core component of Goldsmith’s M.O.
For years, Goldsmith worked as an officer with Vietnam Veterans of America, a group chartered by Congress to advocate for the interests of Vietnam War veterans. While Goldsmith did do that, he also used the group as a vehicle for promoting left-wing political priorities like anti-Russia fearmongering.
The experience launched him on a hunt for other suspicious Facebook pages that target military personnel and veterans by using patriotic messages and fomenting political divisions. It has become a full-time job.
Working from offices, coffee shops, and his apartment, he has cataloged and flagged to Facebook about 100 questionable pages that have millions of followers. He sits for hours and clicks links, keeping extensive notes and compiling elaborate spreadsheets on how pages are interconnected, and tracing them back, when possible, to roots in Russia, Eastern Europe or the Middle East.
“The more I look, the more patterns I see,” he said.
Goldsmith fought proudly and openly to censor pages aimed at veterans that engaged in “suspicious” behavior. Some of these pages were full-blown scams, or spoofs of other existing veterans groups. But Goldsmith commingled his anti-fraud efforts with ideological concerns. In fact, Goldsmith claimed that one sign of “suspicious” behavior was sharing popular pro-Trump and pro-conservative memes. Taking down these pages ahead of the 2020 election was his obsession:
The most recent suspensions included the page “Vets Before Illegals,” with nearly 1.4 million followers, which Mr. Goldsmith’s research showed had five page administrators in the U.S. as well as three in the Philippines, and DcGazette, a page pushing conservative news that had attracted more than 400,000 followers.
Several of the pages Mr. Goldsmith has studied expressly catered to conservative audiences and frequently promoted divisive memes depicting President Trump favorably on issues involving veterans, illegal immigration and the National Football League. While posts didn’t specifically discuss congressional candidates seeking election in next month’s midterms, they often promoted Mr. Trump’s 2020 re-election bid while disparaging Hillary Clinton as a criminal who deserved jail time.
But, based on his own research, he says the company needs to do much more. “They have a responsibility” to deal with manipulative accounts, Mr. Goldsmith says. “What you see on Facebook is your reality.”
As someone paid to advocate for Vietnam veterans, Goldsmith would have done more good focusing on disastrous mismanagement at the VA. Instead, Goldsmith demanded that the VA divert its focus to fighting the phantom threat of Russia. In 2019, he released a “Troll Report” calling on the VA to train veterans in how to recognize and reject crimethink:
The Secretary of Veterans Affairs should immediately develop plans to make the cyber-hygiene of veterans an urgent priority within the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA must educate and train veterans on personal cybersecurity: how to mitigate vulnerabilities, vigilantly maintain safe practices, and recognize threats, including how to identify instances of online manipulation.”
In his massive 200-page report, Goldsmith routinely accuses pages of “suspicious activity” based on ideological offenses. For instance, the page “Veterans Before Illegals” was described thusly:
While there may be individual American veterans who subscribe to racist and xenophobic believes and are attracted to messages like “Veterans Before Illegals” or “Veterans Before Refugees” — there is not one single legitimate veterans organization that in any way endorses or promotes these messages. We, in fact, categorically reject them and seek to underscore that this false dichotomy is both harmful to veterans and our democracy as a whole.
Elsewhere, Goldsmith writes that memes featuring Antifa “emphasize the most radical and threatening elements of the otherwise small and disorganized group of protesters.”
Now, Donald Trump has been safely ejected from office. Hysterical fearmongering about Russian misinformation on Facebook is getting stale. Goldsmith needs a new gig.
And now, he has one. Instead of preventing his old comrades-in-arms from reading memes he doesn’t like, Goldsmith is going to target them directly for holding ideologies the ruling regime disapproves of.
After the Capitol incursion, Goldsmith said that being suspicious of the 2020 election results was “incompatible” with military service.
Disinformation pushed by Trump has poisoned the minds of countless troops on active and reserve status. The conspiracy theories that led to this insurrection are incompatible with military service. This is a massive, durable readiness and security threat.https://t.co/e9mymBgdaf
— Kristofer Goldsmith (@KrisGoldsmith85) January 12, 2021
Of course, if troops hold ideas “incompatible” with military service, the only fix is mandatory reeducation, or a purge of the armed forces. Goldsmith is giddy at the prospect of either.
Now, with Sparverius, Goldsmith has capably positioned himself to promote (and profit from) both. It’s not hard to imagine Goldsmith’s potential plan: Milking the U.S. taxpayer for contracts so that his new company can produce “research” warning about all the “extremism” in the military.
How might he do that? Well, for starters, Goldsmith now has a friend in a very high place at the DOD.
Goldsmith has a long association with The Truman Project, a non-profit that promotes left-wing ideals in the defense and foreign policy fields. To get an idea of the Project’s overall legitimacy, only one fact is needed: Hunter Biden used to serve on its board.
Did we mention Hunter Biden is on our Board?
— Truman Project (@TrumanProject) September 7, 2012
But it’s not all grift at the Truman Project. There’s serious ideological work afoot. Besides the President’s sinecure-collecting son, there’s another major figure linked to Truman that any Revolver reader will recognize: None other than Bishop Garrison, the new Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense for Diversity and Inclusion.
Garrison has been affiliated with the Truman Project since at least 2013, and even served as its interim executive director for a spell. Now, he’s joined the government as the point man for imposing ideological conformity on the U.S. military.
As chronicled by Revolver, Garrison, like Goldsmith, has seemingly dedicated his life to extreme attacks on President Trump and his supporters in American life.
Like Goldsmith, Garrison openly advocated for “confronting” and purging the wrong ideas from the military, until he was hired to do exactly that.
With his old Truman Project ally firmly entrenched at the DOD, Goldsmith is well-situated to make sure his “research” is treated as gospel truth in the armed forces.
It’s a spectacular fusion of financial and ideological interests. Goldsmith feeds bogus research to Garrison and other woke enforcers in the military. These enforcers use the research as “proof” that disinformation and extremism are threats to military cohesion, threats which only reeducation or purges can fix. And who will be available to advise throughout the process (for a fee, of course?). None other than Kris Goldsmith and Sparverius.
Goldsmith can count on the press to promote him, too. He’s already had a fawning profile in Wall Street Journal and is a featured guest on CNN. But he can also count on plenty of favorable treatment from the New York Times, where his wife is an editor.
My wife @Lkatzenberg is drop-dead gorgeous ???https://t.co/UMc8KqYglq
— Kristofer Goldsmith (@KrisGoldsmith85) June 4, 2021
Once one is familiar with Goldsmith’s biography, his rage becomes more comprehensible. By his own admission, Goldsmith did not join the military to build a career, pay for college, or serve his country, but rather because he wanted to kill people and maybe even commit genocide.
In May 2008, Goldsmith testified before the House Progressive Caucus that Army recruiters had not pressured him to join, but rather he sought it out and had a pre-existing desire to commit atrocities.
“I joined the army to kill people. To kill Iraqis, to kill Muslims,” he said. “I remember … standing up the day after 9/11 and talking about how we should use chemical weapons or biological weapons over the entire Middle East to make it so the religious land, the Holy Land, is not an issue that harms Americans.”
After his tour in Iraq, Goldsmith testified that he had sabotaged the rifles of Iraqi troops allied with the U.S., though he later walked back this claim, saying he was “fucked up” at the time he made the allegation. That’s believable, as Goldsmith suffered from PTSD after his return from Iraq. He was discharged from the military after a suicide attempt.
Goldsmith’s personal history does much to explain the nature of his current tweets. Revolver feels for him, as we feel for all our veterans going through trouble due to the shameful, unnecessary wars launched by America’s ruling elite. But whatever it is that drives Goldsmith’s venom, and his track record of targeting other veterans for perfectly normal political beliefs, it means he is clearly not the right man to serve as ideological vetter-in-chief for the armed forces.
STo be clear, not all of Goldsmith’s work is bad. As mentioned earlier, Goldsmith suffered from PTSD upon returning from Iraq and was discharged from the military after a suicide attempt. Drawing on his own experiences, Goldsmith has been a major lobbyist for bills to expand veteran mental health care and compel military discharge review boards to consider PTSD and other trauma in their decisions. Revolver has no issue with advocacy on behalf of veterans. But Goldsmith should stick to that. Instead, it is clear that Goldsmith justifies his own volcanic rage at the right, and his campaign for political purges and censorship, by convincing himself he is helping America’s troops rather than stripping them of their rights.
Now, Goldsmith is poised to collaborate in a far-reaching effort to purge the U.S. military of beliefs incompatible with the Globalist American Empire.
American patriots must lose the illusion that, whatever else happens to America’s schools, its corporations, its police departments, the military will somehow remain a bastion of traditional and sane nationalism. The infrastructure is already in place for a purge worth of the USSR. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is babbling about the need to read books on “white rage.”
Right now, the military is the plaything of creatures like Kris Goldsmith, who see the military as an ideological weapon, a tool not for fending off foreign threats but for purging the real enemy, other Americans. Unless Republicans uniformly recognize the threat and oppose it right now, the U.S. military will become unrecognizable, a hideous caricature that replaces the force that won two world wars with an automaton that can only repeat “Napoleon is always right.”
RELATED:
Join the Discussion