BLUF: The training was mandated from above, but it was up to company commanders to produce the training. Our BN CO and company CO seemed to understand the implications of allowing political bias to be passed off as training, so they neutered it pretty good and kept things specifically on what constitutes actual extremist behavior, mainly using unambiguous examples like real neo-nazis and islamic terrorists.
The long version is that this was little more than existing training we already do on insider threats (which also encompasses spies and the like, not just insider terrorists). The CO did a great job of staying as unbiased as possible, which was unexpected, and the BN CO did an even better job squashing someone who tried to cite the Southern Poverty Law Center as a source for identifying which groups were extremist groups. Those leading the training basically refused to comment on any group, except BLM which has some protection from the government and a memo explaining why it's not a political group. That's obviously bullshit, but that doesn't excuse them from being an extremist group, the memo only allows for discussion of them in the workplace since they powers that be classify it as a social movement rather than a political entity.
The interesting part was that the only people who pushed their biased views onto the group discussion were a few highly leftwing people, and they basically made fools of themselves in the process, at least from my perspective. One went on a rant about Trump that was mostly incoherent babble, one went on another diatribe that was incoherent so I couldn't figure out their point other than they wanted to know if people they thought were extremists would be kicked out, and a third went on a rant about "Q anon" and how he shouldn't have to explain why his opinions were better than others and that anyone he deemed a "q anon" should be kicked out. He was working himself up out of nowhere so it came across as really demented.
Even other lefties weren't on board with them doing that, from what I could tell. Basically the training focused squarely on things that actually would make you an extremist if you said or did them, and not at all on groups. The BN CO had some good guidance on that, saying that there are some groups that are on the far extremes that anyone would agree are extremist groups, but many inside the spectrum that would be debatable, and that debate is not what the training is about.
So I went in feeling like it was going to be an attack on conservatives but was pleasantly surprised that it was officially unbiased, but leftists still managed to make themselves look like retards and no conservatives even bothered engaging with them.
Yeah, we didn't have any of that. The neo-nazi guy was the one who started Atomwaffen Division (apparently a tiny group that somehow got internationally known?), who then joined the National Guard before having a shootout with some members of his nazi group because one of them decided to join ISIS. He also had explosives for bomb-making. Complete retard, but definitely an extremist, I'd say.
Correct. However, just because it's not a Hatch Act violation doesn't mean it can't be reported as an extremist indicator.