He kept emphasizing a connection between the military and the alt-right. He said many of his compatriots were veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who had become disillusioned with the American political system after fighting in unwinnable conflicts. In his telling, members of the alt-right were patriotic Americans who had come to their extreme worldview through honorable life experience, not hatred.<\/p>\n
He mentioned that he too had served in Iraq. But when I asked him to elaborate, he waved off the question. “It was boring.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Cott thought that was an odd way for him to describe his military service, so after the interview, she sent for the FOIA of his records. When it came back, she had the proof that he had never deployed outside the state of Pennsylvania with his National Guard unit. His fellow guardsmen confirmed that he hadn’t joined until the final year of the Iraq War and his unit didn’t deploy for the entire six years of his service. So Emma called him back for an explanation;<\/p>\n
So I picked up the phone and called him. After informing him that I was recording the call, I launched right in.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Army tells me that you did not deploy.\u201d<\/p>\n
He paused. \u201cThe Army tells you?\u201d<\/p>\n
I explained that I had gotten his official records from the Army and the National Guard.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo did you go to Iraq?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in Kuwait,\u201d he said. \u201cI told you that before.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou told me you went to Kuwait and then you went to Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, it\u2019s very similar the way it works,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
We talked for a while longer and his story kept changing, but he did not back down. He wavered between blaming a military clerical error and saying that a military form he would send me would clear up the confusion once and for all.<\/p>\n
He still hasn\u2019t sent me the form, or any other proof that he deployed. He also doesn\u2019t have any photos. (He had already told me that he lost them all when his Facebook account was shut down.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is not my surprised face. He’s no different than the Boys from Malheur. Or those ass-monkeys of the Iraq Veterans Against the War. They think that a phony military biography gives them a measure of credence they wouldn’t have otherwise, so they steal valor to make themselves believable. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the New York Times comes the story of Elliot Kline, also known as Eli Mosley, … Elliott Kline, aka Eli Mosley, Neo-Nazi, phony combat veteran<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":77533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,391],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-phony-soldiers","category-valorvultures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/77533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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