Western officials are afraid to call out the Islamic radicalization that motivates terrorists such as the truck driver who massacred people in New Orleans, former Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie told Newsmax on Thursday.
Wilkie appeared on "Wake Up America" the day after a U.S. Army veteran flying an ISIS flag from his truck plowed into a crowd of New Year's revelers, killing 15 people and injuring 30 before dying in a shootout with police.
Host Marc Lotter brought on Wilkie immediately after Newsmax correspondent Alex Salvi's report that mentioned the outdoor Christmas market attack in Germany where five people were killed and more then 200 were injured.
"He [Salvi] noted that after the attacks in Magdeburg, Germany, the German authorities say they don't have a motive. Well, this is precisely why this kind of radical Islamic fascism continues to fester throughout the West," Wilkie told Lotter.
"Politicians, law enforcement officers are afraid to call it for what it is. And we saw that in the in the Biden-run military and the Obama-run military. They spent four years looking for Christian nationalists, MAGA supporting troops. They even, at Fort Bragg, issued a warning list that included the Catholic Church and Jesuits as sources for radicalism. They refused to mention the unmentionable that we are still engaged in a life and death struggle with radical Islam. And the sooner we call it out for what it is, the better equipped our people will be and our government will be to resist it."
Wilkie, a New Orleans native, was asked what could cause the Bourbon Street suspect, a U.S. military veteran, to snap.
"Well, what has to snap is the radicalization that comes from easy access to propaganda," Wilkie said. "We've seen it play out throughout history, particularly in the 20th century when you didn't have access to information at the snap of a finger. We have people who are perpetually aggrieved. They buy into this.
"We in the West, we've let millions of people into our countries who despise our liberal institutions, despise the rule of law, believe that we are infidels, to be honest. And you see the breakdown of civil society in places that we never thought would happen. Sweden, Norway, the other Scandinavian countries where crime is up, terror is up because we refuse to say what is true – it is that there are elements in this world who want to kill us."
Wilkie added that there's fear even within the U.S. military.
"It is the fear of the politically correct police, fear on the part of soldiers and officers that if they tell the truth, they will be cast into the outer darkness," he said. "It's all right for people at Fort Bragg to cast the Jesuits in doubt. But they say nothing about radical Islam. And the last time I think the Jesuits killed anybody was in the 1400s."
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Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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