Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier of the U.S. Space Force was fired on Friday for claiming the Department of Defense has an agenda “rooted in Marxism” because of its diversity trainings.
A Space Force spokesperson told the Washington Post on Sunday that the agency had ousted Lohmeier “due to loss of trust and confidence in his ability to lead.”
“This decision was based on public comments made by Lt. Col. Lohmeier in a recent podcast,” the spokesperson said.
Additionally, the agency has begun a “Command Directed Investigation on whether these comments constituted prohibited partisan political activity,” the spokesperson told Military.com, which was the first outlet to report Lohmeier’s firing.
The ouster came after the official, who was promoting his book “Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military” at the time, appeared on a conservative podcast with L. Todd Wood earlier this month and complained about critical race theory, a popular point of attack in right-wing culture wars.
“The diversity, inclusion and equity industry and the trainings we are receiving in the military … is rooted in critical race theory, which is rooted in Marxism,” Lohmeier told Wood, according to Military.com.
A description for Lohmeier’s book on Amazon calls it “a timely and bold contribution from an active-duty Space Force lieutenant colonel who sees the impact of a neo-Marxist agenda at the ground level within our armed forces.”
Lohmeier told Military.com that his “intent never has been to engage in partisan politics.”
“I have written a book about a particular political ideology (Marxism) in the hope that our Defense Department might return to being politically non-partisan in the future as it has honorably done throughout history,” he said.
Critical race theory is a study of how systemic racism intersects with social and economic inequality and, despite Lohmeier’s claims, is not “rooted in Marxism.”
