With democracy in balance, veterans take up new fight at home

Fearful of rising political violence and declining democratic norms, Chris Purdy is organizing veterans to fight both.

The former Army National Guard member and advocate for Afghan evacuees this month launched the Chamberlain Network, aimed at countering the rise of authoritarianism and political polarization.

Purdy is hoping veterans, who consistently poll as one of the most trusted messengers in society, can combat the attacks on democracy.

“Today, we see crisis after crisis that causes many Americans to lose faith in democratic institutions. We need people — veterans — to go out and say, ‘No, democracy works,’” he told The Hill in a recent interview.

“We're in an interesting moment right now, I think, as a country as it relates to political violence, and we need to know how to talk about that. We need to know what to say; we need to be messengers of hope for our communities,” he added later.

“Democracy is fairy dust, right? It only works if we believe in it.” 

The work could not come at a more critical time.

The Chamberlain Network, alongside other veterans-affiliated groups, met in Washington, D.C., just weeks after the failed assassination attempt on former President Trump’s life.

Its creation also comes a few months ahead of an election where GOP candidates have already begun laying the groundwork to cast doubts on the legitimacy of the vote. 

“I always say ‘if’ we win, ‘if’ we win, because I don’t like saying ‘when’ we win, because they cheat like hell. So, ‘if’’ we win,” Trump said during a rally in Michigan earlier this month.

But the Trump campaign is doing more than just spurring uncertainty. 

Along with the Republican National Committee, it’s organizing an effort called “Protect the Vote” with a goal of securing 100,000 volunteers and attorneys to be stationed at polls across the country. The campaign also plans to have those volunteers on hand for any postelection auditing and recounts, a signal of the potential legal action the Trump team would bring in the event of a loss.

Purdy’s group, meanwhile, is organizing veterans to serve as poll workers on Election Day, something he said serves as a civic duty while leaving veterans in a position to counter any false claims of election fraud.

“What they're going to do is create a team who can kind of amplify these untruths and make people not believe in the system,” Purdy said of some members of the GOP.

“So while I don't want to create a program in opposition specifically to Trump, I think our program is built around this idea that we're opposing people who want to sow distrust in the democratic process and want to try to dismantle the democratic norms that we have.” 

Purdy joined the National Guard after being torn between different recruiting tables at his college’s student union: one for the guard, the other for the Peace Corps. He jokes the dilemma may appear “counterintuitive” but reflected a desire for service.

He picked the National Guard in the hopes of serving as a medic. Instead, he was a combat engineer.

His career as a D.C. public school teacher was interrupted when he was sent for a six-month stint in Iraq. His role was to ride in the lead car of an overnight convoy traveling across the country, keeping lookout for any danger that could interrupt the trail of up to 80 vehicles.

When he returned to teaching, he volunteered for numerous veteran efforts, eventually landing a role leading Veterans for American Ideals.

The organization was one of a number of veteran and immigration groups coordinating with those on the ground amid the fall of Kabul, advocating both for evacuees and those left behind in Afghanistan after the withdrawal. 

But amid all that deeply personal and emotionally exhausting work, he was alarmed by rhetoric questioning democratic norms, attacking institutions and calling for political violence, pushing him to form the Chamberlain Network.

The group is named after Joshua Chamberlain, a Civil War hero and former Maine governor who, as head of the Maine Militia, responded to discord over a contested election that resulted in the occupation of the state house.

Purdy said there’s danger in the country’s failure to share a collective reckoning over a more recent occupation: the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

The Republican right wing has called those serving time for their participation in the riot political prisoners. And since the GOP overtook the House, they’ve tasked Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), who gave a tour of the Capitol to two men who would later participate in the attack, with reviewing the work of the former Jan. 6 select committee.

“There needs to be accountability for political violence,” Purdy said, noting that in some circles, people’s participation is being celebrated.

“In fact, you have people who are running for Congress on the fact that they were there. ... People are now emboldened by it. And I don't know that there's no accountability, but you can actually get political gain or personal gain by being associated with that. So the incentive structure is there for more political violence.”

His group, in coordination with others, brought about 30 veterans and allies to D.C. for a training on how to confront political violence and dangerous rhetoric.

“It's not a coincidence, I don't think, that the insurrection on Jan. 6 followed a speech where political rhetoric, rhetoric from everyone out there basically said, ‘Your political rights were stolen; they were violated. Your voice was taken away from you.’ You put that type of rhetoric out there for an entire morning, and people get all amped up,” Purdy said.

“This is a comms issue right now,” he added, saying it’s essential to have “trusted messengers and validators and people who can go out and say, ‘No, I know what political violence does to communities. I was in the military, I trained to go to places that were wracked by political violence, and I do not want to see that happen here in the United States.’”

Veterans who have joined the network pointed to their own experiences driving concerns about democratic decline in the U.S.

“If you see the kind of societies that I saw on deployment like Iraq and Lebanon, you know what happens to a country when it loses its democratic practices and institutions. It’s bad — bad for the people, and bad for their neighbors,” said Reed Bonadonna, who retired from the Marine Corps as a colonel. 

Bonadonna said he’s been alarmed by some calls he’s seen, primarily coming from conservatives.

“There have been statements made, particularly on the right … in favor of antidemocratic practices, such as voter suppression, such as locating more authority in the in the office of the executive, such as insisting on political qualifications or standards for civil servants… These are anti-liberal ideas that are — seem to have more presence in the public discourse,” he said.

Emir Hadzic, a former Marine Corps infantryman who grew up in Bosnia, said he sees echoes of the same rhetoric he heard during his childhood before Yugoslavia descended into war.

“There was so much of a primitivism in those politics, but it worked. It really worked, because they gained power to destroy the country from within, which is something that I'm noticing similarly in American political discourse. There's a lot of divisive rhetoric, there's a lot of, ‘You're not a real American if you don't agree with me 100 percent or if you don't toe the party line,’” he said.

“All this stuff is corrosive for a healthy democracy.”

Part of the training for Chamberlain Network volunteers and others included a workshop on how to prevent and in some cases deescalate alarming rhetoric or political violence.

And the group also met last week with lawmakers, asking them to sign a pledge rejecting political violence — but also to work toward “ending divisive rhetoric designed to fracture our political community.”

The weeks ahead of the election are sure to be busy ones for the fledgling group, but Purdy noted the work to undercut democratic norms will not cease with the 2024 contest.

“I do not think that no matter who wins this election, the political violence threat is going to go away,” he said.

“I think we are, unfortunately, in a generational struggle for our democratic norms. And we need to build systems to adapt to that.”