Pentagon Says Nidal Malik Hasan’s Execution Will Be Livestreamed, And We Need To Talk About Why [Op-Ed]

The U.S. government hasn’t overseen a public execution in 90 years, not since the execution of Rainey Bethea, a Black man who was hanged in August 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky, before an audience of tens of thousands, after being accused of raping a white woman.

It was a public lynching, and that’s the America the Trump administration is looking to make great again.

On Dec. 3, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people with a personal handgun he brought onto the grounds of Fort Hood, Texas, is scheduled for a public lynching of his own.

Sure, we can call it an execution. Many will even call it justice. But there’s only one reason the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have made the decision to execute Hasan by firing squad at Fort Hood: Hasan carried out his mass shooting on behalf of Muslim nations he believed were unjustly attacked by the U.S. Hasan, an Army psychiatrist stationed at Fort Hood, said he carried out the Nov. 5, 2009 attack to wage jihad for what he called the illegal and immoral wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the New York Times.

Actually, there’s another reason: Hegseth and his obsession with cosplaying “warrior ethos.”

“Of course we’re going to do it at Fort Hood,” Hegseth said during an interview with right-wing podcast Real America’s Voice. “And do it on a Thursday, and we’re going to do it at 1 o’clock — which is when he did it — and it’s going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad. It hadn’t been since World War II since we’ve done that.”

 “Well, I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II,” he continued.

Yeah — one could bet there are a great many things Hegseth admires about the mentality of 1940s America; it would explain why he keeps disproportionately blocking Black and female service members from being promoted within the ranks, for example, or why he shared a video about how women shouldn’t vote by his pastor, Doug Wilson, who has also defended slavery in the U.S.

Hegseth also said Hasan’s execution will be livestreamed for the world to see “because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.” 

Really? But why “these types of things,” specifically?

Dylann Roof has been sentenced to death by a federal court after he killed nine Black people during Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC, on June 17, 2015. Surely, an evangelical Christian like Hegseth would want to make an example out of him, too, right?

What if Payton Gendron, who murdered 10 Black people in Buffalo, New York, for no other reason than the fact that they existed, is found guilty in his upcoming federal death penalty trial? Does anyone expect his execution will be carried out by firing squad at the Tops grocery store where he carried out the horrific act, and livestreamed so anyone and everyone can watch?

Hell, last year, FBI Director Kash Patel indicated that he didn’t even know who Dylann Roof is.

Neither Hegseth nor anyone else in the Trump administration would have any interest in making the same example of these two that they wish to make out of Hasan, because they are white supremacists who carried out their acts in the name of white supremacy. 

Roof owned a website that showed him posing with symbols of white supremacy and Nazism, and he admitted he intended to start a race war. In his manifesto, Gendron referenced the white nationalist Great Replacement Theory, which is championed by white conservatives and  Republican legislators and political candidates, and Republican officials across the MAGA World, including President Donald Trump, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama), and, of course, MAGA’s favorite totally-not-racist martyr, Charlie Kirk.

Oh, also, a number of employees at the Pentagon — they’re Great Replacement theorists as well

The public execution of Hasan isn’t about justice or demonstrating consequences for a mass shooter’s actions — the public already knew he was condemned to death. This is more of the same culture war nonsense this administration has clung to, especially over the last two years. It’s about jingoism, not patriotism. It’s about anti-Islam, not pro-America. It’s about pseudo-masculinity and pseudo-warrior romanticism, not justice.

This is how far this country has regressed under this administration, y’all.

There’s nothing to see here.

SEE ALSO:

Death By Firing Squad Is Back. Haven’t We Gone Backward Enough?

Soldier Charged With Plotting Terror Attack At Fort Hood