Hegseth’s livestream plan trades military dignity for spectacle
By Adele Rutherford · Reporting from Atlanta ·
Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream Nidal Hasan’s execution draws military condemnation and degrades the law by turning sovereign capital punishment into an unconstitutional spectacle.
The spectacle of the state
The administration has decided that the death of a soldier should be a digital event. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the December 3 execution of Nidal Hasan, the former Army major who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, will be livestreamed, according to reporting by NPR. Hegseth told Real America's Voice that the public must watch because "people need to understand that... there's serious consequences for these types of things." This is not about transparency or the public's right to know. It is about the state using a digital platform to perform a ritual of vengeance.
When the state moves from administering justice to staging a show, it abandons the solemnity required by the law. Capital punishment is meant to be a grave, final act of the sovereign. It is not a content stream for the "podcast bros" and "tech bros" that Professor Julie Ingersoll notes have aligned with Christian nationalists. By proposing this, Hegseth is not merely executing a convicted murderer. He is attempting to engineer a moment of transgressive theater.
The administration is currently caught in its own trap. According to CNN, President Donald Trump is debating whether to cancel the livestream after learning that Hasan is paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair. This marks the first firing squad execution approved by the military since World War II. The hesitation from the Oval Office does not stem from a sudden concern for human dignity. It stems from a tactical fear that the broadcast could serve as propaganda for adversaries.
A mechanism of martyrdom
The danger of the livestream is not merely aesthetic; it is strategic. In the Execution of the Virginian Guards, the state sought to use the death of Wilbert Lee Evans to signal the authority of the law. Yet turning punishment into a spectacle risks undermining the sovereign authority the state seeks to assert.
We have seen this tension before. During the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse, the visual documentation of violence captured in photographs did not deter cruelty. It fueled global condemnation and provided a visual vocabulary for adversaries.
Hegseth’s plan ignores these lessons in favor of a "warrior ethos" that views the law as a tool for ideological combat. In his 2020 book, American Crusade, Hegseth argued that the nation is in a "360-degree holy war." To him, the execution of Hasan is not a legal conclusion to a criminal case, but a strike in that crusade. He treats the execution as a way to "exorcise the leftist specter." That goal has no place in a military tribunal.
The erosion of institutional honor
The backlash from the military itself signals an institutional failure. A group of 72 retired generals and admirals issued an open letter to the President and Congress, as reported by the BBC. They argued that the livestream would turn a "solemn and grave punishment" into a "carnival for the enjoyment of voyeurs and spectators." They warned that such "exploitative broadcasting" would debase human dignity and taint military honor.
This is a warning about the degradation of the office. When the Pentagon uses the machinery of the state to create a viral moment, it ceases to be a professional institution. It becomes a media production company. The retired officers correctly identified that this act will be used by enemies to stoke hatred.
The administration’s current debate—whether to show it or not—is a false choice. If they show it, they provide the imagery of a martyr. If they cut the feed before shots are fired, as a source told CNN, they merely manage the optics of a spectacle they chose to create. The firing squad is a matter of military protocol, but the livestream is political theater.
The law requires that the state act with restraint to maintain its legitimacy. Legitimacy is a capital stock that spends fast and refills slowly. By turning the execution into a televised event, the administration spends that stock on cheap, transgressive satisfaction. They trade long-term respect for the military justice system for a short-term surge in engagement.
The state must be allowed to carry out its lawful punishments. It must not turn those punishments into a digital circus. If the government uses the death of a citizen for social engineering through a livestream, the Eighth Amendment is hollowed out. The dignity of the law cannot survive the voyeurism of the feed.
Sources
- NPR: For some Christians, Hegseth’s plan for public execution fits a biblical mandate
- CNN: Trump debates calling off livestream of firing squad execution after learning Fort Hood shooter was paralyzed
- The Washington Post: Opinion | What my daughter’s killing tells me about live-streaming an execution
- BBC: Retired US generals call on Pentagon to cancel 'barbaric' execution livestream
- The Namibian: Retired US generals call on Pentagon to cancel ‘barbaric’ execution livestream