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He is both an airhead & a rabid Christian nationalist

Pete Hegseth is much more than just a Fox News airhead. He’s a man with a plan.

When Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Fox News host Pete Hegseth to serve as Secretary of Defense, concerns were raised immediately about Hegseth’s undisguised Christian nationalism.

Hegseth, who has admitted that his multiple crusader tattoos got him “deemed an extremist” by his own National Guard unit, has deep ties to misogynistic Christian nationalist pastor Douglas Wilson.

On Monday, Hegseth appeared on the “CrossPolitic” podcast, which is hosted by Toby Sumpter and Gabe Rench, both of whom are closely tied to Wilson and his church.

Douglas Wilson often seems to fly under the radar, but he’s a far-right religious nutjob. Hegseth is cut from the same cloth, apparently. This is not someone you want overseeing the military, especially given his plan to start a culture war.

During the discussion about Hegseth’s book “Battle For The American Mind,” Hegseth said that he is working to create a system of “classical Christian schools” to provide the recruits for an underground army that will eventually launch an “educational insurgency” to take over the nation.

“I think we need to be thinking in terms of these classical Christian schools are boot camps for winning back America,” said Sumpter.

“That’s what the crop of these classical Christian schools are gonna do in a generation,” Hegseth agreed. “Policy answers like school choice, while they’re great, that’s phase two stuff later on once the foothold has been taken, once the recruits have graduated boot camp.”

“We call it a tactical retreat,” Hegseth continued. “We draw out in the last part of the book what an educational insurgency would look like, because I was a counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan and kind of the phases that Mao [Zedong] wrote about. We’re in middle phase one right now, which is effectively a tactical retreat where you regroup, consolidate, and reorganize. And as you do so, you build your army underground with the opportunity later on of taking offensive operations in an overt way.”

He learned a lot in Afghanistan. I don’t think it would be too hard to translate to the USA — one nation infested with heavily armed, rabid Abrahamic fanatics is much like another.

Role models for the religious right

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Comments

  1. says

    Oh, crap, these aholes are proliferating in government the wake of the orange sphincter’s election! (We shall, henceforth, never use his name)

  2. says

    His ideas clearly define the difference between ‘educating’ and ‘indoctrinating’.
    Here’s another rtwingnut xtianterrorist at work:
    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/oklahoma-orders-schools-teach-bible-every-classroom-2024-06-27/
    Oklahoma orders schools to teach the Bible in every classroom
    Jun 27, 2024 Oklahoma’s Department of Education ordered every teacher in the state to have a Bible in their classroom and to teach from it, in an announcement on Thursday that challenges U.S. Supreme Court …
    YES! These battles of toxic xtian indoctrinatino are ongoing and increasing in frequency and severity.

  3. says

    …I was a counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan…

    And what did you or your students accomplish in Afghanistan? How did your actions make it a more godly place?

    Wait, lemme guess — “Everything was perfect and Heavenly until Joe Biden pulled the plug!” Right?

  4. jasonfailes says

    I bet he calls himself a “patriot” too, because it doesn’t count as destroying the USA if you keep the name, or something.

  5. drewl, Mental Toss Flycoon says

    Welp, I always thought he was a piece of shit, but hooking up with Doug Wilson (the guy trying to buy/ruin my hometown) is just the rancid cherry on top.

  7. Dennis K says

    Detach yourself far enough and all this unfolding of humanity becomes rather fascinating to watch.

  8. raven says

    Detach yourself far enough and all this unfolding of humanity becomes rather fascinating to watch.

    If you detach yourself even further, then you don’t much care any more.

    Which is where I’m trying to get to.

    The US voters chose this.
    I cared deeply for over 50 years and look at where it got us.
    Not a lot I can do about it for at least the next 4 years.

  9. David Heddle says

    I heard Wilson speak on classical education and read his book on the subject in the early 2000s. It is seriously flawed. He makes arguments (with a well practiced air of profundity) like “students who take Latin do better when they take other languages” which is of course true but says more about self selection (which he doesn’t understand) than the effects of his homemade pedagogy. (Not unlike saying “students who take multivariable calculus do better in Linear Algebra”.) He is also scientifically illiterate– I have read numerous examples.

  10. thewolf says

    to #7 and #8–taking a geologic-time viewpoint helps detach further. I’m a climate-change / agronomist / soil scientist, and I can clearly see the end of human civilization coming soon (at least of any level that allows us to preserve writing and accumulated knowledge). It is depressing, but then i think how excited i used to feel about the last big extinction (e.g. dinosaurs) because of the great radial evolutionary divergences that followed after the dust settled.

    I look at the little brown birds at the feeder and the starving, zombified suburban deer, and wonder which ludicrous beautiful traits will arise from the few survivors next time around. ridiculous feathers and horns, or maybe future life will be fungal and insect-oriented for a while. All hail chitin! it will be interesting to someone hopefully, in a few million years or more?

  11. jrkrideau says

    I was a counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan

    That ended well.

    I would not worry about that tattoo on his chest. It, clearly, is the Flag of Georgia showing his allegiance to that country. He was recruited by Georgian intelligence back when he was in high school.

  12. billseymour says

    … one nation infested with heavily armed, rabid Abrahamic fanatics is much like another.

    My thoughts, too; but it’s not just the Abrahamic religions.  My understanding is that there are fundie Hindus in India and, IIRC, fundie Buddhists in Myanmar; and they always replace basic human decency with pridefullness and hatefullness when they get political power.

    I don’t know enough about the Far East to know whether there are fundie Shintoists or Taoists, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

  13. stuffin says

    @6 robro – Are these Christians Nationalists really that much different then Mao?

    @7 Dennis K and @8 raven – Once I knew Trump won the election, I decided to detach myself from the daily flow of current events into my brain. Wanted to minimize the infection called MAGA. I stopped watching The TV news, won’t read any articles on the net regarding Trump, his cabinet choices or any plans he or his phony army of patriots are planning. The boat has gone over the falls. There is no bringing it back. Still read the headlines but am very selective on what I read, it must pertain to important issues specific to me, ex. SS, Medicare. etc. My hope is there will still a skeleton of a government left and enough people who care when this Populist Bullshit ends. I need an Opterectomy, that operation where they remove the nerve that connects your eyes to your asshole. This I’m told is supposed to improve a shitty outlook.

  14. StevoR says

    @5. drewl, Mental Toss Flycoon : “Welp, I always thought he was a piece of shit, but hooking up with Doug Wilson (the guy trying to buy/ruin my hometown) is just the rancid cherry on top.”

    As an Aussie who hadn’t heard of that particular Christianist extremist before can you elaborate a bit more on that please?

  15. Bekenstein Bound says

    Hegseth said that he is working to create a system of “classical Christian schools” to provide the recruits for an underground army that will eventually … take over the nation.

    So, Orange Turdblossom’s pick for SecDef is a rapist, a Nazi, and (of course) a boogaloo boi. Who’s overarching strategic plan for his revolution comes from … <drumroll> …

    Chairman Mao

    Well, at least it wasn’t Hitler this time.

    So, does this mean we can denounce this jackass to his fellow wingnuts as a c-c-c-communist and maybe spur some monster infighting?

  16. says

    @9: There’s a lot of science demonstrating that students who start serious study of any noncognate foreign language (that is, studying another Romance language doesn’t help much if a Romance language is your daily tongue) before middle-school age (12), and definitely before high-school age (14), has a far, far greater correlation with “success” in both that new language and in all others later on. But then, my family is full on linguists, all of us having at least one language outside the Indo-European group in our toolbox…

    • • •

    A snide, side comment from a professional perspective:

    On-the-ground experience with “counterinsurgency” matters in a single nation like Afghanistan does not teach transferrable skillsets… except, perhaps, to those who didn’t actually learn anything. There’s an old saw about military expertise for which Desert Shield/Storm provided ample demonstration:

    Amateurs think about the hardware
    Armchair dilletantes think about tactics
    Politicians think about strategy
    Professional officers think about logistics

    I haven’t seen one word out of Wannabe Prince of Darkness Jr’s† mouth/pen indicating that he’s gotten beyond armchair dilletante (notwithstanding his “on the ground” experience in one, limited, highly focused operational area). If there really is an “American Way of War,” it is now and always has been “out-supply, out-maintain, and out-train everybody else (usually after starting from behind).”

    † Remember who was Secretary of Defense during Desert Shield/Storm?

  17. StevoR says

    @11. jrkrideau :

    “I was a counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan

    That ended well.

    Indeed, and yet the USA’s loss to the Taliban (& the Soviet’s defeat by the Mujahedeen before that) seems to have not humbled Hegseth or given him pause.

    One might think it would have made him think and reconsider and learn but if he’s learn anything itseems tobe the wrong lessons.

    I would not worry about that tattoo on his chest. It, clearly, is the Flag of Georgia showing his allegiance to that country. He was recruited by Georgian intelligence back when he was in high school.

    LOL! Well spotted.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Georgia_(country)

    However I really don’t think so somehow..

    YOUSEF: So the specific tattoo he said he was dinged for is an image of the Jerusalem cross. So this looks like one large cross with four smaller crosses in the corners. It is a symbol of Christianity, and its origins date back to the Crusades. Hegseth also has another tattoo relating to the Crusades, of the words, deus vult – Latin for God wills it. And that was sort of the battle cry to take back the Holy Land and to slaughter Muslims. Now, Hegseth says these are not symbols of white nationalism – that they are symbols of Christianity. And he is very big on this notion of a modern-day American Christian crusade. You know, one of his books is titled, “American Crusade.”

    But it is important to know that symbols and language tied to the Crusades are very present in some extremist movements. You know, this was a symbol on display on January 6. It was contained in the writings of neo-Nazi mass-shooter who killed scores at a summer camp in Norway in 2011. And it could signal a deep antipathy toward Islam.

    Source : https://www.npr.org/2024/11/14/nx-s1-5191413/peter-hegseths-tattoos-are-raising-some-eyebrows

    Plus :

    (hegseth’s -ed) .. tattoos are like a collage of aggressive bumper stickers such as you might see on the back of a truck with steer horns over the windshield. Importantly, “Deus Vult” has never been interpreted as a call for spiritual combat—for reflection and prayer. It has always been understood as a call for violent action, for blood. This interpretation remains consistent in its widespread adoption by the Christian far right around the world, including by some who marched on the Capitol on January 6th, and one who perpetrated shocking white supremacist violence against Muslims in New Zealand.

    The story that emerges from Hegseth’s sleeve is a familiar one; it provides a veritable checklist of today’s Christian nationalist folklore. Among many who espouse a union of church and state, gun tattoos such as Hegseth’s amount to a kind of spiritual kitsch, a younger and more radical generation’s version of putting a framed print of Albrecht Dürer’s study of praying hands on the dining room wall. The iconography of weaponry is ubiquitous: Hegseth has used his Instagram profile to advertise silencers, ammunition, and soaps shaped like grenades.

    He’s also hawked books from a Christian nationalist press, further reinforcing his ideological affinities. But Hegseth doesn’t need to outsource his beliefs. He has made clear that he sees himself and Donald Trump—whom he has approvingly called a “Crusader in Chief”—as leaders in a holy war to reclaim America:

    Source : https://www.thebulwark.com/p/whats-the-deal-with-pete-hegseth-crusader-tattoos

    So, yeah, having him in power is gunna be fun.. / Does that really need a sarc tag?

  18. drewl, Mental Toss Flycoon says

    StevoR @14…
    Wilson started in the ’80s with a private elementary school and church in a university town, and in one of the two counties in Idaho to reliably vote blue. He felt it was a ripe target (much like Mark Furman and other racist cops moving north to Sandpoint, ID) to build his brand. He wasn’t wrong. He split the crazies from the local churches (breaking several of them), made a ‘university’, and built it up to the point his ‘church’ owns or controls about half of the town’s business properties.
    We always joked that Moscow was an oasis between the neo-nazis to the north (see Mark Furman above), and Mormons to the south (think Ammon Bundy).
    There ain’t much of a line left between the two anymore, and this jackass, Wilson, is trying to erase it completely. I don’t live there anymore, but still have friends and family there, and try to visit when I can. Apparently, any social media posts regarding which local businesses are owned or controlled by Wilson get nuked pretty quick. There does seem to be a growing backlash, though.
    I love the town, love the state. I just hate most of the people that live there.

  21. says

    Cross posted from The Infinite Thread.

    Pete Hegseth, president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of Defense, has close ties to an Idaho-based Christian nationalist church that aims to turn America into a theocracy. Hegseth is a member of a Tennessee congregation affiliated with Christ Church, a controversial congregation in Moscow, Idaho, that has become a leader in the movement to get more Christianity in the public sphere.

    More details, from an article posted in May 2024:

    Last month, onetime Fox News host Tucker Carlson sat in his cabin-like studio and introduced a bearded, 70-year-old Idaho pastor named Doug Wilson as the person “most closely identified” with Christian nationalism, calling him one of the “rare” clergy “willing to engage on questions of culture and politics.”

    The vibe was similarly effusive weeks later, when Charlie Kirk, founder of the youth-focused conservative group Turning Point USA, had Wilson on his podcast to define Christian nationalism for listeners, calling the Reformed pastor a “thoughtful, brilliant thinker.” [Charlie Kirk! All the rabid doofuses flocking together.]

    Kirk was so excited by the interview that he encouraged listeners to “send it to your pastors.”

    From talk shows to the conference circuit, Wilson, the influential head of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, for decades, has become a regular voice in conservative political circles, emerging as a figurehead for what is framed as a comparatively moderate version of Christian nationalism.

    [“Moderate” my ass. That is in no way a moderate viewpoint.]

    […] But scholars and critics of Wilson argue his version of Christian nationalism remains radical, and as Wilson associates himself with a widening web of right-wing influencers and personalities — including some who argue the U.S. Constitution is “dead” — analysts say they are worried about precisely what kind of ideas the small-town pastor will promote on the national stage.

    Wilson’s recent elevation has centered less on his past statements and controversies — of which there are many, from anti-LGBTQ+ slurs to comments decried by critics as pro-slavery to contentious stances on gender roles — and more on his vision for a Christian nation. For example, he has floated incorporating the Apostles Creed into the Constitution; believes building a Christian nation in the U.S. should be a “pan-Protestant project”; and has said that while he does not personally endorse the idea of establishing a religion at the state level, he believes it to be legal.

    “As a Christian, I would like that national structure to conform to the thing that God wants, and not the thing that man wants,” Wilson told Carlson. “That’s Christian nationalism.”

    […] In an interview with RNS last February, Wilson imagined a global order of Christian nations that would exclude any self-described Christian nation that allowed for same-sex marriage or abortion access, saying a “liberal Methodist” nation would be “out” and people who embraced “some total loopy-heresy” would be barred from holding public office.

    […] “To have him getting play on these major media platforms signals a lot about where things are headed within kind of conservative and Republican politics today,” Taylor [Matthew Taylor, senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies] said […]

    Wilson’s popularity is rising. He is slated to address Turning Point USA’s Believers Summit in July and the National Conservatism conference that same month, where he is a featured speaker alongside political figures such as Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and J.D. Vance of Ohio, as well as onetime Trump aides Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller. [And now we add Pete Hegseth.]

    […] “I get a lot of feedback from political operatives who are reading what I write,” Wilson said.

    […] provide “Christian cover” to “extremist narratives.”

  23. says

    https://digbysblog.net/2024/11/24/regime-change-from-within/
    Timothy Snyder lays out the case against Pete Hegseth. It’s worse than you think:
        1. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, has no qualifications for the job. He has never run a large organization and has no national security expertise.
        2. Hegseth has zero notion of which other countries might threaten America or how. In his books this is simply not a subject, beyond a few clichés.
        3. Hegseth does not believe in alliances. For him, “NATO is a great example of dumb globalism.”
        4. Hegseth wants a political army that bans women from combat roles, is purged of “cowardly generals,” and is anti-woke.
        5. Hegseth never notes that the politicized Russian army meets all of his standards perfectly, but is is ineffective and commits war crimes.
        6. Hegseth never notes that the Ukrainian army, which does have women in combat, and is not politicized in the way he would like, has overperformed.
        7. Hegseth has almost nothing to say about the most significant armed conflict of our time and has not visited Ukraine or learned anything about it.
        8. Hegseth’s misogynist gender politics are consistent with his polygamy and the accusations of rape.
        9. Hegseth’s enemies are all internal: the Left, Muslims, and immigrants. He repeatedly claims that the Left wishes to annihilate everyone else, which is a call to violence.
        10. Hegseth, a Christian Reconstructionist, believes that Americans should be governed not by law or by the Constitution but by God — as interpreted of course by Hegseth and his friends.
        11. Hegseth calls for a “holy war” and a “crusade” against Americans who think differently than he does because “God wills it.” Trump is the pretext: Hegseth wants “to make crusade great again.”
        12. Hegseth, according to his books, could be counted upon to ignore threats to America from abroad, and to use a purged and politicized military against “enemies within.” This is consistent with Trump’s avowed intention to build a kind of dictatorship on the ruins of a dysfunctional government.
        13. Hegseth thus represents a policy of regime change. Trump’s nomination of Hegseth is best understood as part of a decapitation strike against the republic. A Christian Reconstructionist war on Americans led from the Department of Defense is likely to break the United States.

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