Hesgeth Flagged as White Nationalist
The man tabbed to lead the Defense Department was deemed an "insider threat."
AP (“Trump Pentagon pick had been flagged by fellow service member as possible ‘Insider Threat’“):
Pete Hegseth, the Army National Guard veteran and Fox News host nominated by Donald Trump to lead the Department of Defense, was flagged as a possible “Insider Threat” by a fellow service member due to a tattoo on his bicep that’s associated with white supremacist groups.
Hegseth, who has downplayed the role of military members and veterans in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and railed against the Pentagon’s subsequent efforts to address extremism in the ranks, has said he was pulled by his District of Columbia National Guard unit from guarding Joe Biden’s January 2021 inauguration. He’s said he was unfairly identified as an extremist due to a cross tattoo on his chest.
This week, however, a fellow Guard member who was the unit’s security manager and on an anti-terrorism team at the time, shared with The Associated Press an email he sent to the unit’s leadership flagging a different tattoo reading “Deus Vult” that’s been used by white supremacists, concerned it was an indication of an “Insider Threat.”
If Hegseth assumes office, it would mean that someone who has said it’s a sham that extremism is a problem in the military would oversee a sprawling department whose leadership reacted with alarm when people in tactical gear stormed up the U.S. Capitol steps on Jan. 6 in military-style stack formation. He’s also shown support for members of the military accused of war crimes and criticized the military’s justice system.
[…]
Hegseth wrote in his book “The War on Warriors,” published earlier this year, that just “a few” or “a handful” of active-duty soldiers and reservists had been at the Capitol that day. He did not address the hundreds of military veterans who were arrested and charged.
Hegseth has argued the Pentagon overreacted by taking steps to address extremism, and has taken leadership to task for the military’s efforts to remove people it deemed white supremacists and violent extremists from the ranks. Hegseth has written that the problem is “fake” and “manufactured” and characterized it as “peddling the lie of racism in the military.” He said efforts to root extremism out had pushed “rank-and-file patriots out of their formations.”
“America is less safe, and our generals simply do not care about the oath that they swore to uphold. The generals are too busy assessing how domestic ‘extremists’ wearing Carhartt jackets will usurp our ‘democracy’ with gate barriers or flagpoles,” he wrote in “The War on Warriors.”
In a segment on Fox News last year about Jacob Chansley, a Navy veteran known as the “QAnon Shaman” who walked through the Capitol while wearing a horned fur hat, Hegseth played a misleading video clip from his then-colleague Tucker Carlson that sought to portray Chansley as a passive sightseer.
In fact, Chansley was among the first rioters to enter the building and pleaded guilty to a felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding in 2021. Chansley acknowledged using a bullhorn to rile up the mob, offering thanks in a prayer while in the Senate chamber for having the chance to get rid of traitors and writing a threatening note to Vice President Mike Pence saying, “It’s Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming!”
In a message on Facebook Hegseth posted with an excerpt of the video, he wrote the way Chansley had been treated by the justice system “is disgusting.”
“Trump, Chansley, and many more… the Left wants us all locked up,” Hegseth wrote.
The tattoos in question:
WSJ (“How Hegseth’s Tattoo Got Him Barred From Working at Biden’s Inauguration“) adds:
Hegseth, a former National Guardsman and Fox News commentator who was nominated Tuesday by President-elect Trump to be defense secretary, was pulled from inauguration service. Hegseth later wrote that he saw the incident as a rejection by the military.
“The feeling was mutual—I didn’t want this Army anymore either,” Hegseth said, recounting the episode in his book “The War on Warriors,” published earlier this year. “Twenty years, and the military I loved, I fought for, I revered spit me out.”
In a post on X on Friday night, Hegseth called the reporting on his dismissal from inauguration duty “Anti-Christian bigotry,” echoing an earlier post by Vice President-elect JD Vance, who described the tattoo as a “Christian motto.”
[…]
“Was this really about a cross?” Hegseth wrote in his book, lambasting Army leaders for branding him as an extremist for what he said were religious symbols. “What can one Christian man do to dismantle their agenda? Maybe a lot…I guess we’ll find out.”
[…]
Hegseth has a history of making controversial comments. In 2017, he seemed to defend the white nationalists and their supporters who rallied in Charlottesville, Va. On Fox News, Hegseth said their grievances were a “discussion [that] should be had” and that young white men felt they had become “second-class citizens.”
He also opposed the removal of Confederate statues in the aftermath of the rally, calling it “an attempt to erase our history.” The U.S. Army recently renamed nine military bases that honored Confederate generals.
In his book, Hegseth also described “diverse recruits—pumped full of vaccines and even more poisonous ideologies” as signs of the Pentagon’s weak leadership. “Take it to the racist bank: black troops, at all levels, will be promoted simply based on their race,” he wrote.
He also said that ads promoting diversity in the military to “trannies and lesbians” were putting off the “young, patriotic, Christian men who have traditionally filled our ranks.” In his 2020 book, he wrote admiringly about the “Christian crusaders who pushed back the Muslim hordes” and raised an alarm about Muslim birthrates.
Just days before the pick was announced, Hegseth said on “The Shawn Ryan Show” that women should not be allowed to serve in combat because “it has made fighting more complicated.”
“I’m straight up saying we shouldn’t have women in combat roles,” Hegseth said, although he added, “I love women service members, who contribute amazingly.”
The Telegraph‘s chief DC reporter, Robert Mendick (“Mapping Pete Hegseth’s tattoos: the Christian ink that got him kicked off Biden’s National Guard team“) decodes Hesgeth’s plethora of tats. The most disputed:
Jerusalem Cross (Crusaders’ Cross)
The tattoo covering his chest dates back to 1099 and symbolises the Crusader kingdom in Jerusalem.
[…]
The symbol, according to academics, has been popularised by the far-Right.
He juxtaposes this with Hesgeth’s characterization in the aforementioned book:
In his 2020 book, Mr Trump’s pick wrote: “In more ways than you can imagine, leftists have surrounded traditional American patriots on all sides, ready to close in for the kill: killing our founders, killing our flag, and killing capitalism.”
In the book’s introduction he wrote: “This time in our history calls for an American Crusade.”
He added: “Yes, a holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom.”
In a podcast he lashed out at “woke generals” and moves to make the armed forces more inclusive.
“The dumbest phrase on planet earth in the military is ‘our diversity is our strength,” he said.
A September 2017 NPR report (“Scholars Say White Supremacists Chanting ‘Deus Vult’ Got History Wrong“) in the wake of the Chancellorsville protests puts it into context:
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: If you’ve watched videos of white supremacist rallies and marches across the U.S., you may have noticed people dressed up as crusaders from the Middle Ages or waving banners with medieval insignias. Professional historians have noticed this, too. And as NPR’s Neda Ulaby reports, those historians are angry.
[…]
DAVIS: (Reading) By using imagined medieval symbols or names drawn from medieval terminology, they create a fantasy of a pure white Europe that bears no relationship to reality. This fantasy not only hurts people in the present, it also distorts the past.
ULABY: Social media teems with homemade videos glorifying a time when heavily armored Christians fought for Europe against swarthy infidels. Racists online have adopted a crusader rallying cry, deus vult. Reductive medieval imagery and language shows up in posts by contemporary Islamophobes.
Oddly, Mendick does not look at the Deus Vult logo, which is the one that most concerned the security chief who reported it up the chain. It’s part and parcel of the same mythology.
A 2019 explainer (“Deus Vult: The Dark Templar Imagery and Language of the Modern Neo-Nazi and Alt-Right Movements.“) from Villanova University librarian Robert LeBlanc:
Burgeoning online hate communities have been developing a new symbolic language in recent years. Seemingly innocuous words and images such as milk (a symbol of racial purity), the upright OK symbol (and abstraction of the initials for White Power), Pepe the frog, and a host of other false symbols were originally adopted by alt-right “trolls” to identify each other or incite outrage and paranoia from the left. Unfortunately, many of these false symbols have been adopted by legitimate racist, misogynistic, nationalistic, and anti-LGBT groups.
However, a handful of hateful symbols were not created by online provocateurs. The symbology and mottos of the medieval order of the Knights Templar have been used by racist organizations for decades. The order of the Knights Templar was a militaristic quasi-religious organization formed between the first and second crusades (c. 1119) and tasked with shepherding European pilgrims to the recently “liberated” holy lands. It is this concept of “liberation at the end of the sword” in the name of God (hence “Deus Vult” or “God Wills”) resulting in the mass slaughter of entire populations of Muslims and Jews that appeals to modern neo-nazi and far-right groups who publicly revile middle eastern culture and religion.
Several esoteric societies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries also utilized these symbols and mottos, notably the openly racist Order of the New Templars and the Thule Society, which formed the underlying racist mystical doctrine of the Nazi party. In recent years, neo-Nazi nationalist groups have co-opted these same symbols to support their xenophobic, racist, anti-Islamic, and anti-Semitic agendas. “Deus Vult” is emblazoned on alt-right parade banners and chanted at rallies. The Templar Cross in either its traditional red cross on a white field or its inverse, white on red, is a popular symbol used in lieu of swastikas, the double SS symbol of the Nazi Gestapo, or the Norse Othala rune. Even though the link between Templars and extreme anti-Islamic violence is not accurate—most scholars agree that Templars were far more religiously tolerant than your average crusader—far right extremists are still attracted to the false ideology of violence and cultural extermination.
A 2018 explainer (“The Alt-Right and Medieval Religions“) from Dorothy Kim, a professor of medieval literature at Brandeis University:
The next medieval religious frame used, abused, and weaponized by the alt-right is the medieval Catholic crusader. The Crusades were an ongoing set of memes during the 2016 election as well as during Brexit. in which #DeusVult has become a rallying cry. The #DeusVult arose from 4chan, meme culture, and video game culture. Video game culture is the gateway for the public to the medieval historical past. The distorted return of the Crusades and the Christian Crusader in imagining the West as the defender of democratic Christian values was redeployed after 9/11 by George W. Bush and his administration’s War on Terror. For a host of different alt-right groups, it specifically evokes an idea of a militaristic and racially-motivated defense of the Christian West against a racist fantasy of Islam and Muslims. All of which is historically inaccurate. The white supremacist use of #DeusVult and a return to medieval Catholicism is to invoke the myth of a white Christian (i.e. Catholic) medieval past that wishes to ignore the actual demographics and theological state of Catholicism today, let alone the doctrinal practices of contemporary Catholicism.
[…]
What the alt-right has done is pull from the medieval past what will align with their vision of a violent white supremacy in order to claim religious space. They are not practicing any form of theologically-informed, doctrinally-sanctioned version of a contemporary religion. They are also deliberately ignoring the majority practitioners of this religion (whether it is the Icelanders or the racially diverse majority in Catholicism). Instead, they are practicing a form of religiously-inflected medievalism that is based on medieval cosplay, video game culture, and internet memes.
I’m a Defense Department employee whose contract is up for renewal in two years under an administration that has signaled loud and clear that it plans to purge those who aren’t loyalists from the ranks. I am nonetheless compelled to declare that Hesgeth is manifestly unfit to serve as Secretary of Defense.
Whatever else one may think of him, he’s a highly intelligent, well-educated man. He holds a BA in politics from Princeton and a Master of Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. While it’s quite possible he doesn’t possess a nuanced understanding of the Crusades and the long history of their symbology, it’s simply inconceivable that he covered his body with white Christian nationalist tattoos not knowing what they broadly represented.
As an American citizen, he has every right to hold whatever beliefs he wants. To the extent the ownership of Fox News sees fit to put him on their channel, he’s absolutely free to broadcast those beliefs to millions every chance he gets. Freedom of expression is meaningless if it doesn’t include ideas most of us find abhorrent.
But it would be unconscionable to put a man who is so vociferously bigoted as to cover his body with these tattoos in charge of the lives and careers of such a massive, diverse force. According to one recent report,
Over two-thirds (68.8%) of active-duty members (897,340) self-identify as White, while approximately one-third (31.2%) of active-duty members (407,380) self-identify with a racial minority group (i.e., Black or African American, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, Multi-racial, or Unknown). Regarding ethnicity, 18.4 percent of active-duty members self-identify as Hispanic or Latino.
And that’s to say nothing of the Muslim, Jewish, and other non-Christian members.
Frankly, while hardly uncommon among male combat arms soldiers, his publicly stated views on women in combat alone disqualify him. They’re completely out of step with longstanding public policy as expressed in federal statute. Women comprise roughly 18 percent of the active duty force, and a significant number of them serve in combat roles. How can he lead them when these clips—from within the past month, no less—will circulate?
The far right (and I might add, Republicans) has been pushing back on claims of the radicalization in the country for decades starting with the publication of Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment
Since then:
DHS intelligence report warns of domestic right-wing terror threat (2015)
The Rise of Far-Right Extremism in the United States (2018)
Strategic Intelligence Assessment and Data on Domestic Terrorism (2021) (Annually)
The data is clear. Along with revanchist Christian Nationality (a lot of overlap there) the enemy is within our midst.
Ice flagged as cold.
So how did the Muslims eventually defeat the Crusaders in what the West then called the Holy Land? Were those guys leftist Crusaders, defeatists who let themselves lose, knights who favored gay recruits? Gosh, so much of history has been kept hidden from us! /sarcasm
We really do have a massive test coming. I expect that he will lean hard on all of these tattoos are being noting more than expressions of his Christian faith. We’ll see if that flies.
Trump continues to show us who he is.
@Steven L. Taylor: Yup. It’s just a silly claim. We’ve both been around a ton of devout Christians of all flavors. American Christians simply don’t use this symbology to represent their faith.
@Steven L. Taylor: And who he wants to be. The list of his nominees could have come straight from the Kremlin. If he can get all of the Republicans on board to confirm this kind of pro-dictator, anti-democracy agenda, it will confirm his complete power by crushing any dissent inside the party. The last remnant of the old Republican Party will be dead without any chance of revival.
These tattoos don’t represent anything remotely Christian. Even attempting this is simply calling “squirrel” to distract from the objective reality.
Hegseth is a bigoted white supremacist. Trump put one of the Proud Boys in charge.
Yes, the enemy is within — and it’s rightwing white supremacists like Hegseth, not Democrats.
Correction:
Take it to the racists’ bank: white supremacist troops, at all levels, will be promoted simply based on their race, as the tentacles of white supremacy reach into the higher echelons of power.
@Not the IT Dept.:
The Crusader crowd didn’t wash their hands frequently?
@Rob1:
No, Crusaders were too busy hunting for germs they could see so they could kill them with their swords. Just weren’t paying enough attention.
What are we even doing here? American Christianity was invested in supporting slavery and segregation, as well as the extermination of Native Americans. Currently, it is deeply invested in all sorts of imperial drives. The tattoo might be dumb in a cosplay sort of way. But it comes from the actual practice of Christianity in this country. The only way this guy gets cancelled is due to it being embarrassing to the type of people who support Israel being a settler in a land of savages because the same thing happened in Revelations.
@James Joyner: On the one hand, yes. On the other, I can absolutely see him saying “What’s wrong with wanting God’s will?”
And “Crosses are Christian!”
I am sincerely concerned that such “arguments” will fly, especially as too many Evangelicals have decided they are the persecuted ones.
In a shocking twist that’s unexpected only to people who mainline white supremacy, Hegseth was also accused of sexual assault.
Funny how that’s never happened to.. me. Or 10 of the next 10 people you meet who aren’t white supremacists.
But surely that’s all just locker room talk, right?
Good to learn that “great” to Republicans is defined by the freedom to abuse women and not face consequences.
@Gavin:
Yes and no.
I would note that White Supremacists have long claimed that part of what they are protecting was Christianity. We can all ask for the “real Christianity” to please stand up, but that is its own debate. Tribal lines have been drawn, so don’t be surprised if he is able to pull off some version of “don’t attack my faith!”
Keep in mind: a ridiculous number of Evangelicals sincerely think that that Trump is a Christian.
And, moreover, one of the reasons a lot of them starting being pro-Russia was because Putin was anti-LBGTQ+.
@Gavin:
Watch for incidences of rape to rise, even as PD’s will try to avoid accounting for them. Incels won’t be happy when they realize they still can’t get laid.
@Michael Reynolds: my daughter is enrolling the girls in jujitsu this week. She said rape porn is big with middle school boys.
@James Joyner: I have a Jerusalem Cross from the Holy Land on my wall and I’m not white or a white nationalist. I bought it years ago at my church. Every military man I know has tattoos of flags and crosses. The same with a lot of Christian men I know. Hegseth may not be qualified but these tattoos are nothing.
@Fortune:
Hegseth’s tattoos are of a very specific context. “Deus Vult” is a specifically Crusader phrase, which the far right has claimed as a motto for nearly a decade. Having it tattooed on one’s body along with the specific Crusader cross is very, very far from “nothing.” In fact, these symbols taken together have been prominent in the white Christian nationalist movement for some time.
” Every military man I know has tattoos of flags and crosses.”
I dont. I preferentially hired ex-military for over 20 years and none of those I hired had visible tattoos like that. We do have a group of skinhead/neo-nazis in my area of PA. They do have them. So do we just know different people? I dont think so. Note that in story of the thousands of people they looked at they found only 17 they excluded for this stuff. So if you mean tattoos of a regular ordinary cross then lots of people have those. Jerusalem crosses? Nope. Deus Vult? Nope.
Just out of curiosity why add flags? Unless I missed it somewhere no one is claiming that tattoos of the American flag are suspect.
Steve
@Steven L. Taylor:
“Keep in mind: a ridiculous number of Evangelicals sincerely think that that Trump is a Christian.
And, moreover, one of the reasons a lot of them starting being pro-Russia was because Putin was anti-LBGTQ+”
Yes, it is amazing how many people who claim to be Christian believe that the most important doctrine of their religion is being anti-LGBTQ+, which is something which never was raised by Jesus.
While it is called an abomination in Leviticus, so is eating shellfish and having clothes made of more than one type of fabric. For some reason, the same people who are anti-LGBTQ+ never picket Red Lobster.
@Fortune is illustrating my point above.
A lot of people with rationalize this all as “nothing to see here.”
@Fortune: I take your point, and I know good people with tattoos of crosses or biblical passages. But at some point you have to take all the evidence together. Extreme misogynistic and anti-diversity statements, three wives and known infidelity, accusations of sexual assault, tattoos that are highly correlated with white supremacy, etc. When you weigh all the evidence, including the fact that he simply looks like a douchebag, we can safely conclude that he’s a douchebag. He’s someone who doesn’t know what true masculinity and honor is.
Plus, he’s unqualified for the actual job at hand, which has already been covered.
@steve: Neither do I. But then I’m older and retired 25 years ago.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Even Don Quixote is confused by them.
@Modulo Myself: Nailed it! Thank you.
@Steven L. Taylor: American Christianity is a particularly ugly version of what happens when the church endorses the state. Even more so because we keep embracing the fiction that we separated church and state. We didn’t. We dog whistle. We secularize portions of the endorsement. We downplay.
Evangelicals and dominionists don’t. And they embraced Trump because he doesn’t dog whistle; he bullhorns.
@Fortune:
Keep telling yourself that. At least you’ll believe you.
But I do congratulate you on being able to look into the soul of everyone with Christian symbol tattoos. I haven’t perfected that trick. I have to go by what people do and say.
@Moosebreath:
And wearing tattoos (“Thou shalt make no graven images”).
@JimJude: Oh, fuck off with this pissing on my leg and telling me it’s raining. You start out with a bunch of irrelevant whataboutist garbage and end up with gaslighting bullshit. “Oh his tats are just similar to people with abhorrent views.” No, they are explicit and specific symbols used by white Christian nationalists.
“There are folks on the Right who have actually written…” Nah, sorry, not wasting my time with still more gaslighting bullshit. You can keep your flimsy rationalizations, thanks.
@Mikey:
One thing is for sure: the rationalizers have no interest in context nor of the records of these people. They just want to “wait and see.”
Just to be clear, Hegseth had already failed approval. And I endorse James’ analysis of his tattoos. There are lots of ways Christian men can bear witness that aren’t what Hegseth done. I’ve seen it. I’ve done it. Also, there’s this virtue espoused by Christianity known as “humility”. I suppose that’s one of the things that “doesn’t work any more”?
Meanwhile, I just wanted to note that while a very large strain of American Christendom was all-in on slavery, there was another strain that was a deep source for abolitionism. There is a war within American Christianity right now – the Dominionists are all in on politics, whilst the traditionalists are more about, “uh, can we remember the eternal teachings, rather than get caught up in temporal politics?”
So, they are potential allies. Everyone’s a politician now, let’s try to invite people to join us.
@becca:
Don’t forget the ice pick, becca.
@James Joyner:
I’ve been thinking a lot about the handwaving about his tattoos. What I keep coming back to is that these symbols are understood well enough that tattoo artists are going to know their meaning. I’m confident that there is a significant amount of tattoo artist that won’t do them because they don’t want to be associated with white supremacists. You have to seek someone out for those.
I’ve also been thinking about how you have a target on your back because of your job. You seem like the kinda guy with a strong moral compass. I hope your test won’t be bad.
@Fortune:
This makes you a white nationalist.
You’re a white nationalist – whether you like it or not. Facts over feelings. You’re also being gaslit into thinking that’s not a white nationalist sign.. and that’s nobody else’s problem but the man in your mirror. Own your dirt, dude. Why, exactly, do you think “being a white nationalist” might not be viewed as a positive thing?
You’re not a great recruiter for your cult.
Of course everyone you know has those tattoos… because you only hang out with sad white supremacists.
It’s fun to meet a jumped-in member of the Proud Boys.
It’s just as pathetic as I thought it would be.
@Fortune: I know hundreds, if not thousands, of military men and have never seen this combination of tattoos.
The swastika was a symbol common across many different and unrelated cultures, going back to ancient times. It wasn’t all that popular or prevalent, but you find it here and there in many places. Knowing this, it won’t surprise you to learn it had several different meanings and uses.
None of this negates the fact the nazis made it their main symbol, the identity of their party and ideology. If you wanted to claim to use it in any of its older ways, as a good luck charm, or to represent the four winds, or in memory of a very odd and striking comet, you’d fool no one, except those who want to be fooled, and be branded a nazi.
@Gavin: If your comment is serious it’s an example of the internet left not knowing any practicing Christians.
Hegseth’s intent with those symbols is obvious. Any commentary to the contrary is sanewashing.
@Gavin: I used to wear a Jerusalem Cross. I got it at a workshop I attended 40 or so years ago, and I was adjacent to the Jesus Movement back in those days, so wearing that particular symbol of my faith made sense in ways that it doesn’t anymore. I’ve returned to the “no graven images” stance of my youth growing up among fundamentalists (some of whom were white supremacy adjacent but kept it politely hidden from public ostentatious view).
I’m disappointed that I’ve encountered two people in one day who can see into the souls of others while I can’t. Can either one of you tell me where I need to go to obtain this wonderful ability?
@Kathy:
I know some Hindus who still use it in religous symbology.
But anyone else who does is pretty obviously suspect until proved otherwise.
@Gavin:
The use of the Jerusalem cross does not necessarily confirm the user as a white supremacist.
It was used quite often as symbol of having made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Anecdotally, quite a large number of British army veterans from the Palestine campaign in WW1 had a Jerusalem cross tattoo.
It’s also the national flag of Georgia, but I rather doubt Hesgeth was even vaguely aware of that.
What counts in the case of Hesgeth is the combination of tats, and his well known opinions.
Perhaps not necessarily “white supremacist” but pretty certainly militant Christian: a mirror-image wannabe jihadi.
@Fortune: until about a decade ago, I was a very devout Christian. I’ve never seen those tattoos on anyone at church.
Predictably, Hegseth and Christians in general are the victims in this affair.
I spent my formative years immersed in an evangelical Christian community. Never once did I encounter the phrase deus vult.
The Jerusalem Cross is about hate. It’s Just About Fun Touristy Traditions in the same way a statue of Confederate general Nathaniel Bedford Forrest is, like, heritage, man.
The rhetoric and imagery of holy war leads to holy war.
That anecdote about british army veterans is actually explained by the British promoting the capture of Jerusalem as the #1 thing in the war at the end of 1917 – even over Passchendaele. It’s really not shocking that the propaganda at the time which was centered around Christian restoration in the Holy Land led to white supremacy tats on the army soldiers who did the thing.
“Punch Magazine published a drawing of Richard Lionheart looking down toward Jerusalem, nodding contentedly: ‘my dream comes true’ ”
If you really want to derail the thread, read the text of the Balfour Declaration.
@Ken_L:
In British history the phrase is known, if anything, for its link to the Spanish Armada and etc.
The current usage in US right “Christian” circles is, frankly, a bit odd.
(Lol. “Frankly” was an unintentional reference, in the context. 🙂 )
The whole thing seems to be a “neo-crusader” reference.
Which is rather silly.
My paternal grandfather was around when General Allenby entered Jerusalem at the Jaffa Gate.
And did so on foot, as a mark of due humility.
And then both Allenby, and grandpa Farren, in his much less prominent position, went on to the Battle of Megiddo.
“Armageddon? Been there. Done that.”
The current “Christian crusader” thing is just laughable.
@Gavin:
White supremacy?
I suspect you are mistakenly mapping contemporary American notions of “white” onto British views of the 1900’s.
Generally speaking, Turks, Arabs etc were regarded as “white” (of a sort).
Were you to take an average group of Turks, Israelis, Greeks, Levantine Arabs, Iranians, Sicilians, Andalusian Spanish, etc, and get them in identical dress in an ID parade, it might be rather difficult to differentiate them.
As for Christian supremacism, much of the British Imperial force in Iraq was of the Indian Army; of which about a third were Muslim.
The British were seldom inclined to deprecate Muslims, for good reasons, if you are aware of the history of the relations.
Yes: the taking of Jerusalem was regarded by many as the seal and apogee of Empire.
But also of its renunciation.
See, indeed, the Balfour Declaration
Obviously, Hegseth is going to take a lot of fire, but he’s used to it. He is certainly not approved Deep State nominee who will keep the wars going for the MIC
Here is an interview with Jack Carr from before the news, October 16th.
@Mikey: You’re wasting your ink. Fortune knows all of that very well, and is offering deliberate disinformation/distraction. There is no good faith argument here.
@JKB:
“Keep the wars going”.
And what wars might those be, exactly?
@Ken_L: I encountered “God willing” a lot growing up among the Baptists. But that merely brings up the question of whether writing it in Latin changes the intent. My guess would have to be that since evangelicals are so ambivalent about learning Latin, the answer would be yes.
@JohnSF: I think the MIC part is a guilt by association tactic based on the notion* that the only things that America produces anymore are economic transactions and weapons. Friends of mine in Korea** used to use this argument when they were making “America: Arms Salesman to the World”/Americans as war mongers arguments.
*That used to come from the Left when I was in high school, curiously enough.
**Who frequently expressed surprise that someone as old as I was (I was in my late 50s to early 60s) was as liberal as I appeared to be. The ones from the Lutheran Church I went to in Seoul simply figured that it was because Lutherans tend to be more liberal than the typical Evangelicals that usually had English Language churches in Itaewon (near Yongsan Garrison).
@JKB:
Exactly. Many, if not most of those in the ‘Deep State’ would not bother to nominate a man such as Hegseth who paid off the accuser of his alleged sexual assault.
As reported in Axios:
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
It’s still a common expression in Australia, as in “I’ll be there to see the end of the Trump dynasty, God willing” or “the drought’s expected to break this summer, God willing”.
Deus vult, on the other hand, is usually translated as “God wills it!” It’s not a ritual acknowledgement that we are not masters of our own destiny, but a boast one is God’s agent.
@Monala: Did you go to shirtless services, like Steve’s shirtless job interviews?
We all wear scrubs. We all get changed in the locker room. If someone had those tattoos we would see them. (It’s a critical care and surgical specialty practice.) Now, I will admit we dont take off our underwear so someone could have a tat on their butt cheek I wouldn’t see.
Steve
Thank you for providing such a detailed analysis of this controversial topic. It is interesting that symbols and statements can carry such significant implications for leadership suitability. I agree that ensuring inclusivity and trust in military leadership is essential for such a diverse force.