When the Pentagon announced plans to livestream the execution of mass murderer Nidal Malik Hasan in December, the only surprise was that it hadn’t happened sooner. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth likes a little ultraviolence — inked on his body, in the form of Crusader tattoos, or the Scripture he quotes. “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle,” he intoned in a press briefing this spring, citing the Psalmist in defense of the war on Iran. In his imagination, he is the great champion of a “warrior culture,” by which he means masculinity or a homicidal version of it. He’s long defended war criminals like Clint Lorance, who ordered the murders of two Afghan civilians, and Eddie Gallagher, who reportedly stabbed a wounded, teenage ISIS fighter to death. So he chose to kill Hasan by firing squad — the first military execution in 65 years — and he wanted to show off for the world. A broadcast would remind the public that “there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” he told podcaster Jack Posobiec, an admirer of dictators Augusto Pinochet and Francisco Franco.

But Donald Trump apparently had misgivings, and on Thursday morning he said there would be no livestream. Hasan will still die by firing squad, he promised, and families of the victims can watch the killing in person, making this a conventional American execution after all. The impulses motivating Hegseth will not disappear so readily: Others share his lust for state brutality and, with it, the illusion of order. Although Hegseth’s planned livestream faced bipartisan criticism, the American right’s thirst for violent retribution has grown. Immigration authorities under Trump beat and........

© Daily Intelligencer