This week, Donald Trump approved the military’s first execution by firing squad since 1945.
asserted
Trump → approve → 1945
The Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced, will livestream it.
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Hegseth → announce → it
The execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, who opened fire on dozens of people at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center in Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, is now scheduled for December 3.
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who → open → December
Hasan, at the time an active-duty major in the Army, was shot in the back by police during the massacre and now, paralyzed from the waist down, uses a wheelchair.
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Hasan → shoot → wheelchair
When Hegseth spoke about the execution livestream with far-right streamer Jack Posobiec on Thursday, he hardly seemed able to contain his excitement.
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he → speak → excitement
“He’s going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be,” Hegseth said.
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Hegseth → go → soldiers
The execution, as Hegseth envisions it, would be first and foremost a mass spectacle.
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Hegseth → envision → it
“We’re going to make sure people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” he said.
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he → go → it
That is to say, Pete Hegseth wants to make a snuff film.
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Hegseth → say → film
Jim Craig, a veteran Mississippi death penalty lawyer, spoke with me in April, after Trump announced his plan to bring back the federal firing squad.
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Trump → speak → squad
The obscenity of the violence, Craig said, is the whole idea.
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Craig → say → violence
This proposal by the Trump Justice Department is characterized by their attraction to brutality.
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proposal → characterize → brutality
It’s characterized by their affection for causing visible harm to people.
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It → characterize → people
You see it in their foreign policy.
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You → see → policy
You see it in their policing.
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You → see → policing
The firing squad is very physical and visceral in the damage that it does to the person being executed.
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it → do → person
That’s why they like it.
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they → ’ → it
We should not mince words about this.
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We → mince → this
It has nothing to do with the Eighth Amendment.
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It → have → Amendment
It has nothing to do with the supply of drugs, or anything else.
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It → have → drugs
They like it because it’s the same kind of video game brutality that they like in every other context of this administration’s barbarism.
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they → like → barbarism
A firing squad execution, when the executioners aim well, “essentially vaporizes” a person’s heart, Craig explained.
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Craig → aim → heart
When they don’t, the victim bleeds out and dies slowly.
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victim → do → ?
The last time the US military executed a man by firing squad was in 1945—it was called “musketry” at the time.
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it → execute → time
“Well, I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II, which was win,” Hegseth said. “Which was, understand when the enemy attacks you, you stand your ground.”
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you → like → ground
Hasan’s killing would be the United States’ first livestreamed execution.
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killing → livestreame → ?
The closest equivalent in recent memory, by anything approaching a state, is the graphic series of public execution tapes that galvanized the world against ISIS in 2014; before that, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya telecast an execution at a basketball stadium in 1984.
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Libya → approach → 1984
But it would hardly be Hegseth’s first encounter with disseminating death on video.
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it → disseminate → video
Over the past year, the military has released at least 46 different clips of US attacks on noncombatant vessels—the extrajudicial slaughter of people on alleged “drug boats,” including at least one “double-tap” strike on clinging survivors—in the Caribbean Sea.
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military → release → Sea
Sometimes, the clips are posted on their own, in grainy gray and green.
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clips → post → gray
Other times, the official White House X account posts footage of human death interspersed with video-game and Hollywood action film footage.
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account → post → footage
In their interview, Posobiec asked Hegseth whether Hasan had any final requests.
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Hasan → ask → requests
“Don’t care,” Hegseth said.
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Hegseth → care → ?
The Aporia
