Pete Hegseth: the faithful ready to “go on a crusade” for Trump

Before being propelled to the forefront by Trump’s nomination, Hegseth was relatively little known in Washington. A graduate of Princeton and Harvard, he served in Iraq and Afghanistan in the National Guard in his native Minnesota. He received two Bronze Star Medals for his service as well as numerous military decorations before joining the conservative Fox News channel in 2014 as a regular columnist. He is notably known for nearly killing someone by throwing an ax into the void on live television.

• It was in 2001, while studying at Princeton, that Hegseth enrolled in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), a program allowing one to become an officer in the army while pursuing studies.
• During his years at university, he wrote for The Princeton Torya journal in which Hegseth seeks to “legitimize conservatism as a philosophy” and praises the “tangible solutions to societal ills” proposed by conservatives .
• In 2003, he submitted a dissertation on “Modern presidential rhetoric and the context of the Cold War”, under the direction of Patrick Deneen, then assistant professortoday recognized among conservatives for advocating the necessary end of liberalism in the United States, which is said to be at the origin of the inequalities fracturing American society.

If Hegseth does not take part directly in this debate on liberalism, he shares the vision of Deneen, Rod Dreher or JD Vance, calling on the government to support a return to a “more traditional” model of the family unit, marked by necessary rehabilitation of the “vocation of a housewife”. He also says he is in favor of a “renewal of religious faith”. But Hegseth’s main hobby horse is the fight against “wokism” and its specters: inclusiveness, diversity, the rights of LGBTQ people and feminism, supposedly derailed by “leftism”.

It is also precisely to “fight woke ideology” within the army that Hegseth was chosen by Trump to lead the Pentagon. Defense policies, the question of modernizing the armies as well as the allocation of resources will above all be the prerogatives of the White House.

• In the United States, the Secretary of Defense is responsible for overseeing nearly 3.5 million military and civilian personnel and an annual budget of more than $800 billion. As second in command commander in chiefits role is to ensure the proper conduct of military operations and to provide a strategic vision for the future of the forces.
• Hegseth’s appointment can be read as a signal sent to the US military as an institution, considered one of the most open and acting as an important vector of equal opportunities.
• It is thanks to the programs that veterans benefit from after having passed through the army that JD Vance, the vice-president-elect, was able to study at Ohio State University and then subsequently enter the prestigious Yale law school. In 2022, more than 800,000 veterans will benefit from these programs to pursue an education after the military.
• In his latest book published in June, The War on Warriors : Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us FreeHegseth denounces the “woke ideology” which is allegedly corrupting the American army. At the time of the book’s release, he stated on Fox News that “diversity does not make the army strong, unity makes it strong.”
• Hegseth has notably declared in the past to be against sending women into combat, before retracting in December.

Like Vance, Hegseth is part of the Christian nationalist right.

• He is a reader of the books of Doug Wilson, the co-founder of the Fellowship of Evangelical Reformed Churches, a movement initially based in Moscow and the United States.
• In his books, Wilson notably praises the South as constituting an “idyllic multiracial Christian society.” Also “patriarch” of the TheoBros movement – ​​Christian traditionalist influencers – Wilson considers “that women should never have obtained the right to vote” .
• Hegseth also enrolled his children in a school owned by the Association of Classical Christian Schools, a network founded by Wilson. He also said he would not send his children to Harvard, where he himself went, but rather to New Saint Andrews University — also founded by Wilson .

Beyond education, Hegseth has also appeared on TheoBros podcasts and promoted books aimed at “arming Christians with tools and weapons to build, defend and expand the new Christianity” . The rhetoric and imagination of the Crusades can be found even on the body of Pete Hegseth, who bears the tattoo of a Jerusalem cross as well as the inscription “Deus Vult” .

This imagination is claimed by Hegseth himself.

• In his second book, American Crusade (2020), he writes: “Just like the Christian crusaders who repelled the Muslim hordes in the 12th century, the American crusaders will have to demonstrate the same courage against the Islamists today.”
• Hegseth also seems to share the theses of the great replacement theory, as evidenced by this May 2018 statement regarding France: “I don’t like to say that, but I think it’s true. A September 11 in slow motion is taking place on their borders, in France. (…) Demographics are important. Muslims have 2.6 children, while French people by birth have 1.6” .

After returning from Afghanistan in 2012, Hegseth was named president the following year of Concerned Veterans for America, a group representing the interests of American veterans. He led a similar organization, Veterans for Freedom, between 2007 and 2012, before resigning after almost causing the group to go bankrupt. At the start of his contract, Hegseth admitted having “no idea” what he was doing at VFF .

Hegseth’s years at Concerned Veterans for America were marked by accusations of financial mismanagement, sexual harassment and personal misconduct leading to his “quiet resignation” in 2016.

• According to an article from New Yorker quoted by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who sits on the committee which will hear Hegseth tomorrow, Tuesday January 14, one of the reasons that led to his resignation is his excessive consumption of alcohol. This would have notably led him to shout “Kill all the Muslims!” Kill all Muslims! » while he was in a bar during a business trip .
• His former colleagues describe “seeing him drunk so many times [que] having him in the Pentagon would be scary.” Hegseth is also accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2017 as well as helping to create a sexist and hostile climate towards his colleagues during his years at CVF .
• Hegseth’s past and the accusations against him could complicate his confirmation by the Senate. Democrat Richard Blumenthal, who also sits on the Armed Services Committee, said last week: “I do not see how this committee can, in good conscience, consider the nomination of Mr. Hegseth without a full review of his conduct at the head of these organizations — the only experience of civilian management of his career” .

Following Matt Gaetz’s withdrawal, Pete Hegseth is by far Trump’s most controversial choice. The last nominee to be rejected by the Senate, Senator John Tower, chosen in 1989 by George HW Bush to lead the Department of Defense, ended up losing the vote after five weeks of testimony – in part because of his consumption of alcohol and his attitude towards women . Despite these “obstacles,” Trump sees in Hegseth a loyalist who would never oppose his directives, including using the National Guard (or even the military itself) to “deport millions of illegal immigrants.”