Pete Hegseth, the politically inexperienced Fox News host whom Trump tapped to lead the Pentagon, has been embroiled in scandals in the past week. The controversy has largely centered on reports that Hegseth paid off a woman who accused him of sexual assault, while claiming the encounter was consensual. (NBC obtained a copy of the police report; a spokesperson for Hegseth said, “The incident was fully investigated and police determined the allegation was false, and therefore no charges were filed.” Police did not provide a reason for the decision. none file charges.)
However, Hegseth’s actual politics have received much less attention, and in particular his apparent ties to Christian nationalism. That issue initially came into focus because two of Hegseth’s tattoos have been linked to far-right extremist groups (Hegseth has said the charge is “anti-Christian bigotry”). Hegseth is doing little to dispel perceptions of extremism as he earlier this week called for an “educational uprising” to take over US schools.
As Right announced Wing Watch, Hegseth made his comments Monday on a right-wing podcast while discussing a book he published in 2022 in which he and his co-author vowed to “give patriotic parents the ammunition to join an insurrection that gives America a chance. fighting chance” against teachers. Hegseth has ties to Christian nationalists, who see religiously affiliated schools – some of which receive public funding – as key to their efforts to blur the line between church and state.
On the podcast Monday, Hegseth agreed when one of the hosts suggested that Christian schools should be seen as boot camps to prepare children for the so-called uprising.
“That’s what the crop of these classical Christian schools is going to do in a generation,” Hegseth said. “Policy responses like school choice, while great, are phase two things later, once the foothold has been put on the ground, once the recruits have graduated from boot camp.”
Hegseth continued:
We call it a tactical retreat. In the last part of the book we outline what an educational insurgency would look like, because I was a counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan and the stages in which Mao [Zedong] wrote about: We are currently in middle phase one, which is essentially a tactical retreat where you regroup, consolidate and reorganize. And as you do that, you build your army underground, with the ability to conduct offensive operations in an overt manner later.”
“Obviously this is all metaphorical and all that good stuff,” Hegseth added.
Ask yourself: In a country where school violence is common, so are Americans Real need a Secretary of Defense who has promoted a war – figurative or not – against American schools? Think about the message this could send at a time when right-wing religious extremists are active al depicting schools as enemy territory. And then think about what it looks like when the top civilian leader of the U.S. military reaffirms his views.
It is, of course, typical for defense secretaries to have battle plans, but if confirmed, Hegseth will be unique in that the war he is most willing to wage is not against a foreign fighter, but against institutions and people he is sworn to will have to protect. .
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
