The Troubling Worldview of Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Secretary of Defense

His new book leaves readers in no doubt that he’s the sort of figure who would be open to using America’s military against perceived internal enemies.

Donald Trump is moving fast in order to break things. He’s picked Matt Gaetz, accused of sex trafficking, as Attorney General to presumably go after his political opponents. He will get daily intelligence briefings from Tulsi Gabbard, whose pronouncements have greatly disturbed the intelligence community. Some see her appointment as Director of National Intelligence as the end of NATO and the Five Eyes intelligence network, as allies will now curtail their security cooperation with the US to protect their sources.

And he has picked a 44-year-old Fox News anchor in Pete Hegseth to head the Department of Defense and manage its $800 billion dollar budget. Hegseth has an interesting background. He graduated from Princeton (his senior thesis advisor was political theorist Patrick Deneen) and later got a Masters from Harvard. He served in the National Guard and was deployed as an infantry platoon leader in Iraq and counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan. He’s worked for an investment bank and has written four books. 

Hegseth is clearly busy but sports a lot of alarming views and will shortly have a bureaucracy, funding and armed forces at his disposal. He freely refers to “shithole countries” and thinks Israel should annex the West Bank and also be allowed to take out Iran’s nuclear program.

More disconcertingly, Hegseth intensely despises the Left at home and sees them in Manichean terms as a force that is intentionally out to destroy the United States.

His latest book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, leaves readers in no doubt that he’s the sort of figure who would be open to using America’s military against perceived internal enemies, should he and Trump deem fit.

He blames the Left for portraying America as a racist country, teaching critical race theories in school, dividing the nation on race and gender lines, deeming masculinity to be toxic and so on. He blames the Biden administration for pushing the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) agenda on full throttle in the military after January 6 – and says the military leadership capitulated to that agenda to advance their careers.

Left activism, in his view, chips away at belief in America and discourages young people from enlisting in the armed forces. Race and gender-based policies in the military are inherently unmeritocratic and affect combat effectiveness. One of the chapters in the book is titled, “Supporting DEI Means Soldiers DIE.”

The Left has created an ethos that enervates America. “We’ve abandoned an honor culture for a victim culture. The values we promote now are about self-flagellation, not taking responsibility.”

He expresses his antipathy strongly. Writing about the military he says, “politicians with radical social philosophies—from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama—come and go; the real story is how an institution founded on fidelity to the Constitution has allowed itself to be captured by anti-American, anticonstitutional Marxist philosophies.”

…“A domestic political cult of virtue-signaling, social justice saboteurs has targeted our military as the next trophy in their reckless big-game hunting of American traditions. This time, they’re going straight for our immune system.”

…“Our oath is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against anyone who threatens it. The expectation is that we will defend it against all enemies—both foreign and domestic. Not political opponents, but real enemies. (Yes, Marxists are our enemies.)”

Note that, in his view, Marxists are not legitimate political opponents, but real enemies.

Elsewhere, he continues:

“They’re traitors. Plain and simple. And our constitutional responsibility is to expose them, remove them, and defeat what they stand for. They are transforming the American military in their own radical image—and the Pentagon leadership, from Secretary (Lloyd) Austin to Chairman (Mark) Milley, back them all the way. Cowards with stars, complicit as they laud the enemy within.”

Hegseth, consequently, wants to “clean house of woke generals.” In a recent interview, he proposed firingthe current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and any general or admiral who was involved “in any of the DEI woke shit.” He wants to eliminate DEI and CRT that has made its way to military academies.

Ordinarily, this would be rated as just the reforming passions of a partisan. But Hegseth is by any measure, a coherent culture warrior with reported links to the Christian far right, at a moment when Christian nationalism is ascendant, and is in league with an “anointed” President, believing he has been put in charge by God to act against their unbelieving enemies and restore their version of Christian America.

Hegseth believes that America today “is in a cold civil war. Our soul is under attack by a confederacy of radicals. They wish to erode our institutions by making us question our purpose.”

Such a persecuted worldview reinforces the sense that there is not a moment to lose. Hegseth now has a budget and like-minded allies in the administration to achieve their aims.

It remains to be seen if Hegseth will play a part in any proceedings targeting Gen. Milley, who resisted Trump’s calls to use troops against protestors in 2020. Milley reportedly believes that Trump will have him court-martialled after returning to power. Hegseth attacks Milley for his DEI initiatives in his book; it is unlikely that he will stand in the way of prosecuting the General should Trump want that.

It is clear from Trump’s assembly of personnel that the US is headed for a fair bit of internal upheaval, likely featuring a purge in institutions and a McCarthyite witch hunt of opponents. It is unclear what kind of a civil conflict that will lead to. In picking Hegseth, Trump acquires for himself an ideologically committed activist and a coercive apparatus to back his political project.