Pete Hegseth, Secretary of the Department of War, has announced his plans to live-stream the execution of Nidal Hassan by firing squad. Hassan committed a mass shooting at Fort Hood in 2009, killing 13 people and injuring more than 30. The U.S. Army decided to pursue the death penalty in 2011. Earlier this week, the Pentagon confirmed that it would be the first military execution in over 60 years.
Hegseth’s plan to live-stream the execution by firing squad has drawn criticism from varying strata of the capitalist class. Democrats Chris Murphy, Adam Smith, Patty Murray, and Ruben Gallego, along with Republicans Austin Scott, John Curtis, and Thom Tillis all strongly criticized the plan. Even reactionary religious leaders have weighed in. In a statement, Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said, echoing U.S. born Catholic Pope Leo XIV, “The public execution even of one who has done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people.”
The last public execution in the United States, in 1936, was that of Rainey Bethea, a young Black/New Afrikan man accused of raping a white woman. His hanging drew 20,000 spectators and hot-dog vendors. The history of public executions in the United States is inextricably linked to violence, national oppression, and the roots of U.S. society in the mass enslavement of Black/New Afrikans. Public spectacle lynchings carried this history forward after the end of legalized chattel slavery in the U.S., functioning as organized terror in which thousands of Non-national minority spectators gathered to witness torture and killing and partake of fairground food, while photographs were reproduced as postcards and victims’ possessions and body parts were taken as souvenirs.
The Old State should not hold the power of life and death over the masses. They have proven time and time again in their carelessness, cruelty, and disregard of their own “justice” system that it is the purpose of the Old State to meet out repression and abject terror on behalf of the ruling class. Since 1973, over 200 people have been exonerated from Death Row, more than half of which were Black/New Afrikan. It is also estimated that at least 4% of those convicted on Death Row are innocent. Bread and circuses have long been a favored tactic of the Old State, but live-streaming an execution elevates these tactics deeper into the digital age. This event does nothing to provide closure to or support of the families of those who were killed at Fort Hood in 2009. Instead, it will fuel only resentment, fear, and hatred of and within the already unchecked military apparatus of U.S. Imperialism, engine of bloodshed. The masses will not be intimidated by this show of the Old State’s power, for they know that the people, and the people alone, are the motive force of world history, that they alone can create a world where true democratic justice for the masses will prevail.
[Image Source: Pete Hegseth at the U.S. Air Force Academy on October 3, 2026, Department of Defense/YouTube]
