Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on Thursday, October 8, that the execution of Major Nidal Hasan, a former U.S. Army psychiatrist who killed 12 soldiers and one civilian and wounded 32 others in a 2009 terrorist attack at Fort Hood, Texas, would be livestreamed. Hasan is scheduled to be executed by firing squad on December 3.

One week later, following widespread public backlash, President Donald Trump reversed the livestreaming decision. The firing-squad execution will still take place, but it will not be broadcast online.

The reversal is welcome, but it should not be reassuring. The execution would still be the first U.S. military execution in 65 years. If it had been broadcast, it would also have been the first public execution in the United States since 1936, when Rainey Bethea, a young Black man, was hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky, after being convicted of raping an elderly White woman.

An estimated 20,000 people watched Bethea’s execution. It was described as a festive gathering: People ate candy and drank soda, while adults lifted children onto their shoulders so they could see the killing. It was a public ritual that reinforced a White supremacist social and political order.

Nearly 90 years later, Bethea and Hasan could hardly be more different: one was a young Black man hanged in the Jim Crow South, while the other is a convicted mass murderer and terrorist. What connects their stories is the spectacle proposed by the Trump administration—a human being killed before an audience.

Hasan murdered 13 people in a premeditated act of violence. The death penalty can, in principle, be viewed as the ultimate punishment for the most unconscionable crimes, and Hasan’s actions meet that standard. But a public execution would have been a barbaric and grotesque spectacle. It could also have advanced Hasan’s cause by turning him into a martyr and hero for Islamist terrorists.

Most importantly, a public execution would have represented another act of moral debasement and cruelty in what has been called the Age of Trump and American fascism.

Amnesty International reported that only two countries—Iran and Afghanistan—carried out documented public executions in 2025. Trump and Hegseth were willing to have “the world’s greatest democracy” join that ignominious group.

Religious organizations, including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, condemned the decision to broadcast Hasan’s execution. The conference’s president, Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, said he felt “shock and great sorrow.”

“In no way can Hasan's actions be condoned, but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered…. 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,” Coakley told Vatican News.

There are, of course, sadists, morally empty people and others who would relish the opportunity to watch another human being shot to death. When asked about the proposed public execution, Hegseth told a right-wing “news” outlet that it was a “no-brainer.”

On Friday, Trump told reporters that he “absolutely” approved the decision and said Hasan deserved to be killed by firing squad. The following day, Trump said he would soon make the final decision on whether the execution would be broadcast live.

On Thursday, October 15, Trump announced on Truth Social that the execution would not be livestreamed:

I think streaming the execution for all to see might have been a strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan but, many very good and well-meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device. He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed. That said, the execution may be viewed in person by the immediate families of the victims, if they so choose. They deserve to witness JUSTICE!

Trump’s reversal appeared to reflect concerns about the optics of executing Hasan, who is paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair, as well as concerns about public opposition so close to the midterm elections.

A new ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that 80% of Americans, including 64% of Republicans, opposed livestreaming Hasan’s execution. Vice President JD Vance said he would not watch the execution if it were livestreamed. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis called the plan “beyond disgusting,” while Rep. Austin Scott said that livestreaming executions is what jihadists do.

The backlash worked. But interpreting Trump’s reversal as a change of heart would be a serious error.

Trump did not suddenly develop a conscience or deeply rooted moral objections to the death penalty. His attraction to violence has not changed, and he continues to express support for executions by firing squad.

At a rally in Bullhead City, Arizona, on Wednesday, Trump said that people who “leak” information to news organizations should be shot. He then attacked journalists, saying they are “almost as bad” as leakers because “they leak false information. That makes them a leaker, right?”

Trump also shared videos on Wednesday showing tigers and other animals mauling people. One showed William Chapman, a former child actor, being mauled to death by a tiger the previous Saturday after entering the animal’s enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park in the United Kingdom. The footage ends with the words, “Don’t ever mess with nature! President DJT.” Chapman’s family told reporters that he had struggled with mental illness.

Trump later posted an AI-generated video showing himself frolicking and play-fighting with the same tiger that attacked Chapman. In the video, Trump mimics a gesture Chapman made while the tiger was attacking him. The video ends with Trump and the tiger hugging. The apparent message was that Trump wants to be seen as a predator respected even by tigers.

Trump also shared a social-media video depicting people presumed to be “illegal aliens” being placed on deportation flights and sent to foreign prisons, including CECOT, the notorious mega-prison in El Salvador where detainees have been subjected to torture and other extreme abuse. The caption read: “This is where we send our killers, drug dealers, and thugs.” Trump did not specify whether the people shown in the videos were “illegal aliens.” He has also said he would “love” to send violent American criminals to CECOT and other foreign prisons.

In an email about Hasan’s proposed public execution, psychiatrist Bandy Lee, editor of the book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump and one of the world’s leading experts on violence, expressed concern about what she described as Trump’s apparently intensifying attraction to violence and worsening pathology:

Live-streamed public executions by firing squads may seem like shocking new violence, but they are the exact extension of the president's dangerous mindset we have been warning against. The lack of love in childhood that had translated into the need for adulation of crowds, has now transformed into the need to instill fear and terror.

The announcement of Hasan’s public execution prompted familiar reactions during the long Age of Trump: “This is not who we are!” “Enough is enough!” and “This is shocking! Even for Donald Trump.” Relief at Trump’s reversal, however, risks reinforcing denial, naivete and complacency.

The United States is a profoundly violent country. It was founded on the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Black people. The country has been at war or in a state of armed conflict for most of its existence and is currently fighting an undeclared war against Iran. Trump has repeatedly threatened to annihilate Iran and its people. Carrying out that threat could constitute a crime against humanity and genocide.

The Equal Justice Initiative’s landmark report estimates that at least 4,400 Black Americans were lynched between the end of Reconstruction and 1950. The report describes that figure as a low estimate. Some historians and other experts place the number of Black Americans killed by White racial violence during that period in the tens of thousands.

The United States is also awash in guns, with more firearms than people. It is one of the few countries where schoolchildren routinely practice hiding from mass shooters. Rather than treating gun violence as a public-health emergency—nearly 50,000 people died from firearm injuries in 2023—American leaders respond with empty “hopes and prayers.”

Popular culture is also rife with violence. Public-health experts estimate that by age 18, the average American child has seen approximately 200,000 acts of violence on television alone.

Why a public execution?

A public execution of Hasan would have done more than punish a convicted mass murderer. It would have intimidated and emotionally trained Americans to become ideal authoritarian subjects.

Lee warned that, “far from deterring crime, such a [public execution] by the Trump administration will actually accelerate crime, as it weaponizes state power into an instrument of coercive social control.”

She added:

The performative spectacle of power will also dismantle norms by demonstrating very graphically that it can subvert any existing order, as well as strip its "victims" of any dignity by subjecting them to barbaric, dehumanizing treatment.

It traumatizes and desensitizes the general population, while those who already have a violent mindset or traumatic psychology will be further prepared for orgies of violence, either by engaging in them, permitting them through identification with the aggressor, or retreating into total submission and learned helplessness.

I have continued to emphasize that there will be no end to this spiral of violence, until external restraints are applied. It is time we recognize that an intervention is necessary, and that none of us will be safe until all are safe.

Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a leading expert on fascism, echoed Lee’s warnings in a social-media post about the logic behind the administration’s proposal to execute Hasan publicly:

This is an escalation of an attempt to normalize extreme violence, ritualize violence, militarize the country, and make violence entertaining so when they ask you to commit violence in their name, you will be ready.

Ben-Ghiat also wrote:

As I warned in a previous essay, by supporting Trump, tens of millions of Americans have chosen to define deviancy down and, in doing so, have elevated fascism, authoritarianism, and other antihuman forces that imperil the safety and future of the United States and the world.

Beyond the debate over capital punishment, the proposal to publicly execute Hasan remains a symbolic warning about how degraded American politics and culture have become during the Age of Trump.

Trump ultimately decided not to broadcast Hasan’s execution. That decision was not an act of conscience or nobility, but a political calculation. The boundary between what is acceptable and what is unthinkable was tested again. It held, but only because maintaining it became politically costly. The fascist tide continues to rise, but in this case public disgust held it back.

Chauncey DeVega is a politics and opinion writer whose work examines American democracy, inequality, political power, and the continuing significance of race in American society and the wider world. He was formerly a senior politics writer at Salon. His essays and commentary have been cited by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the BBC, NPR, The Atlantic and other leading publications. He hosts two podcasts, The Chauncey DeVega Show and The Truth Report.

Source: Alternet