In 2018, Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to be an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Kavanaugh’s confirmation process was contentious, because he was accused of having sexually abused a woman named Christine Blasey Ford when he was a teenager. Kavanaugh responded angrily to the accusations, and conservatives insisted he was being smeared by Democrats for political reasons. As we showed in this magazine, Kavanaugh’s rebuttal to the charges was full of inconsistencies and outright lies, which Senate Democrats failed to press him on. There was, however, a huge amount of discussion of Blasey Ford’s accusations in the press. 

There was less discussion of Kavanaugh’s actual jurisprudence. In fact, some liberal supporters of Kavanaugh insisted that because he was intelligent and studious, he was qualified for the Court, with the only unsettled issue being the accusation by Blasey Ford. It was debated whether Kavanaugh deliberately selected attractive female clerks, or whether he was a supportive mentor to women. Certainly his past behavior toward women was highly relevant, particularly in light of the Blasey Ford allegation. The problem was that, even among Senate Democrats, few seemed interested in Kavanaugh’s horrendous record as a judge, including cases in which he immunized torturers from accountability and undermined labor unions in favor of corporations. (When I wrote that Kavanaugh was clearly lying about basic facts concerning the Blasey Ford accusation, I was invited on NPR. When I wrote a long exposé of his horrific court decisions, hardly anyone read it.) It seemed to me at the time that many liberals saw something they describe as character as more important than ideology, even though ideology can have far more serious implications. As Jay Willis put it in a debunking of the “liberal case” for Kavanaugh, they are part of an elite political world that “prioritize[s] comity and civility over the real-world implications of its work.”

I was reminded of the frustrating, narrow debate over Kavanaugh in the discussions around Pete Hegseth, who has now been sworn in as Trump’s Secretary of Defense. As with Kavanaugh, Hegseth was accused of being abusive to women. (His own mother once called him “an abuser of women,” although she retracted her judgment in a recent interview and says she regretted it soon after making it.) There have been numerous accounts of his poor behavior, from getting dragged out of a strip club in uniform while drunk to squandering the funds of two nonprofits he ran (one pro-war and one pro-privatization of the VA). At one he is alleged to have "treated the organization funds like they were a personal expense account," and even Republican insiders were concerned about his “frequent public intoxication, poor leadership and the toxic work climate he fostered within the organization.” Hegseth paid a $50,000 settlement to a woman who accused him of rape, and his former sister-in-law says he was so terrifying that his wife had to develop an “escape plan” complete with a codeword in case he got out of hand. 

These are very serious accusations, although it’s not clear how the Senate should evaluate accusations that have never been put before a jury. I can see why these lurid and disturbing stories predominated in coverage of Hegseth’s nomination. But let’s be clear: this atrocious behavior is just one reason that Hegseth should not have been made the Secretary of Defense. An even more important reason that he should not be Secretary of Defense is that his political beliefs are likely to contribute to atrocities and aggressive war. A person accused of being an abuser and having alcohol problems who also had “benign” beliefs might not do much damage to the world at large in a government post, although the people around them will certainly be affected. Hegseth, however, holds Nazi-like views on Muslims. He makes Donald Rumsfeld look like Mahatma Gandhi. He should not be anywhere near power, even if every single one of the behavioral allegations against him was proven conclusively false.

First, Pete Hegseth is a rancid bigot whose “clash of civilizations” view of humanity will sanction aggressive warfare against the Muslim world. It is fair to say that if Hegseth said any of the things about Judaism that he says about Islam, it would be transparently obvious that he held neo-Nazi beliefs that could easily justify genocide. But there is a double standard on the treatment of the two religions, so that one can get away with horrific comments about Muslims that would (rightly) be career-ruining if spoken about Jewish people. He specifically says that the very presence of Muslims in a society is harmful: 

“Islam itself is not compatible with Western forms of government. [Some] countries want to stay free, so they are fighting like hell to block Islam’s spread. In this age, it’s incredibly difficult to remain clear-eyed about the fact that some ideas for society are better than others. And that is where the real fight lives.”

While he cursorily acknowledges the existence of “moderate” Islam (“When appropriate, I am careful to separate individual moderate Muslims from the radical element”), he says that ordinary, non-jihadist Muslims are essentially misinterpreting their own religion, because “the real heart of Islam is much closer to Islamists than to moderates.” He usually uses the term “Islamism” rather than Islam, but repeatedly makes clear that the distinction is essentially unimportant: 

• “Esmat is a Muslim, not an Islamist. To him it’s a big difference, but in the larger scheme, the distinction becomes less important. 

• “ Moderate Muslims are battling not just the Islamists but also the bulk of Islamic theology, history, and traditions…  the real heart of Islam is much closer to Islamists than to moderates.”

• “Islam—the fastest-growing religion in the world—is almost entirely captured and leveraged by Islamists who believe that their mission is the same as their founder’s. Muhammad led armies, enslaved or killed his opponents, and sought to conquer everyone else. Modern Islamists, of course, have the same goal.”

• “Islam and Islamism are two branches of the same theological tree. Islamism is a widespread interpretation of Islam that draws on the text of the Muslims’ holy book, the Quran, which tells the story of a leader who, empowered by his god, spread the Islamic faith by subjugation and the sword. This is a fact, whether it makes you uncomfortable or not.”

• “Millions of Muslims have joined modernity and choose to live peacefully; but they do so by disregarding intolerant and violent quranic passages that are no less authoritative today than they were a thousand years ago. Islamists choose to interpret the Quran as it is written, not as modernity tries to edit it.” 

So Hegseth is clear: the very presence of Muslims in the United States is a problem, regardless of their interpretation of their faith or their behavior. “The United Kingdom is done for,” he says, citing the fact that many cities now have Muslim mayors. “The British were invaded, and they didn’t even know it.” As “Muslims’ birth rates have grown,” countries that permit Muslim immigration are being destroyed, because they have “import[ed] unskilled, noncontributing Islamist throngs from the Middle East.” The U.S., he says, is next. “Just like the Christian crusaders who pushed back the Muslim hordes in the twelfth century, American Crusaders will need to muster the same courage against Islamists today.” He thinks those who “ “balk at Muslim immigration bans or moratoriums” are deluded: “The ‘Islam = Peace’ narrative is a naive and cowardly worldview, because the alternative is confronting the reality of a threat that’s almost too scary to fathom.” The very fact that the U.S. lets Muslims hold elected office shows we are falling prey to the “cultural invasion”: “In November 2019, twenty-six Muslim candidates won elected office in the United States. Muhammad is now a top ten boys’ name in America—what will it be in 2030?” (Quotations are from his books American Crusade and The War on Warriors.) 

Again, it is instructive to think about how Hegseth’s statements would sound if applied to other groups. First, we can see how absurd his logic about fundamentalism being the correct interpretation of Islam is just by applying his reasoning to Christianity: “Millions of [Christians] have joined modernity and choose to live peacefully; but they do so by disregarding intolerant and violent [Old Testament] passages that are no less authoritative today than they were a thousand years ago. [Christian fundamentalists] choose to interpret the [Bible] as it is written, not as modernity tries to edit it.” Of course, Hegseth might accept that the Bible’s sanction of genocide, slavery, and the subjugation of women is theologically authoritative, but would he accept that this proves Christians are a threat and that all peace-loving Christians are a “Trojan horse”? 

But look how Nazi-like Hegseth’s statements are. Imagine calling Jews a “Trojan horse,” or pointing to the number of Jews in elected office as proof the country is being invaded. Imagine dismissing the fact that Jews do not enslave people by pointing to Torah passages and saying that they should be enslavers, and are probably plotting as we speak. These would sound like deranged ravings out of Mein Kampf. How is this any different? (And if you think Hegseth’s own statements are bad, he also supported the 2022 congressional campaign of Laura Loomer, a “proud Islamophobe” and white nationalist who thinks Muslims are a “cancer” and “savages” and whose response to the massacre of Muslim worshipers in Christchurch, New Zealand was, “Nobody cares about Christchurch.”) 

Now, Hegseth might say that his bigotry is different because it happens to be true, and Islam is different from Judaism. But Hegseth’s American Crusade does not actually provide evidence that ordinary Muslims are extremists bent on undoing the fabric of our culture. Consider how he discusses questions of proof: 

“Islamism in Europe, aided by willfully blind leftists, is creating de facto ‘no-go zones’ for infidels. Leftists say that this is a lie, but they are in denial of what is happening on their streets. They also won’t look at the available counterevidence: all modern Muslim countries are either formal or de facto no-go zones for practicing Christians and Jews.”

So: he asserts that Islamism is creating “no-go zones” in Europe. Acknowledging that many people think this is a lie, he does not prove it is true, but simply adds another lie, which is that “all modern Muslim countries” are off limits to practicing Christians and Jews. (He does not discuss the Christian communities in Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Syria, nor does he acknowledge that there are Christian churches in Hamas-governed Gaza, and Palestinian Christians have been victims of Israel’s attacks. These facts make the world complicated and thus Hegseth must ignore them.)

Hegseth has an essentially unfalsifiable view. America is part of a crusade. That crusade is Good versus Evil, Christians (and their Jewish partners) versus Muslims. No number of actually-existing peaceful Muslims can dissuade Hegseth that he is on a divine mission to stop the invading hordes. He lives in a fantasy world. 

What’s so frightening is that this worldview could easily justify genocide. If you think that Muslims are an invading horde, if you think that it is either kill or be killed because the enemy is remorseless, if you think the problem is an entire people and not just a fringe minority within that group, if you think that the laws of war should be set aside (as Hegseth does, see below), then it is easy to see how you could end up justifying the most heinous atrocities. Certainly, it’s clear that Hegseth thinks Muslims essentially need to be persecuted, kept from immigrating to the U.S., and kept from elected office. That’s not “Final Solution” rhetoric (although there are accounts of Hegseth getting drunk and chanting “Kill All Muslims!”), but even Nazis did not begin with the “Final Solution.” The path to the Holocaust started with characterizing Jews as an internal enemy. It started with precisely the kind of rhetoric Hegseth uses. Hegseth writes in American Crusade: 

I realized that perhaps my planetary purpose was to proactively, politically, and then militarily destroy Islamist radicals. Feeding a well-oiled killing machine, now that’s my jam.

Remember that when Hegseth says “Islamist radicals,” he thinks Islamist radicalism is inherent to Islam. Again, if we substitute phrases like “Jewish radicals,” we can see that this kind of violent rhetoric is precisely comparable to what appears in Hitler’s diatribes. 

Hegseth’s views on Islam and Muslims are bad enough. But it gets worse. Any actions he takes against his enemy will likely be unrestrained by international law, because Hegseth has also expressed open contempt for the laws of war. In his book American Crusade, he recalls telling his platoon to disregard the rules of engagement after they had been explained by a military attorney. “I will not allow that nonsense to filter into your brains,” he said. “Men, if you see an enemy who you believe is a threat, you engage and destroy the threat.” Hegseth believes that it’s absurd to try to even try to apply rules and laws during war, because war is “the terrible reality that exists when all law and order has broken down, and the only thing left is force. In that time, the goal must be winning—and reality. Not public relations.” Speaking of Allied atrocities like the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hegseth’s verdict is: “They won. Who cares.” 

Hegseth sees the Geneva Conventions as tying America’s hands and thinks that the United States should simply disregard them: “If our warriors are forced to follow rules arbitrarily and asked to sacrifice more lives so that international tribunals feel better about themselves, aren't we just better off winning our wars according to our own rules?!" Hegseth says that our message to Al Qaeda, for instance, should be that unless we are met with unconditional surrender, “we will rip your arms off and feed them to hogs.” (Of course, given Hegseth’s blurring of the line between ordinary Muslims and Al Qaeda terrorists, this would probably result in a lot of innocent people having their arms fed to hogs.) On his Fox News show, Hegseth has defended the actions of, for example, Blackwater contractors who killed Iraqi civilians, and he repeatedly encouraged Trump to pardon convicted war criminals like Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher during Trump’s first term. In his book, Hegseth even implies that when he was in Iraq, a member of his unit conducted torture on a detainee, with Hegseth’s full approval. (“A couple of the names and identification matched our target lists. Now we needed them to sing. First sergeant Geressy earned all the rope and latitude he demanded. He did some ‘on-site interrogation’ [quotation marks in original] and one of the men tossed up a name and address down the road.”) One former U.S. major general has said that it’s a major problem to have someone who has “condoned murder and execution” in a position of ethical responsibility. (Hegseth’s lawyer has said that he is “not in any way advocating that anybody not follow the Law of Armed Conflict,” but this is precisely what Hegseth advocates in his writings.) 

It’s alarming to have a person like this in charge of the Department of Defense, because one of the secretary’s jobs is to ensure compliance with the laws of war. Unfortunately, the Department of Defense’s process for investigating potential war crimes is broken, so it’s a terrible moment to have a Secretary of Defense who doesn’t believe war crimes are real or should be prevented. The implications become downright horrifying when we pair Hegseth’s belief in the unrestrained use of violence to accomplish American objectives with his belief that Muslims are dangerous invaders who must be aggressively fought in an epic battle for the soul of civilization. 

Now, interestingly, one chapter of Hegseth’s book contains a rather telling admission. Hegseth says that when he came back from Iraq, he was drinking to excess and felt purposeless. War had given him meaning. His crusade was able to fill the gaping hole in his life.

“There is a reason many soldiers who come back from combat become depressed. I did. I drank way too much and didn’t want to leave the couch. It’s often because when veterans come back to a modern society that’s largely purposeless, they cannot find the sense of meaning and brotherhood that fulfilled and sustained them on the battlefield. It’s understandable for all the reasons this book has outlined: our culture is becoming distracted, shallow, and trivial. However, when you get back to first principles, love the people around you, and love the pursuit of a cause that’s bigger than you, it sets you back onto a ‘deployment’ mind-set. You’re back on the battlefield, here at home, with people you love and a clear sense of purpose… I believed in the mission we had in Iraq and loved the daily grind. It was purposeful, focused, and fulfilling. Thankfully, I was able—eventually—to find similar arenas on this side of the pond. The American Crusade, with President Trump as our leader, is a pitch-perfect way to kindle or rekindle a mission greater than ourselves: the mission of America.”

We can see here evidence that Hegseth is unlikely to have his eyes opened, to see that his view of the world is fundamentally warped. The meaning of his life is wrapped up in this “crusade.” It keeps him from drinking! In passages like this, Hegseth comes across as an angry, troubled, and broken person. The accounts of his personal behavior certainly seem consistent with that conclusion. Hegseth appears to have suffered from PTSD after returning from Iraq, and I am sympathetic to his account of struggling to return to civilian life. But there is no justification for becoming a bigoted fanatic. 

Nor are Hegseth’s violent fantasies abstract. He has advocated various acts of aggressive warfare that would be in direct violation of the U.N. charter and would plunge the U.S. into a major conflict. He has, for instance, said there’s “merit” in the idea of launching a “decisive” preemptive strike against North Korea, and he claims without evidence that “cultural sites” in Iran are used to hide nuclear material and should be “on the target list” for bombing. He is, predictably, rabidly pro-Israel, although his peculiar description of Jews serves as an exhibit on how it is possible for Christians to be both extremely pro-Zionist and a little anti-Semitic at the same time: “If you read the Bible, you know that the Jewish people are far from perfect. God makes that abundantly clear. But God also stands with the people of Israel against their enemies and blesses those who bless Israel (Genesis 12:1–3).”

 Hegseth admits the Iraq war did not accomplish much, but his pivot seems to have occurred because Donald Trump condemned the war. He quickly pivots to condemning the Left: “as we look back on twenty years of war, perhaps the biggest mistake wasn’t opening a second front in the Middle East. It was ignoring the third front that the Left opened at home…”

That idea—of everything being oriented around a giant war—is at the heart of Hegseth’s worldview. He is paranoid and sees bogeymen everywhere. “Citizens of this country cannot naively hope that oceans will hold back the cultural invasion. The invasion is not just at our shore, it’s in your community and schools.” Even if you don’t think it is in your schools, even if you have never seen evidence, rest assured, it is there, lurking. Islamists and Leftists are coming to kill everything, and we must battle them by any means necessary. He insists repeatedly that he does not condone violence, but at one point he includes the ominous caveat “yet”: 

• For decades, the United States has been lured into a giant L-shaped near ambush—the most deadly kind, with almost no escape. In more ways than you can imagine, leftists have surrounded traditional American patriots on all sides, ready to close in for the kill: killing our founders, killing our flag, and killing capitalism. The only option for survival in a near ambush is to charge; to close with, and destroy, the enemy. Now, while President Trump gives us cover fire, is our moment to reload, fix bayonets, and charge toward the enemy. Attack! (Metaphorically, of course, for triggered bed wetters.) Only that way, by regaining the initiative and closing with an exposed enemy, will we be able to survive, let alone win.”
• “Our American Crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet. Until our crusader in chief, Donald Trump, showed up, our leaders were not seriously confronting the leftist invasion. Yes, voting is a weapon, but it’s not enough. We cannot outsource or delegate our crusade. Arm yourself—metaphorically, intellectually, and physically. This is, by the way, why the Second Amendment exists. Let me repeat—slowly—for the benefit of leftist readers: I am not advocating any sort of violence in this book. The American Crusade is a war against destructive ideas. We are not calling for violence. I am saying that our founders would have compelled you to be prepared, because the clash is ongoing and only going to get nastier. We didn’t start this war. But we must win it.”

This is violent paranoid delusion. Pete Hegseth sounds like he is in need of clinical care. Instead, he has been put in charge of the Defense Department. 

Hegseth’s books are full of other material demonstrating that he’s on the very fringes of the far right. Despite being an alumnus of Harvard and Princeton (like so many other “populist” right-wingers), he attacks college as an institution, going so far as to say that “if you financially support your alma mater—or that of your kids—you are funding the enemy.” He thinks social studies is a fake subject (“Sadly, even the vast majority of conventional Christian schools have latched on to subjects like ‘social studies,’” a line that wouldn’t be out of place in my parody of anti-woke books, The Silencing of Me), and he has written a book on how to return to a classical Christian education. Predictably, he detests public schools, even though he admits that, to his shame, several of his children attend them. In fact, he says that if you think your child’s public school is actually good, as many parents do, then you are wrong: 

“It’s not my school.” If you find yourself saying that, you, my friend, are lying to yourself. A lot of people assume that the bad schools are those “other” schools—inner-city schools, rural schools, underfunded schools. But the problem is your school.

 He comes out in favor of bullying children, suggesting that when schools try to eliminate bullying, they destroy a useful source of character-building. (“I was bullied, probably for good reason, actually, and I had to deal with it—learning from the fear…”) He dreams of a world in which “Abortion will finally and forever be illegal and our government schools either abandoned or fully transformed.” He is, you will not be surprised to learn, anti-union: “The Left had their ‘defund the police’ movement—we should have our ‘defund the unions’ movement.” Hegseth is anti-democracy, saying that Republicans should make it more difficult to vote (some on the right are already working on this) and should engage in gerrymandering in order to rig the political system against Democrats. His motto for the fight is that conservatives should “disdain, despise, detest, distrust.”

On every subject he discusses, Hegseth demonstrates wilful ignorance. Here’s how he deals with the evidence of catastrophic climate change: “I don’t see ‘the data’ on global warming that everyone is clucking about. Where can I find ‘the science’? At the United Nations? Yeah, right, I trust those guys—they don’t have an agenda at all! It’s a sincere question, and we should ask more such questions more often.” Well, one place you can find the science is in the Fourth National Climate Assessment released by the Trump administration itself in 2018, which warned that “In the absence of significant global mitigation action and regional adaptation efforts, rising temperatures, sea level rise, and changes in extreme events are expected to increasingly disrupt and damage critical infrastructure and property, labor productivity, and the vitality of our communities.” (Donald Trump waved away the report with a simple: “I don’t believe it.”) 

Hegseth has received a lot of criticism for his stance on women in the military: he’s against them. “Our military runs on masculinity,” he writes. “Moms put the training wheels on our bikes. We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.” “Do we want women to become killers?” he asks.

 “Women are life givers, regardless of what the abortion industry might want us to think. This role was embedded in human beings and was one of the clear reasons why the only, even mythologically articulated, successful women in combat narratives involve separatist societies of nonchildbearing women who live apart from men. To create a society of warrior women you must separate them first from men, and then from the natural purposes of their core instincts.” 

He informs readers that “he two most famous females in the so-called War on Terror were a victim [Jessica Lynch] and a criminal [Lynndie England].” His book The War on Warriors is in part an attack on the American military brass itself, which he claims has invited a “freak squad” of women and transgender people to participate in the country’s defense. You will not be surprised to learn that Hegseth believes wokeness, women, and DEI have destroyed America’s combat readiness. 

I must reiterate my extreme frustration with those who have focused solely on Hegseth’s “character,” when it is his views that could do the most damage. We are not talking about theories in a political philosophy class: Hegseth has just been put in charge of the Department of Defense! He is overseeing the very “well-oiled killing machine” that he was proud to be a part of. He has the ear of the president. The choices made by this administration will determine whether many millions of people live or die. Donald Trump has just floated a plan to fully ethnically cleanse Gaza and drive its Palestinian population into the surrounding Arab countries, after which presumably he will build a Trump hotel in Israel’s newest beachfront resort. The threat of wars with Iran and North Korea, so easy to make flippantly on Fox News, becomes alarmingly real when made by the head of the agency responsible for overseeing war. (In fact, Hegseth believes that the Department of Defense should be renamed the Department of War, a suggestion I actually agree with since it would be more honest about the agency’s function.) 

Jon Favreau of Pod Save America has lamented that “Republicans voted to make a weekend Fox and Friends host with a drinking problem the Secretary of Defense.” Lisa Murkowski, explaining why she voted against Hegseth, cited “his lack of experience, concerns about his character and his past statements opposing women in combat.” But what about the fact that he thinks we should ditch international law and pursue a civilizational crusade against an Islamic menace? Not to overdo the Nazi comparisons, but if someone’s writings were dripping with antisemitism and talk of a civilizational battle against the Jewish menace, that would be the thing we would be discussing about them; it would not be reduced to some ancillary point that we mentioned after his alcohol problem! 

There is a disturbing norm in Washington that if you are credentialed and “decent”—whatever that means—then it’s okay for you to be a warmonger. (Even Bernie Sanders seems to believe some version of this, having voted to confirm his Senate colleague Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. Bernie’s office has not replied to a request for comment on why he voted for Rubio, who believes many of the same things Hegseth does about Iran, Gaza, and other global issues.) But those of us who have our priorities straight need to understand the real nature of the threat, which is that Pete Hegseth will be pushing Donald Trump to start a war with Iran. Donald Trump’s pretense of being “pro-peace” has always been a fraud, and his appointment of warmongers like Hegseth and Rubio make clear that his main problem with people like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo was that they were disloyal, not that they were pro-war. It is too late for us to stop Pete Hegseth’s appointment, but we can at the very least develop a clear understanding of the kind of danger we are in, which is not just the danger that Hegseth will drink in his office and make unwanted advances on female staff, as unsettling as those possibilities are. It is also the danger that he means what he says and intends to push the administration to pursue his lawless “crusade” against Muslims, leftists, transgender people, and anyone who does not subscribe to his brutal theocratic vision.