the war rhetoric of Pete Hegseth, head of the Pentagon, raises criticism in the US

Few in the US were surprised: the public already knew the Hegseth’s bravado and aggressive rhetoric from his time as a commentator in Fox News. His extremist positions, described in his book American Crusadethey had brought him closer to Donald Trump’s MAGA (‘Make America Great Again’) movement. But the bombings against alleged drug traffickers’ boats, denying them the right to help, made it clear that they were not just bravado.

Operation ‘Epic Fury’ has brought this knife style to a paroxysm. Hegseth’s press conferences, full of boasting, hyperbole and contempt for International Law, shock analysts accustomed to the Pentagon’s neutral military language. “Glorify violence is a baseness for a member of the US Government,” condemned former military officer and professor Rachel VanLandingham in he Financial Times.

The way to talk about war is “dismissive, offensive and degrading“continues the analyst, who compares Hegseth to a “macho” who “beats his chest.” Gestures such as reproaching the media for featuring deceased American soldiers on the cover because “They make President Trump look bad“They have raised blisters.

Hegseth’s bad relationship with the press goes back a long way. The new restrictions imposed on the information about the Army led to major media correspondents losing access to the Pentagon. Collaboration programs with Harvard or climate change research have been canceled because they were considered woke (‘progressives’). And he has tried to take his critics such as Congressman Mark Kelly, a military man and astronaut, to court.

This volcanic character would have disqualified him from public office under any other president. Accusations of sexual assault, alcoholism, several cases of adultery that go poorly with his defense of the traditional family… His position hung by a thread after he leaked attack plans against Yemen’s Houthis in a Signal chat. Trump forgave him, and since then Hegseth has been one of his unconditional spokespersons.

War seen as a video game

Trump’s turn, who promised not to involve the US in any new war, has shocked many within the MAGA universe. For Hegseth, it has been a liberation. In his first press conference on ‘Epic Fury’, he exultantly stated that the Iranians “They were fried“, that they would “hit them when they are down, as they should be,” and that the rules of engagement “were stupid“.

Regarding the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the head of the Pentagon boasted that Trump “had had the last laugh,” alluding to the alleged Iranian assassination plans. He dismissed questions about whether Russia was collaborating in targeting Uran, saying that “the only ones who need to worry are the Iranians who they think they are going to live“.

At the same time, the Pentagon and the White House have deployed a hodgepodge of communications on social networks that mix religionvideo games and war movies like Call of Duty y Top Guny memes childish with characters like Pokémon as protagonists. All this watered down with American exceptionalism: before the Latin American leaders gathered for the signing of the ‘Shield of America’, Hegseth boasted of “speaking only American.”

It is a mixture of “arrogance in tone, hypermasculine concern for the concept of domination, trivialization of violence and vulgarization of death”, analiza Casey Ryan Kellyprofessor of Communication Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (USA), and one of the experts in ‘MAGA language’.

Hegseth, who served in the Army, “speaks to the public like a squad commander would do it with his recruits“explains the expert. “Apparently he enjoys causing casualties and glorifying war. He doesn’t talk about anything other than ‘winning’ when it comes to long-term strategy. In the MAGA world, winning is everything. And by inference, the war is a test of masculinity“.

Kelly thus illustrates the phenomenon of “media hypermasculinity“that dominates the discourse of the extreme right, and how it is transferred to the communication about the war that is angering many in the US and the rest of the world. “At the moment when we most needed explanations, the powerful let us know that They don’t owe us any“.