Hegseth And Trump Announce Plan To Use US Military To Defend Christianity Against American Dissidents

In speeches before the top officers of the US military, Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump used Christian Nationalism to justify US military attacks against American civilians.

Shortly beforehand, Donald Trump issued an order categorizing hostility toward Christianity as a form of terrorism.

Full Transcript:

Welcome to Stop Christian Nationalism, a podcast that is dedicated to resistance, to the effort to transform the United States of America from a democracy into a Christian fascist theocracy. This is no longer just something in theory that could happen. It's happening right now.

The Christian Nationalism was exemplified yesterday in a speech by the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, and a subsequent speech by Donald Trump.

The context of these speeches is that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump ordered all of the top officers from the U.S. Military, all of the branches, no matter where they were in the world to come back to to the United States, to be in one room, to listen to Hegseth and Trump talk. Boy, they said a lot of things.

I want to focus on just a couple of things that they talked about. So, first of all, they brought up God and Jesus and the Bible and prayer.

It's a funny thing because part of the speech that Hegseth was making was to point out that the Department of Defense is no longer going to be the Department of Defense. It's going to be the Department of War.

Hegseth explicitly said that the people in the Department of War, the people in the U.S. Military, their purpose now is to kill, and then he quoted Jesus, saying that you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It really doesn't make sense.

I want you to listen to people Pete Heseth's words for yourself.

“Would I want my eldest son eventually joining the types of formations that we are currently wielding?

If in any way, the answer to that is no, or even yes but, then we're doing something wrong, because my son is no more important than any other American citizen who dons the cloth of our nation. He is no more important than your son, all precious souls made in the image and likeness of God. Every parent deserves to know that their son or their daughter that joins our ranks is entering exactly the kind of unit, that the Secretary of War would want his son to join.

Think of it as the golden rule test. Jesus said, do unto others, that what you would have done unto yourself.

We fight to win. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy.

We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our war fighters, to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill, the enemies of our country.

No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality, and authority for war fighters.

Well, today is another liberation day, the liberation of America's warriors, in name, in deed, and in authorities.

You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don't necessarily belong always in polite society.”

If you are a person who knows how to think, and doesn't just do whatever you're ordered to do by people in authority, then listening to Pete Hegseth say these things leaves you shaking your head, wondering what the hell he's talking about.

What is he thinking about?

He says that Jesus told us that we should do unto others as we would want done unto ourselves.

He's saying this to a bunch of military officers, though. Then he's bragging that the officers are excellent killers. They're killers. They break things. They demoralize people.

Is that what you want done to yourself?

No, that's not what most people want done to themselves.

I have a lot of problems with some of the things that Jesus said in the Bible, but I don't think that's what was meant in that particular line, that you should demoralize and abuse and kill people in the way that you want to be demoralized, killed, and abused.

Actually, the context of what Pete Hegseth was talking about, there was just physical fitness. Physical fitness, that he wants all of his soldiers to go to the gym a lot.

And that's what he was talking about with his son. I want my son to be in a platoon where everybody's going to be in good physical condition, Hegseth said. Hegseth thinks that's what Jesus meant when he said to do unto others what you would have done to yourself.

He thinks it means that you should have soldiers who kill and beat up and break things and demoralize people be in really good physical condition to do that.

I hope you took note of some of the other promises that he made in this context of a Christian military and army with a warrior ethos of Christianity inspired by Jesus.

There will be no more laws of war, no more pesky rules of engagement. The U.S. Military will follow orders and they will kill, and they will do whatever the hell they want to do.

No more Geneva Conventions.

If they want to kill civilians, that's exactly what they will do. I want you to consider that in context with what you're going to hear Donald Trump say.

Donald Trump is, like Pete Hegseth, not a great public speaker, but he has a different kind of bad speaking style. He rambles a lot, but he also tends to reveal what it is that he really intends to do.

And, you know, long gone are the days when some people said, oh, you just can't take Donald Trump literally. They told us to take Trump seriously, but not literally, and they lectured that those of us who were warning about the coming of a fascist America under Donald Trump, we were just, you know, blowing things up out of proportion.

Well, we now have military troops in cities across the country to deal with problems that do not exist.

Donald Trump says that Portland, Oregon, is war ravaged, and that's why he has to send a military occupation force there, which he has said, by the way, will be engaging in full force against the residents of Portland, Oregon, because there's some kind of war going on there.

There is no war going on in Portland, Oregon.

Donald Trump is simply making that up. After Pete Hegseth spoke, here's what Donald Trump had to say.

"We will not be politically correct when it comes to defending American freedom, and we will be a fighting and winning machine we want to fight, we want to win. Last month, I signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances.

This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room because it's the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control. It won't get out of control, but I want to salute every service member who has helped us carry out this critical mission. It's really a very important mission.

And I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military.

As president, I will never hesitate to defend our people from threats of violence, from the horrible plague that's taking place from within. Our history is filled with military heroes who took at all enemies foreign and domestic.

You know that phrase very well. That's what the oath says: Foreign and domestic. Well, we have domestic.”

Right after Pete Hegseth declared that the U.S military is no longer going to be constrained by the laws of war, that the gloves are off and the military is going to do whatever it wants to con conduct lethal violence and humiliation and intimidation against all of its enemies, Donald Trump told us who the enemy is that the U.S. Military is going to be sent after: Enemies foreign and domestic.

Well, the United States is really not at war with any foreign enemies right now. Donald Trump is focused on his internal enemies. These are not enemies of the American people. These are the American people who he regards as his political opponents.

Trump uses the idea of a crime wave as an excuse. There is no crime wave going on.

Let's take a look at the most recent statistics of where the highest rates of crime are in the United States. These statistics come from 2023, and they show that the states with the highest rates of crime are New Mexico, Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee.

Those are Republican-controlled territories, unlike the cities of Chicago and Portland, Oregon.

Donald Trump, just a few days ago, issued a new national security memorandum in which he declared that Antifa is a terrorist organization.

This declaration took place in National Security Policy Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7. In that memo, he defines what Antifa, anti-fascism is. This is the idea that anti-fascismism, resistance to fascism, is now terrorism in the United States.

I'm going to quote from this memorandum, written by Donald Trump, quote,There are common recurrent motivations and uniting this pattern violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self described anti-fascism.

“These movements portray foundational American principles, for example, support for law enforcement and border control as fascist, to justify and encourage acts of violenceent revolution.

This anti-fascist lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fund amental American liberties.

Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti Americanism, anti capitalitalism, and anti Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United States government, extremism on migration, race, and gender, and hostility toward those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality."

In NSPM-7, Donald Trump is saying that people who don't like Christianity have formed violent terrorist organizations that must be suppressed.

Of course, Donald Trump says a lot of things. Donald Trump declared, for example, that when a few days ago, a Mormon church was attacked, four people were killed, many others were injured, and the church was set on fire, that this was an example of the kind of anti-Christian terrorism that he has been talking about.

What we have learned since is that the perpetrator of this attack was himself a Christian. Furthermore, he was a supporter of Donald Trump. He was a right-wing Christian nationalist.

This man photographed himself wearing t-shirts that said things like “Make liberals cry again / Donald Trump 2020.” He had Donald Trump campaign signs at the end of his own driveway. He declared himself that he didn't like Mormons because they did not submit themselves to the authority of Jesus, that he thought that the Mormon version of Christianity had Mormons placing themselves above Jesus.

This was an attack that was done in the name of Jesus. This was Christian nationalism, run amok.

Donald Trump uses that kind of attack by a Christian against other Christians who are not the right kind of Christian , as evidence of some kind of violent terrorist, anti Christian, anti fascist organization, that organizationization does not actually exist.

There is no widespread attack, violent or organized in any way against Christians in the United States of America.

Donald Trump is claiming that such an organization exists in order to justify military action against Americans, and Pete Hegseth was letting us know that when that military action against Americans who are exercising their First Amendment right to freedom from government establishment of religion, all the gloves will be off.

None of the rules, none of the laws of war, none of the legal restrictions of military action against American citizens will be recognized.

It's ironic that in the very same speech in which Donald Trump says that accusations of fascism against his government are a lie, he's actually engaging in fascist propaganda and fasc fascist policy.

One of the aspects of a fascist government is that it uses military force against its own citizens. That is what Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth announced yesterday.

Another aspect of fascism, classically, is that it fails to understand history, the lessons of history, or it creates a false history.

I want to end up working with a short statement that Pete Hegseth made, justifying the turn toward aggression, violence, and war, as positive symbols of Trump's fascist government.

He said that peace is something that only people who are willing to join the military deserve, and then he said this, about what makes war so important for society.

“Good morning, and welcome to the War Department, because the era of the Department of Defense is over. You see, the motto of my first platoon was: Those who long for peace must prepare for war. This is, of course, not a new idea. This crowd knows that. The origin dates to the fourth century Rome, and has been repeated ever since.”

It's worth looking back into history to see what other kinds of organizations, besides Pete Hagg Seth and Donald Trump's fascists of America today, have used this slogan, if you want peace, you must prepare prepare for war. One of them, infamously, was a business with with a name that we would translate into English as: The German Weapons and Munitions Public Limited Company.

This organization actually had that motto engraved on its guns that it made, artillery, machine guns, the Luger Pistol, infamously used by the Nazis. Not just by the Nazis, though. No, the Germans followed that motto: If you want peace, you must prepare for war.

In fact, factories, they had slaves making those guns. They had prisoners from concentration camps, forced laborers, who were later killed manufacturing those guns.

The Germans prepared for war, but they did not get peace. When you prepare for war, you get war.

That's what the lesson of the German Weapons and Munitions Public Limited Company shows us. They prepared for war, and they got the First World War, the first war in which we had trench warfare, machine guns, chemical weapons. Then, they got World War II.

They prepared for war, and they didn't get peace. They got war.

But as Pete Hegseth says, yes, this slogan does date back to the fourth century in the common era, in the in the Roman Empire.

What was the Roman Empire in the fourth century?

It was a Christian nationalist regime, and it was a failure. The Roman Empire, under its Christian nationalist emperors, crumbled. The fourth century of the common era is when the Roman Empire fell apart, under the motto, "If you want peace, you must prepare for war."

That is the last example that Americans should be following today.