National Public Radio’s domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef, whose reporting solely sees extremism on the right, on Thursday filed “For some Christians, Hegseth’s plan for public execution fits a biblical mandate" on NPR.org, about the proposed idea of livestreaming the execution of Nidal Hasan, an Islamic terrorist who killed 14 people in 2009 at Fort Hood in Texas. It's an extended version of her Tuesday story on All Things Considered.
That aspect of the execution is now off the table, with President Trump posting Thursday that it would not be televised after all.
….whether or not the public execution proceeds, some religious scholars worry that damage has already been done.
"I think one of the most worrisome parts of this development is that … it pushes the boundaries of what's acceptable," said Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religion at the University of North Florida who specializes in the religious right and Christian Reconstruction. "Just saying it out loud moves the boundary."
Any professor who "specializes in the religious right" is a leftist. Give Yousef half a point for the phrase “violent Islamist extremist.”
The last time the U.S. government conducted a high-profile public execution was 90 years ago. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested that livestreaming Nidal Hasan's death by firing squad would deter future, similar attacks. Hasan, a former U.S. army major and violent Islamist extremist, killed 13 people and injured 32 in a 2009 attack at Fort Hood. His execution is set for Dec. 3.
Yet Yousef portrayed Hegseth’s proposal as not just unusual or outlandish but part of a sinister push to normalize Christian nationalism, while quoting a source smearing the Secretary of War in similar terms as terrorist Hasan.
"These are extreme ideas and these are extreme leaders, and I don't have a better way of phrasing it than to just note that Pete Hegseth is a religious extremist," said Matthew Taylor, a visiting scholar at the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University. "He holds ideas that are far outside the mainstream. He is trying to implement those ideas within the U.S. military structure within the Pentagon."
Taylor is a common source for PBS and other outlets aiming to label various conservatives as religious extremists.
Hegseth's announcement of a livestreamed execution elicited reactions of disgust and condemnation from some faith leaders and politicians....Taylor said he believes Hegseth's idea represents "an outlier position within American Christianity," including, he said, within right-wing Christianity.
Yousef even suggested Islamophobia was the reason an Islamic terrorist might be executed for all to see.
But some are also asking whether Hasan's religion may partly account for a public proposal that is, to many Americans, abhorrent....Ingersoll said that the CREC goal to enact Christian governance, and Hegseth's own apparent animus toward Islam, are key factors in this discussion.
Taylor wasn’t done:
"What Hegseth is trying to do is consolidate the military around a particular ideology – an ideology of Christian nationalism, an ideology of Christian supremacy, an ideology of Western supremacy, that also has racial undertones and patriarchal and misogynistic undertones and anti-LGBTQ undertones," he said.
Yousef’s disinterest in left-wing extremism was unwittingly displayed:
But the idea of reviving public executions has, in fact, been openly discussed in more mainstream rightwing circles, beyond the CREC. In a 2024 podcast, the late hard-right activist Charlie Kirk argued in favor of it, saying, "It should be public, it should be quick, it should be televised." Kirk even suggested that large corporations might underwrite the televising of executions to raise money for public coffers.
The cruel irony unmentioned by Yousef is that many leftists who rejoiced in spreading clips of Kirk’s public assassination by a fellow leftist are now hypocritically decrying the proposed televised execution of a mass murderer. Yousef wrote a ridiculous story on Kirk’s assassination that blamed the right-wing for using the murder as an excuse to invent doxxing of political opponents.
Liberal journalists are suddenly concerned about the country’s “moral fiber.”
Amidst all the discussion, Salaam said it is important also to reflect on the potential damage that public executions do to the moral fiber of the country.
Perhaps the real atrocity here is not a televised execution, but how Hasan’s public threats were kept quiet at the time over fears of being accused of Islamophobia, and how it’s taken 17 years to finally execute the terrorist.
