10/13/26: Hegseth Floats Livestreamed Execution, Eugene Debs Lessons From The Grave

Turning now to the recent controversy over the execution of Nadal Hassan. He was the perpetrator of the Fort Hood terrorist attack in 2009. He has now worked his way through the judicial system in the United States military some 17 years later and is scheduled for execution. The news had broken earlier that Hassan would be executed by a firing squad at the order of Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense. But in a recent interview, he kicked off a firestorm where he says, that the entire execution will be live streamed. Here's what he had to say.

No brainer. execution by firing squad. Army major betrays his country. Radical Islamist kills a bunch of Americans at Fort Hood. Of course, we're going to do it at Fort Hood and do it on a Thursday. We're going to do it at one o'clock, which is when he did it. And it's going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad. It hadn't been since World War Two since we've done that. Well, I kind of like the mentality we had in World War Two, which was win, which was understand when the enemy attacks you, you stand your ground.

So it was radical Islamist terror attack. Remember what Obama called it? workplace violence i mean that's what we're up against that's the worldview we're up against is workplace violence cve we don't we know what it is it was a radical islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks and so he's going to get a firing squad of soldiers as it should be and we'll make sure that people are able to to watch it that it's public uh because people need to understand that this is a there's serious consequences for these types of things do you has major hassan made any uh final request reach out to the president anything like that to your knowledge.

Don't care We'll see him on December 3rd.

So all of that has now kicked off a political firestorm, both the vice president and the president now, you know, basically throwing a little bit of cold water on it. First was here from the vice president, who was like, I'm not so sure that's going to happen. If it does, I'm not going to be watching it. Let's take a listen.

Well, first of all, I've seen these announcements. I don't know if that's actually going to happen. Let's sort of see what... I think it's going to happen in December when he's executed. But what I try to remind people is, look, this is a guy who committed, in my view, the worst terrorist attack on American soil outside of 9-11. The people that he was meant to treat, the Army soldiers that he was meant to treat for mental illness and other problems... He took them at their most vulnerable and gunned down these people where they live. So whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don't forget that this is a guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people. Now, that said,

I mean, look, if it's ultimately live streamed, I'm not going to be watching it.

I'm not going to be watching it. Apparently, Trump himself, now having some questions, has put this up here on the screen. He says, behind the scenes, he's been calling people up and privately shared misgivings about the live streaming. has been deluged with negative input from the idea from a bipartisan chorus of lawmakers, as well as advisors inside and outside of the White House. It appears, Crystal, that Pete Hegseth was freelancing during this entire thing. Okay, so with all the news set up, I actually do feel like there's a lot to say about this. Is that, you know, there is a lot of baste and trad, you know, like, wow, this is awesome. This is public execution.

But let's put it in the context of where we are of the United States military. And let's also put it in the context of Major Assange, who himself, yes, is a terrorist, is a scum. He's also paraplegic and he's a 60-year-old man, right? And so I don't think there's any doubt, or at least I can say in my case, to say death penalty, I can understand that.

Even firing squad, especially for somebody who is himself, was in the uniform of the United States military and is subject to a different code of justice and law than the rest of us who are civilians. But to publicly live stream such a thing, and in particular, when you have Hegseth there, you know, standing on the deck of the United States Navy, talking about the mindset of World War Two, while we're in the midst of this disastrous war with Iran, it looks very much more like to me as an act of desperation. to show bigness and toughness and how awesome and based you are at a moment of genuine military defeat. And so when you put that all together, instead what you land on is this grotesque public spectacle, which is designed to shock. It is

the same thing of why people are drawn to these gory and horrific videos out of war zones. And it's the very same reason that totalitarian countries and barbaric societies that are remainders here in the world maintain public execution. Now, that said, for people like me, in my case, I'm a supporter of the death penalty. I can give the nuance here if we want to talk about it. There is a grappling, I think, that has to be had where it's like, oh, you want it to be medicalized and kind of behind the scenes. You don't want it in your face because then you'd have to grapple with the brutality. I think that's a fair argument. I'd be willing– to talk about it. But I think within the context of Hegseth himself, LARPing, kind of making this up literally

as he goes along to create this grand public spectacle, which he claims would be, you know, some sort of warning per se, that is not the context in which he is operating. And so I look at it as a tremendous, you know, real act of desperation for to shock to to be the base testosterone tight T-shirt guy at a time of literally losing a war while he himself is an idiot.

Yeah, I think that's all very well said, Sagar. And I'm not a supporter of the death penalty, but certainly if there were any instance where it would be merited, I understand why people would say that this would be such an instance. But the other thing about Hegseth is he's one of these types that talks all about Western values and has this sort of religious holy war clash of civilizations ideology that he's trying to use our military to pursue. And if you look at the countries that still do public executions, it's like, North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran, actually, you know, not exactly the harbingers of Western values that he would claim to be in league with. So I think most people are repulsed by the idea that you

would have not just government executed death penalty, but a celebration of that, a government backed sort of snuff film put out for public consumption. And in the same way that there was a concern that the mass gore that we saw on our timelines all the time in Gaza sort of cheapens human life and makes violence commonplace. I think that's the fear here as well, is that you not only accept this as, okay, society has decided that government is going to hold this awesome power in their hands, which again is something that I don't accept, but I think most Americans probably do, but that we're actively going to display it and celebrate it as some sort of a tough guy theater is grotesque to people. And then

as you pointed out, this is an old man in a wheelchair at this point. I think that's probably the part that Trump was thinking about, because obviously he's always thinking about the theatrics of things and how it's going to come across on TV. Like, are we going to look big and bag and tough when you have our soldiers in military uniform pumping bullets into the body of this paraplegic and an old man in a wheelchair? I don't know that that's like the tough guy imagery that Hegseth is imagining it's going to be.

Yeah, you know, and I recently, shout out to the Rest of History podcast, because they had years ago done a big series on the French Revolution, and specifically on the guillotine. And so I became obsessed with the guillotine. I've been talking to you and all of our team behind the scenes. And so of course, you know, this comes up in the midst of one of our discussions.

And so let's put D5 up here on the screen. I was fascinated to learn this. Sir Christopher Lee the famed British actor, was actually a witness to the very last public execution by guillotine on the streets in France, actually outside of Versailles. And in his autobiography, he described, quote, a powerful wave of howling and shrieking that greeted the appearance of the condemned on the street. And he said, I couldn't actually watch it. I turned my head, but I heard it. He eventually goes on to describe how people who witnessed this public execution took their handkerchiefs and dipped it in the blood of the condemned. And keep in mind, this is a person, I believe he was like a serial killer. I mean, he's an absolute scum

of the earth. In fact, the exact type of person who I would say, okay, I think he deserves the death penalty. But what you find of the description of the guillotine, be it 1789 to the very last of 1939, is that what it says about us and the type of people who revel in gore and in bloodshed and in violence, and time after time, including the contemporary accounts, you can actually read them. I have some of them here in front of me. The dominant reaction to the behavior of the crowd at the very last guillotine in 1939 was, was repulsed. I mean, people were outraged at the behavior of how they had opened a history book of the guillotine. They say, oh, the crowd, they would bring their children and all that. But by 1939, they're like, oh, well,

we're better than that, right? But we're not. It turns out we're exactly the same. And I would say to add live stream on top of this actually makes it worse because the people who were there sickos and weirdos who want to go and to actually watch a public execution is one thing. But the barrier of entry of watching something and of taking perverse pleasure at the spilling of blood and of violence by it you know but almost disaggregates the reality of it when it's on your phone or it's on your screen it normalizes not only violence but thirst for blood and it gives the very same reaction in the form of mass media and dehumanization of which already pervades our entire society. And so the live streaming aspect of it, the entertainment aspect of it

itself is something that even the public executions could not emulate, you know, at the height of the violence of the French terror. And I feel like, you know, if anything, it just encapsulates again, you have a weakened military, you have a secretary of defense who wants to appear awesome. Everybody's out there, you you know, wanted public executions and frequently carried them out, which was the norm, I will say at the time. I feel like that is one thing in the middle of, you know, the Revolutionary War.

But it is simply something very different, especially the live streaming aspect. So I don't know. I really haven't been able to stop like thinking about how the live stream aspect itself and how we are exactly the same type of people as the crowd of 1789. Like nothing actually separates you at all from that person. And the moment that you start to attend and engage in that type of spectacle, you will turn in to the same.

Type of people that they were.

You know, the mob has not changed at all and throughout, you know, organized civilization.

Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. There's nothing in human nature that has really evolved beyond that. And I think that's been a painful lesson for me in my adult life. to realize, and certainly, you know, watching us, uh, basically live stream a genocide and no one intervene. And I think you're right. The argument for doing it in public is okay. Don't hide the ugliness and brutality of it.

Maybe that will make people more repulsed by it and actually value life more. But what we've seen in history is that it has the opposite impact that it feeds a blood lust and, um, you know, leads to, uh, a sort of destruction of a part of the humanity of everyone who decides to partake. So it's barbaric. I mean, that's the bottom line. So we'll see if Trump decides that this is a bridge too far for him. He is apparently contemplating that.

Yeah, I think that even he understands this would not be a good look. Last thing I wanted to mention, just because I think it's kind of an interesting tension, D6 just came across the screen. The archbishop, actually, of the United States military, says that Catholic soldiers should not serve on the firing squad and described the planned execution as contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church, stipulated that anybody who was assigned who was a Catholic should be excused from that duty and again spoke out specifically.

This is after actually the Pope intervened directly against the death penalty and used his pulpit to speak out against the news after livestreamed news became public. I personally, I would bet that it probably doesn't happen just because of the overwhelmingly kind of negative reaction. But I think it tells me more about Pete Hegseth and really about, you know, their belief in the literal bread and circus of the Roman empire and of gladiators and all that than it does, you know, necessarily about whatever. But yeah, I just, I get last thing is it's not just about them. It's also about us and about the content and the dehumanization that we see on the screen every single day from Israel, as you said, to, I mean, how many terrorist attacks,

school shootings and other things have we, I mean, Charlie Kirk. I mean, we all saw it. I saw the blood rush out of that man's neck. I wish I'd never seen it. There was no reason for, for it. You know, it's bad enough to know that it happened, but to watch it, I didn't need to see that. And I don't think anybody else did either. All right. So with all that said, let's get to the next one.

So the primary midterm strategy for the Republican Party in order to try to stave off a major blue wave has been to sound the alarm about socialism or even communism. You hear from Trump, you hear from all kinds of negative ads. And of course, this comes as a number of Democratic socialist candidates have been elected in offices across the country and are making a major impact on American politics.

So joining us now to talk about that and the legacy that they draw from is the former editor of Jacobin Magazine, who is out with a fantastic new book, American Socialist, The Life and Legacy of Eugene V.

Debs.

Sean Goody, that author, joins us now. Great to have you, Sean.

Hey, thanks so much for having me on. Appreciate it.

Yeah, of course. So we were chatting before you came on that the book ends up being very timely. And I do want to get into some of those modern day connections. But just for people who may be really ignorant about who Eugene Debs is, why did you decide to profile him? Why do you think that he's an important figure in American politics people should know about?

Sure. I mean, I think people's ignorance, if they have it, is quite excusable, given his legacy and really the really rich history of democratic socialism in America has been sort of whitewashed from American history in a lot of ways. And that's kind of what pushed me to write this book. I thought, you know, I was I found Debs a very compelling figure. But even more than that, I thought he was a perfect kind of entry point. and way to talk about democratic socialism in America through the story of one of its more compelling figures. This book really is a story about him and the movement around him.

It's not sort of a recitation of facts or anything. It's really a vibrant sort of history of the socialist movement in the early 20th century during the Gilded Age. And I think certainly we're in our own Gilded Age now. And so I think that history is quite relevant.

You know, it's interesting. I think we have F3 here, Sean. We can put this up here on the screen, which is about socialism has its first positive rating for the first time at 40% in some recent Gallup polling. How similar is today's socialism to the Eugene Debs and socialist movement, which is kind of embedded in prairie populism and sewer socialism of the Gilded Age period, which you talk about?

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, there's both similarities and some obvious differences. I think what you point to, there is a real geographic difference right now in terms of where socialism is strong, because as you mentioned, socialism, and I'm actually from Iowa, I'm a proud Midwesterner, so this sort of history speaks very much to me. And so the Socialist Party was extremely strong in places like Oklahoma, Kansas, Milwaukee, as you mentioned. The largest socialist newspaper was in Kansas.

It was called Appeal to Reason. It was published out of a small town and had a circulation that rivaled mainstream newspapers. So there were also sort of hotbeds of socialism in places like the Lower East Side of New York among Jewish garment workers. But for the most part, it really was a kind of like heartland socialism, you could say. And that is different from today so far, I would say, because certainly where socialists have been strongest so far is on the coast and certainly big cities.

But I think this sort of history tells us and shows us that that's not inevitable, that socialism isn't just this like big city coastal thing. It very much is something that can speak to the ordinary needs of people around the country.

I want to come back to that. But first, tell us a little bit about Debs. He grows up in Indiana, drops out of school relatively young, becomes active in the labor movement. But you track the fact that when he first gets interested in politics, he's actually much more of a moderate and then becomes radicalized. So talk about his radicalization and how it perhaps mirrored the radicalization of others at that time period.

Yeah, that's a great question. And you're right. It is like it's kind of a stunning story. personal transformation, really. And that's kind of the arc of the book, because as you mentioned, he starts out as a kind of moderate union leader, he sort of thinks that if workers are upstanding, good people, basically, the employers will treat them well, and we'll see that they're decent people that are, you know, that that should be accorded respect. And it's really through a series of strikes that he that he leads that he sees that this is actually a pretty unrealistic view of the world. And that when employers and businesses have extraordinary power over workers and over the course of society, you really do have to push something, a kind of

more radical transformation of society to make sure that wealth and power isn't concentrated in the hands of just a few people. And so that's when he, he sort of becomes a socialist later on. And I think that, that, um, that transformation does mirror the transformation of a lot of other people at the time because it is a time of upheaval, of labor strikes, of extraordinary wealth being created and opulence. This is the Gilded Age, but also people don't even have unemployment insurance and they're thrown out of work willy-nilly and they are working in conditions where they could lose an arm or something on the railroad and you know tough luck you don't have any sort of you don't get compensation for that you and then if

you you know go out and protest that with your with your fellow workers you might get beaten down and have judicial injunctions called in to to uh to block you from striking. Um, so it's, uh, it's that kind of, those kinds of conditions that produce the radicalization of Debs and produce the kind of radicalization to some extent of the country and lead to the rise of the, of the socialist party.

Uh, Sean, how do you assess Debs is historical legacy in terms of his influence, but also the reality of I mean, the guy only won 6% of the vote, like at his peak. Now, I mean, don't get me wrong. He literally ran from a jail cell. I think the government threw him in prison for correctly speaking out against intervention in the war. And if you think censorship and propaganda and all that are bad today, you have no idea what life is like in.

1915, right?

So, you know, with all that said, the deck was genuinely stacked against him. That said, he only won 6% of the vote. He does seem to have been tremendously influential. on a lot of the other people around FDR or people who would assess his legacy, Huey Long and all of that, et cetera. So talk me through a little bit of that.

Yeah, it's a fair question. I mean, the Socialist Party was able to have these really strong pockets of support. I mentioned places like Oklahoma, and I haven't mentioned out West, but they were very strong in mining camps and mining towns. So they had these pockets of support where they're quite strong.

Also the upper Midwest, they were very strong and kind of industrial cities, not only Milwaukee, but kind of midsize industrial cities where steel workers kind of voted the socialist ticket too. But they weren't ever able to translate that support into a national level support. And it really was, I mean, I don't want to go too much down a kind of scholarly rabbit hole, but if you kind of compare the US to other countries, because the US really is an outlier in terms of its socialist party not taking off, because every other advanced capitalist country has a social democratic party, a labor party, that sort of built the welfare state and built what we think of today as social democracy. Um, and the U S didn't

have that because, um, you know, the U S was, was, uh, the business class was so strong. Um, and because the labor movement wasn't as, as large in, in other countries. And so the socialist party was sort of, wasn't able to link up with the strong labor movement essentially, um, is kind of what it comes down to. Um, but you're totally right that, um, I, I do think its legacy is, uh, is very relevant today and also has had, I think it's fair to say that the points in American history where ordinary people have won more freedom and more democratic rights, the labor movement of the 1930s, the civil rights movement of the 1960s, democratic socialists have been really central to those movements. You think of people like A.

Philip Randolph during the civil rights movement was very good friends with Debs. drew a lot of his kind of inspiration in politics from people like Debs. And, you know, I could name other examples, but it's that kind of impact that democratic socialism has had in the U.S. And, you know, I think that's a pretty proud legacy, too.

Well, and the legacy obviously is very clear today. Debs specifically, Bernie Sanders is a big admirer of Eugene Debs. And Zoran actually shouted out Eugene Debs and quoted him in his victory speech. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of that.

The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said, I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity. For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands. Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor Palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars. Knuckles scarred with kitchen burns. These are not hands that have been allowed to hold power. And yet over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater.

And Sean, one thing I was reflecting on is, you know, the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs era really was a sort of ground up. You know, they're able to elect if it was 1200 officials across the country at the peak. But to your point, you know, his highest watermark in terms of presidential campaign is six percent. So he's not able to grab a sort of national foothold. The modern movement is almost the reverse, you know, splashes into being with Bernie Sanders coming very close actually to winning the Democratic nomination and potentially the presidency. Zoran is become this massive national sensation as extremely popular and mayor of the largest and arguably most important city in the entire country.

So.

What do you think about the differences in the way that the movement has grown and whether that represents a strength, a weakness, whether it doesn't matter which way it goes? How do you think about those pieces?

Yeah, no, it's a really astute point. I hadn't really even thought about that before necessarily. But yeah, I think it's a weakness on some level, but it's also just kind of a challenge because it was that having a party that had that level of support Locally, as you mentioned, 1,200 elected officials at its peak. They had about 120,000 members, something like 80 mayors in 36 states. So they had a real strength in a lot of places. But also, yeah, they were never actually able to acquire national-level political power.

And right now, at least, we do have the opportunity you know, as, as democratic socialists to really see something different. Um, because we do have national level standard bearers that are among the most popular, uh, politicians in the, in the U S. And so that, that provides extraordinary power too. Um, it comes with dangers. Like obviously you don't just want, um, you need us at the end of the day, you really do need a really strong labor movement to transform the country. And if that doesn't come about, then we're going to be in trouble. But certainly having Bernie Sanders as one of the most popular politicians in the U.S., now having Zoran and AOC, very effective politicians and kind of communicators of democratic socialist ideas, I think really good

at bringing democratic socialism down to human level and making it not just a kind of wonky, sort of policy alternative or something, but like really speaking to people's needs for solidarity and human connection and joy in this, in this world, um, that's really important too. And so there are, there are real strengths to the movement right now. Um, and so, uh, I think we have some real opportunities.

But Sean, to press you a bit here, um, you know, you, you, you talked about Eugene Debs and his legacy and, and largely of the socialist connection to the heartland and away really from the kind of cosmopolitan elite. You know, today, modern day DSA socialism is a literal product of the cosmopolitan elite at a cultural level from New York City, Los Angeles. The higher educated, the more likely you are to be, you know, kind of a card carrying member of DSA. That You might be downwardly economically mobile. I mean, you know, that is a little bit separately different.

How do you square that?

You know, the everyday working man doesn't really seem to be a DSA card carrying member. They may like Soran, but they may not identify themselves as part of the so-called socialist movement. Kind of the beating heart of modern day DSA, you know, leftism reminds me a little bit more of like the affinity for international communism. in the cultural elite of the United States? I don't say this in any aspersion. I'm just saying in terms of kind of the parallel. So how do you work through that?

Or do you want to challenge some of the things I'm saying?

No, I mean, I think I wouldn't agree entirely with what you're saying, but I do think it's fair that so far DSA only has a slice of of, um, the working class and it's, it's the college educated working class. It's nurses and teachers, um, rather than, um, you know, Amazon workers. And that's a huge problem. Um, you can't have, uh, you, you can't have, um, just like one small slice of, you know, you can't just have white collar workers and, win democratic socialism. I agree that it's a problem. I have some optimism about this because I think Zoran in particular is very good at breaking that kind of divide.

I also think the socialist movement in the US is still fairly young. This is really only a recent development. And it's true that the people that it's attracted so far have been disproportionately college educated workers. But I don't think that's I don't think that's something that's inherent to where we're at. I mean, I think someone like Bernie is very good at at. talking to people across the divides within the working class. And I think, you know, we should take a page from that, certainly. But I'm not so pessimistic that that's not going to change.

And Sean, my last question for you on that note is, I wonder if we don't need to reconceptualize the working class, especially in the age of AI, where you've got a bunch of tech oligarchs saying they're going to put all white collar workers in out of work. I mean, it's a very different economy than it was during Debs time. Um, you know, the, there's a, the, the blue collar workforce has been decimated. You have a lot of service workers now, and you have a lot of, um, white collar knowledge workers, college educated with a lot of debt who are facing a lot of economic precarity themselves. So I wonder how you think about how the left may need to adjust and look different in an age of AI where they

are trying to make all of human labor irrelevant. And in that way, there should be a lot of solidarity between all human beings about what's going on and what's going to come next.

Yeah. I mean, I couldn't agree more. I mean, you can take the point too far and say that only that it's fine. The composition of DSA currently is okay. But But certainly, I totally agree that the economy of today is extremely different from the economy of Debta's period. I mean, there just aren't as many railroad workers in the US. There aren't as many steel workers. And rail workers and steel workers and those people very much should be part of the socialist movement, and the socialist movement should be speaking to them. But nurses and teachers are also very much part of the working class too. And I think they're very central to socialist politics today. And yeah, even tech workers too. They're not the classically defined working class.

And certainly if all DSA was just tech workers, that would be a problem. But we also shouldn't make the mistake of saying that, you know, only people who didn't go to college are, um, are in the working class.

Uh, I think that, I think that's fair to, yeah, I know. I think that's entirely fair. Uh, where does culture play into this? So, you know, it's been interesting to me, uh, Eugene Debs, you could correct me if I wrong, uh, from what I was looking into was a genuine, like class first egalitarian. Um, he was like, look, I'm here, you know, he, he opposed, I believe like racial quotas in the 19, I forget the, year of the 1919, I think, Immigration and Nationality Act, which eventually was passed. I know he was a strong supporter of civil rights, but he often took an approach of saying, look, this is about class first, which I believe actually put him at odds, I think, with some of the more racial leaders at the time. What did you find in

some of your research on that? I'm curious.

I think it's more complicated than that. He certainly thought that he certainly thought that the best way to fight, you could say the best way to fight for racial equality was through building a mass movement of which Black workers would be a part of. And he certainly came to the view, too, that the Socialist Party and socialists had to be on the front lines of fighting Jim Crow because, you know, other people in society weren't going to do it. So he was very much on uh, on board with that, but he also, he did reject, um, the idea that, um, you could fight racism without, you know, um, fighting the kind of, uh, without fighting economic exploitation, because he thought that was really central to how racism, um,

actually operates in, in American society. So he, he kind of linked the two, I would say. And, um, That was a pretty interesting part of researching the book. And I think that's part of his legacy too.

The book is American Socialist, The Life and Legacy of Eugene Debs. And fascinating character, incredibly impactful, very much understudied and under-discussed is the type of thing that it was very likely left out of your public school education. And obviously with a lot of implications for today. I think people will see a lot of parallels there. with Eugene Debs era and today while also noting there are profound differences, of course. Sean, thank you so much. It's great to have you.

Hey, thank you so much. I appreciate it, guys.

Yeah, our pleasure.

Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it about to do our AMA and we will see you all on Thursday.

10/13/26: Hegseth Floats Livestreamed Execution, Eugene Debs Lessons From The Grave

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