The execution of Nidal Hasan will not be livestreamed.
Hasan, a former U.S. Army Major and psychiatrist who killed 13 people and injured 32 in the November 5, 2009, shooting rampage, was sentenced to death by a military court-martial in 2013.
The decision to livestream the execution, and then not to, probably was based less upon the current sensibilities about barbarity and spectacle -- Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth saw that as a positive -- than from prudence. The public execution would be used by U.S. critics. It would be a recruiting film, depicting what Americans do to Muslims. It would invite retaliatory public executions.
The last public hanging in my community took place in 1886. Two hundred people got tickets to watch.
It is a grim realization for me, but it is undeniable: There is public fascination in witnessing violent death.
Larry DiCara is a college classmate. He was elected to the Boston City Council, taking office at age 22. He served there for a decade. He has been a key element in the repositioning of Boston from a declining industrial city into an extraordinarily successful hub of education, science, and technology: a modern boomtown.
Larry reflects a kind of old-school tradition, from an Italian immigrant family, Catholic, neighborhood-oriented, patriotic, family-oriented, civic-minded, and a Democrat.
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| Larry DiCara and his three daughters |
Donald Trump cancelled the Pentagon’s plan to live stream the firing squad execution of the Fort Hood shooter. According to the New York Times, dozens of retired admirals, generals and other officers had spoken out again the plan, saying “It would clearly violate the basic human dignity of the condemned prisoner.” Notwithstanding that directive, this topic merits reflection.
Saint Augustine wrote in Book VI of his Confessions regarding his friend Alypius who was enticed to attend the gladiatorial games in Rome. Augustine warned as to how a group’s passion can take over an individual. How is such a spectacle resulting in death 2,000 years ago any different from the killing of a man by firing squad which Pete Hegseth proposed be live streamed across the world?
Pete Hegseth has proclaimed his Christianity. He follows a pastor in Idaho who believes women should not have the right to vote. He has invited his local pastor, Brooks Potteiger to lead prayer sessions (certainly not nondenominational) at the Pentagon, which is a public building. Did his association with these pastors influence him in directing and encouraging death by firing squad? Speaker Johnson has suggested that video of the execution could become a “recruiting tool for future terrorists.” Senator Murkowski said, “It will give this individual…the martyrdom he seeks.” Where does Hegseth’s Christianity differ from that which St. Augustine discussed?
Would such a spectacle not encourage the type of mob brutality which resulted in the lynching of Black men across the south, often at large public gatherings with circus-like atmospheres. Of course, there were also eleven Sicilians lynched in Louisiana in 1891 because the citizens of that state considered them to be Black. It certainly appears that what “Call of Duty” Pete hears at church on Sunday is very different from what I hear at The Paulist Center.
Pope Leo has declared capital punishment “inadmissible”, referencing Catholic teachings that stress that the common good can be met without the death penalty. The Vatican Secretary of State has stated publicly that it is “unacceptable to turn death into a spectacle.” Perhaps that is why Vice President Vance suggested that he would not tune in to the spectacle. Although Donald Trump has cancelled the live streaming scheduled for early in December, this incident tells volumes no only about the bellicosity of the Trump administration, but also about their lack of respect for human life. As George Will recently wrote in the Washington Post: “Fill the government with barbarians, you get barbaric government.”
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3 comments:
Being cruel as a feature of being a real man and a proud republican is losing its appeal.
Unlike Gavin Newsom, I support capital punishment (the death penalty), but unlike Pete Hegsteth, I oppose publicly broadcasting the execution. Capital punishment can be a gruesome event, and sometimes it doesn't go smoothly, as evidenced by the recent failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee. Only a sick person would want to watch another person die.
A public execution of Major Hasan would be both squalid and bloodthirsty, especially in a governing entity, in stark contrast with say the televised ISIS beheadings, or the gleefully live-streamed Hamas atrocities on October 7.
We needn’t fear religious terror recruitment, though, recalling that the Obama administration officially deemed Fort Hood generic “workplace violence”, with the President himself certifying that jihadist violence not “real” Islam.
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