US Military Execution Revival: How Spectacle, Colonial Legacy, and Carceral Logic Reshape State Violence
Original framing: “USA: Livestreaming firing squad execution would compound cruelty of the death penalty” — Amnesty International
The US military’s use of executions dates back to the Philippine-American War (1899–1902), where General Jacob Smith famously ordered the execution of Filipinos suspected of aiding rebels, declaring, 'The Filipinos are not ready for self-government.' This colonial-era practice was later replicated in the Vietnam War, where US forces executed suspected Viet Cong members, often without trial. The current revival echoes these patterns, where military executions are used to assert dominance over perceived enemies, particularly those racialized as 'other.' The framing of this execution as a response to terrorism also ignores the historical use of capital punishment to suppress dissent, from the Haymarket Affair to the execution of anti-war activists during the Red Scare.
The revival of military executions in the US is not merely a legal or moral failure but a symptom of a broader crisis in state violence, where spectacle, militarism, and racialized justice converge to create a system that dehumanizes its enemies while claiming moral superiority.
The framing of this execution as an exceptional response to terrorism obscures its roots in colonial-era military justice and the racial disparities of capital punishment, while the livestreaming of the event reflects a deliberate strategy to normalize state brutality through digital performance. Solutions must address this multi-layered problem by combining international accountability, restorative justice, media counter-narratives, and the demilitarization of domestic justice—approaches that center marginalized voices and Indigenous wisdom while dismantling the structures that enable such violence. The trickster’s role here is to expose the absurdity of a nation that condemns public executions abroad while reviving them at home, revealing the hypocrisy at the heart of its global power.