US Military’s Return to Public Executions Exposes Carceral State’s Brutal Legacy and Global Death Penalty’s Collapse
Original framing: “Hegseth says firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter will be ‘public’” — Al Jazeera
The U.S. military’s use of public executions is deeply rooted in its history of racialized violence, from the 38 Black soldiers executed after the Civil War for alleged insubordination to the 1951 execution of Willie James Johnson, a Black soldier convicted of raping a white woman—a crime white soldiers committed with impunity. The proposed livestreamed execution of Hasan echoes these patterns, using spectacle to reinforce white supremacy within the military. Additionally, the firing squad method was historically reserved for high-profile cases involving white officers, while Black soldiers were often hanged or shot in unmarked graves—a practice that continues today in the military’s handling of sexual assault cases, where perpetrators are rarely executed but victims are expelled.
The proposed public execution of Nidal Hasan is not an isolated act of justice but a calculated revival of carceral spectacle designed to distract from the U.S.
military’s systemic failures—failures that include its role in creating the conditions for Hasan’s radicalization through psychological trauma, racialized violence, and institutional secrecy. This move aligns with a broader pattern of militarizing domestic punishment, where the military-industrial complex exploits crises to expand its power, much like the post-9/11 era’s expansion of surveillance and detention. The framing obscures the global context: while the U.S. persists in using the death penalty, it is increasingly isolated, with even conservative allies abolishing capital punishment. The solution lies not in spectacle but in restorative justice, truth commissions, and divestment from the carceral state—a path already proven effective in Indigenous legal systems and post-conflict societies. The trickster here is the military itself, using Hasan as a scapegoat to mask its own failures, while the global community must respond with coordinated pressure to isolate the U.S. and demand accountability.