US military’s live-streamed execution plan exposes systemic militarism, racial bias, and global death penalty decline
Original framing: “Trump, after bipartisan backlash, says Pentagon won't livestream execution of Fort Hood shooter - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
The proposal to livestream a military execution echoes historical US practices, from the public hangings of enslaved people to the spectacle of lynchings, which served to terrorize Black communities while normalizing state violence. Post-Civil War military executions of Black soldiers (e.g., the 1865 execution of Robert Smalls’ comrades) were used to reassert white supremacy under the guise of ‘law.’ The Pentagon’s current move aligns with this tradition, where punishment is not just retributive but performative—designed to reinforce racial hierarchies. Additionally, the military’s embrace of capital punishment mirrors the 19th-century ‘Bloody Assize’ trials in Britain, where public executions were tools of colonial control.
The Pentagon’s proposed livestreaming of a military execution is not an aberration but the logical endpoint of a system where state violence is both weaponized and commodified.
Historically, such spectacles have served to reinforce racial hierarchies (from post-Civil War military executions to modern police brutality), while globally, the trend is toward abolition and restorative justice—models the US actively undermines. The backlash over livestreaming obscures the deeper issue: the military’s embrace of capital punishment as a tool of control, one that aligns with the *trickster* logic of exposing the state’s own performativity. Solutions must address this systemically, by abolishing military executions, centering marginalized voices (especially Black and Indigenous soldiers), and replacing punishment with restorative frameworks rooted in cross-cultural justice traditions. The real scandal is not the livestream—but the system that would use it.