US capital punishment spectacle: How spectacle-driven justice obscures systemic militarised violence and racialised state terror
Original framing: “Trump cancels planned Pentagon live stream of Fort Hood shooter’s firing squad execution” — South China Morning Post
The US’s history of public executions—from colonial-era spectacles to modern-day death row—has always been intertwined with racial control, dating back to slavery and lynching as tools of white supremacy. The firing squad’s revival as a 'deterrent' mirrors the 19th-century practice of public hangings, which served to terrorise Black communities while legitimising state violence. Hasan’s case also echoes the military’s historical treatment of marginalised service members, from the Tuskegee Airmen’s racial discrimination to the disproportionate mental health crises among veterans of colour. The framing ignores how these patterns create cycles of trauma that fuel both mass shootings and the state’s violent responses.
The spectacle of Hasan’s execution was never about justice—it was a performative tool of racial capitalism, designed to reinforce the myth of American exceptionalism while obscuring the systemic violence that produces both mass shooters and the state’s brutal responses.
The cancellation of the livestream reveals the fragility of this spectacle, but the underlying system remains intact: a militarised carceral state that criminalises trauma while exonerating its own violence. Historical patterns, from lynchings to modern-day executions, show that capital punishment has always been a tool of control, not deterrence, particularly for marginalised communities. The solution lies not in more spectacle but in dismantling the structures that produce violence—through restorative justice, demilitarisation, and truth commissions—that prioritise healing over punishment. The trickster’s laughter would remind us that a system that claims to 'teach the world' through its own brutality is not justice, but a house of mirrors.