Pete Hegseth’s Mein Kampf
by Joe Allen
Book Review
“The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free”
I spotted Pete Hegseth’s latest book The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, while I was shopping at my local Costco. Intrigued, I bought a copy. Published by Fox News Books, it shot to the top of the New York Times Best Seller List soon after publication in early June. His name was one I recognized as one of Fox’s talking heads, who has the ear of former President Donald J. Trump on veteran’s issues and pardoning war criminals.
The back flap of Hegseth’s book describes him as “a husband, father, patriot, and Christian.” He is a U.S. Army veteran. He was a guard at Guantanamo Bay and served in Iraq and Afghanistan. During his time in the National Guard he was deployed in Washington D.C. during the national uprising against racism that followed the police murder of George Floyd. Hegseth is also a former failed candidate for the Republican Party U.S. Senate from Minnesota, and he’s led several “veterans” groups, including the Koch brothers backed Veterans for Freedom.
The War on Warriors, like Hitler’s Mein Kampf or My Struggle, is a contrived nightmarish vision of society, where true “patriots” are persecuted by a twisted and evil political establishment motivated to sell out their country. He is also a shameless self-promoter and bloviates about his alleged martyrdom. To get a taste of Hegseth, here’s the opening lines of his book:
I joined the Army because I wanted to serve my country. Extremism attacked us on 9/11, and we went to war.
And, in 2021, I was deemed an “extremist’ by that very same Army.
Yes, you read that right.
Twenty years…and the military I loved, I fought for. I revered…spit me out. While I was writing this book, I separated from an Army that didn’t want me anymore. The feeling was mutual — I didn’t want this Army anymore either.
It’s not clear at all from Hegseth’s book or his many interviews how he was “spit” out of the National Guard or why. The implications was that he was charged with some breach of military discipline and/or court-martialed, but the facts don’t bear this out. I scoured his book, and thinking I must have missed it, I watched several of his interviews and monologues to get a clearer answer. And, I couldn’t find it.
Hegseth refers to an unnamed senior officer, who told him to “stand down,” that he wasn’t needed anymore. Whether this conversation or something like that ever took place is questionable, but it certainly is not being “spit out,” yet it’s important for his faux martyrdom. It wouldn’t be out of the question that he simply got bored with military life and decided life was easier sitting full time on the couch at Fox News. If Trump is elected president this November, Hegseth will probably be on the short list for Secretary of Veterans Affairs, which would be a disaster for veterans of any political stripe.
Die Hard
I’ve read many modern military autobiographies and biographies over the years, including Colin Powell’s My American Journey and Norman Schwartzkopf’s It Doesn’t Take a Hero. Biographies are almost always self-serving, usually concerned about preserving one’s place in history or an eye on a future political career, but you can sometimes also learn, as I did, something about the post-Vietnam era U.S. military. The only thing I learned from Pete Hegseth’s book is what an ugly and dangerous mind he possesses.
Hegseth’s wrath is directed at “woke” political elites and military leaders because of the very mild Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives adopted by the U.S. military over the last few years. His “book” is really one long political rant and a call to action. “Now is not the time to retreat,” Hegseth writes,” from our military. If we secede from our military branches — and service writ large — then we’re handing the keys of our Republic over to the very people who loathe the sort of men vital to defending us.”
Exhibiting a difficulty that American men of certain age have of distinguishing between reality and Hollywood movies, Hegseth writes,
Our “elites” are like the feckless drug-addled businessmen at Nakatomi Plaza, looking down on Bruce Willis’ John McClane in Die Hard. But there will come a day when they realize they need John McClane — that in fact their ability to live in peace and prosperity has always depended on guys like him being honorable, powerful, and deadly.
He rants on:
The military has long been a place for turning mere boys into fighting men not just teaching them honor and sacrifice but by channeling daring, building strength, and accumulating skills. The so-called elites directing the military aren’t just lowering standards and focusing on the wrong enemy; they are working to rid the military of this specific (essential) type of young patriot. They believe power is bad, merit is unfair, ideology is more important than industriousness, white people are yesterday and safety is better than risk-taking.
And, finally:
This book is a clarion call to charge ahead with everything we have into the breach. Retreating now means we will definitely lose. Charging ahead means we have a fighting chance.
The military is where our country needs — desperately — patriotic, faith-filled, and brave young Americans to step up and take the long view. At a basic level, do we really want only the woke “diverse” recruits that the Biden administration is curating to be the ones with the guns and guidons?
But more than that, we want those diverse recruits — pumped full of vaccines and even more poisonous ideologies — to be sharing a basic training bunk with sane Americans. If elite universities are where underprivileged kids learn how to hobnob with the elites, then the military should be where potential Antifa members learn what it really means to use force for just and honorable reasons. The American military is one of the great deradicalization machines for aimless young men — but only it is working correctly.
If sometimes, what Hegseth calls elites is hazy and confusing, he makes it very clear in other passages. “Marxists are our enemies,” he declares. And, he means using force to defeat his enemies. “Busy killing Islamists in shithole countries — and then betrayed by our leaders — our warriors have every reason to let America’s dynasty fade away. Leftists stole a lot from us, but we won’t let them take this. Time for round two — we won’t miss this war.”
Reading Hegseth’s long rants, I couldn’t help thinking that he accuses his enemies of what he is guilty of. One thing of the many things that we can say is the U.S. military has been a major source of far right radicalization for decades, most famously Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and a large number of those who attacked the Capitol Building on January 6th at the behest of President Donald Trump. Hegseth defended Trump’s January 6th coup attempt.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s order to hold a one day “stand-down” to combat extremism in the military in February 2021, is mocked by Hegseth as “drivel.”
Mein Kampf
I don’t believe Hegseth is a straight-up Nazi, but he is certainly a dangerous authoritarian and racist who should be kept away from positions of power. Reading over two hundred pages of his rants, I heard the echo of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In the aftermath of the failed Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, Adolf Hitler was arrested and charged with high treason. He spent several months awaiting trial in Landsberg Fortress. His conditions were pretty cushy.
During his time in Landsberg, Hitler penned his famous autobiography or long political rant, Mein Kampf or My Struggle. He originally wanted to call it “Four and a Half Years of Struggle and Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice.” But, Max Amann, the head of the Nazi publishing house nixed the idea and shortened the title. It was not a best seller upon release.
There have been libraries full of books written about Hitler and the Nazis. I reached for an old copy of William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a liberal, pro-labor history of Hitler and the Nazis that was popular among American readers in the 1960s. There are in retrospect many shortcomings to the book, but he made a valid point,
“For whatever other accusations can be made against Hitler, no one can accuse him of not putting down in writing exactly the kind of Germany he intended to make if he ever came to power.”
We should take Pete Hegseth’s rantings just as seriously.
