Friday, March 27, 2026
Fascist Move of the Day
Defense Secretary Hegseth prays at a Pentagon service for "overwhelming violence against those who deserve no mercy" — while cutting the military chaplain corps to center evangelical Christianity and purging all other faiths.
Source: The Guardian, March 26 2026
Historical Parallel
In 1933, a movement calling itself the Deutsche Christen — the German Christians — held a rally at the Berlin Sports Palace. They called for a "positive Christianity" purged of Jewish influence, aligned with National Socialism, and suited to the needs of the German military. Within a year, they had taken control of the German Protestant Church's institutional structures. Ludwig Müller — a Wehrmacht chaplain personally selected by Hitler — became Reichsbischof, the head of the united German Protestant Church. The church's creeds were rewritten. Jewish Christians were expelled. Military symbols were incorporated into worship. The cross and the swastika shared altar space in hundreds of churches across Germany.
The Deutsche Christen understood something that Hegseth's Christian nationalist project understands too: a military without a shared theology is just armed personnel. A military whose faith has been shaped by the state — whose chaplains are selected for ideological alignment, whose worship centers on violence sanctified by God, whose enemies are described as "those who deserve no mercy" — is something more tractable than that. Gott mit uns — God with us — was stamped on the belt buckles of German soldiers throughout World War II. The phrase predated the Nazis by centuries. But the Nazis made it theirs, and weaponized it.
"Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation. Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy."
— Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, prayer service at the Pentagon, March 26 2026Sources: Wikipedia: German Christians (Deutsche Christen) · USHMM — German Churches and the Nazi State
The Full Dispatch
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth presided over a Christian worship service at the Pentagon — his first since the Iran war began. At the service, he led a prayer asking God for "overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy" and "let every round find its mark." The following day, he announced a restructuring of the military's chaplain corps: the religious affiliation codes would be reduced from approximately 200 faiths down to 31, chaplains would replace officer rank insignia with religious insignia, and the corps would be cleansed of what Hegseth called "political correctness and secular humanism" that had reduced chaplains to "therapists" focused on "self-help." All of the monthly prayer sessions Hegseth has instituted at the Pentagon have been presided over by evangelical Christians.
Hegseth is a member of a church affiliated with the Congregation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, founded by Doug Wilson — a self-described Christian nationalist who has himself led a Pentagon prayer session. In a TV interview about the Iran war, Hegseth framed the conflict in explicitly religious terms: the US was "fighting religious fanatics who seek a nuclear capability in order for some religious Armageddon." The enemy, in this framing, is not a nation-state pursuing its interests. It is an apocalyptic force in a cosmic struggle. The US military is the instrument of divine will. And its chaplains will now be selected and formatted to reinforce that message.
The Deutsche Christen project in 1930s Germany was not universally welcomed — the Confessing Church, led by figures like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller, resisted it explicitly. But the resistance did not prevent the institutional capture. What the German Christians achieved was the alignment of the dominant institutional structure of German Protestantism with the state's ideological and military project. The chaplains who served with German troops were not all Nazis. But the institutional framework in which they operated had been shaped by the state to serve the state's purposes. Hegseth is doing this openly: reducing the number of recognized faiths, centering evangelical Christianity, removing secular humanist "therapists," and replacing them with religiously certified warriors of righteousness.
"Those who deserve no mercy" is doing a lot of work in that prayer. The phrase doesn't describe a military target. It describes a category of human being — one whose death is not merely permitted but sanctified. When the Secretary of Defense stands before military personnel and prays that God help them kill people who deserve no mercy, he is not leading a prayer service. He is conducting a consecration. He is making violence holy. The Germans had a word for this: Heiliger Krieg. Holy war. It is always the other side that deserves no mercy. It is always God's will that we win. History has never once produced a case where praying for overwhelming violence against the unworthy ended well for the people doing the praying.
The Playbook
Seize control of military chaplaincy — reduce to one approved faith → Lead worship services praying for violence against defined enemies → Frame the war as a cosmic struggle — enemy deserves no mercy → State and church merge — violence becomes sacred → Soldiers fight not for policy but for God and nation