Under His Eye. Now Streaming.

4 views · Counting since 7 Oct 2026

Content warning: execution, authoritarianism and language appropriate to the fucking circumstances.

Apparently, the United States has reached the point in its moral development where the government wants you to watch a man die online.

Pete Hegseth—the Pentagon’s contribution to the question “What if a bar fight had a communications department?”—has announced plans for a public firing-squad execution on December 3.

The Pentagon says it will be livestreamed.

Welcome to the new world. Please check your connection. Human dignity may buffer.

The condemned man is Nidal Hasan, convicted of murdering thirteen people in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting. His crimes were horrific. The victims and their families deserve to be remembered with care.

They do not deserve to become the supporting cast in an administration’s production of Look How Fucking Tough We Are.

You can believe someone committed an unforgivable crime without believing the government should turn his death into content.

Apparently, that distinction now requires explaining.

We have spent years debating whether social media exposes people to too much violence. Whether children should encounter disturbing footage. Whether platforms should remove videos of people being killed.

And now the government is effectively saying: hold my flag. We’ll provide the footage ourselves.

The cruelty is appalling. The eagerness to find an audience makes it worse.

Somewhere in this process, somebody had to consider cameras. A feed. Distribution. The practical arrangements required to make a human death available on demand.

An execution has become a production meeting.

That is fucking grotesque.

And Donald Trump, our favourite self-appointed contender for the Nobel Peace Prize, has approved the execution.

He has not publicly endorsed the livestream. Let’s keep that distinction intact. Reality is ugly enough without helping it.

Still, the contrast is quite something.

The peace-prize enthusiasm. The firing squad.

Perhaps the medal could come with a little tripod.

I keep thinking about The Handmaid’s Tale. The public punishment. The ritual. The authorities presenting brutality as moral instruction while everybody else is expected to stand there and absorb the lesson.

The lesson being: we have the power to do this.

And we want you to watch.

People imagine dystopia arriving with an unmistakable soundtrack. Sirens. Black uniforms. An official announcement that civilisation has been discontinued.

More often, it arrives through familiar channels.

An interview.
A press statement.
A man in a suit explaining why something revolting is necessary.
A crowd congratulating him for having the courage to be revolting.

Then somebody calls your disgust weakness.

I am tired of that particular bullshit.

Restraint requires more strength than applause-seeking brutality. It requires institutions capable of imposing limits, including on themselves. It requires the ability to say: even here, even with this person, there are things we will not turn into entertainment.

Because the standards a government keeps when dealing with the worst people tell you something about the standards it is willing to abandon.

The thirteen people murdered at Fort Hood mattered. Their lives mattered before this announcement, and they will matter after the cameras are switched off.

Remember them.

Support the people who survived.

But don’t sell me a livestreamed killing as respect for the dead.

The victims’ suffering is not a licence for the government to audition as an execution-themed reality network.

And spare me the patriotic packaging. You can drape something in flags until the fabric runs out. It will still be a planned human death with an audience.

That is the image I cannot get past.

Millions of screens.

A government deliberately arranging the moment when a person stops being alive.

And officials pleased that people will be able to watch.

I find it disgusting.

I find the excitement around it disgusting.

And I find it chilling how easily the language of justice can be used to invite people to enjoy cruelty.

Under His Eye.

Now streaming.

What a fucking achievement.

Reporting: Pentagon livestream announcement; Trump’s execution approval and silence on the livestream. A traditional television broadcast is not confirmed.