It’s not the Arabic that’s the problem. Pete Hegseth, Trump’s newly installed Defence Secretary, has the word kafir tattooed on his arm: Arabic for ‘infidel’, the term Islamists use to describe unbelievers, reclaimed by the American right as a perverse badge of honour. It’s meant to signify a spiritual and civilisational rejection, a refusal to submit. As always with the far right, the gesture is more posture than principle. Hegseth wants to be seen as a holy warrior. The trouble is that he may soon be issuing orders as one.
Hegseth’s path to the Pentagon was paved with the usual detritus of reactionary celebrity: cable news slots, a string of scandals (sexual misconduct, undisclosed donations, financial mismanagement), and an affect that toggles between genial authoritarianism and violent hyperbole. He was confirmed 51–50, with JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. This wasn’t a consensus appointment; it was a provocation. The tattoo made it clear, if it wasn’t already: American Christian nationalism is no longer an undercurrent. It is the dominant ideology of the Trump administration’s second term, now governing from the top of the chain of command.
‘Christian nationalism’ is often treated as a cultural pathology: a kind of religious cosplay indulged in by gun-toting, megachurch-attending Americans who think Jesus wrote the Constitution. But it is best understood, following William I. Robinson, as part of a broader move toward a global police state: a fusion of corporate, military, and religious power, deployed to protect the interests of a ruling class in crisis. Trumpism did not replace neoliberalism; it intensified its coercive side. When markets can no longer guarantee social peace, faith and force are brought in to do the job. Hegseth is a perfect representative of this synthesis: a man who believes the military exists to defend not just the United States, but God’s kingdom on Earth.
It’s not just Muslims who should be worried. Christian nationalism is not a politics of spirituality, it’s a politics of sovereignty. It makes exceptional claims: that the United States is chosen by God, that its power is sacred, and that its enemies (internal or external) are demonic. You do not negotiate with demons. You do not detain them. You destroy them. Under Hegseth’s watch, we can expect drone warfare to be reframed as divine retribution, aid conditional on ‘family values’, and troops deployed not to defend democracy but to shore up theocratic capital.
Beneath the tattooed bluster is a serious geopolitical problem. The Pentagon is now led by someone who sees diplomacy as weakness, pluralism as decadence, and war as spiritual cleansing. The secular liberal order—if it ever existed—is being replaced by something older and more dangerous: a sacrificial state, ruled by men who pray for the Apocalypse and have their finger on the trigger. The last time this logic was allowed to run its course, it ended in the Crusades. This time it ends in thermonuclear war.
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