Donald Trump, 9/11, and the rise of Military MAGA

How populism is taking over the Pentagon

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9/11 played a large role in creating Donald Trump. Spectacular acts of terrorism gave legitimacy to the idea that America needs a presidential strongman untrammeled by accountability in order to keep America safe. That notion remains the animating force of Trump’s political persona, even if the focus is now on immigrants and foreign manufacturers rather than Islamist terrorists. I wrote a post about all of this a few years ago, before most of you were subscribers to this newsletter:

Today, though, I want to focus on a different aspect of how the politics of 9/11 shapes our era. And that’s through what I call Military MAGA.

America sent hundreds of thousands of service members to war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and lesser-known theaters of the War on Terror. Not all of them came back, and not all of those who did were the same as when they went. In many ways, America’s all-volunteer force is more isolated from mainstream society than ever, and veterans face all kinds of problems when they reintegrate into civilian life.

Along with the challenges faced by individual veterans of the War on Terror era - and often entwined with it - has come a particular type of populist politics. It’s the sort of politics embodied by Pete Hegseth, the new Secretary of Defense, himself a veteran who seems to have undergone some sort of mental health crisis after returning from Iraq. But it’s also embraced by many (though by no means all) veteran podcasters, social media influencers, and former service members up and down the United States.

That politics is Military MAGA, and it’s made up of a few different components.

The first is an ambivalent relationship to the wars of the War on Terror. At the core of this ambivalence is the fact that these were wars that America either outright lost (Afghanistan) or which ended in an ambiguous way (Iraq). Veterans who are part of Military MAGA tend to be proud of their service in these wars, but aghast that they ended the way they did. They resolve this tension either by blaming the politicians and generals for getting the United States into these unwinnable wars in the first place, or by blaming them for “tying the hands” of regular soldiers so that they couldn’t win.

The second part of Military MAGA is populism directed at the upper ranks of the Pentagon, including military and civilian leadership.

When Pete Hegseth fired the top lawyers of every uniformed service branch last week, many people - myself included - saw an act designed to enable lawbreaking. Military MAGA sees things the same way, with the exception that they’re actually happy about it. High-ranking military lawyers are seen as the sort of effete, hypocritical elites who held America back during the War on Terror, preventing it from using the illegal and brutal tactics that Military MAGA claims would have brought victory.

According to Military MAGA, the main problem with the leadership of the Pentagon is that they went liberal - and then they went woke. Policies like allowing women to serve in combat roles or efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in the armed forces are not seen as laudable attempts to promote equality and help with the services’ recruitment problems. Instead, they are viewed as proof that social justice, rather than winning wars, has become the top priority of the generals.

The coronavirus pandemic also played a role in shaping this populism. Under the Biden administration, about 8,000 service members were discharged for refusing to take the Covid-19 vaccine, and others left of their own accord to avoid it. To Military MAGA - many of whom are steeped in vaccine conspiracies - this was another example of liberal dogma taking over the Pentagon. One of Hegseth’s first acts after he took office was to offer the discharged troops the opportunity to re-enlist.

Thirdly, this strain of populism is why Military MAGA advocates for relatively low-ranking personnel to be put into senior positions. People who have served - preferably in combat - but who have not risen up the greasy pole are preferred because they are considered to be more authentic, realistic, and untainted by liberal dogma.

Sometimes this is framed as these figures being “apolitical” and simply focused on professional service. But it’s notable that Military MAGA’s heroes never seem to lose their lustre in the eyes of their fans even when they become MAGA hat wearing Fox News pundits. The idea that they might just be practicing a different type of politics - or practicing politics much more aggressively than their enemies - never seems to occur to them. As always, a victimhood complex lies at the core of every strand of MAGA, serving as a cover for aggression.

All of this helps to explain why Military MAGA has embraced Hegseth. As I wrote here, I view it as highly problematic to place an alcoholic with no experience of running a large organization in charge of the Pentagon. But to Military MAGA, everything about Hegseth - his combat deployments, his lack of experience at the top of the ranks, and his personal demons - screams authenticity and opposition to what they see as the liberal blob which ate the Pentagon. He’s a perfect embodiment of the movement’s politics, rooted as it is in the trauma of America’s post-9/11 wars and the populism of the Trump era.

In other words, he’s just another product of a toxic force which is still wreaking havoc to this day.

In many ways, Military MAGA resembles the parallel development of far-right politics after the Vietnam War. Again, this politics was rooted in the trauma of defeat, and again it came to revolve around the idea that an effete liberal class was holding the country back and needed to be forcibly uprooted. It played a large role in the rise of the white power movement in the 1990s, as you can read in the great book Bring the War Home by Kathleen Belew. This post-Vietnam movement didn’t really ever fade away, instead bleeding and merging into Military MAGA in the years after 9/11.

Now, this movement holds power - to be precise, it holds military power, one of the most fearsome kinds. Like other far-right nationalist movements throughout history, Military MAGA is focused on perceived enemies both at home and abroad. It’s currently purging the institutions of violence, and then it intends to turn them against those enemies. The result, I’m afraid, won’t be pretty.

Thanks for reading America Explained. This post is free. If you haven’t already, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription, which allows you to read every post and access the full archive. It also enables me to put more time and energy into this newsletter, something that I’m hoping to do in order to cover the new administration more thoroughly. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thanks for supporting independent media and making it possible to do what I do.

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