Friday 9 October 2026
Live From Fort Hood
The US has decided to broadcast an execution. What changes when a public punishment becomes a spectacle watched by people who are nowhere near it?
Yesterday, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the execution of mass murderer Nidal Hasan, a former major convicted of killing 13 people at the Fort Hood army post in 2009, would be »public«.1 Later in the day, the Pentagon clarified that it would be livestreamed.2
»Whoever thinks the sentence is just should be content to see it carried out in the open; whoever thinks it’s wrong may want it seen for exactly that reason«
The word had changed its meaning without changing its spelling. Historically, a public execution meant that people gathered to watch the state kill a person. Now it can apparently mean that the state distributes live footage of their execution to people who don’t need to leave their sofas to watch it, and who can turn off the screen whenever they choose.
In 1936, thousands gathered in Owensboro, Kentucky, to watch the hanging of rape convict Rainey Bethea. It remains the most recent public execution in the United States, and the press attention that followed led Kentucky to ban the practice two years later.3 The philosopher Michel Foucault identified the flaw in the scaffold: it was meant to show the state’s power, but a crowd could side with the condemned. That, he argued, is why punishment moved out of sight.4
A livestream looks like a way to keep the spectacle and lose the crowd. A crowd stands beside the condemned and the executioner. Its members react to one another, which can change what the event means. A livestream disperses the audience and delivers the image into each viewer’s private space. The state chooses the time, the camera, and the access. There is no gathering that might become a protest. There are only silent viewers.
But a viewer is not a witness. Writer Albert Camus described how his father came home sick after having gone out to watch a man guillotined. The spectacle hadn’t produced the response its organisers wanted. It had produced revulsion.5 A livestream might produce that, or curiosity, or indifference, or the small thrill of watching something forbidden. The state can make an execution visible. But it can’t decide what the visibility will mean.
There’s a case for publicity. English philosopher Jeremy Bentham thought that what can be seen can be scrutinised.6 The Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria made a different point in 1764: execution is a »terrible but momentary spectacle«, weaker as a deterrent than the more lasting example of a lifetime of forced labour.7 Broadcasting an execution makes the moment reproducible. It doesn’t make the lesson last.
The argument cuts across the usual lines. Whoever thinks the sentence is just should be content to see it carried out in the open; whoever thinks it’s wrong may want it seen for exactly that reason. Camus believed that support for capital punishment depends on not looking at it. Hegseth’s bet is exactly the other way around.
To show the ending is not to show the process that’s supposed to justify it. Hasan’s attack took place nearly 17 years ago, in 2009. He was sentenced to death in 2013, and the appeals ran on for years after that. All of this will be compressed into a few minutes of footage. The US Army has set the execution for 13:00 on Thursday 3 December, at Fort Hood itself, the site of the shooting, rather than at Fort Leavenworth where Hasan is held. It’s the same weekday as the attack, and close to the same hour.8 The execution is staged as an echo of the crime, as if repetition could complete what time left unfinished.
But repetition can’t supply what the arithmetic lacks. Hasan killed thirteen people and can be executed only once. Philosopher Immanuel Kant held that murder demands death, because only death is equal to it.9 By that measure, the state is owed thirteen deaths and can collect one. So whatever one thinks of the death penalty, equality can’t be what justifies this execution. Hegseth names another purpose: people need to understand there are serious consequences. That’s a claim about the audience, and it’s the one a broadcast serves.
The Islamic State also understood execution as media: its 2014–2015 execution videos were made to be distributed. That was the point.10 The Pentagon’s livestream will differ radically in legal process, but the form raises a question: when an execution is distributed to produce an effect, what separates accountability from theatre? At his trial, Hasan called no witnesses and made no closing argument11; his court-appointed lawyers reportedly feared that he wanted a death sentence, though he disputed this. If the lawyers were right, Hegseth may be giving Hasan the stage that he sought.
The public is everywhere now, and the gathering is nowhere. If the lesson Hegseth wants taught is learned at all, it will be learned one viewer at a time. A livestream can make the moment visible, but it can’t decide whether the footage reads as justice, deterrence, or closure. When a punishment can’t repair the harm, what’s the spectacle meant to complete?
1 Herb Scribner & Avery Lotz (2026) »Hegseth says public can watch Fort Hood shooter’s execution«. Axios, 8 October 2026. https://www.axios.com/2026/10/08/hegseth-nidal-hasan-firing-squad-public-tv
2 Eleanor Watson & Joe Walsh (2026) »Fort Hood shooter’s execution will be livestreamed, Pentagon says«. CBS News, 8 October 2026. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth-fort-hood-shooter-execution-public-nidal-hasan/
3 Associated Press (2011) »After 75 years, last public hanging haunts city«. Fox News, 2011. https://www.foxnews.com/us/after-75-years-last-public-hanging-haunts-city
4 Michel Foucault (1975) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin, 1991 edition. pp. 7–9, 57–69.
5 Albert Camus (1957) »Reflections on the Guillotine«. In Resistance, Rebellion, and Death. Translated by Justin O’Brien. New York: Knopf, 1961. Part 1.
6 Gerald J. Postema (2019) Utility, Publicity, and Law: Essays on Bentham’s Moral and Legal Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
7 Cesare Beccaria (1764) Of Crimes and Punishments. Chapter 28, »Of the Punishment of Death«. https://www.laits.utexas.edu/poltheory/beccaria/delitti/delitti.c28.html
8 Austin Campbell (2026) »Army sets execution date for Nidal Hasan by firing squad at Fort Hood«. Task & Purpose, 7 October 2026. https://taskandpurpose.com/news/nidal-hasan-execution/
9 Immanuel Kant (1797) The Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Academy edition 6:331–337.
10 Charlie Winter (2015) The Virtual ‘Caliphate’: Understanding Islamic State’s Propaganda Strategy. London: Quilliam Foundation.
11 Jana Pruett (2013) »Accused Fort Hood shooter rests case without calling witnesses«. Reuters/NBC News, 21 August 2013. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/accused-fort-hood-shooter-rests-case-without-calling-witnesses-flna6c10968124