Pete Hegseth's masculine front is just a cover for violence | Opinion

President Donald Trump's renaming of the Department of Defense to the Department of War in September 2025 seemed like an empty gesture toward a more violent, offensive military. As time has told, it was a harbinger of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's comical crusade of military re-masculinization that has reached its breaking point.

The name change also began the chronicle of a boy who couldn't be king – or in Hegseth's case – machismo militant dictator.

Hegseth's latest display of hypermasculine leadership comes in the form of a planned live-streamed execution of the Fort Hood shooter, former Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, by firing squad on Dec. 3. This act of public violence has drawn bipartisan criticism and proves that Hegseth's hubris – and the type of masculinity it represents culturally – is just vacuous evil.

The masculine urge to regress

As we've seen with the manosphere – online spaces that promote aggressive or traditional masculinity, anti-feminism and the belief that society is biased against men – affirming masculinity through cruelty inevitably leads to more harm. And we're only regressing from here.

Manosphere influencer and self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate was charged with rape and human trafficking in 2023.

Clavicular, a prominent figure in the manosphere subculture of "looksmaxxing," faces felony charges of drugging and raping a 16-year-old girl in Cape Cod.

Hegseth has faced sexual assault allegations of his own.

An ideology that propagates violence and misogyny was bound to create such violent and depraved people. The manosphere – and everything it touches – was always destined to collapse in on itself.

Hegseth's patriarchal utopia is no different.

The cruelty is the point. Assign it righteousness to give it cause. Take it away, and there's nothing left. It's all rather childish.

Even Trump, someone who revels in cruelty and disorder, has his doubts.

The manosphere is laughable – until it's not

In September, the Defense secretary stumbled through an obviously rehearsed diatribe against perceived "woke" culture in the military.

"No fatties, no t-------, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals," Hegseth said during his "State of the Force" speech.

In 2026, a speech like this reads more like full-on regression than standard bigotry.

Hegseth isn't the only man-child turning backward. "Comedian" Shane Gillis recently sparked controversy during a "Saturday Night Live" monologue in which he essentially called women "whores" for dressing "provocatively" at the gym, and victimized men for the arduous task of not harassing these women.

Besides being late to the what-women-wear-working-out discourse, the "joke" seems like the type of low-hanging misogyny that wouldn't have gone on air not even five years ago.

Although rape culture certainly hasn't gone anywhere, one would think more men would have a more robust understanding of consent after #MeToo. The sheer depravity displayed in the rape accusations against seven former Cornell University by a former female student proves otherwise.

Perhaps a product of the manosphere and "incel" (involuntarily celibate) culture, there seems to be a large swath of men who would rather revert to antiquated displays of masculinity than unlearn problematic patriarchal paradigms.

In Hegseth's case, he desperately wants to be seen as a strong, militant leader. Why else would he embarrass himself with those now-viral gym-fail videos? He won't ever admit it, but all this macho-military fanfare is a futile attempt to affirm his masculinity. Like the manosphere, it's laughable until it's not.

Kofi Mframa is an entertainment and culture columnist at USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pete Hegseth's masculine front is just a cover for violence | Opinion

Reporting by Kofi Mframa, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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This story was originally published October 14, 2026 at 1:31 AM.