AILSA CHANG, HOST:
President-elect Donald Trump's pick for secretary of defense, Peter Hegseth, has surprised many lawmakers who say they just don't know much about him. But one thing has gotten a lot of notice - his tattoos. Here he is talking about this on a recent podcast.
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PETER HEGSETH: I was deemed extremist because of a tattoo by my National Guard unit in Washington, D.C.
CHANG: NPR domestic extremism correspondent, Odette Yousef, joins us now to discuss. Hi, Odette.
ODETTE YOUSEF, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: All right, so what are these tattoos? Like, what do they look like, and what might they signify here?
YOUSEF: So the specific tattoo he said he was dinged for is an image of the Jerusalem cross. So this looks like one large cross with four smaller crosses in the corners. It is a symbol of Christianity, and its origins date back to the Crusades. Hegseth also has another tattoo relating to the Crusades, of the words, deus vult - Latin for God wills it. And that was sort of the battle cry to take back the Holy Land and to slaughter Muslims. Now, Hegseth says these are not symbols of white nationalism - that they are symbols of Christianity. And he is very big on this notion of a modern-day American Christian crusade. You know, one of his books is titled, "American Crusade."
But it is important to know that symbols and language tied to the Crusades are very present in some extremist movements. You know, this was a symbol on display on January 6. It was contained in the writings of neo-Nazi mass-shooter who killed scores at a summer camp in Norway in 2011. And it could signal a deep antipathy toward Islam.
CHANG: Do we have any evidence that Hegseth feels any deep antipathy towards Islam?
YOUSEF: So I attempted to contact Hegseth for an interview, and I haven't heard back. But one group that has looked into this is the progressive watchdog group Media Matters for America. Now, they've highlighted his connections to David Horowitz, a prominent American Islamophobe. They've also highlighted passages from Hegseth's own books, where he complains about growing numbers and political representation of Muslims in the U.S. And Hegseth has also spoken about rebuilding the so-called third temple in Jerusalem, which would involve destroying the third-holiest site in Islam.
CHANG: Oh, interesting. OK. Well, what else have you found, Odette - anything that might shed light on Hegseth's religious beliefs or religious affiliations - anything?
YOUSEF: So scholars told me that Hegseth is what they would consider to be a Christian nationalist, you know, and, even within the spectrum of Christian nationalism, that he belongs to a movement that one religious scholar, Matthew Taylor, calls, quote, "the very militant end of the Christian nationalist spectrum." Now, this is called the Christian Reconstructionist movement, and it seeks to reestablish Biblical law - namely Old Testament Biblical law. Now, Ailsa, this movement has lately been finding more popularity, specifically with young men in the U.S. They're sometimes referred to as theo bros, in part because this is considered a very masculine expression of Christianity. Here's Julie Ingersoll of the University of North Florida.
JULIE INGERSOLL: This tradition is deeply patriarchal. Men are in charge, and women exist for the purpose of assisting their men in their exercise of dominion. And their roles are very limited to home and family.
YOUSEF: The leader of the denomination that Hegseth belongs to has established a kind of theocracy in Moscow, Idaho. And some within this movement speak quite openly of repealing the 19th Amendment - you know, the right for women to vote. And so, you know, I think this adds some context around what Hegseth has said in interviews about wanting to remove women from combat roles.
CHANG: That is NPR's Odette Yousef. Thank you so much, Odette.
YOUSEF: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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