The defining philosophical move of Nazism, the thing that distinguishes it from generic authoritarianism, is the totalization of function. The person ceases to exist except as an instrument of the collective mission.

Hannah Arendt identified this precisely: totalitarianism doesn’t just suppress dissent, it eliminates the category of the person who could dissent. If you aren’t in, you’re out. Now read Hegseth’s new Nazi rule applied to the U.S. military.

The department must ensure it is building ‘one force’ without subgroups defined by anything other than ability or mission adherence. Efforts to split our troops along lines of identity weaken our force and make us vulnerable. Such efforts must not be tolerated or accommodated.

The stupid. Think about it. The guy appointed to oversee an organization with effectiveness defined by how it splits troops into subgroups, doesn’t believe anyone can be special.

Special forces used to mean something, but not to Nazipants Pete.

Hegseth’s statement does exactly what Nazis do. There are now only two permitted identity traits of “ability or mission adherence”. You are what you do for a Trump mission, or you are nothing.

That’s not a military philosophy. That’s literally Nazi Gleichschaltung forcing every institution, identity, and association into alignment with a single purpose defined from the mouth of an unhinged lunatic at the top.

As a historian I want to double-down on what specifically makes this a Nazi speech by Hegseth rather than just authoritarian:

Banning recognition of identity-based patterns destroys the detection mechanism for discrimination. If you can’t categorize, you can’t measure. If you can’t measure, you can’t identify bias. If you can’t identify bias, bias becomes structurally permanent and invisible.

Hegseth doesn’t just want to enforce conformity, he says he will destroy the capacity to perceive the problem. That’s why book-burning was so much more than the loss of books themselves, as it was destroying the entire framework through which injustice becomes legible.

Circular self-justification also should be called out. “Ability” is declared the only legitimate criterion, but who assesses ability? The existing hierarchy. Whose biases are embedded in that hierarchy? The question is now prohibited. So the dominant group’s perspective becomes reality itself. “Are you able” is a weapon, not a measurement. The permitted framework of evaluation predefines answers.

Again, we see a purely Nazi epistemic move: declare the particular to be universal, then criminalize any lens that would reveal it as particular.

Universalism disgraced

“One force” sounds like equality. The Nazis also claimed this, building unity as their Volksgemeinschaft, the people’s community. Hegseth is clearly repeating the trick. He will define unity as the erasure of all difference except the categories the leader designates as real. Race is how the Nazis defined “ability”. A supposedly natural, objective criterion replicated the existing power structure exactly.

Hegseth is making statements that redefine what a human being is within the institution, as a functional unit with no legitimate interiority, no group history, no structural position worth recognizing. And he makes his redefinition coercive, exclusionary, by declaring that anyone who resists it “must not be tolerated.”

I can’t believe I have to say this but it also is a self-refuting enforcement point. Saying troops identified by his ideological “ability” review then “must not be tolerated” is itself an act of splitting the force along ideological lines, performing exactly what it prohibits.

There is no policy here. Hegseth has made an ontological claim enforced by threat. He has presented himself as the operational definition of Nazism.