The man overseeing America’s bombardment of Iran – a campaign that has killed more than 1,700 civilians and counting – has a 12th-century Crusader’s cross tattooed across his chest. Beneath his navy suits and American flat pocket squares, Pete Hegseth, US secretary of war, has “Deus Vult” (God wills it) inked on his forearm and the Arabic word for “infidel” just below it. These are the same symbols that white supremacists paraded through Charlottesville in 2017. What Hegseth has tattooed on his skin is not incidental to what he is doing in the Middle East.
“It appears Islam lives so rent-free in Pete Hegseth’s head that he feels the need to stamp himself with tattoos declaring his opposition,” said Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim civil rights organisation in the US, in a statement after Hegseth’s nomination was confirmed. “He should keep in mind that he leads the US armed forces, which includes thousands of American Muslims, and that he is sworn to defend the American people, who include millions of American Muslims.”
But Hegseth has leaned more into the “warrior ethos” that he promised he would bring to the job formerly known as secretary of defence while the US senate deliberated approving a former Fox News host accused of sexual assault and alcohol abuse to the role. Since then, early fears that his so-called “Christian tattoos” promised a modern reign of terror against Muslim people have proved well-founded.
Meanwhile, Hegseth’s expressions of his own Christian faith in his new federal position are clumsy at best. His increasingly desperate defence of Donald Trump verges on idolatry, and earlier this month he quoted a fake bible verse that Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino had invented for his bloody crime thriller Pulp Fiction. He was trying to underline the importance of a rescue mission for an American fighter pilot, but instead revealed how much of his faith-based defence is a farce.
What Hegseth really seems to be speaking to is the belief that the US is a nation by and for Christians, committed to violently purging non-Christians from desired territory around the world. That’s another way of describing Christian nationalism, a far-right ideology that has accumulated frightening power during Trump’s second term.
Three months before he was sworn in as second-highest person in the US military chain of command, after a process which required Vice-President JD Vance to cast a rare tiebreaking vote, Hegseth showed off his largest chest tattoo on the popular podcast The Shawn Ryan Show.
Hegseth explained he had resigned from the National Guard after his orders to protect the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden in 2021 were revoked over his chest tattoo. The tattoo is a large, square cross with flattened ends. In each quadrant, there’s another, smaller cross. Hegseth told Ryan this is called a Jerusalem cross. It’s also known as the Crusader’s cross, and it was used as the coat of arms by Christians who battled Muslims for control of Jerusalem in the 12th century. Today, the city is still disputed territory, claimed by the Israeli government as its capital.
According to Hegseth, someone else in the military had found a picture of his cross tattoo on social media during Trump’s first term. They reported it then as evidence of Hegseth being an extremist threat – one of the white, Christian, nationalist variety. So, Hegseth left the military and published a book called The War on Warriors.
“It’s a Christian symbol, that’s all it is,” Hegseth assured Ryan. “There’s a lot of guys with it.” He then gestured to another tattoo on his wrist, of a sword inside a more traditional-looking cross, which he had previously identified as a reference to Matthew 10:34, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword”. “I got a Christian symbol here,” Hegseth said. He was indignant about the idea that Christians could be labelled extremists while asserting that the real extremism in America was coming from the radical left.
A few inches above his sword-in-cross, Hegseth has another tattoo that says “Deus Vult”, Latin for “God wills it”. Some believe Crusaders used this as a battle cry. In addition to Hegseth’s body, the Crusader’s cross and “Deus Vult” were also displayed together on banners carried by white supremacists through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, before one drove his car into counter-protesters and killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer. In the Trump age, these symbols together are no longer merely reminiscent of medieval history classes. They have instead become calling cards for the far right’s legacy of domestic terrorism.
US Secretary State for War Pete Hegseth. Photo: Instagram
Hegseth denies that his tattoos are rooted in the same violent extremism, but during his 15 months as war secretary he has ushered in an unprecedented level of Christian extremist influence. In the US, church and state are supposed to be separated as a matter of constitutional principle, but complaints to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which monitors freedom of religion in the armed forces, have rocketed as Hegseth leads the country’s forces into war with Iran. One commander reportedly described the war as “part of God’s divine plan” and said that Trump was “anointed by Jesus” to trigger the kind of Armageddon and second coming of Christ described in the Book of Revelation.
Hegseth also personally welcomed an Evangelical Christian nationalist preacher into the Pentagon to lead worship services for defence contractors, which drew complaints that the military was intentionally excluding non-Christians from official activities. That preacher, Doug Wilson, hopes to transform America into a Christian republic, where same-sex marriage would be outlawed and men would vote on behalf of their wives.
We are seeing a Crusader mentality play out at the absolute highest levels of government
“His ideas are – you know, I’d like to say cuckoo bananas, but it’s more like they’re extremely close to the centre of power,” says Tal Lavin, a journalist whose book Wild Faith explores the Christian right’s American takeover. “We’re at now perhaps the apotheosis of 50 years of them building power.
“You look at Hegseth’s embrace of Crusader imagery, and then you look at his actions, which are embracing and leading a war against Iran. We are seeing a Crusader mentality play out at the absolute highest levels of government.”
Trump’s own rhetoric against Iran has signalled this mentality, including his now infamous threat this month that “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again” if the country’s leaders failed to make a deal with him.
Blatant anti-Muslim bias is evident even in Hegseth’s most recent ink. After joining Trump’s administration, and less than a year before the US launched “Operation Epic Fury,” Hegseth posted photos online that appeared to show off a new tattoo: right below “Deus Vult,” there were Arabic letters spelling out the word “kafir” – a derogatory term for someone who isn’t Muslim.
“‘Kafir’ has been weaponised by far-right Islamophobes to mock and vilify Muslims,” posted Palestinian-American activist Nerdeen Kiswani. “The US just bombed Yemen. This is the real-world impact of officials who glorify imperialist violence.”
Some of the best evidence that Hegseth’s tattoos reflect a belief that Christian Americans should exert violent dominance over Muslim people is found in the first few pages of his 2020 book American Crusade. The cover pictures him holding an American flag and shows off three more of his tattoos: “We the people,” which are the opening words of the US Constitution; “MDCCLXXV,” which is the year of the US army’s founding in Roman numerals (1775), and an image of an assault rifle embedded into the stripes of the American flag.
“This time in our history calls for an AMERICAN CRUSADE. Yes, a holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom,” he writes in the book’s introduction. “One thousand years ago, after years of ceding land to conquering Muslim hordes, the pope ordered military action to save Europe. ‘Deus vult’ (‘God wills it’) was the rallying cry of Christian knights as they marched to Jerusalem.”
Hegseth then goes on to compare the crusaders to today’s Maga movement, urges readers to re-elect Trump, and suggests that Muslim immigrants to the US can become truly American through joining the US military and killing “terrorists” in the Middle East. It’s the kind of thing that raised glaring red flags during Hegseth’s confirmation process, but ultimately didn’t stop him from rising to the height of military power.
“The Christian right has been organising in broad daylight,” Lavin said. “Now the secretary of defence is openly calling for Christian soldiers to defeat their Muslim enemies while wearing a Crusader tattoo. We’re at a pretty extreme point.”
Kat Tenbarge is an award-winning independent journalist who writes the newsletter Spitfire News about internet culture and politics