On September 30, under orders from Trump and “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth, 800 U.S. military generals and admirals from all over the world met at a Marine base in Quantico, Virginia. This was not only unprecedented but highly risky from a security standpoint. The purpose was to lay out—and solidify support for—the MAGA fascist vision of the role of the military in this immediate period as a deadly weapon to be wielded against those they identify as “enemies.” 

And who are those enemies? Here is what Trump said:

[America is] under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don't wear uniforms. At least when they're wearing a uniform, you can take them out. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war too. It's a war from within.

Think about this. Hard. Much of the media covered this as a one-day wonder. But this marks a real leap toward fascism and toward ripping up what have been the ruling norms of this country since the Civil War. TRUMP HAS DECLARED WAR ON TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WITHIN THE U.S.!!! This is way beyond and not even comparable to the Civil War, when the Confederacy fielded an army and fired the first shot.

Who Does Trump See as the Enemy? The Decent People of This Country

Trump’s enemies are numerous, and not just immigrants. He rants about “our inner cities” (i.e., Black neighborhoods) “which we're going to be talking about because it's a big part of war now, it's a big part of war.” In fact, the night before this meeting he unleashed military-style forces against both Black and Latino people in Chicago.

He says “Portland, Oregon… looks like a war zone”—apparently referring either to protests against ICE going on now, or protests after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. He denounces Democratic politicians, and claims that “insurrectionists” are being “paid off” by George Soros, a funder of the Democratic Party and of liberal causes. 

In a nutshell, “the enemy within” includes the tens of millions of immigrants, people of color, dissenters, ruling class political opponents—and many more. And the Quantico meeting platformed a fascist program of extreme, violent and deadly repression of the tens of millions that MAGA deems to be undesirable and any people who oppose Trump’s fascist offensive.

White Male Supremacy in the Guise of “Merit”

To carry out this level of repression, the forces around Trump need a reliable military. This is where Pete Hegseth, Trump’s “Secretary of War,” came in. Hegseth made clear that the purge already under way will accelerate.

Hegseth said, “This speech today... is about people, and it’s about culture,” and he was telling the truth—it was a call to embrace a culture of very thinly disguised white supremacy and male supremacy and open and quite ugly contempt for gay and especially transgender people.¹

Hegseth complained that “An entire generation of generals and admirals were told that they must parrot the insane fallacy that, quote, ‘our diversity is our strength.’ Of course, we know our unity is our strength.” He said that from now on there will be, “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction, or gender delusions.”

For Hegseth, this means restoring Confederate generals—war criminals who fought to defend slavery and carried out all manner of barbarism against Black soldiers in particular—to a place of honor. It means restoring the medals of honor (the U.S. Army’s highest medal) to those who slaughtered unarmed people, including many women and children, at the Wounded Knee Oglala reservation in 1890. It means purging Black and female officers who rose to the highest positions in the military.

Hegseth also celebrated a culture of U.S. soldiers as heartless, mindless, cold-blooded killers in the name of “God and Country.” He said that his speech represented “the liberation of America’s warriors, in name, in deed, and in authorities. You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don’t necessarily belong always in polite society.” Remember, Hegseth first caught Trump’s attention for his demagogic defense of a war criminal who was so egregious and out there in his sadism that he had been turned in by his own men and tried and convicted by a military tribunal. He “conducted” that defense as a commentator on FOX (Fascist) News; now he enforces that brutal code as “Secretary of War.”

Hegseth Message: If You Aren’t Fascist, Get the F*ck Out!

No, he didn’t put that in so many words, but he did talk openly about the rolling purge that he has been carrying out since he took office—getting rid of about a dozen very high-ranking female and Black officers, as well as people who thought diversity was in fact a good thing for the military. Hegseth said that he intends to continue to “clear out” those who are not on board with his “culture change.” And he told the officers at Quantico that “if the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign.”

To be clear, we here at revcom.us have documented many crimes that have been committed by the U.S. armed forces in their “normal functioning” as the enforcer and protector of this imperialist system. The horrors have been many, with millions of lives taken by this killing machine after World War 2. But to wield this military to crush and lock down the tens of millions opposed to, or just in the way of, the Trump fascist program would be a leap on to a whole other level of horror, and would make any chance of fundamental change or even basic protest against this system or any of its outrages qualitatively more difficult.

It is not clear how all this went down with the assembled generals, or the military more broadly. The generals followed long-standing military protocol of keeping to a strictly nonpartisan public orientation. They showed no response when Trump ridiculed and attacked Joe Biden and Democrats more generally, even when Trump encouraged them to react to what he was saying. There were retired military generals who did attack Trump’s speech, especially his focus on internal repression, and other seasoned reporters with ties through the military reported a sharp division of opinion. 

During Trump’s first term, there was some resistance to some of Trump’s repressive moves among some of the generals and other military personnel who served in his administration. Some of them intensely and ultimately successfully argued against Trump’s demand to unleash the Army against the 2020 anti-police brutality protests after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. They held, then and since, that military personnel swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, and not loyalty to a particular president. In light of this precedent-shattering meeting, this is worth reflecting on going forward.