Why does Pete Hegseth talk like a Charlottesville-era white nationalist?

American conservatism is mutating.

Pete Hegseth is a creature of Fox News – the same one your aunt and uncle watch. The network’s familiar, performative, conservative infotainment vibe oozes from him every time he speaks.

Hegseth co-hosted Fox and Friends during the transition from Obama to Trump. I admittedly didn’t watch much of that show then, but in 2016, he supported Marco Rubio, and then Ted Cruz, before finally pledging himself to Trump when no one else was left. Seven years ago, he was tossing out chum for the Fox News viewer who believes that cold weather means climate change is fake.

Hegseth returned to the friendly confines of Fox News a few times this week to drop talking points about his still nascent tenure as Secretary of Defense. One immediately stood out.

“One of the dumbest phrases in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength,’” Hegseth told Jesse Watters on January 29. “Our diversity is not our strength. Our unity and shared purpose is our strength.”

It’s not clear to me that the “Diversity is our strength” platitude is exclusively a “military phrase,” which tells me that he probably wanted to squeeze this particular point in for his audience. White nationalists and other radicals have long repeated variations of that refrain and it isn’t something I remember someone saying in any other context.

In 2017, internet posters associated with the “alt-right” movement blasted the phrase on 4chan, Gab, 8chan, and Twitter. In what feels like a different lifetime, former Iowa Congressman Steve King lost favor in his own party for posting a variation of the same anti-diversity slogan to Twitter.

Lydia Brimelow, co-leader of the recently defunct “great replacement” and “white genocide” focused group VDARE, said something similar on a 2022 podcast.

“One of the things we talk about [at VDARE] is this idea that diversity is strength, which could not be less true. Diversity is weakness,” Brimelow said.

Activists motivated by a fear of “white genocide,” obviously view ethnic diversity as a symbol of weakness. Their thinking isn’t very complex. But I wouldn’t expect to hear that talking point from someone speaking for our $1.5 trillion military, partially because that very expensive institution is composed of about roughly one-third non-white people. I also wouldn’t have expected to hear it from someone who responded positively to Marco Rubio’s losing vision of Republican politics less than a decade ago.

Hegseth has said and done other things that seem like he plucked them from a suggestion box at a Nick Fuentes event:

• Hegseth made the “our diversity is not our strength” comment on the heels of the Trump administration removing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies from our military.

• Hegseth deliberately referred to Fort Liberty as “Fort Bragg,” the old version of the North Carolina base, named after Confederate general Braxton Bragg. (I feel compelled to note here that historians consider Bragg to be one of the most inept generals of the Civil War.)

• The Pentagon has also paused events related to “Juneteenth, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month, Holocaust Days of Remembrance and Pride Month.”

• Hegseth signaled an end to the military’s effort to fight extremism in the military. Roughly 20% of January 6 attackers served in our armed forces and white supremacist and anti-government groups target military personnel for recruitment.

A bigger issue than Pete Hegseth

If you want to argue that Hegseth has been “hiding his power levels,” to borrow a white nationalist phrase that describes burying your bigotry so that you can operate freely in the world, I won’t shoot it down. The problem is, it’s becoming almost impossible to tell. Hegseth’s drift into what we once considered radicalism likely has more to do with how the alt-right activists of 2017 helped reshape the rhetoric and values of the mainstream conservative movement.

Consider who Tucker Carlson was before Trump’s first run and what became of him after it. Consider Elon Musk’s behavior before he announced he was “red pilled” and what he does now. The behatted YouTuber Tim Pool went from making self-described “centrist” videos about bias in journalism to beating the drum about a fake stolen election in the runup to January 6.

The fact that the radical rhetoric of 2017 currently percolates at the top of the MAGA hierarchy doesn’t mean that the Republicans can–or even want to–build a white ethnostate. MAGA has become increasingly multiracial, as I have written.

Hegseth flicking away Martin Luther King Jr.’s memory like it was a beetle crawling across a picnic table will likely only result in more psychological squalor for Americans and more division. The real danger is that a strongman like Trump can manipulate such a toxic environment to impose authoritarian control.

Note: This piece is news analysis and therefore includes my personal opinions. My first book, Strange People on the Hill, will be published with Bold Type/Hachette in 2026. Please also check out Posting Through It, the podcast I co-host with Jared Holt. We try to have fun, despite everything. New episodes are usually released on Mondays: