AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

God Forgives, Brothers Don’t: The Long March of Military Education and the Making of American Manhood That’s the name of a new book by the journalist Jasper Craven. In it, he examines how the military has come to define American masculinity and how it often fosters its most toxic traits.

This comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently announced plans to screen the testosterone levels of service members over the age of 30, and will offer voluntary replacement therapy to those with low T-scores. The initiative was announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who’s branded the Pentagon as the “High-T Department of War.”

Jasper Craven also wrote a recent piece headlined “Why Does Pete Hegseth Have to Make His Desperate Need for Masculine Validation Our Problem?”

Welcome to Democracy Now!, as we reach you in the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont. Thanks so much for being with us, Jasper.

JASPER CRAVEN: My pleasure, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Why don’t we start off there, with that most recent piece you wrote, and start off with Pete Hegseth talking about injecting testosterone into the troops, that he wants a “High-T Department of War”? Give us the context for what he’s talking about and where Pete Hegseth comes from, what he’s tapping into.

JASPER CRAVEN: Well, all of this really stems from childhood anxieties. There’s an interesting moment in one of Hegseth’s memoirs where he pretty plainly admits feeling frustrated that his father had, you know, a strong Scandinavian work ethic but was insufficiently strong, did not sort of hold an aggression, was unable to teach that behavior, and Hegseth was deeply concerned that he would sort of grow into a man without that sort of signature, classic aggressive mentality. And so, from a very early age, Hegseth wanted to be a soldier. He talks about meeting a mythical Vietnam War veteran at a parade who counseled him not to miss his war.

And so, in 2000, when Hegseth is at Princeton in the ROTC program, he, you know, deeply, intensely embraces a military identity. He wears his ROTC Army uniform around campus outside of drill. After 9/11, he, you know, fiercely deploys neocon arguments in support of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, you know, sort of mixed in with that, he evinces aggression and deep misogyny, including towards feminist activists on campus. One of his early crusades was against The Vagina Monologues being, you know, put up on campus.

And so, you know, from here, there’s sort of these moments in his life, deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, and a real hardening that you see with Hegseth. This sort of theatrical character that he develops at Princeton, which, you know, former colleagues, students told me, you know, he could sort of turn off and on, becomes really his true identity. He’s also struggling, you know, at this time with war trauma and a drinking problem, and also the sort of realization that, you know, the “war on terror” was turning out less like World War II and more like Vietnam. The public was turning on it, and Hegseth was very frustrated that he wasn’t sort of being, you know, blindly welcomed home as a war hero. So, that curdles into cynicism. And again, he’s sort of searching for some validation through the military to sort of be considered a hero, and that is still sort of motivating his tenure at the Pentagon.

AMY GOODMAN: The title of your book, Jasper, is God Forgives, Brothers Don’t. It’s a slogan that originates from the white supremacist groups. Can you talk about why you chose this?

JASPER CRAVEN: Yes. So, I think just on its face, the slogan nicely encapsulates the really punishing dynamics within the military, in which, you know, real brotherhood and support is often withheld, and true, like, love and bonding can prove elusive. But yes, the fact of the matter is that the slogan originated as the omertà code of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a brutal neo-Nazi prison gang, and then, a few years later, is adopted as the slogan of the West Point football team. It remains the slogan of West Point’s football team until 2019. That same year, it is discovered that there is a plaque on West Point’s Science Center that features a hooded figure and the words “Ku Klux Klan.”

AMY GOODMAN: Explain. Tell us further what happened to it.

JASPER CRAVEN: Well, so, the plaque was removed, and the slogan was changed. But I think, really, you know, among other things, these two discoveries help sum up the fact that there has long been a powerful strain of white supremacy within the military. White supremacist groups have often entered the military to learn skills. They have often recruited veterans because of the overlapping ideologies between the military and domestic extremist groups. I mean, domestic extremism is today largely perpetrated by military veterans. You know, military service is today the number one predictor of violent military extremism.

And, you know, we see that and have long seen that played out in really brutal ways. I mean, veterans were responsible for Ruby Ridge, the Oklahoma City bombing. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas mass shooting was undertaken by Nikolas Cruz, who was deeply enmeshed in the Junior ROTC program at his high school. He wore an ROTC shirt while carrying out that massacre on Valentine’s Day. And then, you know, with these two recent cases, the ICE agent in Maine and the anti-ICE, you know, actor in New York City, both Army veterans. And, you know, there’s more information about the man from Maine, but the biography that you see there really hits on, you know, unfortunately, typical traits of many military veterans. You know, this is a man who, from a very early age, was sort of obsessed with the uniform in a very sort of boyish way. He became involved in Junior ROTC. He joined the Army. He was in a color guard for the Marines. He became a police officer. He became violent towards many of his partners after his deployment to Afghanistan.

Again, you know, I mean, the military has elevated rates of domestic partner violence. Divorce is endemic, drinking. I mean, you know, the base truth here is that the military condones and encourages violence towards women, misogyny, violence in general. You know, violence is the mission and is, you know, integral to the sort of bonding and initiation process. So, this is why these men are acting the way they are.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, in talking about David Brouillette, who has been identified as the ICE agent who killed the Colombian immigrant Joan Sebastián in Biddeford, Maine, speaking anonymously, one relative said, “Afghanistan destroyed him — trained him to be a killing monster, a machine. They took someone who was extremely mentally ill and turned him into a killing machine.” Also, his ex-wife, Ashley, who told the Portland Press Herald that he called her and admitted that he had been the shooter, she described abusive behavior both during and after her marriage to David Brouillette. She said she wanted to speak out publicly because she previously reported concerns about her husband’s mental health to his superiors in the military. Jasper?

JASPER CRAVEN: Yeah, and I’ve heard similar stories just like, you know, the one you just told. I mean, another really interesting fact in this case is that, you know, Brouillette wanted to join the Army at the height of the “war on terror,” and, you know, he was initially turned away because of his mental health history. But a recruiter, according to a relative, told him, “Look, get off your mental health meds for a year and come back to us, and then you’ll be able to enlist.”

I mean, when we’re talking about things like stigma around mental healthcare, you know, a lot of these toxic ideologies originate and perpetuate through the military, and that’s a perfect example. You know, here’s a man who was explicitly told by a recruiter, “Look, if you want this masculine validation in the Army, if you want to be a hero, you need to reject the medicine that’s been prescribed to you. That’s the only way you’ll be able to sort of reach this level.” And clearly, that was not the right move. But, you know, recruiters were so desperate for bodies in the Middle East, and all this service did was, you know, further degrade him.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, talking about going, being in the military, or you go to Junior ROTC, you go to military academies, that you look at the whole vast array of military education. I mean, President Trump himself attended the New York Military Academy in Cornwall, one of the oldest military schools in the United States. He was sent there by his family.

JASPER CRAVEN: Yeah. And, you know, I argue in the book that it was these four years that were deeply formative to how Trump viewed power. And also, I think Trump picked up at an early age how malleable all of these lofty virtues that the military and the U.S. government purports to uphold. I mean, you know, here was a place that pledged to build integrity among young boys, and yet at the end of the day, it’s kind of a cesspool of bullying and, you know, sexualized tension and hierarchy. And Trump was very savvy at navigating that hierarchy and snatching status by cutting corners. You know, I mean, there’s a famous moment on picture day where he borrows the uniform of a decorated classmate, so that, you know, when the photo comes out, Trump appears to be more decorated than he actually was. He understood how to navigate these systems, and that, really, you can sort of maintain status through threats of violence and domination.

You know these are the environments that many young boys historically are put through. I mean, not a lot of us think about military education and sort of what it entails, but we’re talking 5,200 ROTC and JROTC programs in public high schools and colleges across the United States. We’re talking elite military academies like West Point, the Air Force Academy, Annapolis. I mean, the Boy Scouts has a long history of deep collaboration with the military. Many, many Boy Scouts go on to serve in the military and are sort of formed around a military mindset at a very early age. And so, then there’s just sort of like all of the cultural products and news, you know, fawning news coverage, and all the rest, that just, like, infects young children at an early age. Even if they never join, they sort of become enraptured in some way with what it means to be a man, and that’s deeply tied to sort of military dominance.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Jasper, about previous investigations that you did. You’re well known in Vermont for exposing the Vermont National Guard scandal, resulting in the head of the National Guard stepping down. You revealed how a high-level Vermont Air National Guard leader was flying in military jets to see his mistress. You revealed rampant sexual abuse of female National Guard. Talk more about that and how you got into this, how you discovered this.

JASPER CRAVEN: Yeah, well, here in Vermont, the Vermont National Guard, the Green Mountain Boys, are sort of held up as paragons of this state’s flinty culture, its independent streak. You know, Ethan Allen is memorialized on the steps of the Capitol via a granite statue. And so, you know, for a long, long time, the National Guard was sort of, you know, both impenetrable reporting-wise, but just sort of like broadly, blindly declared as a real crown jewel in Vermont culture.

But as I was reporting a number of years ago about a very controversial basing of F-35s here in the state, I was tipped off from a whistleblower that a “Top Gun” culture was pervading the Air National Guard, these boys getting, you know, new toys in the form of the F-35. And so, I spent, you know, basically a year talking to women who had endured terrible sexual abuse, and also men who had seen, you know, really rowdy, inappropriate drinking and partying. This was sort of my first exposure to, you know, the dark underbelly of military culture that exists in Vermont and far beyond. But, you know, the project, I think, sort of helped illuminate the dynamics that exist in the military, especially between men and women. And so, from there, that sort of influenced, you know, a lot of the additional reporting I’ve done on military sexual trauma, on abuse at military schools and, you know, so on.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about how you got into this. You’ve also done an exposé of the gutting of the VA. Your focus is the military in all of its aspects, Jasper.

JASPER CRAVEN: Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people who cover this beat begin at the Pentagon or, you know, via an embed overseas. And my sense is that a lot of those reporters, especially if they’re civilians, can get sort of caught up in that culture and, you know, become sort of intimidated and sort of enmeshed in the sort of top brass culture there.

And my journey began at the VA. So, my work was covering the wounds of war, speaking to veterans about what military life had done to them, how it had complicated their transitions back to civilian life, you know, the the wounds, invisible and otherwise, that they carried. And so, I, you know, developed, very early on, a deep skepticism of the Pentagon itself and sort of worked backwards, you know, from veteran life to active duty. And so, I think, you know, I’ve been able to, I think, maybe better trace what actually happens after the battlefield. There’s sort of a silo between DOD and VA reporting much of the time, and I’ve tried to sort of, you know, broach those two institutions to sort of get beyond the often sort of exciting, you know, war coverage that is generally sort of much of what exists out in the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Right after Secretary Hegseth said that, you know, they’d be making available testosterone to soldiers over at 30 — they’d be doing testosterone tests and seeing if we have a low-T military — Jesse Watters of Fox had this disturbing comment to make on TV.

JESSE WATTERS: You know what’s going to happen? The guys that don’t need it are going to take it, to triple boost.

TYRUS: Right.

JESSE WATTERS: And then they’re going to get out there, and women on base, you guys better be careful. Port calls, women in Asia, you better be careful, because these guys are going to be wild animals, and you better watch out!

AMY GOODMAN: Jasper Craven, if you can respond to what Jesse Watters said?

JASPER CRAVEN: Well, it makes me sort of think back on the evolution of the military’s obsession with the male form and with strength over wits. A lot of this actually dates back to World War II. You know, American war planners became very panicky that Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy were enacting these really stringent physical fitness regimes on their people and on their soldiers, in particular. You know, there were rumors that the Nazis actually were injecting their men with anabolic steroids. And so, there was this reaction within the War Department to enact a similar regime as these strongmen, to sort of build up the American soldier in a really aggressive way. This was the first time that military manuals prescribed, you know, hand-to-hand combat techniques. There was a new emphasis on building the upper body. And so, this sort of culture, these standards have sort of continuously evolved to, you know, create these sort of super soldiers.

Another sort of important moment in time here is the rise of the special operator. You know, beginning with JFK during Vietnam, the Green Beret, the special operator, the Navy SEAL, these men have been considered this sort of panacea to political figures, that can accomplish these missions through their own brute strength on a sort of covert level without too many men being put into harm’s way. And so, politicians, from Kennedy to Obama to Trump, have increasingly deployed these hyperaggressive, really ripped dudes out into war zones, not only because they’re sort of enchanted by the culture and the brutishness that they exude, but because there’s simply less political risk with a, you know, small cadre of SEALs, as opposed to a large-scale ground invasion.

I mean, Trump has continuously sort of turned to these smaller micro-conflicts that offer these triumphant moments — or so he hopes — that can sort of, you know, fortify his own image as a strongman without sort of, you know, actually undertaking major deployments. I mean, firepower has also been critical to this. But, you know, Hegseth has really embraced the naval — the Navy SEAL as sort of the ultimate soldier. As many will recall, he vouched for a number of special operators accused very credibly of war crimes during Trump’s first term, including Eddie Gallagher. Trump either pardoned or commuted the sentences of these men.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain who Eddie Gallagher was.

JASPER CRAVEN: Yeah, Eddie Gallagher was a Navy SEAL, had a half-dozen or so deployments, you know, was suffering, it appears, from PTSD and traumatic brain injuries, and on his final deployment really sort of set down a mission that was, you know, as many men as he could kill. He was just — he just wanted to rack up numbers. Allegedly, he, you know, shot at civilians intentionally. He also, in violation of international war codes, allegedly killed a young captive with a knife. And, you know, his own men turned Gallagher in. He was imprisoned. And many of them had taken the extraordinary step of testifying against him.

But thanks to Hegseth’s advocacy, Trump intervened and spared Gallagher a sentence, preserved his military status. He could keep his vaunted SEAL pin, which is very important in the culture. And Eddie Gallagher has basically spun that out to become a influencer himself in the manosphere. He has a podcast. He hawks gun silencers and hot salt online. You know, he is sort of a character now in the manosphere.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Jasper, of course, Eddie Gallagher, I mean, he was in Afghanistan and Iraq, but what he was imprisoned for was the killing in Iraq.

JASPER CRAVEN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to ask you, as Pete Hegseth goes before the Senate asking for billions more for the war on Iran, Republican as well as Democratic senators, to say the least, questioning him. You did a piece just in February about the gutting of vet care. You did a piece in The American Prospect called “How Trump Put Veteran Care in Crisis.” Explain.

JASPER CRAVEN: Yes. Well, you know, to back up for a second, the VA was built through much tenacious activism by veterans across generations. This was a social safety net that was not given to those who served, but, you know, aggressively secured at the price of blood, sweat and tears, dating back to, you know, the benefits march after World War I.

And so, Republicans especially have always been skeptical of the benefits within the VA — free healthcare, the GI Bill, subsidized home loans, pioneering housing programs and anti-homelessness measures, you know, peerless medical research. But as traditional membership-based veterans’ groups have waned, in part because the veteran population has shrunk, a number of ideological and corporate actors have stepped in, often under the guise of sort of veterans’ advocacy. You know, there are now a number of astroturf groups, including Concerned Veterans of America, which is funded by the Kochs. And they, you know, year by year, have chipped away at this benefits system and are working to privatize it and send veterans out into the private sector. You know, I mean, the DOGE initiative last year also led to tens of thousands of frontline VA staff being pushed out. I mean, Trump, in his first term, passed the VA MISSION Act, which was a hugely consequential law that, you know, funneled hundreds of thousands of veterans outside of the VA, left many VA hospitals struggling.

And yeah, so, to see, you know, Hegseth ask for basically $100 billion for this war in Iran that nobody wants, while, you know, lawmakers are currently considering legislation that would gut veterans’ disability payments, it’s just pretty despicable, frankly. And, you know, I mean, the other thing that I think is really important here, as we talk about, you know, military extremism and veterans engaging in violence and other toxic behavior, is that the VA serves a vital purpose of helping veterans transition back to civilian life in healthy ways. You know, there is research that the healthcare it provides helps extinguish hateful ideologies, helps sort of, you know, reprogram veterans away from a mindset that’s oriented around violence.

You know, I mean, the case study of Graham Platner is a tricky one, because, you know, after he got home, he engaged in a lot of really bad behavior, and any progress that he has made clearly seems to have occurred in fits and starts. At the same time, you know, the things that he struggled with — alcohol abuse, nihilism, misogyny, extremism, sexual misconduct — these are part and parcel for veterans coming home. And, you know, to his credit, Platner entered the VA in 2017. He’s had the same therapist ever since. He has tried, it appears, in some ways, to reorient his mindset. I mean, you know, he became an oyster farmer. He found a productive way to use his hands. He got a house. He found a wife. I mean, again, like, there is a very credible sexual assault allegation against him during this period of transition when he was in the VA, so, you know, that cannot be ignored and, I think, speaks in part to just how difficult it can be for someone like Graham Platner, who had four very gnarly deployments in the Middle East, to sort of reintegrate into his Maine hometown. But I think that he speaks the truth when he hails the VA as critical to helping him find some solid ground.

AMY GOODMAN: Jasper Craven, I want to thank you so much for being with us, journalist covering masculinity and the military. His latest book, God Forgives, Brothers Don’t: The Long March of Military Education and the Making of American Manhood. This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.