Book shows how the ‘War on Terror’ sank the US into authoritarian extremism

After World War Two, US authorities changed the name of the Department of War to the Department of Defence. In September 2025, the Donald Trump administration changed it back. As elsewhere, President Trump abandoned propaganda niceties as he made brute realities explicit.

The US state is a war machine, ruthlessly enforcing global capitalism while leaving endless death and destruction in its wake. At the helm sits FOX host-turned-Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, an unrepentant bigot adorned with far-right Crusader tattoos and notorious for his chants to “Kill All Muslims.” Hegseth was recruited to the military back when Matt Kennard was first warning about the radicalisation of enlisted privates.

US — ‘The message to service members was clear: you have free rein to commit war crimes’

That such a character now commands the world’s most powerful military is neither a fluke nor an aberration. It shows how thoroughly Trumpism has obliterated the firewalls of acceptability and normalized the extreme. The extremist growths Kennard documented a decade ago have metastasized and taken over our governing institutions, as the likes of Hegseth and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller now occupy the highest political echelons.

Weeks after the Pentagon got its new name, Hegseth instructed senior commanders at the Marines training base in Quantico that they should no longer follow the US military’s “stupid” rules of engagement but instead pursue “maximum lethality” by taking the gloves off. When considered alongside Trump’s first-term pardons for so many convicted war criminals, the message to service members was clear: you have free rein to commit war crimes.

‘Trump declared war on the “organised left”’

Trump’s presidential predecessor, Joe Biden, had timidly called for “evaluat[ing]” counter-extremism policy after so many veterans and military personnel had been documented participating in the anti-democratic riots of January 6, 2023. Trump issued all participants with a blanket pardon. Then, after the September 2025 assassination of the far-right campaigner Charlie Kirk, Trump declared war on the “organized left” while declaring that he “couldn’t care less” about right-wing extremists, who, he alleged, are only considered radical “because they don’t want to see crime.”

At Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, the prospective defense secretary said he was determined to refocus away from alleged “extremism” in the ranks and insinuated that any attempt to address dangerous ideologies within the military was a liberal witch hunt. Such rhetoric didn’t just stoke racism, zealotry, and violence — it was an open invitation for neo-Nazis to enlist in the American Empire’s New Crusades. In his first directives as defence secretary, Hegseth targeted Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) programs, banned trans service members, and imposed new constraints to purge Black troops: all measures designed to enthuse and recruit from a reactionary base.

US — ‘The bipartisan neoliberal order that incubated the far right’

As Kennard shows, it was the bipartisan neoliberal order that incubated the far right; the failures of Tony Blair and Barack Obama paved the way for figures like Trump and Nigel Farage. Matt Kennard’s decades-long investigations into US empire and its criminal collaborators anticipated the present slide toward global authoritarianism — where genocide is the policy and opposition to it the crime; where unchecked corporate power pillages and pollutes every last drop of the planet’s precious resources; and where 60 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck even as $1.5 trillion in tax dollars are robbed by the Pentagon every year.

‘We haven’t the luxury of remaining atomised’

Trump 2.0 is ratcheting up the brazen corruption, naked colonialism, and overt militarization of society. Each news cycle brings more eviscerations of environmental protections and civil rights. As political censorship tightens, it is unclear whether the first amendment still protects adversarial journalism or whether the feds will soon come knocking at my door. Matt has reason to worry, too. His colleagues in the UK have been raided for airing the same truths he publishes regularly.

From Latin America to Palestine, Matt’s crucial reporting has proven the grim thesis that the imperial status quo means death for far too many, and that the lunatics steering it are driving off a cliff. This book is a prescient warning we may be too late to heed. As wars rage and the Earth bakes, we haven’t the luxury of remaining atomized in our discrete causes or identities. We must come together to construct a shared internationalist vision for a habitable future, built for the many and scaled to win.

This is Abby Martin’s foreword to Matt Kennard’s book Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited
Neo-Nazis, Gang Members, and Criminals. We are republishing it with Kennard’s permission.

Featured image via Orbooks