The execution of death row inmate Nidal Hasan is set to be livestreamed December 3., 2026, according to the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. The Equinox is disgusted by not only the U.S. being one of only 53 remaining countries to have and practice capital punishment, but also at the notion that this execution is going to be broadcast to the public. Only two countries have held public executions in the past year, Iran and Taliban-led Afghanistan, soon that number will be three.
Public executions and capital punishment are far from new happenings in our country’s history; people were still commonly being lynched, gibbeted and hung in the town square for local viewing until the 1930s. It is not so different now than it was in our recent past, and that should be something of concern at the very least.
The Equinox feels that capital punishment should not exist at all, let alone be something the general public has access to view. When you give the state the power to kill people that they deem “bad,” it diminishes the severity of the wrongdoer’s crimes. People are becoming desensitized to violence because they see and hear about it every single day and we would not be surprised if the livestreamed footage of this firing squad ends up on social media just hours after it happens. We have seen it with political assassinations, police brutality cases, gang affairs and body camera footage of active crime scenes. It all ends up on social media very shortly after it occurs.
Violence is something that we as a society have grown accustomed to with the rise of social media, and with so many minors having unrestricted internet access, it becomes very plausible that a young child may stumble across videos of gore and harm—or in this case, a video of the firing squad execution. It is already not good for someone with a fully developed brain and consciousness to see these demonstrations of violence, but it becomes even more of an issue when children are exposed to it.
We also take note that if any other country were to do this, Americans would riot and government officials would want to take action against those killing their citizens. There is a consistent track of hypocritical contradictions within this, and yet they do not seem to matter to those in charge. Religious folks will claim that it is their faith not to kill or harm others and use that as a justification to ban abortion rights, but in the same breath they will say that they do not believe in certain marginalized groups having rights or that all criminals should die by the hands of the government. We are supposed to separate religion from state, and yet we have people in charge who seem to believe that putting people on death row is them doing a service to God.
People turn to livestreams for entertainment more often than not. Whether it be a video game, an activity or even just a chat with an online creator, people go to livestreams to feel connected to the streamer and to have something to entertain themselves. So why would someone choose to watch someone else be murdered? It is not only immoral, but it is telling of the world we live in today. There are people gambling real money on apps like Kalshi, betting on aspects of the execution like how long it will take for the inmate to die, and there will surely be hundreds of tweets making jokes about it as we approach the date it is set to occur. We have become so desensitized and apathetic towards how actions affect other people, and it will only continue to fester the longer we let things like this happen.
We are not so far removed from our less-civilized days as a country, but we should not aim to stay the same as we always have been or return to the way things were in the past. Public executions are not normal, and we should not act like they are. Letting the government decide who gets to live or die does not deter people from causing harm, it only lets people know that they can get away with anything as long as they are not afraid of death.
