The misogynist Secretary of Defense (I refuse to call him the Secretary of War!), Pete Hegseth, has launched an attack on the Boy Scouts. He is demanding they make immediate reforms to return to ‘core values’ otherwise the Pentagon will pull funding for things like the National Scout Jamboree due to be held in July and refuse to allow the Scouts to meet on military bases. This ridiculous assault is part of Hegseth’s ongoing war on anything that can be deemed inclusive and not up to his warped beliefs in ‘God and manhood.’
The Scouts began allowing girls to join Cub Scouts, its program for younger children, in 2018 and then expanded its Boy Scout program in 2019, allowing girls to become Eagle Scouts. In addition, the organization has become more welcoming toward transgender youth, openly gay members, or adult leaders, and accepts members of all religions. These are apparently grave sins according to Hegseth who, based upon his beliefs and actions to date, wants the Scouts to return to an exclusionary organization solely for boys and solely for Christians.
People should remember that the Nazi Party undertook a very aggressive campaign to shape the youth of Nazi Germany during Hitler’s rise to power. “The original youth movement was established in 1926, and developed into a distinct organisation to train children intended to become Nazis of the future. After Adolf Hitler’s rise to power as Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the move towards incorporation of all other youth groups such as Catholic groups, and outlaw of the Boy Scouts, ensured inclusion of as many children as possible.”1
Hitler’s Germany ultimately passed a law in 1939 mandating that all youth belong to a Nazi youth organization. “The Law on the Hitler Youth was intended to ensure, through academic and physical education, that the future of Nazism was secure in the hands of an ideologically and racially aware youth. The law mandated who had to join, and who was prohibited from joining”1. Parents could be fined or even imprisoned for refusing to allow their children to join the Nazi youth organization. There were, of course, separate organizations for boys and girls. The boys were groomed to become members of the Nazi party and support their ideology and girls were groomed to be mothers under this same ideological umbrella.
There is no question that the Boy Scouts of America has a somewhat checkered past due to past cases of sexual abuse against its members. However, even with those problems, millions of boys and girls have benefited from being a part of this organization. What Pete Hegseth is doing now to the Scouts smacks very much like the beginning of the Hitler Youth Organization of the 1930’s and the 1940’s leading up to World War II. It will be a much larger blight on American history than the sexual abuse that rocked the Boy Scouts of America in recent years.
Every American should be outraged that a white, Christian nationalist like Pete Hegeth is using extortion to force his ideology upon the youth of America. Hegseth and his ilk loudly bang the drum about ‘parental rights,’ and yet here they are trying to make decisions that should be left to parents and their children. Parents and their children should be the ones to make a decision as to whether or not the Scouts organization is a good fit for them and whether or not they wish to participate.
One would hope that in today’s volatile and complex world, Pete Hegseth would have more important things to do than declare war upon the Boy Scouts of America – apparently not! I guess the next logical step would be to rename the organization the ‘Trump Scouts of America’ and it will start with a pledge of loyalty to Donald J. Trump rather than to the United State of America. That’s what happened in Germany. Think about it.
