- U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, an Army veteran and former Fox News commentator, has about 12 tattoos on his right arm and chest. Ever since U.S. President Donald Trump nominated him to the job, social media posts have claimed Hegseth wears white supremacist, Christian nationalist or Nazi tattoos.
- At first glance, all of Hegseth’s tattoos are references to his military service and patriotism, and to his Christian faith.
- None of the tattoos is a swastika, despite online claims to the contrary.
- While some have theorized that one of Hegseth’s tattoos contains a covert reference to a neo-Nazi symbol, that theory is questionable at best. It’s important to note that neo-Nazis often rely on plausible deniability to hide their symbolism. With that caveat, there is no clear evidence that any of Hegseth’s tattoos represent a sympathy for or commitment to white supremacist or Nazi views.
- However, at least three of Hegseth’s Christian-based tattoos do use symbols that are currently associated with — but don’t necessarily indicate adherence to — Christian nationalist views (details below)
It didn’t take long for rumors about U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s tattoos to begin circulating on social media. They started not long after then-U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced he would nominate Hegseth, an Army veteran and Fox News host, to the position. In the year since, posts across social media platforms have variously claimed that Hegseth’s tattoos contain white nationalist, Christian nationalist and/or Nazi symbols.
In a podcast appearance hosted by former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan, Hegseth said that during President Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration, he had been removed from the event’s security detail because of one of his tattoos. According to the Department of Defense, 12 National Guardsmen were removed from inauguration security as a precaution due to reports of “questionable behavior,” including but not limited to extremism. If Hegseth is to be believed, he was one of those 12.
By examining Hegseth’s social media accounts, Snopes was able to identify almost all of his tattoos, which could be classified into two different categories: tattoos representing Hegseth’s military service and patriotism, and tattoos representing his Christian faith.
We should note we reached out to both Hegseth and Fox News for comment and will update this story if we hear back.
The Patriotic Tattoos
Hegseth’s tattoos referencing his military service and patriotism did not have any direct connection to neo-Nazis, Christian nationalism or white supremacist ideology. This group of tattoos included:
- The words “We The People” from the U.S. Constitution
- The year 1775 in Roman numerals (MDCCLXXV)
- A ring of stars around his elbow (possibly a reference to the Betsy Ross flag)
- A pair of crossed muskets (which normally represents military service)
- Benjamin Franklin’s “Join, or Die” political cartoon from 1754
- The patch of the 187th Infantry Regiment, of which Hegseth was a member
- A stylized red shape that appears to be a torii gate, commonly found at the entrances to Shinto shrines in Japan. The symbol is used by the 187th Infantry Regiment, nicknamed the “Rakkasans.”
(Instagram user petehegseth)
One theory claims that one of Hegseth’s tattoos, a stylized American flag with its bottom stripe replaced by an AR-15 assault rifle, is secretly a neo-Nazi tattoo. This theory claims that the stars in the American flag are laid out in a pattern that creates the number “88.” That number is used by neo-Nazis to represent “Heil Hitler,” because the eighth letter of the alphabet is “H.” Since this theory is solely based on an assumption about Hegseth’s intent, Snopes can neither confirm nor disprove it.
The flag tattoo contains 13 stars, and their layout resembles the so-called Hopkinson flag, an early American flag purportedly designed by Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. While the Hopkinson flag generally features six-pointed stars, no original designs of Hopkinson’s flag survive, and reconstructions of the flag variously feature five-pointed, six-pointed and eight-pointed stars in the same layout.
But there’s another plausible explanation for what’s going on, too — Hegseth’s tattoo contains 13 stars because 50 stars wouldn’t look as good. The U.S. Olympic Team’s logo uses 13 stars on its flag, in the same layout, for that reason.
(X user @SecDef)
The Christian Tattoos
Hegseth has five different tattoos referencing his Christian faith, and this is the group containing symbols many identified as problematic. None of these tattoos have direct connections to Nazi or white supremacist ideologies, though at least two have at least tangential links to Christian nationalism, while a third has been labeled “anti-Muslim” by at least one Islamic organization.
First and simplest are the Greek letters chi (X) and rho (P) in a circle on Hegseth’s upper arm. Chi and rho are the first two letters in the Greek spelling of Jesus Christ’s name, and the paired symbols have been used since Roman times to represent Christianity.
Next, Hegseth has a sword contained within a cross tattooed on the inside of his forearm. This is a reference to the Bible passage Matthew 10:34, which reads: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Along the blade of the sword in Hegseth’s tattoo, Hebrew letters spell “Yeshua,” or Jesus. Matthew 10 is a chapter in which Jesus Christ tells his disciples to spread the word of God, noting later on in that verse that “whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”
Two tattoos frequently cited as problematic both connect to the Crusades, when European armies invaded the “Near East” with the goal of conquering Jerusalem from the Muslims and placing it under Catholic control. Christian nationalists and other far-right movements have long glorified the Crusades. In a 2023 paper about the history of one particular Crusade song, medieval historian and musician Kate Arnold wrote the following:
The crusades and medievalist tropes in general have a history of being appropriated in the promotion of right-wing, nationalist and racist agendas, from the beginnings of medieval studies and the parallel rise of ‘Romantic nationalism’ in the nineteenth century, through twentieth-century Fascist and Nazi constructions of the medieval past as a kind of ethnically ‘pure’ golden age, to modern-day white supremacists in the USA styling themselves ‘alt-knights’.
On his right pectoral, Hegseth has a large symbol called the “Jerusalem Cross,” which consists of one large Greek cross and four small Greek crosses, one in each quadrant. (It is not, as some online claimed, a swastika.) The symbol has long been associated with the Crusades, based on sources dating back to the 1300s (the last Crusader Kingdom came to an end in 1291).Â
On his bicep, Hegseth has the words “Deus Vult,” Latin for “God wills it.” That phrase was a rallying cry of the First Crusade, and may have even been used by Pope Urban II in 1095 when he ordered the First Crusade to begin. During the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots, at least one flag flown read “Deus Vult”.
(Instagram user petehegseth)
Finally, placed right below the “Deus Vult” tattoo, Hegseth appears to have the Arabic word “kafir” tattooed. Kafir can be translated as “infidel” or “nonbeliever.”
This tattoo appeared in a photo of Hegseth posted to the official Secretary of Defense X account on March 25, 2025, and was immediately criticized by some as being anti-Muslim. For instance, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released a statement on March 27 calling the tattoo “a sign of both anti-Muslim hostility and personal insecurity.”
(X user @SecDef)
This is not to say that any of these tattoos prove Hegseth is a Christian nationalist. However, the claim surfaced for a reason — Hegseth has at least two tattoos directly referencing the Crusades, an event that many Christian nationalists glorify, and one tattoo that is hard to interpret as anything other than anti-Muslim.
According to a December 2024 article about Hegseth in The New Yorker, he has reportedly made blatant anti-Muslim comments in the past. An internal report on Hegseth’s behavior while he was president of the nonprofit organization Concerned Veterans for America claimed he repeatedly chanted “Kill All Muslims!” while at a bar in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, in the early hours of May 29, 2015. (A lawyer for Hegseth called the claim “outlandish” and said it came from a “petty and jealous disgruntled former associate.”)
In Hegseth’s 2020 book “American Crusade,” he directly referenced the Crusades when discussing the difference between “peaceful Muslims” and “Islamist Muslims,” according to the progressive research group Media Matters.
“Just like the Christian crusaders who pushed back the Muslim hordes in the twelfth century,” Hegseth wrote, “American Crusaders will need to muster the same courage against Islamists today.”Â
Sources
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“Bible Gateway Passage: Matthew 10 – New International Version.” Bible Gateway, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010&version=NIV. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024.
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“Trump Builds out National Security Team with Picks of Hegseth for Pentagon, Noem for DHS.” AP News, 12 Nov. 2024, https://apnews.com/article/trump-transition-white-house-staff-huckabee-f51121db5b18814bbab014e872c2a736.
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