Extremism experts are sounding the alarm about Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, whose writings and online presence reveal someone immersed in a culture of rightwing Christianity, political extremism and violent ideation.

The Fox & Friends host, who has served in the US army but has no experience in government, drew shock from Pentagon officials when Trump nominated him. Hegseth’s books on American culture and the military, his commentary on Fox and his frequent posts on social media showcase his far-right ideology. On these platforms, Hegseth telegraphs paranoia and anger toward “leftists”, an ultra-masculine Maga persona and apparent revulsion toward service members who do not fit his vision – including women.

“The thing that really worries me, is both the ideology of Christian nationalism and what that’s going to mean for the kind of policies he tries to put in place for the defense department,” said Thomas Lecaque, a historian focusing on religion and political violence.

Researchers who focus on the Christian right were quick to flag Hegseth’s tattoos, which feature a tapestry of symbols widely embraced by Christian nationalists, including a Jerusalem cross on his chest, an American flag with 13 stars partly obscured by an assault weapon below his shoulder and the words “Deus Vult” (“God wills it”) on his biceps.

Deus Vult is “a first Crusade battle cry”, said Lecaque. “There is no other way you can interpret this. This is not some warm and fuzzy, ‘we should, you know, pray and do acts of service’ – this is a call to religious violence.”

Hegseth did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Hegseth’s tattoos are just one aspect of the television presenter’s Christian, hyper-masculine and hard-right persona.

In one Instagram post promoting an ammunition company, Hegseth dips his hands into a bucket of bullets and lets them pour through his closed fists while shouting: “freedom!” In another, he shows off a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “A Pledge a Day Keeps the Commies Away” superimposed on an American flag.

Much of Hegseth’s social media content is promotional. He regularly advertises an ammunition company, a coffee company and the pro-gun group Right to Bear on Instagram. In a November 2023 post, he promoted an Advent songbook published by the Forge Press, which is described on its website as an organization that “arms Christians with weapons to build, defend, and expand the new Christendom”. It also offers the podcast Red Pill Reformation, with episode titles such as “Reformation vs. Revolution: A Christian Vision for World Conquest.”

The Forge, Hegseth wrote on Instagram, is “a great new Christian company you won’t regret supporting”.

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Hegseth has also embraced the upside-down American flag, which he has worn on a hat and used as cover art for his 2024 book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. Historically flown by sailors to signal distress, the upside-down flag has been widely appropriated by Trump supporters who rejected the outcome of the 2020 election and protested against his criminal convictions.

In his books and interviews, Hegseth regularly demonizes his political opponents and lays out hardline positions – often in explicitly militant terms.

“In more ways than you can imagine, leftists have surrounded traditional American patriots on all sides, ready to close in for the kill: killing our founders, killing our flag, and killing capitalism,” he writes in his 2020 book, American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free.

For Hegseth, “leftists” – proponents of LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights and racial justice – lurk around every corner, posing an existential threat to the United States. In American Crusade, Hegseth writes that he believes the US faces a moment of “irreconcilable differences between the Left and the Right in America leading to perpetual conflict that cannot be resolved through the political process”. He adds: “No, I’m not calling for violence, I’m just pointing out the reality.”

Despite many such caveats in the book, Hegseth frequently proposes violent ideas.

“This time in our history calls for an American Crusade,” he writes in the book’s introduction. “Yes, a holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom.”

The central premise of American Crusade is the idea that there exists something called “Americanism”, which he characterizes essentially as rightwing populism, and then there is everything else: feminism, globalism, Marxism, progressivism. In Hegseth’s narrative, “Americanism” must prevail, or “death” will.

“America is under the scourge of leftism. Our situation is bad, very bad. We are in the fight of our lives for the soul of our country,” writes Hegseth. “You must be thinking, ‘Pete, you laid this out in pretty simple terms. Us versus them. America versus the left. Good versus evil. You’re overplaying your hand. It’s not that bad.’ Read on, and think again.”

In media appearances and on social media, Hegseth frequently expresses other common tropes of the far-right – including the idea that the US is not a democracy, but a “constitutional republic”. (It is both.)

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“Democracy, it’s everywhere, right?” said Hegseth in a May 2024 interview, railing against secular public education and teachers’ apparent obsession with the idea of democracy. “Democracy, democracy, defend the democracy. Do you know what our founders did not want us to be? A democracy.”

Hegseth has also joined efforts by rightwing groups to discredit an early push by the Biden administration to address extremism in the military.

A veteran of the US army, having served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay with the Minnesota national guard, Hegseth takes offense at the notion that service members could be vulnerable to the sway of extremist political ideologies.

“Rooting out ‘extremism,’ today’s generals push rank-and-file patriots out of their formations,” writes Hegseth in his 2024 book, The War on Warriors.

Hegseth is far from alone in opposing efforts to counter extremism within the ranks of the military. Less than three years after the creation of the countering extremism working group, the military quietly dropped the project – reportedly the result of a Republican push to quash it.

“Republicans began to treat extremism in the military as though it was not a problem,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the research group Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “It doesn’t matter to them the number of terrorist attacks committed by people who were active duty.”

Hegseth says that he was personally labeled as an extremist by the US army – a claim the Guardian could not verify.

“I was in the national guard during the inauguration of Joe Biden,” said Hegseth in a 4 June interview. “But ultimately, members of my unit and in leadership deemed that I was an extremist, or a white nationalist.”

At the heart of Hegseth’s grievances about the modern US military is his opposition to diversity and inclusion, and he has openly dismissed swaths of service members as inadequate based on their gender or sexuality.

“I’m straight up just saying, we shouldn’t have women in combat roles,” Hegseth said in a recent podcast.

Hegseth proposes upending the military establishment and purging members of the “general-class” who support diversity and inclusion principles. “The next president of the United States needs to fire them all – or at least most of them – and install leaders with real fidelity to the Constitution,” Hegseth writes in War on Warriors.

The proposal to purge the military of officers he deems too liberal reflects Trump’s campaign mantra of targeting “enemies within” the state.

“The tattoos – I get why we talk about them, and we should – but there’s also the project of sweeping out the general staff,” said Jeff Sharlet, an author who has covered Christian fundamentalism and the far right. “That’s what you do in a coup.”