Before the mid-19th century, executions in America were presumptively public. Most prisoners were hanged on a gallows, following an hours-long affair that began with the condemned person’s exit from jail accompanied by ministers, the sheriff and his deputies, and sometimes a military escort. Spectators joined the humiliating procession, gathering by the thousands to watch the noose lowered over the prisoner’s neck. The sheriff would mount the scaffold to read aloud the death warrant, sometimes adding commentary, and at least one minister (often several) would issue sermons. The condemned was offered the chance to give a speech, with spectators standing so close that they could ask the prisoner questions and join him in prayer, or bid him goodbye, if he was a family member or friend.

All of that seemed safely confined to a past that the Trump administration now hopes to revive. President Trump, a consummate showman, has authorized the country’s first public execution in 90 years. The condemned prisoner is Nidal Hasan, a military psychiatrist who murdered 13 people and injured many more during a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, in Texas. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that the killing, scheduled for December 3, will be conducted by the military and publicly livestreamed. During his trial, Hasan alarmed his standby attorneys when he chose to defend himself, and mounted an argument that the lawyers considered tantamount to seeking his own death. He could still conceivably file civilian appeals, which could delay his execution substantially. If it goes forward, the administration surely hopes to make an example of Hasan to all who might be tempted by his worldview. But this strategy could just as likely result in unintended consequences, and pushback by the public.

[Elizabeth Bruenig: The way of the gun]

Public executions ceased not because those who clamored to witness them found the displays uniformly outrageous, but because politicians in the 19th century associated them with proletarian barbarity. Though these executions were theoretically meant to deter crime and exhort onlookers to practice proper Christian values, they were mostly entertainment, and did not always provoke the desired reactions. Some onlookers cheered and celebrated the killings; others sympathized with the condemned. Public executions of Black prisoners in the South, for instance, became opportunities for community, song, and displays of Black religious authority. Ministers preached sermons of salvation and sometimes protested that the prisoners were innocent.

In that sense, the public nature of executions backfired, and critics took note. Because the attendant crowds were so volatile, vulgar, and unruly, by 1860 all northern states had begun carrying out the killings in jail yards, which were much smaller areas, subject to tight government control. Decades later, the South followed suit. The large crowds soon vanished. Military executions, traditionally carried out by firing squad, were long conducted in small, controlled settings, often witnessed only by military personnel and chaplains. The last military execution in the United States was carried out in 1961.

Trump and Hegseth aim to have it both ways: a small, secure setting and massive crowds. This time, viewers will be watching a livestream on their screens, close enough to see the event but too far to smell the gunpowder. Both Hegseth and Trump seem intent on flexing America’s political power and military might as a message not just to foreign enemies but to the American people, as if to say: This could be you. This method of ruling by fear is central to authoritarian governance, and Trump and Hegseth seem drawn to executions partly for that reason.

But if Trump and Hegseth are hoping for a deterrent effect, they’re unlikely to get it. The idea that executions could deter other killers with political motives seems sorely mistaken; those who carry out such murders already know that they could face grave consequences, and have deemed that outcome acceptable. Nor do executions deter murderers without political motives, because deterrence is generated not by the severity of the punishment, but by the certainty of getting caught. And there is little certainty in American homicide investigations: In 2023, the nationwide case-clearance rate for murder was only 58 percent, meaning that murderers have decent odds of evading justice. Even if they are caught, they have good odds of avoiding the death penalty—only 23 new death sentences were handed down in 2025. Trump’s Department of Justice hopes to boost those numbers, but even if they tripled, they would add up to 69 death sentences spread across some 14,000 murders.

[Read: The problem with Trump’s crime claims]

Adding a livestreamed element is perhaps an attempt to intensify the intended deterrent effect, but it might have opposite consequences. Plenty of Americans would surely enjoy the spectacle of a public execution, just as people have historically. One can envision groups of people crowded around their phones, sharing chips and drinks, admiring the military pageantry. But it’s easy to imagine a different effect, too: Other crowds of people, other phones, entirely different impressions—that the death penalty is a disgusting violation of human rights that puts America in league with nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China. Or that Nidal Hasan is a martyr, and the United States is a savage country not worth defending—which is the narrative presented by Hasan himself. Before the shooting, he told family that he’d turned against the country he served upon hearing horrific stories of war from his psychiatric patients, and grew troubled by the fact that America was killing Muslims abroad. Carrying out his public execution would only credit the notion that this country is barbarous.

© Illustration by Adam Maida / The Atlantic

White Nights, a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky first published in 1848, is the latest literary discovery of Generation Z. TikTok users seem to be talking about little else.

Seguir leyendo

© Patricia Bolaños (EL PAÍS)

Il sole sta calando sulle vette dei monti Pryor come una ferita aperta che sanguina sul Montana. È un paesaggio che sembra un quadro, ma è un inganno: sotto questa selce grigia  giace una storia di violenza, fango e calcoli a freddo.

Se volete capire come si è chiuso il West, dimenticatevi le favolette di Hollywood. Qui si parla di sopravvivenza cruda, di gente che ha dovuto masticare ferro e sputare pallottole per non farsi cancellare dalla mappa.

Al centro di questo conflitto c’è Plenty Coups. Nato attorno al 1848 nella tribù degli Absarokee — i Crow, per chi mastica solo l’inglese —, gli appioppano alla nascita un nome che suona come “Bisonte che affronta il vento”. Ma da queste parti le parole valevano meno del fango sotto gli stivali se non eri pronto a tirare fuori i denti.

La svolta arriva quando ha nove anni. Gli ammazzano il fratello maggiore in una scaramuccia da quattro soldi. Un colpo secco, di quelli che ti fanno cortocircuitare il cervello. Il ragazzino prende e se ne va da solo tra i dirupi selvaggi dei Pryor, posti duri, pieni di selce scura e affilata come bisturi. Si mette a digiunare per giorni, masticando rabbia e svenendo sulla roccia dura.

Lì, tra la selce e la polvere, la fame gli regala una visione che sembra un film di terrore: una tempesta bestiale si abbatte sulla foresta e sradica i pini secolari, tirandoli giù come birilli spazzati via dal fango. Tutti gli alberi crollano, piallati. Ne resta in piedi uno solo. Su quel ramo sopravvissuto c’è una cinciallegra. Subito dopo, vede le mandrie di bisonti svanire nel nulla, rimpiazzate da una marea di buoi maculati che occupano ogni centimetro di terra.

Gli anziani del villaggio non ci misero molto a capire l’antifona, senza troppi fronzoli:

L’uomo bianco sta arrivando e farà tabula rasa. Se non vogliamo dare le dimissioni dalla storia, dobbiamo fare come quel piccolo uccello bastardo: ascoltare, capire come muove le carte il nemico e adattarci prima che ci schiacci.

Ma Plenty Coups non era un agnellino. Prima di mettersi la giacca e la cravatta, quel tipo era un guerriero spietato. Un coup per loro era il massimo del coraggio: toccare un nemico in battaglia a mani nude o con un bastone mentre quello cercava di piantarti un proiettile in pancia.

Bisognava avere i nervi di selce. Plenty ne collezionò a decine, umiliando Lakota e Sioux prima ancora di compiere trent’anni.

Si infilava la pelle di un lupo grigio sulla schiena e strisciava nel campo avversario rapido come una lama che ti taglia la gola in silenzio.

Poi arrivò il punto di non ritorno. Mentre altri capi leggendari sceglievano la guerra totale contro l’esercito americano — una scelta eroica ma destinata a finire in un bagno di sangue e nella resa incondizionata —, Plenty applicò la lezione della cinciallegra con un calcolo politico spietato. Capì che affrontare i fucili a ripetizione e i treni a vapore era un suicidio pulito.

Così fece la sua mossa: alleò i Crow con Washington, fornendo esploratori all’esercito contro i nemici storici della sua tribù. Un tradimento? No, puro cinismo da sopravvivenza.                                    I Crow non volevano finire deportati in qualche buco arido a centinaia di miglia da casa. E il piano funzionò: quando la polvere si posò, i Crow furono tra i pochissimi a tenere le proprie terre ancestrali nella valle del Little Bighorn.

Nel 1890, diventato Capo Supremo, Plenty capì che la battaglia non si faceva più con i cavalli, ma negli uffici. Salì su quei mostri di ferro a vapore e andò dritto a Washington a trattare con i presidenti americani, schivando i tranelli di senatori corrotti e speculatori minerari con la stessa cattiveria con cui un tempo schivava le frecce.

Agli anziani che volevano ancora impugnare l’ascia, sputava in faccia la realtà:

L’istruzione è la vostra arma più potente. Con quella siete pari al bianco; senza, siete soltanto le sue prossime vittime.

Nel 1921 lo chiamarono perfino ad Arlington per la sepoltura del Milite Ignoto. Unico nativo presente in mezzo a una manica di politici che puzzavano di ipocrisia. Stette lì, solenne, e depose sulla tomba il suo copricapo di piume e il suo bastone da guerra. Tirò giù la serranda sulla sua carriera da guerriero davanti al mondo intero.

Morì nel 1932, a 84 anni suonati. Niente figli, ma una terra salvata dal disastro e la sua casa regalata allo Stato perché bianchi e nativi imparassero a non scannarsi come bestie.

La storia di Plenty Coups non è una storiella da eroi romantici: è la vicenda di un leader che ha preferito affilare il cervello invece di farsi massacrare per un briciolo di orgoglio.

Fonti consultate e citate:

• Wikipedia (voce di riferimento): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenty_Coups
• Autobiografia e fonti storiche: Frank B. Linderman, Plenty-Coups: Chief of the Crows, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.
• Archivi storici: Library of Congress (Dedicazione del Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Arlington 1921).

 

L'articolo L’ultimo dei Crow: La vera storia di Plenty Coups su Vanilla Magazine scritto da Elian Dar

Paul Spong’s life has been entwined with whales for nearly six decades. In the 1960s, Spong, who hails from Aotearoa New Zealand, moved to the U.S. to study physiological psychology at the Brain Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. Then, in 1967, he entered the world of cetaceans when the Vancouver Aquarium in Canada hired him to study the behavior of a once-wild orca (Orcinus orca) named Skana, who’d been captured from Puget Sound that same year. While conducting behavioral, visual and auditory experiments on Skana, Spong quickly noticed the orca’s high intelligence and self-awareness, and advocated for her release. But the aquarium, which didn’t renew Spong’s contract, held onto Skana until her death in 1980. After his experience with Skana, Spong decided to investigate orcas in their natural habitat. In 1970, he landed on Hanson Island, off the northeastern coast of Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada, with a tent and hydrophone, intending to study the local whales over the Northern Hemisphere summer. But his project stretched out longer than a single season, and by the late 1970s, Spong had founded a permanent research facility on Hanson Island, known today as the OrcaLab. Spong and his wife, whale researcher Helena Symonds, now serve as co-directors of the organization. Northern resident orcas near Hanson Island in British Columbia. Image courtesy of OrcaLab. Spong and Symonds made a conscious decision to take a hands-off approach, only observing the orcas using land-based hydrophones and cameras, rather than tracking them…This article was originally published on Mongabay