Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Nothing good will come from this public execution

It's hard to know whether Pete Hegseth thought it through before he said it, but he said it, didn't he? And now the Pentagon has doubled down on it, and the execution of the Fort Hood shooter will be livestreamed on the internet like some sort of sporting spectacle.

Personally, I find this abhorrent because we're supposed to be a more civilised society in modern liberal democracies than one that wants to tune in and watch somebody die in real time.

But the truth is, that's just a nice thought, isn't it? We're not really above that, are we? Tens of millions of people rewatched Charlie Hebdo's murders within hours and how many people dug up the shooter's video of the mosque attack?

If the Pentagon goes ahead with this, and if Nidal Hasan doesn't use the courts to delay his execution, I bet you now that millions of people will tune in to watch him die on December 3.

And you know I'm right, not just because of recent examples of people wanting to watch other people die but also because this is what humans have done for centuries. We used to watch gladiators battle to the death. We used to watch the burning of witches, public hangings and all that sort of thing and that continued until relatively recently.

But Hegseth is an absolute idiot if he thinks that livestreaming this execution is going to deter others from committing similar crimes, which is his stated aim. This guy, Hasan, considers himself a martyr, doesn't he? He's said as much publicly. So allowing his death to be seen by millions is probably giving him exactly what he wants.

What I personally don't like about this is that watching people die seems to have become normal again because of the internet, and it worries me no end that this is the sort of thing kids can now find when their parents aren't watching what they're browsing.

And nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing says snuff is normalised more than the US government joining in with the livestreaming of it.