The incoming US Secretary of Defense has vowed to create an "underground army" of Christian school pupils to wage an "insurgency" against the current education system.
Former National Guard officer Peter Hegseth, who was recently named the forthcoming nominee for US Secretary of Defense, appeared on a Christian nationalist podcast to discuss upcoming plans for the administration.
When his nomination was announced, critics raised concerns over his fervent Christian nationalist viewpoint. On Monday, he featured on the CrossPolitic podcast in which he discussed his book, Battle for the American Mind. While discussing his work, he mentioned his plan to create a new system of "classical Christian schools", which would shape recruits of an "underground army". These child "soldiers" would launch an "educational insurgency" which would take over the country.
One of the hosts, Toby Sumpter, replied: "I think we need to be thinking in terms of these classical Christian schools are boot camps for winning back America. That's what the crop of these classical Christian schools are gonna do in a generation.
"Policy answers like school choice, while they're great, that's phase two stuff later on once the foothold has been taken, once the recruits have graduated boot camp."
Explaining the insurgency "metaphor" Hegseth said: "We call it a tactical retreat. We draw out in the last part of the book what an educational insurgency would look like, because I was a counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan and kind of the phases that Mao [Zedong] wrote about. We're in middle phase one right now, which is effectively a tactical retreat where you regroup, consolidate, and reorganize. And as you do so, you build your army underground with the opportunity later on of taking offensive operations in an overt way."
When he said that his comment was "metaphorical", the hosts and he burst out laughing.