President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, is under attack by Democracy Now! for sporting “tattoos associated with the white supremacist and neo-Nazi movements,” with some leftist social media users wrongly claiming the motif in question is an Iron Cross, associated with the wartime German military.
Democracy Now!—a radio and television newscast that is satellite-uplinked through the taxpayer-funded Public Radio Satellite System and reportedly funded indirectly by George Soros and the controversial Tides Foundation—alleges Hegseth’s tattoo, a Jerusalem Cross, is “a symbol used by Christian nationalists.”
In fact, the Jerusalem Cross, comprised of a central potent cross and four smaller Greek crosses, dates from at least the 11th century. Later, it became strongly associated with the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which was located in West Asia rather than Europe.
The Jerusalem Cross is believed to represent Jesus Christ at the center of the four quarters of the world, or the Five Holy Wounds—that is, the pierced hands, feet, and side of Christ during the crucifixion. Many Christians who have made pilgrimages to Jerusalem are inked with Jerusalem Cross tattoos, including Britain’s King George V and King Edward VII, the grandfather and great-grandfather of the late Queen Elizabeth II.
This is not the first time leftists have wrongly associated the roughly 1,000-year-old Christian symbol with contemporary white nationalism. Hegseth, a decorated veteran, was pulled from guard duty during Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021 because someone in the D.C. National Guard spotted the tattoo on his social media and used it to brand him a “white nationalist” and an “extremist.”
