Standfirst

The execution of Major Nidal Hasan is highly unlikely to create the kind of martyrdom that emerged from the executions of 1916. Nor is Hasan remotely comparable to Patrick Pearse or the leaders of the Easter Rising. Yet the decision to televise his death raises an older question, one that W.B. Yeats understood better than most politicians: when does justice cease to be punishment and become performance?

On 3 May 1916, Patrick Pearse faced a firing squad in Kilmainham Gaol. A week earlier, large sections of Dublin had viewed the Easter Rising as reckless, destructive and futile. The city lay damaged, civilians were dead and many Irish people regarded the rebels as irresponsible men who had brought catastrophe upon their own country.

The British authorities believed that swift executions would restore order and deter further rebellion. Instead, they transformed it.

One by one, the executions continued: Pearse, Clarke, MacDonagh, Plunkett and Connolly. Between 3 and 12 May 1916, fifteen leaders of the Rising were executed in Kilmainham Gaol, a process that transformed the political meaning of the rebellion in the eyes of many Irish people.

Men who had attracted limited support before the Rising acquired a stature in death they had never possessed in life. W.B. Yeats understood the transformation more clearly than many of his contemporaries. In Easter, 1916, he captured the strange political alchemy by which state power can accidentally create symbols more powerful than the movements it seeks to destroy:

"All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born."

Yeats was not celebrating the insurrection. His feelings towards several of the leaders were ambivalent. What fascinated him was the way history had suddenly shifted. The British government believed it was demonstrating authority. Instead, it had altered public consciousness.

More than a century later, a very different drama is unfolding in the United States.

Former Army Major Nidal Hasan, convicted of murdering thirteen people and wounding dozens more in the 2009 Fort Hood attack, is scheduled to be executed by firing squad following approval by the Trump administration. Reports indicate that the execution may also be publicly livestreamed, making it the first U.S. military execution in more than six decades and one of the most publicly visible state executions in modern American history.

The comparison with 1916 is not moral. Patrick Pearse and Nidal Hasan belong in entirely different categories. Pearse was a revolutionary nationalist involved in an armed insurrection against imperial rule. Hasan murdered unarmed soldiers processing for deployment and openly declared his allegiance to the enemy side in an ongoing conflict.

Yet the actions of governments can still illuminate one another across time. The question is not whether the men are comparable. The question is whether the state is repeating a familiar mistake.

Justice and Theatre

Executions have always occupied an uneasy space between law and performance. Historically, governments understood this perfectly. Public hangings, beheadings and firing squads were designed not merely to punish the condemned but to communicate a message to the living. The audience was as important as the prisoner.

The proposed livestream of Hasan's execution follows that same logic. Supporters argue that people should witness the consequences of acts of terror and mass murder. Senior officials have explicitly framed the public nature of the execution as a demonstration of accountability and deterrence.

Viewed in that light, the decision is understandable. Hasan committed an atrocity. The suffering inflicted upon victims and families was immense. Few Americans are likely to feel sympathy for him. The desire to see justice carried out is entirely understandable.

Yet Yeats's insight was never concerned with sympathy. It was concerned with symbolism. States often believe they control the meaning of public acts.

History suggests otherwise.

The Illusion of Control

The British administration in Ireland believed the executions of 1916 would demonstrate strength. Instead, they provided a narrative around which Irish nationalism could reorganise itself. Men who had failed militarily proved unexpectedly successful in death.

The dangerous assumption made by governments throughout history is that the audience will interpret an event exactly as intended. But audiences rarely behave so obediently. The moment punishment becomes spectacle, control begins to slip. Some viewers will see justice. Others will see vengeance. Others will simply see entertainment. The event acquires meanings that no government can fully manage.

The difficulty is magnified in a global media environment. A livestream intended to demonstrate justice in Texas will not be interpreted solely by an American audience. It will be consumed, reframed and repurposed across countless political and cultural contexts. Some viewers will see accountability. Others will see vengeance. Critics of American foreign policy are likely to cite it as evidence of hypocrisy, while extremist propagandists may seek to weaponise the imagery for entirely different purposes.

The very act of broadcasting punishment guarantees that its meaning escapes the control of those who stage it. What appears to one audience as closure may appear to another as spectacle. Reports that the execution could be livestreamed underscore precisely this dilemma: once the cameras roll, the state ceases to be the sole author of the story.

The paradox of the modern media age is that visibility no longer guarantees authority. Indeed, the more public an act becomes, the less predictable its consequences become. The British authorities discovered this in 1916. The architects of modern political media would do well to remember the lesson.

The Pornography of Power

The public execution was largely abandoned in the Western world because societies gradually concluded that it degraded everyone involved. The condemned became an object. The executioners became performers. The crowd became spectators.

Punishment drifted towards theatre.

The modern state generally prefers justice to occur without an audience. Court proceedings may be public, but the administration of punishment itself is usually hidden from view. The principle reflects an understanding that legitimacy derives from law, not spectacle.

By turning an execution into a broadcast event, however, the state invites a different interpretation. The act ceases to be merely judicial and becomes cultural. It becomes content.

Whatever one's position on capital punishment, that transformation should give pause.

A Terrible Beauty

Yeats's phrase survives because it captured a truth broader than Irish history. Power is strongest when it achieves its ends without needing to advertise itself.

The temptation to dramatise authority has repeatedly led governments into difficulty. Whether through public executions, political show trials or carefully staged displays of strength, rulers have often mistaken visibility for legitimacy. Sometimes the audience applauds. Sometimes it recoils. Sometimes, as in Ireland after 1916, it responds in ways nobody expected.

The proposed execution of Nidal Hasan will almost certainly not reshape American politics in the manner of the Easter Rising. History does not repeat itself so neatly.

Yet the decision to broadcast the event reveals an enduring temptation within political power: the belief that justice becomes more effective when transformed into spectacle.

Yeats understood the risks of that assumption.

The state may control the rifles, the prison and the cameras.

What it never fully controls is the meaning.

And that, more than a century after the volleys rang out in Kilmainham, remains the lesson of a terrible beauty.

About the Author

Tim Flynn (T.S. Flynn) is an Irish-Australian novelist, essayist and commentator whose work explores Irish historical memory, political culture, migration, music and literature. He is the author of the Regiment historical fiction series and writes regularly on Irish history, identity and culture through his Substack. His essays have appeared in The Wild Geese and A Sense of Place Magazine. His recent work has examined figures as diverse as James Clarence Mangan, Shane MacGowan, Bram Stoker and Michael Davitt, exploring how memory, culture and storytelling shape the Irish imagination.

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