US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Saturday travelled to Normandy to commemorate the 82nd anniversary of the World War II D-Day landings.

But after making a speech at the American military cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, he conspicuously skipped afternoon’s main international ceremony marking the anniversary of the Allied landings, which helped herald the end of World War II.

His presence was not missed by some residents of the village hosting the ceremony, Langrune-sur-Mer, who said the US official was not welcome there.

“He has very warlike views and it seems to us that this man does not share our democratic values,” Sylvie Lamy Thepaut, a member of the municipal association Langrune en commun, told BFM TV.

  • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    He has very war like views

    Someone pointed out he doesn’t call soldiers soldiers. He calls them war fighters. He’s on a crusade and sees them as fighters for his cause.

    • ragepaw@lemmy.ca
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      2 hours ago

      Warfighter is a US military term.

      I believe the original intention was to avoid differentiating between a sailor, soldier, marine or airman. I think it was supposed to be a generic term.

      But he for sure thinks of them as crusaders in his fucking lunatic holy war.

  • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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    2 hours ago

    As an American, I visited Normandy and the people there were very kind and welcoming to Americans. You’ve gotta be a huge fuck up for the people there not to like you.

  • ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca
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    3 hours ago

    He’s a neo-nazi. He’s a fucking disgrace to all the soldiers that landed on that beach to destroy the very movement he’s so proud to be a part of.

    • Blibly@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      He would have been shaking and throwing up in bootcamp from the alcohol withdrawals.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Hey! Hey! Drunks have been at the backbone of the imperialist war machine for centuries!

      You think Westmoreland was sober after the last helicopter left Saigon? You think MacArthur was sober when he fled the Philippines? You think Seal Team Six was sober when they crashed those helicopters over Abadabad?

      Substance abuse is the grease between the wheels of the grinding gears of global Holocaust. It’s how the brave men stormed Fallujah. It’s why drone operators can sleep at night after obliterating another wedding party in Yemen or Afghanistan. It’s what keeps guards at the human slave markets in Libya and the torture camps in Abu Gharab and Guantanamo Bay.

      Do you want the Terrorists to win? Do you want China to take every island from Taiwan to Cuba?! Do you want America TO LOSE?!

      Then keep that whiskey coming. Wars aren’t won on seltzer water

  • ryper@lemmy.ca
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    4 hours ago

    Hegseth may not understand what D-Day was about

    In a perplexing speech Saturday commemorating the World War II D-Day landings in Normandy, France, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called for European leaders to combat what he implied was a second, modern D-Day—in which European countries were being “stormed by different dangerous ideologies” accompanied by “boats and men.”

    The original D-Day was the Allied invasion to liberate France from Nazi German domination: the defenders were Hitler’s National Socialists and their army, and the “dangerous ideology” was anti-fascism.

    Hegseth may have been confused—or, then again, we might be at the stage where our government explicitly aligns us with Nazism. After all, every single refugee we admitted to the US this year was supposedly fleeing anti-white persecution.

    • ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca
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      3 hours ago

      Hooooly…

      Who controls the past now, controls the future.

      Who controls the present now, controls the past.

      Rewriting history to align with their ideologies with mind-blowing mental gymnastics.