Shadowing Practice: Hegseth's holy war - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Pete Hegseth’s “Holy War” It's a phrase I've been seeing around a lot ever since the start of the war in Iran which really got my attention.
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Pete Hegseth’s “Holy War” It's a phrase I've been seeing around a lot ever since the start of the war in Iran which really got my attention.
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The secretary of defense is obsessed with the Crusades, Medieval wars where Europeans fought to control the Holy Land.
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Hegseth has two different tattoos that reference the Crusades, something that actually came up in his confirmation hearing in 2025.
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It's a tattoo I have right here, Senator. It's called the Jerusalem cross. It's a historic Christian symbol.
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His book is called American Crusade, and the title of the last chapter is "Make the Crusade Great Again." When I studied medieval history in college, everyone always made fun of me, saying it was totally irrelevant.
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But clearly for Pete Hegseth, it's very relevant.
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And as the Secretary of Defense for the United States, what he cares about has an impact on the fate of the world.
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This most recent war in Iran has killed thousands of people since February 28th.
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And this week, gas prices hit their highest level since the start of the war.
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Even with a cease fire, this conflict doesn't seem any closer to ending.
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So let's take a look at this holy war, investigating the actual history of the Crusades to see how Pete Hegseth’s obsession with medieval history might actually affect US foreign policy and the future of the war in Iran.
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Our present moment is much like the 11th century.
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We don't want to fight, but like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must.
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We need an American Crusade.
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We Christians, alongside our Jewish friends and their remarkable army in Israel, need to pick up the sword of unapologetic Americanism and defend ourselves.
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We must push Islamism back.
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Pete Hegseth wrote that in 2020 when he was a Fox News host.
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But now, in 2026, he's the Secretary of Defense and one of the biggest supporters of going to war with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
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Nearly all of Trump's senior cabinet members has expressed serious reservations about the war in Iran and whether it was an ill advised idea.
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Except for Pete Hegseth, who seems to have consistently been enthusiastic about this war to the point that Trump has actually referred to it as "Pete's War" And if it's Pete's War, then it's important to understand how he's thinking about the war.
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Now, a bit of historical context.
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The Crusades were a series of religious wars in the Middle Ages, mainly fought by Christians against non-Christians.
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They were often started by the Pope and first aimed at taking Jerusalem from Muslim control.
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But over time, these wars spread to other regions throughout Europe.
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Here's Hegseth's version of that history from his book American Crusade.
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By the 11th century, Christianity was so besieged by Islam that Christians had a stark choice to wage defensive war and his emphasis on defensive or continue to allow Islam's expansion and face existential war at home in Europe.
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I guess how does that sound to you?
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Like nonsense.
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The major claim that he's making here is that Islam is the aggressor Absolutely not true. 100% not true.
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Then he's just kind of very neatly kind of smoothing it over, saying that Islam is ontologically, existentially, always kind of an aggressive force that attacks other people.
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Hegseth's interpretation of the Crusades as a defensive war falls into a common misunderstanding of the Crusades.
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He's trying to say that this these crusaders are progenitors of us today on the American right, that we need to do this once more.
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It's an more an extreme oversimplification of a series of conflicts that lasted centuries.
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The other thing, too, is that, of course, Hegseth served in Afghanistan And this matters because he's cast himself as a crusader.
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Let's take another look at his tattoos.
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"Deus Vult" is on his bicep. It means God wills it.
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And it was a rallying cry of the Crusaders in the First Crusade around the year 1100.
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And the Jerusalem Cross on his chest is another medieval symbol.
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These types of kind of evocative symbols, both the Deus Vult and the Jerusalem Cross, kind of in combination, were not uncommon among American military within that, that that had a very specific kind of connotation of anti Islamic feeling, Islamophobic feeling, and kind of evocative of kind of neo-crusader ideology in that the US was carrying out a great crusade against its eternal foe, in their perspective, the eternal foe of Islam.
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Here he is addressing Pentagon officials about the war in Iran in March of this year.
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Last month I meant to read a prayer which I'm going to read today, which I think is fitting given given what's going on right now.
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Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation.
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Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.
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Preserve their lives, sharpen their resolve, and let justice be executed swiftly and without remorse.
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That evil may be driven back and wicked souls delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them.
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He's casting Iran as enemies of righteousness and an evil that must be driven back, which is consistent with what he's written about the Crusades.
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He continually refers to the US military having the divine providence of God The providence of our Almighty God is there protecting those troops.
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And we're we're we're committed to this mission.
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The fact that there are at least people in the Trump administration's orbit, even if not Trump himself, were very comfortable with a Christianity versus Islam framing of this, I think that's pretty telling.
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if an important cabinet member like Pete Hegseth sees the war as more than Iran versus the US, but rather as Islam versus Christianity, then that presents the stakes of the conflict in potentially dangerous ways.
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I think when people in the 21st century evoke Crusade and we're talking about warfare specifically, they're talking about kind of a zero sum battle. When you get into, military situations in which there's only good guys and bad guys, it excuses any type of restraints on conduct.
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Because if your enemy is existential, it's irrelevant.
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Like like your job is to kill them, to defeat them in any way possible.
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And this rings true with the kind of thinking we've already seen from Hegseth.
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A consistent theme that we've heard from Hegseth's rhetoric is sort of getting the lawyers out of the way the US fights wars, about cutting back on sort of overly restrictive targeting guidelines, for instance.
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And when you see things like the destruction of the school on the first day of the war in Iran that killed almost 200 schoolchildren, I think it's fair to ask questions about just how much they were sort of pulling back on the amount of scrutiny that these targeting decisions were getting.
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And there are some other very real diplomatic ramifications towards framing the war in this way.
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And you don't want to be using words like "crusade." You don't want to be casting this as a kind of, apocalyptic battle between Christianity and Islam, because that just feeds into the narrative of groups like al-Qaeda and like ISIS.
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And, it has to be said, you know, the Islamic Republic of Iran today would love to have this be portrayed as as sort of a Christian war against Islam.
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And most importantly, if Hegseth thinks of this war as part of a crusade, then violence seems inevitable.
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The nation of Iran is not, you know, the caliphs of Baghdad who existed, you know, in the 9th and 10th and 11th centuries. Right.
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But to Hegseth that's that's a distinction without a difference.
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There are bad guys over there.
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They are muslims. We are Christians.
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They are our enemy in this kind of cosmic war between God and the devil, and that means there's going to be violence, that people are going to kill other people because of it.
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About This Lesson

In this lesson, you will practice your English speaking skills by analyzing a video discussing Pete Hegseth's views on foreign policy, particularly in relation to the historical context of the Crusades. You will engage with complex vocabulary, phrases, and concepts, enhancing your English comprehension while gaining insights into a significant contemporary issue. By shadowing the speech in the video, you will improve your pronunciation and fluency, allowing you to express nuanced opinions and understand deeper historical narratives.

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

  • Holy War: A war waged for religious reasons, often involving different faiths.
  • Crusades: A series of medieval wars launched by Christians to regain control of the Holy Land.
  • Defensive war: A conflict fought to protect oneself against an aggressor.
  • Existential threat: A danger that poses a fundamental threat to existence.
  • Divine providence: The belief that God provides protection, guidance, and care.
  • Islamism: A political ideology seeking to implement Islamic principles in government.
  • Evocative symbols: Signs or images that provoke strong emotional responses and associations.
  • Righteousness: The quality of being morally right or justifiable.

Practice Tips

When engaging with the content of this video, consider the following tips to maximize your learning experience and enhance your shadow speech:

  • Shadow Speak: Listen closely to Pete Hegseth's intonation and pacing. Aim to emulate his speech rhythm as you practice, focusing on capturing the emotional weight of his words.
  • Break it Down: Divide the video into manageable segments. Play a few sentences at a time, pause, and repeat what you've heard. This technique will help reinforce your speaking skills.
  • Watch with Subtitles: Always use subtitles if available. This visual aid can significantly help you connect spoken words with their written forms, making it easier to absorb vocabulary and phrase structures.
  • Emotional Emphasis: Pay attention to the emotional undertones in Hegseth's speech. Practice emphasizing certain words or phrases that stand out, which will enhance your expressiveness as you learn English with YouTube.
  • Engage in Discussion: After practicing, discuss the themes, such as the concept of a 'Holy War', with a language partner. This will add depth to your shadow speech and help reinforce what you've learned.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

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