Before President Donald Trump nominated him to lead the Defense Department, Hegseth said the “DEI woke s*** has got to go.” In January, after he was confirmed by a 51-50 margin, Hegseth told Pentagon personnel that “diversity is our strength” is the “single dumbest phrase in military history.”
Since then, the Pentagon under Hegseth, at the instruction of Trump, has moved to root out anything it deems an example of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
However, the enthusiasm to carry out its mission has led to some awkward overcompliance, and the latest example seems to be the Enola Gay, the B-29 aircraft the U.S. military used to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, during the Second World War.
The Associated Press reported that the Pentagon has flagged over 26,000 photos and online posts to be removed under its DEI elimination efforts. The purge could result in the removal of as many as 100,000 images or posts, when including social media posts and other websites that are under review.
In some instances, photos were seemingly flagged for the file name. The word “gay” flagged up the famous aircraft, while several pictures of the Army Corps of Engineers dredging project in California were flagged because the local engineer’s last name was “Gay.” In another example, a photo of Army Corps biologists was flagged because it mentioned the data they recorded about fish, specifically their size, weight, hatchery, and gender.
Other flagged photos include an image of then-Pfc. Christina Fuentes Montenegro, one of the first three women to graduate from the Marine Corps’s Infantry Training Battalion, and an image of Pfc. Harold Gonsalves, a Marine Corps World War II veteran and Medal of Honor recipient.
“As Secretary Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department. Efforts to divide the force — to put one group ahead of another through DEI programs — erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution. We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms,” Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
“In the rare cases that content is removed that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct components accordingly,” Ullyot added.
It’s unclear if the department will reinstate any of the flagged photos or content that were flagged but are seemingly unrelated. As of Friday afternoon, a search for “Enola Gay” on the Air Force’s picture database returned no results, although several results were returned on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service website.
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In a similar instance earlier this year, the Air Force blocked and then restarted a course in late January on the Tuskegee Airmen, the nation’s first black military pilots who served in a segregated World War II unit, and the Women Airforce Service Pilots, the female World War II pilots. Hegseth was quick to reverse the move after Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) accused the Air Force of “malicious compliance” with one of Trump’s executive orders rooting DEI out of the federal government.
“While we are currently reviewing all training courses to ensure compliance with the Executive Orders, no curriculum or content highlighting the honor and valor of the Tuskegee Airmen or Women Air Force Service Pilots has been removed from Basic Military Training,” Gen. David W. Allvin, Air Force chief of staff, said in a statement at the time. “The historic legacy and decorated valor these Airmen embodied during World War II and beyond will continue to guide our newest recruits and all who serve in our ranks.”
