Militarized Masculinity from Pinochet's Chile to Trump's America

A guest essay by Lisa DiGiovanni

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This is a guest post by Lisa DiGiovanni, who is Chair of Modern Languages and Cultures and has a joint appointment in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College (New Hampshire, USA). She is the author of the new book Militarized Masculinity in Chile and Spain. Her work examines the links between militarized masculinity, militarism, and violence in Spain and Latin America, and how 20th-century regimes can help us understand the politics of today.

I wanted to publish Professor DiGiovanni’s work because her expertise on the history of forms of masculinity we are now seeing in action in the United States is so timely. I really appreciate her comments at the end about the need to think about “alternative notions of bravery—ones rooted in empathy, care, and emotional range rather than stoicism and aggression.” I hope we can have a discussion about this in the comments and at the Q&As.

You can view the companion video she made here.

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In the early 1970s, Chile was weighing whether soldiers could be deployed into the streets at a time of intense social and political tension. In July of 1970 the then-head of the Chilean Armed Forces, General Rene Schneider, had explicitly limited the authority of the military, stating: “The armed forces are not a road to political power nor an alternative to that power. They exist to guarantee the regular work of the political system and the use of force for any other purpose than its defense constitutes high treason.” It became known as the “Schneider Doctrine.”

Three months later Schneider was dead, shot by right-wing insurrectionists in a CIA-backed kidnap attempt.

Schneider’s successor, General Carlos Prats, upheld the Schneider Doctrine, but Prats resigned in August 1973. When the democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende appointed General Augusto Pinochet to succeed Prats as the head of the Chilean Armed Forces, the “Schneider Doctrine” was doomed. Embracing the use of force as the only way to quell social upheaval, Pinochet and other military officials led a coup on September 11, 1973, and used the language of “National Security” to justify it. Prats and his wife were assassinated a year later in Buenos Aires, where they had gone into exile.

Pinochet’s campaign to restore Chile to an idealized earlier state could very well be instructive for what’s happening in the United States today. The Pinochet regime (1973–1990) was defined by brutal institutionalized violence that repressed all opposition to a conservative economic and social agenda. Pinochet dissolved Congress, declared a state of emergency, crippled the judiciary, shut down opposition news outlets, ousted academic leaders, sacked local bureaucrats and filled his government with loyalists.

Pinochet also projected the image of the unyielding, decisive military leader—the epitome of militarized masculinity—to enforce control and instill fear, contrasting sharply with the ideas that Schneider and Allende championed.

Augusto Pinochet, September 1973. Chas Gerretsen/Nederlands Fotomuseum.

In my book Militarized Masculinity in Spain and Chile, I examine the beliefs and social constructs that underlay the dictatorships of Franco in Spain and Pinochet in Chile. These same ideas, centered around a soldier ethos and a deep-rooted faith in the effectiveness of military force, are at the heart of right-wing political movements now in the United States.

While Pinochet’s path as a General was the direct use of military force, Trump’s appeal lies in the rhetorical and performative use of similar aggressive, uncompromising ideals. Both styles reject the notion of the military (or the executive) as a guarantor of democratic political order. Instead, they position the strong leader as the active, combative agent necessary to save the nation from weakness, corruption, or internal enemies. These are key characteristics of militarized masculinity.

As trailblazing feminist and political scientist Cynthia Enloe powerfully stated decades ago, militarized masculinity is not a naturally occurring trait; it is a learned gender identity that emphasizes physical toughness, emotional stoicism, unwavering discipline, and, most crucially, a reflexive willingness to use violence in the name of patriotism and national security. It is built by hierarchical, ultra-nationalistic, patriarchal societies and reinforced, often invisibly, through our most fundamental institutions —educational systems, media, government, and religious bodies. Understanding this societal architecture is vital, because it reveals that the continuum of violence is not an unstoppable force of nature, but a political choice that can be unmade.

From childhood, boys are bathed in subtle or overt gendered propaganda. Toys, narratives, and social expectations align with the militarized ideal: men are protectors, women are those to be protected. As they grow, these messages become harder to ignore. Cruel hazing practices aim to eliminate empathy and vulnerability (framed as feminine) and turn recruits into weapons of war. The logic of militarization fuels the dehumanization of the “other” and serves to justify armed domination.

Women, too, play a functional role in making militarized masculinity, though typically a supportive one. They are often pushed toward reproductive and domestic roles, reinforcing the gender hierarchy where men are positioned as the primary agents of action and protection. Both reinforce the overall, power-controlling structure.

The political utility of this construction cannot be overstated. Militarized masculinity serves political goals, from justifying cultural colonization and economic imperialism abroad to maintaining anti-liberal, homophobic, and misogynistic national identities at home. It is a powerful tool for maintaining social control and consolidating power, both domestically and internationally.

Some readers may dismiss Pinochet as a relic of a distant past. But now an open Pinochet supporter, José Antonio Kast, is President of Chile. His father, Michael Kast Schindele (1924–2014), was a German Nazi lieutenant who fled to Chile after the Second World War. Kast pledged to “restore” order after the 2019 protests (labelled by him as terrorism) and to use a strong hand to tackle tensions with Indigenous Mapuche in the south. His 2025 presidential campaign focused heavily on security and strict immigration controls.

There are some unsettling similarities between those past military regimes and what’s happening in Washington in the second Trump Administration. Power becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of a single man who undermines the democratic belief in dialogue over force. The military, both in its actual strength and as a mythology, is central to these regimes, which frame the opposition as internal enemies that must be eliminated for the restoration of order and tradition.

It is no surprise that Trump selected Pete Hegseth as the Secretary of Defense, renamed the Secretary of War under the Trump administration. The “warrior ethos” that he gained from his war experience has taken a new form. To “fix” a broken immigration system, send in squadrons of masked armed ICE agents who then use force against anyone who opposes their presence even with peaceful protest.

The good news is that change is possible. Militarized masculinity is not an immutable force of nature; it can be deconstructed, unlearned, and transformed. Widespread and robust educational efforts, starting early, can fundamentally transform perceptions of what it means to be a man. Human rights training should prioritize the critical study of masculinity to help break cruel hazing cultures, decrease military brutality, and reduce the crippling mental trauma soldiers face.

Until we tune into the powerful patterns of gender socialization and imagine alternative notions of bravery—ones rooted in empathy, care, and emotional range rather than stoicism and aggression—our understanding of the continuum of violence will remain incomplete. Challenging militarized masculinity is a vital necessity for building a more peaceful and equitable future.