Pete Hegseth is facing sharp criticism over a plan to livestream the firing squad execution of former Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, turning an act of government punishment into a public broadcast.

The controversy followed Hegseth’s exclusive interview with Jack Posobiec, a right wing conspiracy theorist. The appearance on Real America’s Voice was already remarkable, but the War Secretary’s discussion of Hasan’s execution proved even more disturbing.

The Pentagon said Thursday that Hasan’s execution would be livestreamed. Hasan is scheduled to be put to death later this year for the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood.

The announcement came after Hegseth told reporters earlier Thursday that the execution would be open to the public. His explanation made clear that public viewing was not incidental to the plan.

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth said.

Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others at the U.S. Army post at Fort Hood in 2009. It was the deadliest mass shooting ever on an American military installation.

He is scheduled to face a firing squad on Dec. 3, at the same time of day that he committed the murders. Under the Pentagon’s plan, the public would be able to watch that execution remotely.

Public executions are associated in the source with governments in Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan led by the Taliban. The New York Times also noted that releasing execution videos is most often associated with extremist militant groups such as the Islamic State.

That is the grim company the United States would enter by broadcasting Hasan’s death. Rather than treating the execution as a severe act of law, the proposal would present it for public consumption as a government spectacle.

Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, condemned the idea. Smith said, “Calling for a livestream of the execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is disturbing and makes a mockery of our legal system.”

He continued, “There is a reason why we treat the meting out of justice with the seriousness it demands. We are a democratic country and should take the rule of law seriously, not turn it into a spectacle.”

The proposal also reaches backward into a particularly ugly chapter of American history. The Washington Post examined the last known occasions when members of the American public were invited to witness executions.

The 1936 hanging of Rainey Bethea in Kentucky is widely considered the last prominent public execution in the United States, although another public execution followed in Missouri in 1937.

Bethea, who was Black, was publicly hanged for rape after confessing to the rape and murder of Lischia Edwards, a white woman who was 70. He was never charged with murder, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.

The hanging took place in a parking lot in Owensboro, Kentucky. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, that location was selected to avoid damage to the courthouse lawn because of the crowds officials expected.

An estimated 20,000 people attended Bethea’s execution. The following year, Roscoe “Red” Jackson was hanged in Missouri before about 500 townspeople, according to an Associated Press report cited by The Washington Post.

The Death Penalty Information Center identifies Jackson’s hanging as the last public execution in the United States. Hegseth’s livestream plan would not recreate a courthouse crowd, but it would again invite the public to watch the government kill a person.

Smith’s objection goes directly to the heart of the matter: A democratic country can carry out its laws without packaging an execution as public viewing. There is no need to reopen this history simply because Hegseth appears determined to reset the clock.