Former Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher was court-martialed in 2018 on charges that he attempted to kill civilians and stabbed a teenage ISIS prisoner to death while deployed in Iraq. He was acquitted of six of the seven charges against him—for the full story of the case, listen to the incredible podcast The Line—and since then has built a brand as a culture warrior promoting warrior culture. As Jasper Craven reports, Gallagher is part of a trend:
Gallagher’s pivot also speaks to the trend of divisive right-wing figures harnessing backlash to build a brand. This weird world includes the likes of acquitted Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, who has written a memoir and recently partnered with a body armor company, and disgraced General Michael Flynn, who gives speeches, sells merch, and promotes a precious metals exchange. In Gallagher’s case, he has an expert helping him navigate this new landscape: his wife, Andrea, who has a background in marketing and portrait photography. While he was locked up in a Navy brig, she flooded social media with calls to support her husband and scored high-profile TV interviews on Fox & Friends and Good Morning America.
Along the way, Andrea [Gallagher’s wife] leveraged the positive brand of the SEALs—commonly considered America’s most elite special operations force—to establish Eddie’s public persona as an innocent victim of cancel culture, a leading enemy of the deep state, and the last alpha in a beta-fied America. This message attracted thousands of followers, who bought “Free Eddie” T-shirts and donated $750,000 for the family to use for legal and living costs. By the time Gallagher was cleared of the most gruesome allegations in July 2019 and freed, many had come to see him as a new soldier archetype: a righteous fighter unfairly restrained by corrupt generals and woke military dictates who, when confronted with evil, took matters into his own hands to mete out extrajudicial justice.
As his legend grew, a fourteen-year-old boy and his father made and sold Eddie Gallagher action figures, pledging to donate half their proceeds to the Gallaghers’ military justice reform charity, the Pipe Hitter Foundation. The nonprofit takes its name from military slang for a combative and increasingly emboldened sect of special forces that Eddie belongs to. (Some in this unofficial cadre also self-identify as “hunters” or “pirates.”) Pipe Hitter offers a simple mission: to “serve those who serve us.” In practice, this means fortifying the Congressional Justice for Warriors Caucus, which has supported an array of accused war criminals, including Gallagher, and pledges to discredit and reform the military justice system. Despite his vague gestures at institutional reform, Gallagher retains the blinkered philosophy of a SEAL—viciously targeting the individuals who wronged him and his clients rather than executing a comprehensive plan to topple the system itself. Such an approach may succeed in a few battles, but it’s surely not enough to win a war.
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