A retired Army colonel turned social media influencer, who has worked with the Pentagon to promote Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s agenda, has a history of praising dictators, denigrating women and minorities, and suggesting that only people with children should be allowed to vote.
Kurt Schlichter has over 620,000 followers on X and has regularly posted in support of Hegseth’s anti-woke agenda. Last month, as part of an investigation into the Pentagon’s employment of influencers in civilian roles, The Washington Post found that Schlichter was one of several individuals to be given active government email addresses at the time and assigned to the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness’s office. According to reporting from the Post, Schlichter appears in the government database with the designation of “HQE,” which could stand for “highly qualified expert.”
Schlichter confirmed that he was a civilian government employee, working as part of a task force rooting out so-called woke ideologies at the military’s war colleges.
What wasn’t reported, however, were Schlichter’s posts on social media and other platforms in recent years that highlight extremist, anti-democratic worldviews. WIRED has reviewed many of these posts.
“The Department was proud to have a group of patriotic civilians and veterans like Kurt Schlichter contribute to our Senior Service College Task Force. Nothing is more important than the formation of our future military leaders,” Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon’s press secretary, tells WIRED. Schlichter did not respond to requests for comment. It’s not clear if Schlichter is still working with the Pentagon. Wilson herself shared extremist content and an antisemitic conspiracy theory prior to joining the Pentagon.
In an August 2021 thread on X, Schlichter demanded an authoritarian crackdown on “liberals.”
“We must, by any means necessary, force them to be like us. No quarter. No compromise,” Schlichter wrote. In the thread, he advocates for banning everything from masks and unions to critical race theory and “leftist media.” (Last year, Hegseth’s Department of Defense required journalists to sign a pledge that would prevent them from gathering certain information. Most major journalists refused to sign the pledge and left the Pentagon.)
In the same thread on X, Schlichter also suggested that people who don’t have children, who do not serve in the military, and who don’t own property should not be allowed to vote. “Penalize barren, non-familial lifestyles through taxes and disqualification from political participation,” Schlichter wrote. “Establish property and military service qualifications for voting.” Posts in the thread were shared a combined 10,000 times.
Schlichter has also repeatedly expressed appreciation of murderous dictators like Chile’s Augusto Pinochet and Spain’s Francisco Franco. “Pinochet was too soft,” Schlichter wrote on X in April 2024. In May 2025, he quoted a post on X that called on Trump to offer asylum to Spanish fascists, writing: “Franco did nothing wrong.” In December 2025, Schlichter called Franco “a Spanish patriot.” (Under Pinochet’s dictatorship, tens of thousands of his citizens were tortured while thousands of his political opponents disappeared. During the Spanish Civil War, Franco’s Nationalists executed tens of thousands of dissidents while systematically raping women.)
Schlichter has also repeatedly lashed out at women and minorities. In an article for conservative website Townhall, published in July 2026, Schlichter suggested that “liberal women” could bring about the end of Western civilization.
“These self-righteous crones are a pestilence, a plague upon Western society, a group of doggedly ignorant feminist/chauvinists playing out their personal psychodramas on the world stage whose antics, if unchecked, will inevitably lead to the fall of civilization,” he wrote. In the same article, he attacked immigrants, calling them “perverted Third World peasants.” In a post on X, Schlichter went even further, calling immigrants “Third World barbarians” and “semihuman savages.”
Hegseth has prioritized Christian nationalist ideology and a “warrior ethos” at the Pentagon while calling for an end of wokeness by attacking diversity and inclusion initiatives, halting promotions for Black and female officers, and fat-shaming troops he considers overweight.
