While president-elect Donald Trump accuses the U.S. military of being too “woke,” a morale patch showcased on a Defense Department website suggests some troops are as bigoted as ever. While the military has covered up evidence of the patch, removing photographs of it amid press outcry, the Pentagon has not disavowed it.

In late October, the website of the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service — the Pentagon’s official photo repository — posted a photograph highlighting the shoulder patch of Lt. Kyle Festa, a pilot assigned to the Navy’s Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 74.

Festa’s patch features crosshairs over likenesses of the Tusken Raiders, the fictional “sand people” who attacked Luke Skywalker in the 1977 movie “Star Wars.” The patch reads: “Houthi Hunting Club. Red Sea 2023-2024.”

The insignia commemorated his deployment aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Red Sea, according to the photo’s caption. Since January, U.S. warships in the Red Sea have repeatedly struck the Houthis, a nationalist movement that controls much of Yemen and has been attacking ships — including U.S. warships — there and in the Gulf of Aden in retaliation for the U.S.-backed Israeli war on Gaza.

“The enemy is given quasi-racialized and subhuman status, which makes it easier to kill them.”

U.S. military personnel wear all manner of patches — official and unofficial — on their uniforms. Some so-called morale patches are rooted in heraldry and history; others reference pop culture or dark humor.

“The patches reduce the Houthis to the status of a not-quite-human, semi-alien Other. So the enemy is given quasi-racialized and subhuman status, which makes it easier to kill them,” observes Janet McIntosh, a professor of anthropology at Brandeis University and an expert in the U.S. military’s long history of dehumanizing its enemies. “It also lumps all Houthis into the same category, which will also make non-combatants or civilians easier to kill.”

For years, the United States backed an atrocity-filled air campaign led by Saudi Arabia against the Houthis. Just after entering office, President Joe Biden formally delisted Houthis as terrorist group. But after the Houthis started targeting ships, Biden reclassified them as a terrorists and began launching attacks on Houthi missile and radar sites.

“For over a year, the Iran-backed Houthis, Specially Designated Global Terrorists, have recklessly and unlawfully attacked U.S. and international vessels transiting the Red Sea, the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last month, announcing airstrikes in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen by Air Force B-2 bombers, a rarely used stealth plane capable of carrying the U.S. military’s largest “bunker buster” bombs.

The Intercept asked the Office of the Secretary of Defense whether Austin agrees with the morale patch’s characterization of the Houthis but did not receive a reply prior to publication. “The patch signifies the squadron’s operational achievements and heritage,” according to the caption of the official Navy photograph by Austen McClain.

After several journalists — including former Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein — drew attention to the “Houthi Hunting Club”........

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