Trump the Arsonist: Evangelicals, Survivalists, the Alt-Right and Hurricane
Donald
Thursday, 13 October 2016 11:36 By John Feffer, TomDispatch | Op-Ed
Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Lakeland, Florida, on October
12, 2016. (Stephen Crowley / The New York Times)
The world according to Donald Trump is very dark indeed. The American
economy has tanked. Mexico has sent a horde of criminals over the border to
steal jobs and rape women. The Islamic State, cofounded by Barack Obama and
Hillary Clinton, is taking over the globe. "Our country's going to hell," he
declared during the Republican primaries. It's "like medieval times," he
suggested during the second presidential debate. "We haven't seen anything
like this, the carnage all over the world."
For Trump, it's not morning in America, it's just a few seconds before
midnight on the doomsday clock. Although his campaign doggedly continues to
promise a new beginning for the country, the candidate and his advisers are
sending out a very different message: the end is nigh. These Cassandras all
agree that, although Obama's two terms were no walk in the park, the stakes
in 2016 are world-destroyingly higher. If Clinton is elected, the future
could be, as conservative political operatives Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
titled their recent book, Armageddon.
Presidential challengers often paint a grim picture of the world of the
incumbent, overstating the case for dramatic effect. Ever the showman, Trump
has no compunction about repeatedly going way over the top, calling the US
military a "disaster" because it's supposedly underfunded and the United
States a "third-world country" thanks to its precipitous economic decline.
Trump talks as if he were the hybrid offspring of Karl Marx and Ann Coulter.
Trumpworld, however, is a photographic negative of statistical reality. The
US economy has been on an upswing for the last several years (though its
benefits have been anything but evenly distributed). Nationally, violent
crime is on the decline (though murder rates are soaring in some cities like
Chicago). The Obama administration averted war with Iran and negotiated a
détente with Cuba (though it continues to wage war in other parts of the
world and has maintained sky-high Pentagon spending). If the Obama years are
hardly beyond criticism, they are hardly beneath contempt either.
In dispensing with what one of his senior aides called the "reality-based
community," George W. Bush's administration attempted to create an
alternative, on-the-ground reality, particularly through the direct exercise
of American military power -- and we know how well that turned out. Trump
seems to have even less interest in the "reality-based community." He's
evidently convinced that the sheer power of his own bluster, even without
the firepower of that military, should be sufficient to alter our world.
After all, didn't it win him a loyal following on TV and -- to the disbelief
of politicians and media commentators everywhere -- the Republican
presidential nomination?
The reality-based community -- which Trump labels the "elite" -- wants
nothing to do with him. The discrepancy between his rhetoric and what other
people call facts explains in part why even conservative elites -- prominent
Republicans like Brent Scowcroft and John Warner, conservative columnists
like George Will, and even neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, not to speak
of right-leaning newspapers like The Arizona Republic and the Dallas Morning
News -- have made historic decisions to abandon their party's presidential
nominee.
But don't kid yourself. There is method to Trump's particular version of
madness. He and his slyly smiling running mate Mike Pence are playing up
their vision of scorched-earth America not just to win general political
points but to appeal to a very specific set of voters by tapping into the
apocalyptic strain in American politics. The evangelicals, anti-globalists,
and white power constituencies that form the bedrock of his support hear in
Trump's blasts more than just a set of fun-house facts. When the Donald says
that Hillary is "the devil" and America's going to hell, this constituency
-- steeped in Biblical prophecy, survivalist ideology, and racist
conspiracies -- takes him literally. America is on the verge of (take your
pick): the Rapture, an end-of-days contest between American patriots and UN
invaders, or an all-out race war to the finish.
And here's what makes Trump's carnivalesque presidential campaign especially
topsy-turvy. He's been slouching toward just about every kind of Armageddon
imaginable, except the genuine planetary ones that are -- or should be --
almost unavoidable these days. He has, after all, dismissed climate change
as a "hoax" and a Chinese scam. He is so blasé about nuclear weapons that
he's been comfortable with the thought of American allies Japan, South
Korea, and Saudi Arabia developing their own. He has nothing whatsoever to
say about potential global pandemics (but plenty to spout about the
potentially malign effects of vaccinations).
To grasp the nature of such genuine dangers requires at least a minimal
understanding of science. It also requires a genuine concern that the world
as we know it could indeed end in our lifetimes or those of our children and
grandchildren.
Of course, not everyone thinks the apocalypse is a bad thing.
The Rise of the Evangelical Right
It wasn't particularly difficult to portray 1980 as a gloomy time for
America. The spike in oil prices in 1979 had sent the US economy into a
tailspin and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was propelling the two
superpowers into another cycle of Cold War tensions. Iranian radicals were
holding 52 US diplomats and citizens hostage in Tehran, which produced a
daily (and, thanks to Ted Koppel's "Nightline" reports, nightly) humiliation
for President Jimmy Carter and his administration.
As the Republican Party's presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan responded to
these developments by continually playing up the image of an America in
decline. His grim vision of that American future cemented his ties to an
ascendant right wing within the evangelical community. As early as 1971,
intellectual historian Paul Boyer pointed out, Reagan claimed that "the day
of Armageddon isn't far off." He was referring then to turmoil in the Middle
East and the pivotal role of Israel there. "Everything is falling into
place," he added. "It can't be long now."
Reagan was not exactly an easy sell to the Bible belt. Divorced and anything
but a devoted churchgoer, he was closely associated in the public mind with
that Sodom of the West Coast, Hollywood. In the 1980 election, he was also
up against Jimmy Carter, a born-again Christian who openly discussed his
faith.
Admittedly, Reagan benefitted from the endorsement of the Moral Majority,
founded by Reverend Jerry Falwell in 1979, and he began playing directly to
the religious crowd by establishing a new tradition of inserting "God bless
America" into his speeches. But it was those repeated references to
Armageddon that cemented his relationship with the religious right.
Apocalyptic thinking is central to the worldview of evangelicals. Indeed,
it's what principally distinguishes them from mainstream Christians. "The
one thing that affects how they live their daily lives," writes historian of
religion Matthew Avery Sutton, "is that they believe we are moving towards
the End Times, the rise of the Antichrist, towards a great tribulation and a
horrific human holocaust."
The mainstream media was shocked that Reagan then brought such doomsday
rhetoric into the Oval Office. "It is hard to believe that the President
actually allows Armageddon ideology to shape his policies toward the Soviet
Union," The New York Times editorialized just before the 1984 election. "Yet
it was he who first portrayed the Russians as satanic and who keeps on
talking about that final battle." Reagan easily went on to win a second
term. Later, George W. Bush would employ similar apocalyptic references to
justify the invasion of Iraq and unqualified support for Israel, and it
didn't prevent him from winning a second term either.
When Barack Obama became president in 2008, however, evangelicals suffered a
significant drop in political influence. They continued to cling to Congress
and a few Supreme Court justices -- along with their guns and religion --
but they had little leverage over a president that a majority of Republicans
believed to be a foreign-born Muslim. (You're either with us or you're born
in Kenya.)
Eight years later, the evangelical community faced an embarrassment of
riches in the Republican primaries: a couple of born-again candidates (Mike
Huckabee and Ted Cruz), several evangelical Catholics (Rick Santorum, Marco
Rubio, and Jeb Bush), and even an evangelical Seventh Day Adventist (Ben
Carson). In comparison, Donald Trump came up way short on the faith front.
Many evangelicals were skeptical of him because, like Reagan, he did not fit
the mold of an upstanding Christian candidate. He'd been divorced, indulged
in high-profile extramarital affairs, taken pro-choice positions, came from
that East Coast Gomorrah, New York City, and even refused to ask God for
forgiveness. Once he won the party's nomination, however, Trump's approval
rating rose sharply among evangelicals who represent one-fifth of the voting
public. Seventy-eight percent of them now support him, according to a recent
Pew survey.
Trump has triumphed among evangelicals in part by changing his views. For
instance, he now claims that he plans to repent before God (in some
unspecified future) and swears that he will help restore the evangelical
voice to politics. He has become firmly anti-abortion and traded in a more
even-handed approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict for the hardline position
of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that finds favor in the evangelical
community. He has even convinced some evangelicals that his new
relationship with Jesus has turned him into what James Dobson calls a "baby
Christian."
Trump also appeals to a certain pragmatic streak among evangelicals. They
have become convinced that only he can tip the Supreme Court in the right
direction, roll back the nuclear agreement with Iran, and hold back a
potential tide of social protest. "Trump speaks to the profound fears
animating so many white evangelicals today," says R. Marie Griffith,
director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at
Washington University. "Above all, the fear that they and their values are
being displaced by foreign, immigrant, and Muslim forces as well as by
domestic movements such as Black Lives Matter, gay rights, women's rights,
and more."
However, this focus on the pragmatic desire of evangelicals to regain the
kind of political influence and power they've lost over the last seven years
only goes so far in explaining Trump's appeal. Far more important, on
millenarian websites, Trump emerges as the mysterious weapon that God is now
wielding to bring the righteous closer to the rapture. "God is preparing to
shake the nations of the world," an evangelical blogger writes in a typical
endorsement of the candidate, "and I believe he is going to use Donald Trump
to do it." Another asserts, "I don't know if God will use Trump to push back
the coming of the anti-Christ. However, I know that without Trump, the
tribulation cannot be far away. Therefore, I have to support Trump."
Much millenarian support comes from a belief that God has anointed Trump the
ultimate disrupter of the status quo, the human wrecking ball that will
smite all the structures standing in the way of Christ's second coming. No
one (other than the Donald himself) would confuse the candidate with the
Messiah, but some evangelicals imagine him in the role of a John the Baptist
gone slightly berserk.
Certain evangelicals believe that their candidate will avert an apocalypse
spurred on by godless Democrats; others that he will hasten that apocalypse
and so the second coming. Given that Trump is a mass of contradictions -- a
bankrupt billionaire, the most elite of populists, a politician who has
never held office -- it's no surprise that evangelicals can read into him
almost anything they want, even if they then have a difficult time
interpreting his "revelations."
Against the Globalists
The film Amerigeddon, released this year and directed by the son of
right-wing actor Chuck Norris, illuminates in graphic detail the paranoid
worldview of what has come to be known as the alt-right: the tech-savvy,
anti-globalist, anti-immigrant movement that hitherto lurked on the fringes
of the Republican Party.
"The greatest threat to our freedom lies within our own government,"
Amerigeddon proclaims in its trailer. In the film, traitors inside the
Beltway have joined up with global terrorists and the United Nations to
bring down America. It's a movie with everything a survivalist could ever
want: outsiders using an EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) to disable the US
power grid, big government imposing martial law, gun owners saving the day.
If you could take only one DVD to your reinforced concrete bunker, this
would be it.
Given that it debuted on only a handful of screens and disappointed even
those who might otherwise embrace its hyperbolic content, Amerigeddon would
be too ridiculous to mention -- if it weren't for Alex Jones.
Jones is a talk-radio host who also runs the website Infowars. He believes
that the US government has covered up its involvement in everything from the
Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11 to the faked moon landing and WikiLeaks. He's
a libertarian (hates government), paleoconservative (hates liberals), and
survivalist (his Infowars store carries a full line of "preparedness
products" for the moment when the grid collapses).
A hero of conspiracy theorists the world over, Jones appears in a cameo in
Amerigeddon and has used his media empire to hype the film. For someone with
such unorthodox views, he has quite a following. "Jones draws a bigger
audience online than Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck combined -- and his
conspiracy-laced rants make the two hosts sound like tea-sipping NPR hosts
on Zoloft," wrote Alexander Zaitchek in Rolling Stone in 2011. His website
attracts 40 million unique visitors a month.
Jones has made more than a cameo appearance in Donald Trump's campaign. When
the candidate appeared on his show last December, the radio host promised
him that he had the support of 90% of his listeners. "Your reputation is
amazing," Trump responded, "I will not let you down." By refusing to become
a more sensible mainstream presidential candidate and continuing to post
bizarre early-morning tweets, he has indeed kept that promise.
If Trump has managed to lock down the evangelical vote with nary a quote
from the Bible, with the alt-right crowd he has frequently cited chapter and
verse from their prophets. So, for instance, he has peddled such conspiracy
theories as the foreign birth of President Obama, the "thousands and
thousands" of Muslims who celebrated the attacks on 9/11, and the
government-engineered drought in California. Infowars promoted all of these
"facts," while also coming up with the "Hillary for Prison" meme that took
the Republican convention in Cleveland by storm. Where other candidates have
a brain trust, Trump has a mere meme trust.
Jones reserves much of his wrath for what he calls "globalists." For the
alt-right, "globalist" is a code word that, like "cosmopolitan," conjures up
a shadowy network of conspiratorial (and mostly Jewish) figures: George
Soros, Henry Kissinger, the Rothschilds. Jones has his own version of end
times. "The globalists are building a world, in their own words, where
normal human life is over," he rants. "It's the devil. And the churches are
not going to tell you. It's an alien force, not of this world, attacking
humanity, like the Bible and every other ancient text says."
Trump has proven as unlikely a hero for anti-globalists as he has been for
evangelicals. He is an international capitalist with investments in more
than a dozen countries. His signature products are produced in China and
Mexico. He has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and counts Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a friend.
But Trump is an outsider where it counts, at least for those who live at the
intersection of conspiracy and catastrophe. He rails against international
organizations like the United Nations (should be downsized) and NATO
("obsolete"). Despite his global enterprises, he has opposed free trade and
threatened to pull the United States out of the World Trade Organization. He
supported Brexit, inveighs against immigrants, and insists on putting
"America first."
Not surprisingly, these messages also resonate with the white men who form
the core of the alt-right, even though they are generally worried neither
about the coming of the Antichrist nor the arrival of the UN's "black
helicopters." These true "deplorables" obsess instead about a kind of
slow-motion Armageddon in which the twin threats of demography and
immigration will turn America into an unrecognizable (nonwhite) hell. They
welcome, of course, Trump's broadsides against Muslims and undocumented
immigrants.
At The Daily Stormer, the neo-Nazi website, editor Andrew Anglin wrote
during the Republican primary: "If The Donald gets the nomination, he will
almost certainly beat Hillary, as White men such as you and I go out and
vote for the first time in our lives for the one man who actually represents
our interests." Trump has retweeted a number of messages that originated
with the alt-right, and his hiring of Stephen Bannon, the former executive
chairman of Breitbart News, as his campaign manager nailed down his
connection to that community. "We're the platform for the alt-right," Bannon
told journalist Sarah Posner at the Republican convention, referring to
Breitbart News.
Trump is not simply a hero of the alt-right, he's the man around which the
community has now come to identify itself, the nexus of an anti-feminist,
anti-Semitic, racist, conspiratorial worldview. Unlike the evangelical and
survivalist communities, there is no ambivalence on the alt-right. Trump is
their champion, the only person who can prevent their particular apocalypse
-- the victory of multiculturalism -- from taking place.
For all three overlapping constituencies -- evangelicals, anti-globalists,
and the alt-right -- Trump has transformed the paranoid style that has long
lurked beneath the surface of American politics into a genuine and open
electoral force. These groups support Trump because he promises to upend the
secular, reality-based, internationalist status quo. On top of that, Trump
is fundamentally uninterested in the day-to-day compromises of the policy
world. He even disdains politicking within the Republican Party, which
appeals to the many Republicans disgusted with their own party elite. As
Erick Erickson, one of his conservative opponents, puts it, "At some point,
the base of the party just wants to burn the house down and start over."
At heart, Trump is an arsonist. At some level, he's ready to pour that
gasoline and strike that match. His apocalyptic approach to everyday
politics is what puts fear into the hearts of liberals and conservatives
alike -- and what puts fire in the belly of the whitest of America's
insurgents.
The Real Dystopia
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg voiced the fears of many Americans
when she identified New Zealand as a possible refuge from a Trumpocalypse --
as if the Republican candidate's victory in November would be an extreme
weather event that renders much of the globe other than a few remote islands
uninhabitable.
And there's no doubt that Hurricane Donald would wreck the world. His
opposition to efforts to address climate change and desire for a Parexit --
canceling the Paris climate accord -- would guarantee that the mercury in
Mother Earth's thermometer soars ever higher. His contempt for the global
economy would undoubtedly precipitate a worldwide recession. His support for
the unraveling of the European Union would lend a hand to European alt-right
groups campaigning for its demise. His pledge to go mano a mano with the
Islamic State would surely give that organization a new lease on life.
In the United States, meanwhile, Trump's economic plans would further widen
the gulf between the haves and have-nots, making a mockery of the
blue-collar support he has attracted. He would hand considerable power over
to evangelicals when it comes to transforming social policy and, by way of
his Supreme Court nominations, influence the future well beyond his own term
in office. Inspired by his example, alt-right forces would unquestionably
bring their battles onto the streets of American cities.
Nor is Trump alone. Some version of his populist extremism can be found in
every corner of the globe, from Vladimir Putin's Russia and Viktor Orban's
Hungary to Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey, Rodrigo Duterte's Philippines, and
Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua -- not to mention the countries of other
politicians, like France's Marine Le Pen, who hope to seize power someday.
Such leaders may be divided by religion, ethnicity, and even putative
political ideology, but they all believe in putting their nation -- and
their personal ambitions -- above the common global good. Individually, they
are intent on constructing illiberal orders in their countries.
Collectively, they are bent on destroying that fragile entity known as the
international community and, thanks to climate change, the planet that goes
with it.
Next month's election is important. But the core supporters of Donald Trump
are not going to move to Canada -- or Russia -- if their candidate loses.
Those who crave the simplistic, authoritarian solutions offered by dangerous
populists around the world are not going to retreat into political apathy
simply because of the scorn heaped upon them by the mainstream. The
apocalyptic rhetoric of Trump and his followers is a self-fulfilling
prophecy. The gale-force winds of this populist hurricane have been
intensified by decades of polarizing economic and social policies. Whatever
happens in November, the forecast is for more stormy weather ahead.
To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the
latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.
JOHN FEFFER
John Feffer is co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for
Policy Studies.
He is the author of several books and numerous articles. He has been a
writing fellow at Provisions Library in Washington, DC, and a PanTech fellow
in Korean Studies at Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of
World Policy Journal.
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Trump the Arsonist: Evangelicals, Survivalists, the Alt-Right and Hurricane
Donald
Thursday, 13 October 2016 11:36 By John Feffer, TomDispatch | Op-Ed
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Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Lakeland, Florida, on
October 12, 2016. (Stephen Crowley / The New York Times)
The world according to Donald Trump is very dark indeed. The
American economy has tanked. Mexico has sent a horde of criminals over the
border to steal jobs and rape women. The Islamic State, cofounded by Barack
Obama and Hillary Clinton, is taking over the globe. "Our country's going to
hell," he declared during the Republican primaries. It's "like medieval
times," he suggested during the second presidential debate. "We haven't seen
anything like this, the carnage all over the world."
For Trump, it's not morning in America, it's just a few seconds before
midnight on the doomsday clock. Although his campaign doggedly continues to
promise a new beginning for the country, the candidate and his advisers are
sending out a very different message: the end is nigh. These Cassandras all
agree that, although Obama's two terms were no walk in the park, the stakes
in 2016 are world-destroyingly higher. If Clinton is elected, the future
could be, as conservative political operatives Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
titled their recent book, Armageddon.
Presidential challengers often paint a grim picture of the world of the
incumbent, overstating the case for dramatic effect. Ever the showman, Trump
has no compunction about repeatedly going way over the top, calling the US
military a "disaster" because it's supposedly underfunded and the United
States a "third-world country" thanks to its precipitous economic decline.
Trump talks as if he were the hybrid offspring of Karl Marx and Ann Coulter.
Trumpworld, however, is a photographic negative of statistical reality. The
US economy has been on an upswing for the last several years (though its
benefits have been anything but evenly distributed). Nationally, violent
crime is on the decline (though murder rates are soaring in some cities like
Chicago). The Obama administration averted war with Iran and negotiated a
détente with Cuba (though it continues to wage war in other parts of the
world and has maintained sky-high Pentagon spending). If the Obama years are
hardly beyond criticism, they are hardly beneath contempt either.
In dispensing with what one of his senior aides called the "reality-based
community," George W. Bush's administration attempted to create an
alternative, on-the-ground reality, particularly through the direct exercise
of American military power -- and we know how well that turned out. Trump
seems to have even less interest in the "reality-based community." He's
evidently convinced that the sheer power of his own bluster, even without
the firepower of that military, should be sufficient to alter our world.
After all, didn't it win him a loyal following on TV and -- to the disbelief
of politicians and media commentators everywhere -- the Republican
presidential nomination?
The reality-based community -- which Trump labels the "elite" -- wants
nothing to do with him. The discrepancy between his rhetoric and what other
people call facts explains in part why even conservative elites -- prominent
Republicans like Brent Scowcroft and John Warner, conservative columnists
like George Will, and even neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, not to speak
of right-leaning newspapers like The Arizona Republic and the Dallas Morning
News -- have made historic decisions to abandon their party's presidential
nominee.
But don't kid yourself. There is method to Trump's particular version of
madness. He and his slyly smiling running mate Mike Pence are playing up
their vision of scorched-earth America not just to win general political
points but to appeal to a very specific set of voters by tapping into the
apocalyptic strain in American politics. The evangelicals, anti-globalists,
and white power constituencies that form the bedrock of his support hear in
Trump's blasts more than just a set of fun-house facts. When the Donald says
that Hillary is "the devil" and America's going to hell, this constituency
-- steeped in Biblical prophecy, survivalist ideology, and racist
conspiracies -- takes him literally. America is on the verge of (take your
pick): the Rapture, an end-of-days contest between American patriots and UN
invaders, or an all-out race war to the finish.
And here's what makes Trump's carnivalesque presidential campaign especially
topsy-turvy. He's been slouching toward just about every kind of Armageddon
imaginable, except the genuine planetary ones that are -- or should be --
almost unavoidable these days. He has, after all, dismissed climate change
as a "hoax" and a Chinese scam. He is so blasé about nuclear weapons that
he's been comfortable with the thought of American allies Japan, South
Korea, and Saudi Arabia developing their own. He has nothing whatsoever to
say about potential global pandemics (but plenty to spout about the
potentially malign effects of vaccinations).
To grasp the nature of such genuine dangers requires at least a minimal
understanding of science. It also requires a genuine concern that the world
as we know it could indeed end in our lifetimes or those of our children and
grandchildren.
Of course, not everyone thinks the apocalypse is a bad thing.
The Rise of the Evangelical Right
It wasn't particularly difficult to portray 1980 as a gloomy time for
America. The spike in oil prices in 1979 had sent the US economy into a
tailspin and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was propelling the two
superpowers into another cycle of Cold War tensions. Iranian radicals were
holding 52 US diplomats and citizens hostage in Tehran, which produced a
daily (and, thanks to Ted Koppel's "Nightline" reports, nightly) humiliation
for President Jimmy Carter and his administration.
As the Republican Party's presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan responded to
these developments by continually playing up the image of an America in
decline. His grim vision of that American future cemented his ties to an
ascendant right wing within the evangelical community. As early as 1971,
intellectual historian Paul Boyer pointed out, Reagan claimed that "the day
of Armageddon isn't far off." He was referring then to turmoil in the Middle
East and the pivotal role of Israel there. "Everything is falling into
place," he added. "It can't be long now."
Reagan was not exactly an easy sell to the Bible belt. Divorced and anything
but a devoted churchgoer, he was closely associated in the public mind with
that Sodom of the West Coast, Hollywood. In the 1980 election, he was also
up against Jimmy Carter, a born-again Christian who openly discussed his
faith.
Admittedly, Reagan benefitted from the endorsement of the Moral Majority,
founded by Reverend Jerry Falwell in 1979, and he began playing directly to
the religious crowd by establishing a new tradition of inserting "God bless
America" into his speeches. But it was those repeated references to
Armageddon that cemented his relationship with the religious right.
Apocalyptic thinking is central to the worldview of evangelicals. Indeed,
it's what principally distinguishes them from mainstream Christians. "The
one thing that affects how they live their daily lives," writes historian of
religion Matthew Avery Sutton, "is that they believe we are moving towards
the End Times, the rise of the Antichrist, towards a great tribulation and a
horrific human holocaust."
The mainstream media was shocked that Reagan then brought such doomsday
rhetoric into the Oval Office. "It is hard to believe that the President
actually allows Armageddon ideology to shape his policies toward the Soviet
Union," The New York Times editorialized just before the 1984 election. "Yet
it was he who first portrayed the Russians as satanic and who keeps on
talking about that final battle." Reagan easily went on to win a second
term. Later, George W. Bush would employ similar apocalyptic references to
justify the invasion of Iraq and unqualified support for Israel, and it
didn't prevent him from winning a second term either.
When Barack Obama became president in 2008, however, evangelicals suffered a
significant drop in political influence. They continued to cling to Congress
and a few Supreme Court justices -- along with their guns and religion --
but they had little leverage over a president that a majority of Republicans
believed to be a foreign-born Muslim. (You're either with us or you're born
in Kenya.)
Eight years later, the evangelical community faced an embarrassment of
riches in the Republican primaries: a couple of born-again candidates (Mike
Huckabee and Ted Cruz), several evangelical Catholics (Rick Santorum, Marco
Rubio, and Jeb Bush), and even an evangelical Seventh Day Adventist (Ben
Carson). In comparison, Donald Trump came up way short on the faith front.
Many evangelicals were skeptical of him because, like Reagan, he did not fit
the mold of an upstanding Christian candidate. He'd been divorced, indulged
in high-profile extramarital affairs, taken pro-choice positions, came from
that East Coast Gomorrah, New York City, and even refused to ask God for
forgiveness. Once he won the party's nomination, however, Trump's approval
rating rose sharply among evangelicals who represent one-fifth of the voting
public. Seventy-eight percent of them now support him, according to a recent
Pew survey.
Trump has triumphed among evangelicals in part by changing his views. For
instance, he now claims that he plans to repent before God (in some
unspecified future) and swears that he will help restore the evangelical
voice to politics. He has become firmly anti-abortion and traded in a more
even-handed approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict for the hardline position
of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that finds favor in the evangelical
community. He has even convinced some evangelicals that his new relationship
with Jesus has turned him into what James Dobson calls a "baby Christian."
Trump also appeals to a certain pragmatic streak among evangelicals. They
have become convinced that only he can tip the Supreme Court in the right
direction, roll back the nuclear agreement with Iran, and hold back a
potential tide of social protest. "Trump speaks to the profound fears
animating so many white evangelicals today," says R. Marie Griffith,
director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at
Washington University. "Above all, the fear that they and their values are
being displaced by foreign, immigrant, and Muslim forces as well as by
domestic movements such as Black Lives Matter, gay rights, women's rights,
and more."
However, this focus on the pragmatic desire of evangelicals to regain the
kind of political influence and power they've lost over the last seven years
only goes so far in explaining Trump's appeal. Far more important, on
millenarian websites, Trump emerges as the mysterious weapon that God is now
wielding to bring the righteous closer to the rapture. "God is preparing to
shake the nations of the world," an evangelical blogger writes in a typical
endorsement of the candidate, "and I believe he is going to use Donald Trump
to do it." Another asserts, "I don't know if God will use Trump to push back
the coming of the anti-Christ. However, I know that without Trump, the
tribulation cannot be far away. Therefore, I have to support Trump."
Much millenarian support comes from a belief that God has anointed Trump the
ultimate disrupter of the status quo, the human wrecking ball that will
smite all the structures standing in the way of Christ's second coming. No
one (other than the Donald himself) would confuse the candidate with the
Messiah, but some evangelicals imagine him in the role of a John the Baptist
gone slightly berserk.
Certain evangelicals believe that their candidate will avert an apocalypse
spurred on by godless Democrats; others that he will hasten that apocalypse
and so the second coming. Given that Trump is a mass of contradictions -- a
bankrupt billionaire, the most elite of populists, a politician who has
never held office -- it's no surprise that evangelicals can read into him
almost anything they want, even if they then have a difficult time
interpreting his "revelations."
Against the Globalists
The film Amerigeddon, released this year and directed by the son of
right-wing actor Chuck Norris, illuminates in graphic detail the paranoid
worldview of what has come to be known as the alt-right: the tech-savvy,
anti-globalist, anti-immigrant movement that hitherto lurked on the fringes
of the Republican Party.
"The greatest threat to our freedom lies within our own government,"
Amerigeddon proclaims in its trailer. In the film, traitors inside the
Beltway have joined up with global terrorists and the United Nations to
bring down America. It's a movie with everything a survivalist could ever
want: outsiders using an EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) to disable the US
power grid, big government imposing martial law, gun owners saving the day.
If you could take only one DVD to your reinforced concrete bunker, this
would be it.
Given that it debuted on only a handful of screens and disappointed even
those who might otherwise embrace its hyperbolic content, Amerigeddon would
be too ridiculous to mention -- if it weren't for Alex Jones.
Jones is a talk-radio host who also runs the website Infowars. He believes
that the US government has covered up its involvement in everything from the
Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11 to the faked moon landing and WikiLeaks. He's
a libertarian (hates government), paleoconservative (hates liberals), and
survivalist (his Infowars store carries a full line of "preparedness
products" for the moment when the grid collapses).
A hero of conspiracy theorists the world over, Jones appears in a cameo in
Amerigeddon and has used his media empire to hype the film. For someone with
such unorthodox views, he has quite a following. "Jones draws a bigger
audience online than Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck combined -- and his
conspiracy-laced rants make the two hosts sound like tea-sipping NPR hosts
on Zoloft," wrote Alexander Zaitchek in Rolling Stone in 2011. His website
attracts 40 million unique visitors a month.
Jones has made more than a cameo appearance in Donald Trump's campaign. When
the candidate appeared on his show last December, the radio host promised
him that he had the support of 90% of his listeners. "Your reputation is
amazing," Trump responded, "I will not let you down." By refusing to become
a more sensible mainstream presidential candidate and continuing to post
bizarre early-morning tweets, he has indeed kept that promise.
If Trump has managed to lock down the evangelical vote with nary a quote
from the Bible, with the alt-right crowd he has frequently cited chapter and
verse from their prophets. So, for instance, he has peddled such conspiracy
theories as the foreign birth of President Obama, the "thousands and
thousands" of Muslims who celebrated the attacks on 9/11, and the
government-engineered drought in California. Infowars promoted all of these
"facts," while also coming up with the "Hillary for Prison" meme that took
the Republican convention in Cleveland by storm. Where other candidates have
a brain trust, Trump has a mere meme trust.
Jones reserves much of his wrath for what he calls "globalists." For the
alt-right, "globalist" is a code word that, like "cosmopolitan," conjures up
a shadowy network of conspiratorial (and mostly Jewish) figures: George
Soros, Henry Kissinger, the Rothschilds. Jones has his own version of end
times. "The globalists are building a world, in their own words, where
normal human life is over," he rants. "It's the devil. And the churches are
not going to tell you. It's an alien force, not of this world, attacking
humanity, like the Bible and every other ancient text says."
Trump has proven as unlikely a hero for anti-globalists as he has been for
evangelicals. He is an international capitalist with investments in more
than a dozen countries. His signature products are produced in China and
Mexico. He has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and counts Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a friend.
But Trump is an outsider where it counts, at least for those who live at the
intersection of conspiracy and catastrophe. He rails against international
organizations like the United Nations (should be downsized) and NATO
("obsolete"). Despite his global enterprises, he has opposed free trade and
threatened to pull the United States out of the World Trade Organization. He
supported Brexit, inveighs against immigrants, and insists on putting
"America first."
Not surprisingly, these messages also resonate with the white men who form
the core of the alt-right, even though they are generally worried neither
about the coming of the Antichrist nor the arrival of the UN's "black
helicopters." These true "deplorables" obsess instead about a kind of
slow-motion Armageddon in which the twin threats of demography and
immigration will turn America into an unrecognizable (nonwhite) hell. They
welcome, of course, Trump's broadsides against Muslims and undocumented
immigrants.
At The Daily Stormer, the neo-Nazi website, editor Andrew Anglin wrote
during the Republican primary: "If The Donald gets the nomination, he will
almost certainly beat Hillary, as White men such as you and I go out and
vote for the first time in our lives for the one man who actually represents
our interests." Trump has retweeted a number of messages that originated
with the alt-right, and his hiring of Stephen Bannon, the former executive
chairman of Breitbart News, as his campaign manager nailed down his
connection to that community. "We're the platform for the alt-right," Bannon
told journalist Sarah Posner at the Republican convention, referring to
Breitbart News.
Trump is not simply a hero of the alt-right, he's the man around which the
community has now come to identify itself, the nexus of an anti-feminist,
anti-Semitic, racist, conspiratorial worldview. Unlike the evangelical and
survivalist communities, there is no ambivalence on the alt-right. Trump is
their champion, the only person who can prevent their particular apocalypse
-- the victory of multiculturalism -- from taking place.
For all three overlapping constituencies -- evangelicals, anti-globalists,
and the alt-right -- Trump has transformed the paranoid style that has long
lurked beneath the surface of American politics into a genuine and open
electoral force. These groups support Trump because he promises to upend the
secular, reality-based, internationalist status quo. On top of that, Trump
is fundamentally uninterested in the day-to-day compromises of the policy
world. He even disdains politicking within the Republican Party, which
appeals to the many Republicans disgusted with their own party elite. As
Erick Erickson, one of his conservative opponents, puts it, "At some point,
the base of the party just wants to burn the house down and start over."
At heart, Trump is an arsonist. At some level, he's ready to pour that
gasoline and strike that match. His apocalyptic approach to everyday
politics is what puts fear into the hearts of liberals and conservatives
alike -- and what puts fire in the belly of the whitest of America's
insurgents.
The Real Dystopia
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg voiced the fears of many Americans
when she identified New Zealand as a possible refuge from a Trumpocalypse --
as if the Republican candidate's victory in November would be an extreme
weather event that renders much of the globe other than a few remote islands
uninhabitable.
And there's no doubt that Hurricane Donald would wreck the world. His
opposition to efforts to address climate change and desire for a Parexit --
canceling the Paris climate accord -- would guarantee that the mercury in
Mother Earth's thermometer soars ever higher. His contempt for the global
economy would undoubtedly precipitate a worldwide recession. His support for
the unraveling of the European Union would lend a hand to European alt-right
groups campaigning for its demise. His pledge to go mano a mano with the
Islamic State would surely give that organization a new lease on life.
In the United States, meanwhile, Trump's economic plans would further widen
the gulf between the haves and have-nots, making a mockery of the
blue-collar support he has attracted. He would hand considerable power over
to evangelicals when it comes to transforming social policy and, by way of
his Supreme Court nominations, influence the future well beyond his own term
in office. Inspired by his example, alt-right forces would unquestionably
bring their battles onto the streets of American cities.
Nor is Trump alone. Some version of his populist extremism can be found in
every corner of the globe, from Vladimir Putin's Russia and Viktor Orban's
Hungary to Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey, Rodrigo Duterte's Philippines, and
Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua -- not to mention the countries of other
politicians, like France's Marine Le Pen, who hope to seize power someday.
Such leaders may be divided by religion, ethnicity, and even putative
political ideology, but they all believe in putting their nation -- and
their personal ambitions -- above the common global good. Individually, they
are intent on constructing illiberal orders in their countries.
Collectively, they are bent on destroying that fragile entity known as the
international community and, thanks to climate change, the planet that goes
with it.
Next month's election is important. But the core supporters of Donald Trump
are not going to move to Canada -- or Russia -- if their candidate loses.
Those who crave the simplistic, authoritarian solutions offered by dangerous
populists around the world are not going to retreat into political apathy
simply because of the scorn heaped upon them by the mainstream. The
apocalyptic rhetoric of Trump and his followers is a self-fulfilling
prophecy. The gale-force winds of this populist hurricane have been
intensified by decades of polarizing economic and social policies. Whatever
happens in November, the forecast is for more stormy weather ahead.
To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the
latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.
John Feffer
John Feffer is co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for
Policy Studies.
He is the author of several books and numerous articles. He has been a
writing fellow at Provisions Library in Washington, DC, and a PanTech fellow
in Korean Studies at Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of
World Policy Journal.
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