ROBERT PAXTON: Totally surprised. Not so very long ago, Trump was a guaranteed laugh line. He was considered a buffoon. All you had to do was to show the hair and call him “The Donald,” and everyone kind of snickered. And suddenly he’s this—he’s this immense power.
"The apocalyptic myth that helps explain evangelical support for Trump ""Is this fascism? No. Could it become fascism? Yes [...] “God’s used imperfect people all through history. King David wasn’t perfect. Saul wasn’t perfect. Solomon wasn’t perfect,” outgoing Energy Secretary Rick Perry said [...] Perry’s and White’s implicit allusions to this tradition would just be rhetoric if others in the administration weren’t actively bolstering similar notions. Within the government, Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo .. https://www.newsweek.com/mike-pompeo-christian-leader-speech-trump-secretary-state-separation-church-1465143 , Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and others bolster .. https://theintercept.com/2016/11/15/mike-pence-will-be-the-most-powerful-christian-supremacist-in-us-history/ .. the connection between Trump’s presidency and the promise of a Christian Empire. None of them are speaking explicitly about the Last World Emperor, of course, and it’s entirely possible that none of them has even heard of the story, but that’s not how powerful prophecies work. Even when they’re not an explicit part of the conversation, they provide a framework to guide and justify actions, or to give hope for the future. In this case, the framework of apocalypticism is a framework of hope: A dominant power group, feeling their power threatened, applies a prophecy from a time of similar power collapse to justify actions that range for immoral to unconstitutional via religious doctrine."
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American democracy began by rejecting one potential strongman. Protecting it requires rejecting another.
By Zack Wasserman | September 30, 2020, 2:07 PM
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump greets supporters after a rally at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile on Aug 21, 2015. Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images
Anyone who reads the news is used to hearing that U.S. President Donald Trump’s behavior is unprecedented, after nearly four years of scandals and chaos. Less remarked on is that his cult of personality actually has historical precedent. Ironically, that’s even more reason to worry.
Americans like to think of themselves as the world’s most freedom-loving people, but they’ve fantasized about deliverance through a godlike leader—an “I alone can fix it” figure, as Trump boasted—at least once before. Before Trump, the United States’ closest brush with despotism came in 1783, just after the country won independence from Britain. The conventional wisdom at the time was that General George Washington, the hero of the Revolutionary War, was so popular that he could overthrow the weak national government if he wished to do so.
With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to dismiss a Washington dictatorship as an absurd counterfactual. But it certainly didn’t seem far-fetched at the time. While the founding generation fought for freedom and knew its opposite under British rule, their “give me liberty or give me death” bravado co-existed with a powerful nostalgia for a more familiar, hierarchical kind of authority. “O Washington, how I do love thy name! How have I often adored and blessed thy God, for creating and forming thee, the great ornament of humankind!” exclaimed one breathless admirer the year the war ended.
And those weren’t the words of some 18th-century “deplorable.” The writer was Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale, and his effusiveness was representative of the intense pro-Washington sentiment found throughout the new country. (Yale’s rival Harvard had set a high bar for flattery by giving Washington an honorary doctorate at the outset of the war, before his soldiers fired a single shot).
Washington worship ran wide and deep.
Washington worship ran wide and deep. The first Black person to publish a book of poetry in the United States, an enslaved woman in Boston named Phillis Wheatley, described Washington in regal terms: “A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine / With gold unfading, Washington! Be thine.” The former colonists sang “God Save Great Washington” to the melody of “God Save the King.” They named ships and children in his honor, and when the statues of George III came down, Washington went up in the despised monarch’s place.
In terms of popularity, he had contemporaries but no peers, even amongst his fellow Founding Fathers. The power of that cult-like appeal was clear—as was the implicit risk that he might exploit it for personal gain. When the moment came, would Washington reaffirm his republican ideals? Or would he reveal a lust for power and become an American Caesar or Cromwell?
If he had, it would have disappointed many, pleased some, and surprised few. Indeed, George III reportedly mused that Washington would be “the greatest man in the world” if he simply retired from leadership right after the war, though such conduct would have been contrary to the traditions of military victory.
Of course, that’s exactly what Washington did. First, he shamed a group of his own officers contemplating a coup against the new government. Then, after peace was struck with the British, he appeared before Congress to “surrender into their hands the trust committed to me… I resign with satisfaction the appointment I accepted with diffidence—a diffidence in my abilities to accomplish so arduous a task.” His humility created the space for self-government.
The catch is that, unlike Trump—who has repeatedly raised questions about whether he would step down after losing an election and told a neofascist group to “stand by” during the first presidential debate—Washington never conspired against democracy. His commitment to the “Glorious Cause” of American liberty was unshakable. The risk in the 1780s flowed in the opposite direction: from the bottom up rather than the top down. By exalting their hero in the symbols and language of monarchy, America’s former British subjects exposed their ambivalence about giving up a political order based on “great” men. Their republicanism was imperfect.
So, apparently, is modern Americans’. Trump’s betting that attacking his own civil servants, delegitimizing rivals, undermining the public’s confidence in mail-in voting during a pandemic, refusing to say that he’ll accept the results of November’s election, and blustering about staying in the White House past a second term will energize Republican voters who see each outrage as a step toward a national redemption that only he can bring. When people put loyalty to a savior above common sense, they’re in the thrall of a personality cult.
A solid blue state is closer to being in play this year—galvanizing Somali Americans in an election they call “do or die.” Election 2020 | Allison Meakem
Washington’s response to idolization was self-denial. Trump’s is self-aggrandizement. That difference could have profound consequences: There was nothing inevitable about the American people choosing democracy nearly two and a half centuries ago, and there’s nothing inevitable about keeping it today.
Zack Wasserman is the chief strategy officer at Via and has a PhD in history from Yale.
"The apocalyptic myth that helps explain evangelical support for Trump ""Is this fascism? No. Could it become fascism? Yes "Is Donald Trump a Fascist? Part 2 of Interview with Robert Paxton, Father of Fascism Studies"
‘The Trump name in the Republican Party is stronger than it has ever been,’ said a Florida GOP leader.
President Donald Trump speaks at the "Stop The Steal" Rally on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. | Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
By DAVID SIDERS
01/07/2021 07:42 PM EST
The recriminations came swiftly after Wednesday’s deadly insurrection at the Capitol, in calls for President Donald Trump’s impeachment and White House resignations that spilled over into Thursday.
But if the president was finally losing his grip on Washington, there were few signs the base was anywhere close to leaving Trump behind.
At least a half-dozen GOP state legislators were part of the crowd at the Capitol Wednesday. A West Virginia lawmaker, dressed in a helmet, filmed himself rushing the building with other participants in the siege .. https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/politics/decision-2020/west-virginia-delegate-records-himself-storming-us-capitol/2532227/ . And in Arizona, Republicans were expressing such fealty to the president that they were openly discussing the possibility of forming a new party around him — despite his inability to carry the state last year, a first for a Republican presidential candidate since 1996.
Ward blamed the chaos at the Capitol not on the rioters, but on what she called the Democratic Party’s refusal to more fully examine voting procedures. Various House members adopted a similar stance, falsely claiming that antifa infiltrators were behind the violence.
The likes of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Mitt Romney — who cast a glowering stare over Republican objections to Joe Biden’s election when lawmakers returned to the newly-desecrated Capitol — are now “icons of the past,” said J.C. Martin, chair of the Republican Party in Polk County, Fla.
In the riot, Martin said, there were “a few folks who clearly went overboard.” But the key takeaway, he said, was “the shock to the left that the right’s not just going to be quietly, sitting at home when they’re wronged.”
“The Trump name in the Republican Party is stronger than it has ever been,” Martin said.
Outside of the party’s shell-shocked political and professional classes, it wasn’t clear that Trump’s currency with the base was worse off post-Wednesday at all.
“I don’t think anybody thinks it diminishes it,” said Phillip Stephens, the Republican Party chair in Robeson County, N.C. “I think the media wishes it would diminish it.”
Stephens predicted that in the great divide between the party’s grassroots and establishment forces, the post-Trump era would force a unification “out of necessity,” a result of the party’s newfound status as the out-party in Washington.
But it appeared equally, if not more likely, that the fallout from Wednesday could mark a point of no return in the longstanding schism between the party’s most institutionalist and Trumpian flanks.
Establishment Republicans — once content to at least tolerate, if not encourage, Trump’s most rampageous impulses — pulled away from the president and his allies more resolutely than ever before. Some business interests turned on the president .. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/06/business-groups-trump-removal-455636 , with National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons, a Republican, suggesting the Cabinet consider invoking the 25th Amendment to declare Trump unfit for office.
Broadening the condemnation to Republicans beyond Trump — concerning a GOP that will need business support and money in future elections — “any elected leader defending him is violating their oath to the Constitution and rejecting democracy in favor of anarchy,” Timmons said.
“There’s like an evil that’s infected our party and got into the veins of too many of our limbs,” said Doug Gross, a Republican operative who was a chief of staff to former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad. “And they’re going to fall off, because at the end of the day, Republicans care about our country, and this is devastating to our country. And if you’re part of it, you’re going to pay a price for it.”
The problem for Trump’s allies — and for Republicans broadly — is that it may now be impossible to maintain the already-tenuous alliance between the demands of the base and the more restrained segment of the Republican-leaning electorate.
“I get that there are competing factions within our party and there always have been,” said Stan Barnes, a former Arizona state lawmaker and longtime Republican consultant. “But the big reveal today is that those competing factions and the natural tension between the money wing of the party and the conviction-grassroots wing of the party has just been shot with a … steroid and is out of control and is not a fever that is going to break and pass anytime soon.”
Barnes, who believed before Wednesday that intraparty friction might eventually fade, said, “Any thought we were entertaining of a certain return to normalcy, whatever that looks like, is in my mind just gone.” Saddled with “these pictures of these lunatics on the Capitol steps,” he said, the GOP is now confronting a “bigger-than-all-things problem,” with the bedlam the Capitol hardening the division between the GOP’s establishment and its still-fervently pro-Trump base.
Republicans still need both the grassroots and the country club set to win in most competitive states, as evidenced by its failings in the midterm elections, in Trump’s re-election campaign and in the Georgia Senate runoffs on Tuesday.
The idea among Republicans was that in the post-Trump era it could improve on its coalition — either with a Trump-like but less polarizing figure who could still motivate the base, or with a different kind of Republican who might broaden it. According to that thinking, traditionalist Republicans could likely stomach the former, as they had Trump, and rank-and-file Republicans could come around to the latter.
But with images of the riot etched into the nation’s consciousness on Wednesday, that equation may have changed. "I think it was a political 9/11," said one prominent Republican strategist, describing a moment at which "the establishment that hated having Trump and couldn’t stand it and tolerated it and put up with the populism and put up with all this s---, they have their moment."
"It’s the establishment strikes back," he said. And between the establishment and the base, he said, now “we’ll see who has the most staying power.”
"The apocalyptic myth that helps explain evangelical support for Trump ""Is this fascism? No. Could it become fascism? Yes"
Conservative preacher says God booted Trump! WHA!! Trump's God warriors (even God's army is divided) scream. They issue death threats to the conservative preacher. Why so vicious? He strayed from the movement Trump spoke of in his July 6 speech.
After a week of Trumpist mayhem, white evangelicals wrestle with what they’ve become.
By David Brooks Opinion Columnist
Jan. 14, 2021
Trump supporters brought a cross to pray outside the U.S. Capitol as Congress met to ratify Joe Biden’s electoral victory last week. Win Mcnamee/Getty Images
“Over the last 72 hours, I have received multiple death threats and thousands upon thousands of emails from Christians saying the nastiest and most vulgar things I have ever heard toward my family and ministry. I have been labeled a coward, sellout, a traitor to the Holy Spirit, and cussed out at least 500 times.”
The response was swift and vicious. As he put it in that later Facebook post, “I have been flabbergasted at the barrage of continued conspiracy theories being sent every minute our way and the pure hatred being unleashed. To my great heartache, I’m convinced parts of the prophetic/charismatic movement are far SICKER than I could have ever dreamed of.”
[Insert: Welcome to the real world Mr. Jeremiah Johnson.]
This is what is happening inside evangelical Christianity and within conservatism right now. As a conservative Christian friend of mine put it, there is strife within every family, within every congregation, and it may take generations to recover.
On the one hand, there are those who are doubling down on their Trump fanaticism and their delusion that a Biden presidency will destroy America.
The violent Know-Nothingism, which has always coursed through American history, is once again a torrent, threatening more violence in the days ahead.
On the other hand, many Trump supporters have been shaken to the core by the sight of a sacrilegious mob blasting Christian pop music and chanting “Hang Mike Pence.” There have been defections and second thoughts. The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, who delivered a prayer at the Trump inaugural, told his congregation Sunday, “We must all repent, even the church needs to repent.”
The Trump-supporting Texas pastor John Hagee declared: “This was an assault on law. Attacking the Capitol was not patriotism, it was anarchy.”
One core feature of Trumpism is that it forces you to betray every other commitment you might have: to the truth, moral character, the Sermon on the Mount, conservative principles, the Constitution. In defeat, some people are finally not willing to sacrifice all else on Trump’s altar.
The split we are seeing is not theological or philosophical. It’s a division between those who have become detached from reality and those who, however right wing, are still in the real world.
Hence, it’s not an argument. You can’t argue with people who have their own separate made-up set of facts. You can’t have an argument with people who are deranged by the euphoric rage of what Erich Fromm called group narcissism — the thoughtless roar of those who believe their superior group is being polluted by alien groups.
It’s a pure power struggle. The weapons in this struggle are intimidation, verbal assault, death threats and violence, real and rhetorical. The fantasyland mobbists have an advantage because they relish using these weapons, while their fellow Christians just want to lead their lives.
The problem is, how do you go about reattaching people to reality?
David French, the conservative Christian writer who fought in the Iraq war, says the way to build a sane G.O.P. is to borrow a page from the counterinsurgency handbook: Separate the insurgents from the population.
That means prosecuting the rioters, impeaching the president and not tolerating cyberterrorism within a community or congregation.
Others have to be reminded of the basic rules for perceiving reality. They have to be reminded that all truth is God’s truth; that inquiry strengthens faith, that it is narcissistic self-idolatry to think you can create your own truth based on what you “feel.” There will probably have to be pastors and local leaders who model and admire evidence-based reasoning, wrestling with ideas.
On the left, leaders and organizations have arisen to champion open inquiry, to stand up to the cancel mobs. They have begun to shift the norms.
The problem on the right is vastly worse. But we have seen that unreason is a voracious beast. If it is not confronted, it devours not only your party, but also your nation and your church.
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David Brooks has been a columnist with The Times since 2003. He is the author of “The Road to Character” and, most recently, “The Second Mountain.” @nytdavidbrooks
The unexpected relationship between U.S. evangelicals and Russian Orthodox "Despite porn stars and Playboy models, white evangelicals aren’t rejecting Trump. This is why." Under Trump and Putin, a strange alliance gets stranger. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143586924
Right Wing Watch reports on the extreme rhetoric and activities of key right-wing figures and organizations by showing their views in their own words. In this clip, famous country and bluegrass musician Ricky Skaggs claims he was told by God that Donald Trump was being protected by the same angel that protected George Washington, then declares that the election was stolen and God will put Trump back in office.
From biblical times to Trump, false messiahs have doomed societies
"The apocalyptic myth that helps explain evangelical support for Trump ""Is this fascism? No. Could it become fascism? Yes "Is Donald Trump a Fascist? Part 2 of Interview with Robert Paxton, Father of Fascism Studies"
Surrounded by army cadets, U.S. President Donald Trump watches the first half of the 121st Army-Navy Football Game at the United States Military Academy in New York City on Dec. 12, 2020. (Shutterstock)
December 23, 2020 4.38am AEDT
Author Kimberly Stratton Associate Professor, Humanities and Religion, Carleton University
The prophet Jeremiah records in excruciating detail the catastrophic events leading to the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BCE.
Jeremiah describes the devastating famine, escalating sense of fear and ominous foreboding that permeated the city despite optimistic oracles issued in the royal court by prophets, who promised divine intercession. Jeremiah warned his listeners not to be deceived by false hopes based on the belief that God would protect his sacred temple and the city in which it stood: “Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘this is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’”
The people of Jerusalem disregarded Jeremiah’s advice and threw him into a well, threatening even to kill him because his doom-saying weakened morale in the besieged city. Yet, it is Jeremiah’s oracles that the Bible preserves because he was correct: the city was violently destroyed and most of the Judeans either died or were exiled to Babylonia, leaving only a remnant of peasants behind to work the land. This brought the biblical kingdom of Judah to an end.
History teaches that messianic hopes lead to poor outcomes for the societies that embrace them. Yet, they continue to surface — even today, with the elevation of Donald Trump by some to messiah-like status.
Divine intervention and predictive failures
The Babylonian conquest is just one example of false hopes for divine intercession leading to ill-fated rebellion and catastrophic defeat. In the year 70 CE, Jerusalem again found itself besieged by a regional superpower demanding political submission.
Josephus, a Jewish historian who survived the war, writes an eye-witness account of the events that led to the second cataclysmic destruction of Jerusalem. He reports that, leading to the Jewish revolt in 66 CE, numerous bandits fomented rebellion against Rome in ways that suggest they had messianic pretensions: one false prophet gathered mobs in the wilderness and led them to the Mount of Olives, promising to breach the city walls.
More poignantly, Josephus narrates the final hours of the Jerusalem temple before it was burned to the ground, when thousands of common people, including women and children, gathered in the temple cloisters because a prophet had predicted that God would deliver them from there. In language choked with emotion, Josephus describes the foolish waste of life that day due to false hopes in divine intercession.
Sixty-five years later, another disastrous rebellion against Rome culminated in brutal conquest, death and slavery for hundreds of thousands of Judeans — leading to the disintegration of Jewish society in Judea for over a century. This failed revolt by a man with messianic pretensions, dubbed “Son-of-a-Star” (Bar Kokhba), resulted in political domination by foreign rulers and the dispersion of the Judean population into foreign lands until the modern era.
Christian messianism has an equally long track record of failed apocalyptic predictions and false prophecies, appearing already in the New Testament: the Gospel of Mark 9:1 and Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians 7:29-31 both anticipate that Jesus will return within their lifetimes to establish the kingdom of God.
The failure of this event and efforts to justify and explain it ultimately led to the founding of a new religion: Christianity.
If evangelicals regard Trump as their saviour and the one who will rectify the moral and political imbalance .. https://theconversation.com/trump-still-enjoys-huge-support-among-evangelical-voters-and-its-not-only-because-of-abortion-148174 .. they perceive is afflicting American society, the QAnon movement has taken this doctrine of salvation to the next level: Exploiting human emotion and concern for children, the movement posits a global child sex-trafficking ring run by high level Democrats and the Hollywood elite.
QAnon followers believe that this criminal network controls the U.S. government — menacingly labelled “the Deep State” — and operates with impunity across the globe.
Their conspiratorial mythology centres on Trump, who is acclaimed as the tireless leader, fighting to destroy this evil cabal. QAnon believers anticipate an imminent revelation of the truth, referred to as the Great Awakening, and predict an impending apocalypse cryptically referred to as “the Show.”
Trump campaigning in late October after testing positive for coronavirus. (Shutterstock)
Trump’s relentless (albeit futile) attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. election through unsubstantiated claims that mail-in voting was riddled with fraud exploits the credulity and undying faith of his supporters; they overwhelmingly accept his narrative and have taken to the streets to support his cause.
Trumpism has all the hallmarks of previous messianic movements: in subordinating reality to mythology, they failed and in the process destroyed the societies they aspired to save.
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