An alliance between the far right and Silicon Valley oligarchs has given rise to a form of "end times fascism," says journalist Naomi Klein, who details in a recent essay co-authored with Astra Taylor how many wealthy elites are preparing for the end of the world even as they contribute to growing inequality, political instability and the climate crisis. Klein says that while billionaires dream of escaping to bunkered enclaves or even to space, President Donald Trump and other right-wing leaders are turning their countries into militarized fortress states to keep out immigrants from abroad and ramp up authoritarian control domestically.
Why Some People Follow Authoritarian Leaders—And The Key to Stopping It
"The rise of end times fascism"
April 3, 2025
To protect democracy and counteract the allure of authoritarianism, reduce people's sense of fear and insecurity, psychology research says
By Danny Osborne
Nikita John Creagh/Getty Images
The reelection of Donald Trump, perhaps more than any other event in modern history, has thrust authoritarianism into the spotlight. From media pundits to conversations held in coffee shops, people are talking about authoritarian leaders. And for good reasons. President Trump and his warning of being a dictator “on day one,” coupled with his attempts to consolidate power, eliminate government oversight and silence his opposition, poses a grave threat to our democratic institutions.
Without downplaying the dangers of authoritarian leaders, studies from my research group and other labs from across the globe identify an equally serious threat to democracy: “authoritarian followers” who instinctively comply with a dictator. We need to understand this personality type so that we can find ways to encourage authoritarian followers to support democracy instead.
For over 80 years, political psychologists like me have studied the authoritarian personality—a collection of attitudes and behaviors that increase a person’s susceptibility to authoritarian leaders. We have found that authoritarian followers share three tendencies: they obey authority figures from their in-group (called authoritarian submission); they punish rule breakers (authoritarian aggression); and they rigidly endorse long-held traditions (conventionalism).
Work from my lab and others reveals that authoritarian followers express a range of anti-democratic attitudes including anti-gay prejudice, anti-immigrant attitudes, generalized prejudice, nationalism and even the belief in conspiracies. Although peer-reviewed work on 2024 Trump voters awaits, authoritarian followers were more likely to vote for Trump than for either Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden in the previous two elections.Thus authoritarian followers are a powerful force within the MAGA movement.
Why do people become authoritarian followers? Some research indicates that authoritarianism is heritable.For example, the correlation between twins’ authoritarianism is over five times stronger among monozygotic twins, whose genetic makeup is almost identical, relative to dizygotic twins, who share roughly half their genes. This strong genetic component to becoming an authoritarian follower does not, however, mean we are destined to obey dictators. Authoritarianism is also fostered by some of the personality traits captured by the so-called Big Five: openness to experience, conscientiousness (a preference for order and the tendency to follow norms), extraversion, agreeableness (the willingness to cooperate and empathize with others) and neuroticism (the tendency to feel anxious and insecure).
Crucially, the social, economic and physical environment also matter. Low levels of openness to experience and high levels of conscientiousness, coupled with an insecure and threatening environment, lead people to chronically view the world as a dangerous and threatening place. When we think that the world is unstable and unsafe, we search for ways to regain control. Unfortunately for our democratic institutions, placing trust in a dictator and becoming an authoritarian follower is one way to reestablish a sense of control.
Far-right politics seem to appeal to authoritarian followers’ desire to regain stability and extinguish perceived threats. For instance, fear and distrust of immigrants has been a core issue driving the recent return of far-right extremism. Movements including Brexit, the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Marine Le Pen’s successes in France, and Donald Trump’s return to power in 2024 all gained momentum by stoking voters’ fears that our way of life is under threat. Attacks against transgender rights and DEI initiatives are similarly rooted in perceived threats to traditional values.
What can people do to address the recent global surge of authoritarian leaders and followers? As an educator, my first instinct is to argue that we need to increase people’s political knowledge to instill democratic values of tolerance, pluralism and adherence to the rule of law. Yet this approach could backfire. Research on this topic shows that increases in education and political knowledge may make authoritarian followers more, not less, likely to express anti-democratic attitudes. For example, a study in the U.S. found that the relationship between authoritarianism and two core features of conservatism are stronger among those who are knowledgeable about politics.
Alternatively, pro-democracy advocates could employ “jiujitsu” persuasion to target the motivations underlying anti-democratic beliefs. For example, because authoritarianism arises from the need to mitigate perceived threats in the environment, we can expose people to safer ones. Indeed a newly published study by my colleagues and me shows that the diversity of one’s neighborhood correlates negatively with authoritarianism. Multicultural neighborhoods likely provide people with the chance to form close friendships with others from diverse backgrounds. In turn these experiences dispel worries that immigrants threaten deeply held cultural values or will take their jobs.
Other work suggests that we can harness authoritarian followers’ impulse to submit to authority figures and conform to group norms for the social good. For example, research from Singapore—where authorities endorse multiculturalism—shows that authoritarian followers support cultural diversity. Other work from Poland indicates that authoritarian followers support prohibiting hate speech against minority groups including members of the LGBTQ community, Muslims and people of African descent, because this hostile rhetoric violates social norms. These studies show that, under some limited conditions, leaders can harness authoritarian followers’ destructive impulses for the social good.
Although Trump’s return to power has reignited popular interest in authoritarianism, social scientists have long wrestled with its origins. Their insights can help us predict what the next four years will look like, as well as identify ways to address the challenges that are likely to come. Democracy rarely falls at the hands of a single individual. Rather it dies through the complacency and obedience of otherwise well-intentioned authoritarian followers. We must help them follow their better angels. As the historian Timothy Snyder has warned, “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.”
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
Danny Osborne is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Auckland where he examines the causes and consequences of inequality. He is also the lead editor of the Cambridge Handbook of Political Psychology (2022) and has published over 175 peer-reviewed manuscripts on topics relevant to political psychology.
brooklyn13. Your crook tactic of throwing mud without valid evidence in support of it continues.
"I think I read somewhere that you are trying to distance yourself from previous posts, in which you claimed to have "read somewhere", something, after you realized their theses were dubious. You still have numb nuts, here, who are insisting this war was instigated on "Bibi's" behalf and wondering what he'll demand next."
Your first there is a clear cut, absolute lie. You don't think you read anywhere that i have tried to distance myself from anything i have said because you couldn't have.
To your
"Don't really understand who the "us" is you refer to, it seems like plenty of local posters are cheerleading these attacks and buying into the Trump spin."
My "us" obviously could only mean those you have disputed most with. I moderate the board with DesertDrifter, i speak for myself only and have never claimed anything different, so your effort there to marry me with all other opinions on this board is yet another dishonest move of yours.
No doubt Netanyahu has been asking Trump to attack Iran since 2016, so there would be no big wrong in saying Trump did it on Netanyahu's behalf.
Exactly why Trump picked now to do what he has done only Trump knows. All the rest 'detail' on that is conjecture.
Bottom line is that you have made those comments about me without giving an iota of evidence for them, so that post of yours goes.
To Heather Cox Richardson's there is nothing there i disagree with. Nothing there which contradicts anything i have said, including her mention of Trump ripping up the deal between Obama and Iran, including the fact Trump ran as a dove and is acting the hawk he has always been, and including . Obviously she covers more than i have, but i have said this repeatedly:
"The Constitution gives to Congress, not to the president, the power to declare war. After fighting for their independence against a king they considered a tyrant, the men of the constitutional convention were not about to hand the power of raising an army to a single man. One delegate commented that he “never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war.”
Trump’s attack on Iran also violates the charter of the United Nations, under which members promise not to attack other states. This particular attack raises the specter of a larger war. In an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council today, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned that “[e]verything must be done to prevent a further escalation” in the Middle East." Your - https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-28-2026
Snyder is good, this from Richardson's:
Scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder noted in Thinking About… that Trump’s personal corruption is another interpretive framework for thinking about his decision to go to war. Trump’s sudden foray into regime change after years of attacking other presidents who tried it raises the question of whether he is acting for other countries in the Middle East he considers his allies.
“Given the stupefyingly overt corruption of the Trump administration,” Snyder wrote, “one must ask whether the United States armed forces are now being used on a per-hire basis.” Snyder noted that Gulf Arab states eager to curb Iran’s power “have generated extremely generous packages of compensation for companies associated with Trump personally and with members of his family.” https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-28-2026
is spot on. Your post goes because of those ridiculous baseless attacks on my credibility put up by you without required links in support.
Timothy Snyder is super good -- "‘Just by existing, he’s extended this war’: Timothy Snyder on Trump, Russia and Ukraine Martin Pengelly in Washington [...]
Snyder also laments as “laughable” the behavior of the US supreme court, which “cleared the landscape as best it could for Trump to return. This [legal] immunity business … and the ruling that he was not an insurrectionist, or that the insurrection clause in the constitution, article three of the 14th amendment of the US constitution [which disqualifies insurrectionists from federal office], has effectively been vacated: these are extraordinary actions to make it possible for him to come back.” [...] “I think the throughline for Trump, going all the way back to the 1980s and his visit to the Soviet Union, through his first presidential campaign and up to the present, has always been submissiveness towards the power in the Kremlin. I would be very happy for him to break with that. I don’t see any evidence of it yet.
“The scenario is that Trump is made to understand that Vladimir Putin is bullying him and that Trump should therefore do the right thing. But so far in his entire career, Trump has seemed to enjoy being bullied by Putin. And so far [Trump’s] negotiating strategy for Ukraine, so far as they’ve revealed it, has not been to make Russia weaker, it’s been to make Ukraine weaker.”
Snyder has said Trump is Russia’s “only chance of winning the war”. He said so “because the Russians say it”. Snyder speaks “five languages reasonably well, a few more quite badly, and read[s] about a dozen”.
Marix999, Yale Historian Timothy Snyder on How the U.S. Can Avoid Sliding into Authoritarianism (see below)
Agree it's likely Putin has something on him due particularly to his Russian trips. Then that it's essential we continue to focus on the authoritarian nature of Trump himself. And on the absolutely authoritarian nature of his presidency from the very start.
- In his brief career as president and a candidate for president, Mr. Trump has attacked virtually every major institution in American life: Congress, the courts, Democrats, Republicans, the news media, the Justice Department, Hollywood, the military, NATO, the intelligence agencies, the cast of “Hamilton,” the cast of “Saturday Night Live,” the pope and now professional sports. He has attacked the Trump administration itself, or at least selected parts of it (see Sessions, Jeff), and even the United States of America (“you think our country’s so innocent? .. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/us/politics/putin-trump-bill-oreilly.html ”). [...] Historian Timothy Snyder: “It’s pretty much inevitable” that Trump will try to stage a coup and overthrow democracy
Startup country. Hi-tech, high-IQ, wealthy you're in, if not you're out. Bells and whistles in Musk, Thiel, Andreessen circles, come one and (oops, sorry not all) it's the biblical-secular end-time overlap polka.
"The rise of end times fascism [...]The movement for corporate city states cannot believe its good luck. For years, it has been pushing the extreme notion that wealthy, tax-averse people should up and start their own high-tech fiefdoms, whether new countries on artificial islands in international waters (“seasteading” .. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/24/seasteading-a-vanity-project-for-the-rich-or-the-future-of-humanity ) or pro-business “freedom cities” such as Próspera .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/05/honduras-land-rights-fight-crypto-colonialists , a glorified gated community combined with a wild west med spa on a Honduran island. P - Yet despite backing from the heavy-hitter venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, their extreme libertarian dreams kept bogging down: it turns out most self-respecting rich people don’t actually want to live on floating oil rigs, even if it means lower taxes, and while Próspera might be nice for a holiday and some body “upgrades”, its extra-national status is currently being challenged in court. P - Now, all of a sudden, this once-fringe network of corporate secessionists finds itself knocking on open doors at the dead center of global power. P - The first sign that fortunes were shifting came in 2023, when a campaigning Donald Trump, seemingly out of nowhere, promised to hold a contest that would lead to the creation of 10 “freedom cities” .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/26/trump-project-2025-sanctuary-cities .. on federal lands. The trial balloon barely registered at the time, lost in the daily deluge of outrageous claims. Since the new administration took office, however, would-be country starters have been on a lobbying blitz, determined to turn Trump’s pledge into reality. P - “The energy in DC is absolutely electric,” Trey Goff, the chief of staff of Próspera, recently enthused after a trip to Capitol Hill. Legislation paving the way for a bevy of corporate city-states should be complete by the end of the year, he claims. P - Inspired by a warped reading [/b]of the political philosopher Albert Hirschman, figures including Goff, Thiel and the investor and writer Balaji Srinivasan have been championing what they call “exit” – the principle that those with means have the right to walk away from the obligations of citizenship, especially taxes and burdensome regulation. Retooling and rebranding the old ambitions and privileges of empires, they dream of splintering governments and carving up the world into hyper-capitalist, democracy-free havens under the sole control of the supremely wealthy, protected by private mercenaries, serviced by AI robots and financed by cryptocurrencies."
Related: Naomi Klein on Trump, Musk, Far Right & "End Times Fascism" "The rise of end times fascism"
A "startup country" designed around secular end-times, exclusionary principles represents a sovereign entity, likely a city-state or technocratic enclave, built by elite engineers, investors, and thinkers to survive a predicted, imminent collapse of global civilization—climate catastrophe, pandemics, or AI apocalypse . Rooted in techno-eschatology (a secular faith that technology will provide salvation, not God), the startup country aims to isolate its citizens from the "end times" and usher in a post-human or hyper-advanced future.
1. Ideological Core: Secular Techno-Eschatology
* Post-Human Saviorism: The mission is not just to survive, but to transcend human limitations (longevity, mind-uploading, and genetic engineering).
* The "Zero-One" Mindset: A binary worldview where the world is split into winners and losers, the saved (inside the enclave) and the damned (the "hungry hordes" outside).
* Rejection of Tradition: The state is explicitly secular, scientific, and anti-traditional, viewing current global social structures as dysfunctional.
2. Exclusionary Survival Mechanisms
* The Gated Sovereign: Physical and digital security is paramount. The country is designed as a maximum-security compound, utilizing private AI-monitored security, drone surveillance, and automatic airlocks.
* Elite Selection: Admission is strictly meritocratic based on high-value skills (AI engineering, biotechnology, defense), or high-net-worth status (funding the enterprise).
* Necropolitical Boundary: It practices "exclusive-inclusion," relying on a highly advanced, automated infrastructure that renders the outside world's suffering irrelevant.
3. Advanced Technical Infrastructure
* Self-Sustaining Biome: The startup country is powered by cutting-edge, decentralized technology—advanced geothermal/nuclear energy, vertical hydroponic farming, and 3D-printed synthetic food systems.
* The Singularity Lab: A central hub focused on accelerating AI development to reach the Technological Singularity, aiming to create "godlike" AI to manage the new society.
* Digital Immortality Vaults: Infrastructure dedicated to storing the digital consciousness of citizens, allowing them to exist after the physical body fails.
4. Implementation Concept
* Location: Remote high-altitude, island, or subterranean locations, likely taking over existing secure, decommissioned military bunkers.
* Governance: A technocracy run by a "CEO-president" and council of technologists, prioritizing rapid iteration over democratic consensus.
* Economy: A decentralized, cryptographic economy (advanced blockchain) to ensure autonomy from failing global financial systems.
This model echoes the "techno-utopianism" described in studies of Silicon Valley's, which seeks to escape the "human obsolescence" they believe their own technology has rendered inevitable.
Yeah, as you know, Trump did not consult Congress as required because he is still working hard to sideline Congress. Trump is still working hard to destroy the founders' idea of three equal layers of government. Still working hard on further expanding the powers of the presidency. See again: Trump Takes America’s ‘Imperial Presidency’ to a New Level [... to end ..] rump is ‘remarkably like’ 1930s far-right regimes, billionaire investor warns
"Felt it was Orwell in the first three sentences - "Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake." Guess it felt like that because we are experiencing it today more than we ever have before. It really is spot on isn't it .. [...] Yarvin: “Until this “unitary executive” is so much “more powerful” than the present office that the President considers both the judicial and legislative branches purely ceremonial and advisory — with the same level of actual sovereignty as Charles III today — the “unitary executive” will not work.” “A Conversation About Monarchy”, Gray Mirror, March 12, 2024. Toward the end .. [link narrowed (corrected) here,] https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175801418 P - Ray Dalio writes in book president wants to ‘dictate’ Maga policies and calls his skirting of democratic norms more ‘aggressive’ than Andrew Jackson and FDR https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=176243043
Pete Hegseth’s holy war: the militant Christian theology animating the US attack on Iran
The rise of end times fascism [...]Reflecting on his childhood under Mussolini, the novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco observed in a celebrated essay .. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ .. that fascism typically has an “Armageddon complex” – a fixation on vanquishing enemies in a grand final battle. But European fascism of the 1930s and 1940s also had a horizon: a vision for a future golden age after the bloodbath that, for its in-group, would be peaceful, pastoral and purified. Not today. P - Alive to our era of genuine existential danger – from climate breakdown to nuclear war to sky-rocketing inequality and unregulated AI – but financially and ideologically committed to deepening those threats, contemporary far-right movements lack any credible vision for a hopeful future. The average voter is offered only remixes of a bygone past, alongside the sadistic pleasures of dominance over an ever-expanding assemblage of dehumanized others. P - And so we have the Trump administration’s dedication to releasing its steady stream of real and AI-generated propaganda designed solely for these pornographic purposes. Footage of shackled immigrants being loaded on to deportation flights, set to the sounds of clanking chains and locking cuffs, which the official White House X account labeled “ASMR”, a reference to audio designed to calm the nervous system. Or the same account sharing news of the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent resident who was active in Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian encampment, with the gloating words: “SHALOM, MAHMOUD.” Or any number of homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s sadism-chic photo ops (atop a horse at the US-Mexican border, in front of a crowded prison cell in El Salvador, slinging a machine gun while arresting immigrants in Arizona …)."
The Bible-thumping US defense secretary is overseeing another strategic disaster in the Middle East. Is this a war or a crusade?
Julia Carrie Wong Fri 10 Apr 2026 22.00 AEST
Nine months and six days before a Tomahawk missile tore through the gaily decorated classrooms of the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran, ripping apart the bodies of schoolchildren, teachers and parents, the personal pastor of the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, delivered a sermon at the Pentagon.
“There’s a temptation to think that you’re actually in control and responsible for final outcomes, especially for those who issue the commands and do the aiming and the shooting,” preached Brooks Potteiger, Hegseth’s closest spiritual adviser, at the first of what have become monthly Christian worship services at the Department of Defense. “But you are not ultimately in charge of the world.”
Citing a verse from Matthew 10, Potteiger told the gathered leaders of the US military: “If our Lord is sovereign even over the sparrow’s fallings, you can be assured that he is sovereign over everything else that falls in this world, including Tomahawk and Minuteman missiles …
The available evidence and a preliminary investigation by the US military all suggest that the US was responsible for the 28 February school bombing that killed more than 175 people, most of them children, but neither Donald Trump nor Hegseth has taken any responsibility, nor have they expressed any remorse.
Instead, Hegseth has persisted in framing the war in Iran, which reached a temporary ceasefire on Tuesday after six weeks of fighting, as divinely sanctioned, repeatedly invoking “God’s almighty providence” and expressing certainty that God is on the side of the US military. Amid boasts about the US’s superior firepower and theatrical disdain for “stupid rules of engagement”, the defense secretary has promised to give “no quarter” to the “barbaric savages” of the Iranian regime and called on the American people to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ”.
Hegseth’s distinct combination of piety and bloodlust was most prominently on display at the 25 March worship service at the Pentagon, the first since the war in Iran began, when he prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy”. The prayer was so shocking that it appears to have provoked a direct rebuke from Pope Leo,who preached on Palm Sunday that God ignores the prayers of those whose “hands are full of blood” from making war.
Hegseth will hardly mind harsh words from the head of the Catholic church, however. The 45-year-old US army veteran and former Fox News host is a member of an obscure, deeply Calvinist wing of evangelical Christianity – John Calvin broke from the Catholic church during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation – that rejects the pope’s authority and is rooted in a belief in predestination.
“They believe that nothing happens that isn’t in God’s will,” said Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida, who researches this branch of Reformed Christianity. “They believe that God directs everything that happens.”
Even a bomb falling on an elementary school full of children?
Pete Hegseth, left, prays with the theologian and pastor Douglas Wilson at the Pentagon in Washington DC in February. Photograph: US Department of Defense
“If God would order a genocide in Deuteronomy 20,” Ingersoll said, citing a passage in which God instructs the Israelites to “destroy every living thing” in certain cities, “what makes you think he wouldn’t cause a girl’s school to be attacked?”
The Iran hawks in the US foreign policy establishment have never lacked for material and geopolitical justifications for wanting to go to war,but the sheer recklessness of the prosecution of this war raises questions about what other factors may be at play. The US has long managed to pursue its interests in the Middle East without bombing Tehran, and the entirely predictable consequences – deadly attacks on US bases and allies, the global economic fallout from the closure of the strait of Hormuz, and the consolidation of power by the Iranian regime – provide an object lesson in why restraint prevailed for 47 years.
Why take such a risk now? Could the bellicose, belligerent and braying Hegseth – with his Crusader tattoos, his disdain for diplomacy, and his evident taste for violent domination – have convinced Trump to start a war to complete the unfinished business of the Crusades?
[Insert: Pete Hegseth had been flagged by fellow service member as possible ‘Insider Threat’ He’s said he was unfairly identified as an extremist due to a cross tattoo on his chest. P - Pete Hegseth, the Army National Guard veteran and Fox News host nominated by Donald Trump to lead the Department of Defense, was flagged as a possible “Insider Threat” by a fellow service member due to a tattoo on his bicep that’s associated with white supremacist groups. P - Hegseth, who has downplayed the role of military members and veterans in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and railed against the Pentagon’s subsequent efforts to address extremism in the ranks, has said he was pulled by his District of Columbia National Guard unit from guarding Joe Biden’s January 2021 inauguration. He’s said he was unfairly identified as an extremist due to a cross tattoo on his chest. P - This week, however, a fellow Guard member who was the unit’s security manager and on an anti-terrorism team at the time, shared with The Associated Press an email he sent to the unit’s leadership flagging a different tattoo reading “Deus Vult” that’s been used by white supremacists, concerned it was an indication of an “Insider Threat.” https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/15/pete-hegseth-flagged-insider-threat-00189991 .. so see .. "Deus Vult" is a Latin phrase meaning "God wills it". It was famously used as a battle cry by Christian Crusaders during the First Crusade in 1095. Today, it is used as a historical reference, a gaming meme, a religious motto, and in some contexts, a controversial slogan adopted by far-right groups. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=%E2%80%9CDeus+Vult%E2%80%9D+]
On Monday, at a news conference touting the rescue of a crew member from a downed F-15 fighter jet in southern Iran, Hegseth once again invoked his religious beliefs to justify events as they transpired. “Shot down on a Friday, Good Friday, hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday and rescued on Sunday,” he said. “Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday, a pilot reborn.”
It’s not exactly the son of God dying for humanity’s sins, but it at least provided a positive spin to some inconvenient facts: a fighter jet felled weeks after Hegseth claimed that the US had achieved “total air dominance”; a rescue mission that resulted in the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of military aircraft; and all within the context of a war in which the US appears headed for a straightforward strategic defeat.
A tattoo reading ‘Deus Vult’, or ‘God wills it’, on Hegseth’s right biceps. Photograph: @petehegseth/Instagram
“Deus Vult,” reads the tattoo inked across Hegseth’s right biceps. It’s a Latin phrase meaning “God wills it” that is believed to have been chanted by the Christian warriors who responded to Pope Urban II’s call in 1095 to march to the Holy Land and reconquer it for Christendom. As the American and Iranian people remain trapped in this deeply unpopular war, it’s vital to understand what “God wills it” means to Hegseth, and what that might mean for the rest of us.
Hegseth has described his early life as having a “a Christian veneer but a secular core”. Born and raised in Minnesota, he pursued officer training while at Princeton and served multiple tours in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. (A longtime reservist, he left the service after being reported by fellow service members in 2021 for his Crusader tattoos, which have been associated with white supremacist and extremist groups.)
He was elevated to leadership roles at two different advocacy groups for veterans only to be forced out over what the New Yorker called “serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct”. Twice divorced due to reported infidelity, he is now raising seven children with his third wife, whom he married in 2019. He paid $50,000 to a woman who accused him of rape in 2017, though he denies the allegation.
The Fox & Friends co-host Hegseth interviews Donald Trump at the White House in April 2017. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
In 2016, Hegseth landed a hosting chair at Fox News. With his telegenic coif, square jaw and slightly too-tight suits, he caught the attention of Trump with his aggressive and successful campaign to win presidential pardons for convicted war criminals.
‘Masquerading as a university’: inside the brazen rightwing plan to conquer American schools Outed here: [In the fall of 2013, a silver-haired conservative radio host named Dennis Prager flew to Texas to woo a pair of rightwing billionaires. A few years earlier, Prager had co-founded a digital education non-profit, Prager University, which created snappy five-minute videos that promoted capitalism and “Judeo-Christian values”. The billionaires, fracking tycoons Dan and Farris Wilks, were big fans. ] Read more > https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2026/apr/08/prageru-university-conservatism
[See also: One new romantically, i gathered, agree with you on her looks and her eyelashes. Voughtwas granted a contract, apparently without any competitive bids, to arrange “national media appearances” for Walters. Walters would soon rocket into lib-baiting stardom on the national scene with stunts including forcing all Oklahoma teachers to have Trump-branded Bibles in their classrooms, initiating a statewide public school curriculum partnership with right-wing PragerU, and creating a library book review committee headed by controversial “LibsofTikTok” influencer Chaya Raichik. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=176887270 .. and .. Looks a work in progress -- ‘God Bless the USA’ Bibles being distributed in Oklahoma schools are missing 17 amendments https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=176751618 .. also .. Confirmation: JD Vance is the handpicked leader of the anti-democracy movement in the US [...]Trump picked Vance as his running mate because Vance publicly stated he’d do what Mike Pence refused to do – overturn democracy and place the US under Maga control. [...]*Charlie Kirk, co-founder and director of Turning Point USA [Insert: PragerUf'ing kidding? PRAGERU’S INFLUENCE https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174814060 ... and ... Where J.D. Vance Gets His Weird, Terrifying Techno-Authoritarian Ideas https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175265430 .. and .. The snapshot university that isn't a university, the one the extreme right uses to brainwash innocent, eager to learn K-12 school children. No will never forget .. conix, You were clued in on Prager (not a university, but a far right propaganda pusher) months ago .. That's the kind of detail about PragerU that detail-minded conix should be very appreciative of. Detail of the type she has claimed to be always interested in. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171047076 . blackhawks being the generous chappie he is has today serviced you yet again. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173996735]
Hegseth’s pivot to religion began in 2018, when he and his current wife joined an evangelical church in New Jersey and “faith became real”, he told a Christian publication in 2023. Already an enthusiastic proponent of the rightwing culture wars against secular public education, he ended up co-writing a 2022 book arguing that the survival of “Western civilization” depends on the reintroduction of Christianity to American schooling. Hegseth’s co-author, David Goodwin, was a leader of the movement for “classical Christian education” (CCE), and Hegseth was an enthusiastic convert, describing the writing process as a “red pill”.
On Goodwin’s advice, Hegseth moved his family to Nashville, Tennessee, in order to send the children to a CCE school. “We thought we were moving to a school, but we moved to a church and a community and a whole view of the world that has changed the way we think too,” he said.
That church was Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, led by pastor Potteiger, who would go on to preach about Tomahawk missiles at the Pentagon, and Hegseth’s involvement with it is by no means casual.
“It’s not the kind of church that you can just show up on a Sunday and go to worship and sing songs and then go home,” said Ingersoll. It’s part of a denomination called the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) in which there is a “strong hierarchy” and church elders hold significant power over congregants, including by running a court system that can excommunicate and shun.
Communion of Reformed Evangelical Church folk don’t believe in social equality among people Julie Ingersoll
To join, Hegseth would probably have had to attend a “session” with the church’s board of elders, during which new converts make a profession of faith and agree to certain covenants, Ingersoll said. “The key thing is that you commit yourself to be in submission to the elders for church discipline, which means that you are accountable to the elders of the church for everything you do and everything you believe.”
If that sounds a bit concerning for someone holding a leadership position in a government founded on the separation of church and state, it is.
“[CREC] folks don’t embrace democracy particularly,” Ingersoll said. “They don’t believe in social equality among people. They think that God created the world and that some people are destined to have authority and to rule over other people, and other people are destined to be followers.
“When we talk about legitimate government having its authority coming from the consent of the governed – they don’t believe that at all.” To Hegseth’s ilk: “legitimate authority comes directly from God.”
That much is clear in the sixth week of a war that was launched without congressional approval and is broadly opposed by the American people. But if Hegseth doesn’t care about the people, whose opinion does he value?
The “whole view of the world” adopted by Hegseth after he joined Pilgrim Hill was crafted by Douglas Wilson, a 72-year-old pastor who has spent the last 50 years attempting to establish a “theocracy” in the small college town of Moscow, Idaho.
Religion was a family business for Wilson. His father, a retired navy officer and full-time evangelist, moved to Idaho in the 1970s to set up a Christian bookstore. Both Wilson and his brother Evan followed, and found themselves drawn into the somewhat hippy “Jesus People” movement of the 70s. They began studying theology together and helped to found a church, but had a falling-out when Doug got interested in Calvinism, and Evan couldn’t give up his belief in free will. (Calvinists are a very small minority within Protestantism.)
After Evan left the church (the brothers remain estranged), Doug continued exploring niche theological movements, taking a particular interest in a fundamentalist Calvinist movement that seeks to establish “theonomy”, a kind of Christian governance. His fiefdom in Idaho now counts about 3,000 people across three churches, and his followers – known as “kirkers” – are increasingly flexing their muscle in local politics and land-use disputes, and CREC has grown to 150 churches worldwide. Meanwhile, Wilson built a business empire promoting CCE books, schools and home-schooling materials that grew his influence in the more mainstream evangelical world.
Wilson’s views are extreme, even for the Christian right. A staunch proponent of “biblical patriarchy”, he advocates for wives to submit to their husbands, for parents to inflict “painful” discipline on children, and for boys to be taught the “theology of fist fighting”.
Wilson is opposed to women’s right to vote. He is not opposed to the death penalty for homosexuality. He describes himself as a Christian nationalist and wants “to take over the world for Christ”, Ingersoll said. “The whole world is going to become Christian, and that version of civilization is filled with all kinds of really powerful, strong punishments for people who don’t agree or go along.”
His praise of the Christian governance of the Confederate States of America has led some critics to call him a neo-Confederate, but he prefers the term “paleo-Confederate”. In 1996, he co-authored an apologia for the antebellum south that characterized slavery as “a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence” and abolitionists as being “driven by a zealous hatred of the Word of God”. The book was withdrawn over allegations of plagiarism, but Wilson returned to the topic in 2005’s Black and Tan, in which he argued that southern slavery was “far more humane than that of ancient Rome” and that southern Christian enslavers were “on firm scriptural ground”.
But where Wilson’s ideas were once on the fringe of rightwing evangelicalism in the US, recent decades have seen a change.
Members of Douglas Wilson’s Christ church sing a hymn over the noise from counter-protesters playing drums during ‘psalm sing’ in September 2020 outside city hall in Moscow, Idaho. Photograph: Geoff Crimmins/AP
In the aftermath of the second world war, a culture of militant masculinity developed among white evangelicals in the US, according to historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez. A professor at Calvin University who frequently comments on Hegseth, Du Mez traced the emergence of this strain of evangelicalism in her 2020 book Jesus and John Wayne .. https://kristindumez.com/books/jesus-and-john-wayne/ .
Whereas in the 19th century, the ideal of “Christian manhood” would have been focused on virtues such as honor, dignity and gentlemanliness, by the early 21st century, the ideal evangelical man had morphed into something that looks a lot more like Hegseth.
“You could not get a better embodiment of that ideology, that particularly militaristic conception of Christianity and ends-justifies-the-means mentality that baptizes violence and cruelty in the name of righteousness” than Hegseth, said Du Mez.
Du Mez argues that the transformation of the evangelical masculine ideal grew out of a sense of embattlement. Facing threats to their status from feminism, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, and broad economic shifts, evangelicals invested psychically in a kind of chauvinistic religiosity that allowed them to reassert their dominance, at the very least within the home. Cheerleading the cold war and post-9/11 wars in the Middle East provided another realm to act out these fantasies of domination, usually without needing to get their own hands dirty. “Any enemies of America – foreign or domestic – and any enemies of their particular agenda are also enemies of God,” Du Mez said.
The perverse moral consequences of combining militant masculinity with religious certainty can be seen in the way this movement consistently supported the most questionable uses of American military power. During the second world war, Du Mez writes, white evangelicals defended the firebombing of German cities. During the Vietnam war, they rallied behind the perpetrators of the M? Lai massacre. And during the global “war on terror”, they were the Americans most likely to support the torture of prisoners.
As evangelicalism’s culture shifted in his direction, Wilson became less of a pariah. He built ties with more respectable leaders and showed a knack for generating attention and publicity. In the past few years, he’s been featured on Tucker Carlson’s podcast and shared a stage with the Southern Baptist Convention leader Albert Mohler.
Wilson’s greatest coup has been the recruitment of Hegseth by way of Potteiger. The attention has expanded Wilson’s access to megaphones such as the New York Times, and he appears intent on maintaining influence: since Hegseth was named secretary of defense, Wilson has announced that Potteiger will move to Washington DC to establish a new CREC church for Hegseth to attend.
Wilson does not seem particularly interested in the day-to-day minutiae of governance or war-fighting. When he was invited to preach at the Pentagon on 17 February, his sermon largely stayed above the fray, though he mused about whether the invitation itself could be a sign of “a black swan reformation” – an unexpected revival of Christianity in the US.
What we’re living through now is seeing what happens when this ideology becomes national policy Kristin Kobes Du Mez
For his part, Hegseth has shown an unprecedented willingness to incorporate his personal beliefs into the official workings of the Department of Defense.
To Du Mez, Hegseth’s role atop the Pentagon – and apparent enthusiasm for starting conflicts – is alarming.
“For a long time, a lot of this seemed like bluster,” said Du Mez, noting that the leading lights of the militant masculinity movement, such as Billy Graham, Ronald Reagan and John Wayne, tended not to have actually served in the US military themselves. But with Hegseth, “you have the bluster, you have the rhetoric, you have that underlying ideology, and he’s been handed the reins of power,” Du Mez said. “What we’re living through now is seeing what happens when this ideology becomes national policy.”
With Hegseth, that doesn’t just mean waging war abroad, much as he seems to enjoy it. It means attempting to fulfil Wilson’s vision of a world governed by biblical law, a global Christendom. For that, the first step is establishing Christendom at home.
When Hegseth is trying to make the case that the US is a Christian nation – something he does often – he likes to tell a story about the country’s first president, George Washington.
“Just as George Washington knelt in the snow at Valley Forge, appealing to heaven for guidance and protection, so too our warriors do today,” he said at the National Prayer Breakfast on 5 February.
“The problem with the story is that it didn’t happen,” said Brian Kaylor, the editor-in-chief of the Baptist publication Word&Way, who has closely followed (and criticized) Hegseth’s promotion of Christian theology in the government. “It was made up decades after Washington’s death, by the same guy who made up the story about Washington cutting down the cherry tree.”
Nevertheless it has been embraced by the Trump administration as a kind of absurd alternate origin story for the United States, in which the country was founded not by deists who enshrined the separation of church and state in the constitution, but by Christian patriarchs establishing a Christian nation.
Several of the original 13 colonies had officially established religions, Kaylor pointed out, and the founders chose not to emulate that system when they drafted the new constitution. Moreover, the only references to religion in the text of the document, in article VI and the first amendment, serve to protect the separation of church and state by barring religious tests for public office, banning the establishment of a state religion, and protecting the right of individuals to worship as they choose.
“It’s the exact opposite of creating a Christian nation,” Kaylor said.
There have been moments in US history when Christian nationalist ideas were broadly embraced. One is the Confederate States of America, which was conceived of as a Christian nation, “invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God” in its constitution. (The Southern Baptist Convention, today the largest evangelical denomination in the US, was formed in 1845 when it broke from northern Baptists in order to continue to support slavery.) When Wilson calls himself a “paleo-Confederate”, he appears at least in part to be referring to his desire for an explicitly Christian government.
The other was in justifying the genocide of American Indians; early settlers often framed violent aggression against the native population in terms of bringing salvation to the “savage”. By the 19th century, this tendency had evolved into “manifest destiny”, a belief that white settlers were fated by God to conquer all of North America. The Trump administration’s promotion of the painting American Progress by John Gast – it depicts a white woman clad in robes sweeping across the continent, bringing light and technology to the dark and fearful natives – has indicated its desire to revive this way of thinking as well.
American Progress by John Gast, 1872. Photograph: Library of Congress
At another violent time in US history, Christian nationalism is enjoying a strong baseline of support among Americans – about one in three are either sympathetic or strong believers in the idea of the US as a Christian nation, according to a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. But the real strength of the Christian nationalist movement in the US now comes from its access to power. The second Trump administration is rife with Christian nationalists in leadership positions.
The contemporary Christian nationalist movement in the US unites Christians from disparate denominations. Hegseth represents the Reformed/Calvinist wing, which is distinct from the charismatic evangelicalism practiced by figures such as the White House “faith office” adviser, Paula White-Cain. A third camp are Catholic Integralists, who want to integrate church and state; adherents include Steve Bannon and the Project 2025 architect Kevin Roberts.
While these groups may all be able to agree on domestic policy priorities – including dismantling public education and using government policy to promote “traditional” family structures – things are more complicated when it comes to foreign policy, especially as regards the Middle East.
Reformed evangelicals like Hegseth are post-millennialists, Ingersoll said, which means that they believe it’s the job of Christians to build the kingdom of God on Earth first, before Jesus’s return. Hegseth’s enthusiasm for the Crusades fits into this broader sense of purpose: he might actually believe it is his mission to re-establish Christendom across the Middle East, starting with Iran, in order to pave the way for Jesus’s return.
But premillennial dispensationalists, such as White-Cain and the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, believe that they must bring about the end times on Earth now, so that Jesus can return to Earth and establish the Kingdom of Heaven himself. They are avid Christian Zionists and see Jewish control over Israel as crucial to fulfilling these prophecies, rather than wanting to re-establish Christian control over the Holy Land now.
Such wholly irreconcilable visions for the Middle East do not appear to matter that much, however. Both camps have a religious justification for supporting the war, and both can use the war to promote the idea that religion has a place in the business of the state in the first place.
Speaking about the ceasefire at the Pentagon on Wednesday, Hegseth said: “Our troops, our American warriors, deserve the credit for this day, but God deserves all the glory.”
If the ceasefire holds, Hegseth may have to relinquish any fantasies he had of planting a cross in newly conquered land, but that doesn’t mean he – or Wilson – will view this as a defeat.
At the National Prayer Breakfast on 5 February, after sharing his apocryphal tale of Washington’s supposed prayer, Hegseth appeared to channel Urban II, the pope who launched the Crusades in 1095 with the promise that those who fought would receive remission of all sins – a promise that has since became controversial given the brutal massacres and wanton destruction of the Crusades.
Hegseth’s comments were not just Crusader theology but something that would be considered heretical in most of Christianity today Brain Kaylor
“The willingness to make sacrifices on behalf of one’s country is born in one thing: a deep and abiding belief in God’s love for us and his promise of eternal life,” Hegseth said. “The warrior who is willing to lay down his life for his unit, his country, and his Creator, that warrior finds eternal life.”
To Kaylor, who is a Baptist minister in addition to a journalist, the statement was beyond shocking. “This is not just Crusader theology but something that would be considered heretical in most of Christianity today,” he said. “It’s really dangerous and scary.It makes his comments about the religious fanaticism of Iran’s regime ironic at best, if not downright hypocritical.”
The Crusades, like the Confederacy, ended in ignominious defeat.But as with other “lost causes”, they maintain a powerful appeal to reactionary minds who luxuriate in grievance and take comfort in glorious hypotheticals. Trump’s return to the White House in 2025 was propelled in large part by the cult of grievance he built around his loss in the 2020 election. He quickly moved to empower Hegseth to restore the names and statues of Confederate generals to military installations.
With the Iran war seemingly headed toward a resolution that will see Iran significantly better off than it was before, and the US’s geopolitical standing and moral reputation in tatters, it’s possible another rightwing lost cause will emerge. Already, some Maga figures are laying the blame for the US’s strategic failures on Israel. Trump himself has aggressively promoted the idea that Nato is at fault. Hegseth has continued to purge military leaders, and he may lay blame at his usual targets (“woke” generals and rules of engagement).
Leaders of Christian nationalism are operating on timelines in the hundreds of years, Ingersoll said, and they are enjoying real success. The campaign to get rid of the Department of Education has been going on since it was established in 1979, and now appears to be heading toward fruition. The movement did not give up after the supreme court legalized abortion in 1973, waging a 50-year battle to take down Roe v Wade, and they are now setting their sights on overturning Obergefell as well.
That kind of long-term planning and patience is part of why Ingersoll thinks that Christian nationalism is “on the ascendancy, historically speaking”. “I’m not optimistic,” she said.
What seems impossible to imagine, at this point at least, is any kind of honest reckoning with the religious modes of thinking that may have fanned the flames of war in the first place. If you are waiting for Hegseth to concede that perhaps God wasn’t on our side this time, don’t.
There is an American leader who reckoned with that question, however. In 1865, after four years of bloody civil war, the Confederacy was on its last legs and victory was within reach. When Abraham Lincoln made his second inaugural address on 4 March, he did not speak to the country about the union’s superior military capacity, nor did he draw conclusions about God’s support of the winning side. Instead, he acknowledged that both sides believed themselves to be acting according to God’s wishes, and that he, as a man, was in no position to know who was correct.
“Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other,” he said of the two sides. “Let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.”
Looking to the future, Lincoln forecast neither triumph nor domination, but the slow and difficult work of learning once again to live with one another: “Let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
In a year that will be dominated with invocations of US history due to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, let us also take a moment to commemorate that moment: the nation’s second founding. After the rupture and carnage and emancipation of civil war, a leader was willing to say that we can’t know whose side God is actually on – but that we owe it to ourselves and each other to attempt to make peace just the same.
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