Deus Vult: Donald Trump and America's Holy War Threaten Everything We Know
On June 1st, 2020, Donald Trump strode across a recently cleared-out expanse in Washington D.C., stood in front of St. John’s Church, awkwardly held up a borrowed Bible, and declared himself the president of “law and order.”
The stunt was transparent. Trump was attempting to reestablish control over the Black Lives Matter protests while giving him a photo-op meant to contradict recent reports that he had hidden in the White House bunker like a coward. Members of his administration, including Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who joined Trump on his walkabout, backed away from the moment. Generals and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff condemned the event and told their troops to remember their oaths to the Constitution. It was, from all appearances, a misstep and a failed tactic.
When I saw it I knew right away what it meant. I grew up in white-identity evangelicalism. I’m very familiar with the fact that the perversion of Christianity by Neo-Confederate preachers established what I now call the Cult of the Shining City, a white-supremacist, apocalyptic cult of power and profit. That cult now worships Donald Trump like a faulty messiah, and his photo-op in front of St. John’s was a message to those people and an announcement of himself as a Christian emperor declaring a new holy war.
This moment has a history behind it. Like Constantine in the 4th century declaring he had seen a sign from the Christian God commanding him to convert and conquer the world in his name. Or the many Crusades that religious leaders declared in order to steal land, seize riches, and consolidate power. This is how religion turns to violence and mayhem in an instant.
It would be one thing if America was not primed for such a call to righteous arms, but we have been watching this catastrophe come into fruition for decades now.
We all know about the disastrous Iraq War and its disgusting lead-up and cover-up, but what we don’t discuss is how this moment was a natural climax for the radicalization of white-identity Christianity and nationalism that played throughout American history and evolved primarily in the 1980’s. Al-Qaeda, a radicalized death cult, sought out an apocalyptic holy war with American Christians, and American Christians gave them just that. The conflict in Iraq destabilized the region, killed thousands upon thousands of innocent people, and helped give birth to another death cult, ISIS, that continues to threaten us to this very day.
But it also gave carte blanche to radical Christians in America to continue consolidating power and sliding further into fascism. What has happened with these pseudo-fascists and wanna-be crusaders is one of the defining stories of modern America and a defining reason why we are in this crisis at this moment.
What has emerged, in the past two decades, has been a new America that has been hidden just under the surface of normalcy. Within it, frustrated white men, many of them radicalized by a lack of financial prospects and continued white supremacy propaganda, have begun seeking validation and power through fascistic enterprises. These include men in the military, men in law enforcement, and men joining white supremacist terrorist groups. Beyond these positions of power and danger, are also ordinary men who simply want to adorn themselves in fascist iconography and daydream about a state wherein they are free to do and act as they please without social or political consequence.
They declare themselves crusaders. They call themselves infidels as a means of offending members of the Islamic faith. They accrue weapons. They train in paramilitary maneuvers. Some talk tough about a forthcoming race war. Others seek to inspire a new civil war. What has happened is a danger to the Constitution and each of our lives. It is a radicalization that American media and politicians have yet to grasp or really wrestle with because the subject of white supremacy is so dangerous to understand that it could possibly destroy society as we have known it.
But make no mistake. The threat is real. This is why white supremacists have killed during the protests, why they show up carrying bats and weapons. Why they plan in the shadows to destabilize the country. And when Donald Trump signals to them by holding a Bible, they have responded in kind. Maybe you haven’t spent much time in Trump social media circles, but I can assure you they heard his message loud and clear. Memes and radicalizing literature created by white supremacists and white terrorists are being circulated in massive numbers, and much of it has taken on the tone and tenor of holy war. They are using Christ and the idea of churches being endangered to pursue radicalization through perception of persecution.
This has been a tactic of both the Religious Right and Neo-Nazis for a long, long time. That it is now playing out so extensively, and especially through white populations who aren’t even particularly religious but more culturally religious, is telling. The rhetorical appeal Trump chose for his photo-opportunity might have fallen flat for most of the country, but like most of his dog-whistles and bullhorn fascistic calls, the people he wanted to signal heard him loud and clear.
Jared Yates Sexton is the author of American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed its People, available for pre-order from Dutton/Penguin-Random House. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, Politico, and elsewhere. He currently serves as an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University and is the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast.
