Donald Trump: Political Disruptor, Apocalyptic Hero

by Aaron James Goldman

You may have heard the news: Donald Trump won the 2024 US presidential election—handily. The day after, a colleague wrote to one of my research groups, “Good morning! Overnight the apocalypse nudged closer.” Perhaps it has. But the looming (global) consequences of the pettiness and cruelty emblematic of right-wing governance in the United States are not the only Trump-related apocalyptic scenarios. Indeed, in the preceding years, Trump became a central figure in myths formulated at the intersection of American evangelical Christianity, New Age thinking, and right-wing conspiracist movements. In some cases, such as QAnon and adjacent conspiracy theories, Trump took on the role of a religious hero or even messianic figure in the context of a major political upheaval structured much like Christian end-time narratives. What is it about Trump and the context of US electoral politics that enabled such an interpretation? My ongoing work poses possible explanations for this phenomenon, and why it has contributed to Trump’s recent electoral victory.

Apocalyptic conspiracist narratives involving Trump are varied and difficult to pin down, often mutating rapidly as they are disseminated via social media. Most QAnon conspiracy theories have predicted that Trump would root out preexisting corruption among elite networks, specifically a conspiracy of child-abusing Satanists who comprising Hollywood celebrities and US Democratic Party figures. Even among non-supernatural QAnon accounts, Trump’s activities would trigger events that parallel interpretations of the Book of Revelation, including “the Storm,” a tumultuous period during which perpetrators would be brought to justice, followed by the “Great Awakening,” a period of renewed social and political life in the United States that resembles the millenarian reign of Christ on earth. Other more fringe QAnon beliefs feature esoteric, science-fiction, or supernatural narratives, including clones, demonic presences, and the resurrection of deceased celebrities who would side with Trump in his quest. Among some portion of the electorate—particularly those already invested in American evangelicalism or forms of conspiracism—political support of Trump took on a religious fervor.

To understand Trump’s appeal to these communities, one must turn to the history of entanglement between Protestant Christianity and right-wing politics in the United States during the 20^th Century. Scholars such as George Nash and Keri Ladner have narrated how libertarianism, traditional values, and the social reaction to communism were brought together into movement conservatism. Ladner attends specifically to Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, which further consolidated these elements of the American right under an evangelical Christian banner.

Just as much as these were efforts to theologize politics for a segment of the American population, equally—I would argue—did they transform the theology of evangelicalism in North America. By the post-Reagan era, the Christian right had embraced, whether advertently or not, the significant overlap of their moral cosmology and the American electoral-political landscape, culminating in popular conspiracy theories such as the Satanic Panic, birtherism (pushed by Trump himself), and eventually QAnon, in which the right wing’s political rivals were understood as metaphysical forces of evil hindering the utopian plans of their political leaders. As both left- and right-leaning voters’ trust in American government has waned since the 1990s, the back-and-forth stagnancy of the political landscape called out for a massive change, a figure to break open the existing political, indeed (for the American Christian right) cosmic order.

Trump, with his utter indifference to the norms of American electoral democracy, entered the stage in precisely this context. What we see in Trump is a disruption of the electoral political order, and a simultaneous unmasking of American electoral politics: Trump’s message—by barely concealing that he cares little for the well-being of his supporters—is a form of public vandalism that gestures to the inauthenticity of his political rivals (and the structure that supports them), who, on his narrative, merely pretend to care about their supporters’ well-being. To right-wing or right-leaning US voters who perceive themselves as under the boot of political forces beyond their control, Trump’s populist rhetorics and style function as a type of revelatory intrusion, an apocalypse into the cosmos of American electoral politics. For those Christians in the United States to whom the political and the theological are so thoroughly intertwined as to be virtually indistinguishable, Trump appears as a force prepared to do spiritual battle against evil presences. QAnon is an epiphenomenon of this zeal, but develops into its own set of allusions, symbols, and collective interpretive praxes such that it enables a form of community among the American right-wing to participate (or at least pretend to participate) in politics beyond the voting booth.

Toward Apocalyptic Experience: Images and Narratives of the End

Aaron Goldman's article is based on a talk he recently presented at a two-day workshop titled “Toward Apocalyptic Experience: Images and Narratives of the End”. This event, jointly organized by CAPAS and Lund University, brought together scholars from various disciplines to explore how the apocalyptic imaginary shapes our understanding and experience of radical change. Participants delved into the ways in which apocalyptic narratives and images provide frameworks for interpreting historical events, assessing the present, and anticipating the future. A key focus of the workshop was the dual role of apocalyptic thinking in both generating and managing fear. In Western intellectual tradition, the notion of the apocalypse has been used to make sense of catastrophic and incomprehensible events. Simultaneously, apocalyptic narratives and imagery help channel the emotions arising from such events, using the idea of the world's end as a central reference point. Thus, the apocalyptic imaginary can refer to real existential risks and scenarios as well as cataclysmic change, motivate counteractions, but also contribute to resignation or 'disappointment'.

Interpretations of Trump as a religious hero are the result of the structure of biblical apocalypse overlaying the polarized electoral landscape in the United States, with Trump functioning as a disruptive force prepared to open the cosmology of establishment electoral politics. To some of his supporters, Democrats and their allies are forces of evil, with Trump joining the Republicans to usher in a new era after a period of intense unrest. QAnon and related conspiracy theories—blending pop culture references, entire medicine cabinets of conspiracy theories, and a menagerie of other fringe beliefs—reflect popular engagement with this apocalyptic imaginary.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aaron James Goldman has been a Research Fellow in Philosophy of Religion at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University since 2021. He received his PhD in Religious Studies—specializing in Philosophy of Religion—from Harvard University (2021), his MA from the University of Virginia (2010), and his BA and BS from Indiana University, Bloomington (2008). He specializes in applications of the philosophical and religious thought of the modern West to contemporary questions about ethics, politics, and culture.

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