The ideological script writers of the Donald Trump film are a colorful anti-liberal company

He had to resume for a moment when I asked him at a lunch at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS) in Amsterdam what he thought of America’s vice president JD Vance. « A terrible man! Pure driven by ambition. » But Philip Gorski is first and foremost a scientist who did research into the rise of Christian nationalism in the United States, an important factor in the success of Trump and Vance.

He published three years ago with religious sociologist Samuel Perry The flag and the crossa historical and sociological study of ‘white-Christian nationalism’ in the US that played a major role in the first election of Trump in 2016. This nationalism, soaked in racism, anti-liberalism and nostalgia for a dream past, leads Spiritual Warfare Against the ’empty’ secular society.

Christian nationalism is out of political power to radically reform state and society. Gorski and Perry warned that it is threatening democracy, but draw hope from the spread of powers. Trump may want to be a dictator, it is unlikely that he succeeds, was their conclusion.

How does he look at that now? A week after lunch, Gorski receives me in his room in the Nias, to tell how he now assesses the situation in the US, three years after his book and the first hundred days of Trump II.

What did you see well in the book and where did you drop stitches?

« When it had just been out, I was often blamed for alarmism and pessimism, now I think: we were not pessimistic enough. What Trump now does not surprise me, but the speed with which it happens is shocking. What also surprises me is how quickly all kinds of institutions have been reversed. We still think: America is not hungry, universities and universities and once » « 

Is Harvard’s resistance not encouraging?

« Yes, but that university is also under pressure again. It is not only about federal money, American elite universities are enormously dependent on rich donors. The top director of such a university is constantly getting money in. That makes universities vulnerable. Some donors are close to Trump and also stop at Harvard. »

You were not pessimistic enough at the time. Are you not too pessimistic now? He drops in the polls.

« Trump is such a whimsical and chaotic figure that you can’t predict how it will go. Sometimes I wake up and I know for sure that the US is one full-blown become an authoritarian state. Other mornings I hope there is another opening for resistance. A lot will depend on what will happen in the coming six months. « 

Is Trumpism an ideology?

« Not like Marxism or Liberalism, with a number of basic principles and a theory about society and about history. It is rather a personality cult who works as an ideological magnet. A coalition has formed a coalition of unpaid groups that nevertheless have a few fundamental things. overthrow. ”

Let’s walk by. But first: is there a historical precedent?

« Certainly. The idea that this would be something totally new in the US is incorrect. After the Civil War (1861-1865) there was a tyrannical regime in the south, built on racial terrorism. You could speak of the southerification Of the American politics that is now taking place, a ‘explanation’. There are numerous similarities. The South had the great lie that the civil war was not about slavery but about the rights of states. Trump has the lie of the ‘stolen’ election of 2020. He is thus building on the myth of the Lost Causethe noble struggle that has been lost unjust and must be fought again. In a broader sense you could say that the political cultures of North and South America are growing together. Our idea was always: yes, there they have strong men and dictatorships, but we are democratic. That no longer applies. « 

Now those blood groups in the Maga coalition, Make America Great Again. Which distinguishes do you distinguish?

“I have done the most research into white-Christian nationalism, but that is not a homogeneous movement. Be by far the best known the evangelicalswho believe in personal surrender to Jesus and in a Christian society, with anti-abortion as a spearhead. They stood up in the seventies and eighties, but they are no longer so important. There are none on that well -known photo of religious leaders who pray with Trump with Trump evangelicals around him, but leaders of it pentecostismthe Pentecostal movement. They belong to independent churches that often arise around a charismatic preacher. « 

Catholics also play a role.

« Yes, that is the third subgroup. The ultra -conservative Catholics who have reservations about the separation between church and state and often the Spain of Franco or the Portugal of Salazar romantizing. They rely on traditional Catholic theology and metaphysics and have more intellectual firepower than the other groups of the Patrick. failure of liberalism, Why Liberalism Failed (2018). He now argues for Regime Change. « 

Photo Jordan Gale/The New York Times/ANP, photo Shutterstock, photo Allison Dinner/EPA

That is already a pretty colorful group. And the fourth current?

« The least acquaintances are the so -called Christian » reconstructionists, « a conviction with roots in the nineteenth century. They want the Institutions (1536) Van Calvin update and dream of a theocracy as he, according to them, established at the time in Geneva. A society that is furnished according to biblical laws, in particular those from the Old Testament. A leading of their movement is the theologian Douglas Wilson, who also writes Christian fiction, a popular genre in the US. They are ‘post-millennialists’, that is, they believe that Jesus will only return to earth to the millennial kingdom of God, not the other way around. Satan must first be defeated. « 

Yoga mothers started to worry about vaccines, ended up at Qanon or other conspiracy theories and are now at Maga

And the Christians are only one part of the Maga coalition?

« In addition to them, you can certainly recognize four other groups. First of all, the ‘Broligarchs’, tech-Magnaten such as the billionaires Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. We can all see how important musk is for Trump, as a man who would remediate the civil service. Then there are the anti-feminists of the ‘male and jord’ with idols with idols. Young men who are attacked by feminism masculine self -esteem, with martial arts and so on. niggard. That tube must be filled with twelve, sixteen or eighteen children. Finally, there are the hardcore white supremationists and their militias, the Proud Boys and those kinds of groups. Of course all those currents also run together. « 

The swing of Silicon Valley, once hip and liberal, has surprised people. Self -interest?

« Money is an important factor. But there is also a futuristic worldview that drives on technology, an apocalyptic type of spirituality and on science fiction. That is no coincidence. Northern California, where Silicon Valley is located, was a focal point of the New Age and Human Potential Movementan alternative culture that aimed for full development of human abilities. Many tech pioneers are rooted in that culture. Conspiracy theories – at that time mainly left – belonged, just like distrust of institutions. That whole movement has been pushed to the right. Corona has played a major role. Yoga mothers started to worry about vaccines, ended up at Qanon or other conspiracy theories and are now at Maga. ”

JD Vance is very intelligent, but also nasty and deep hypocritical

If you take them together, how many Americans are we talking about?

« About forty percent, perhaps less, around thirty or thirty -five. Those are the ‘Always Trumpers’. It is not a majority, but they are better organized and motivated than others. »

Thank you for the unrest -bearing tableau. Now like a few leaders around Trump, how should we place them? JD Vance?

“A key figure, because he is a bridge between the various elements of the Maga coalition. Since his conversion, he fits all the way into the conservative-Catholic segment, but he also has ties with the tech sector, where Peter Thiel has taken him under his care. He is friends with Curtis Yarvin, a right-wing lover that I am in a leaning of an US. Education, because of his simple descent in the Appalaches, is very intelligent, but also makes him so agile. « 

Musk has resigned as a large cleaner from Doge. What was his role?

« He is the archetypical broligarch. But also a man who believes in creative chaos. Musk has said that he wants to build ‘legions’ before the apocalypse breaks out. You see a bizarre mixture of Christian end-time thinking and science fiction for a devil of that the earth that the earth is grabbed by him and other tech billions. Disrupted.

That doesn’t seem like Trump to me. Does he no longer have in common with someone like the reactionary Steve Bannon, who is facing Musk?

« Bannon is a traditionalist, that is a category apart. That is deeply reactionary anti-modernists who believe that there has ever been a golden age with a mystical unity of religion and politics. It has been lost, but to that tradition, which is much older than Christian, we have to go back. Light goes to dark and back. kali-yugathe darkest period, prior to a new cycle. First we have to go through a total destruction before something new can be born. « 

How does Trump fit in his own movement?

« I can think about him for a long time. Look, you don’t get a president in America because you have such an elaborate ideology but because you are coming at the right time. Twenty years ago Trump had no chance, now a good part of society was mature for him. Psychologically he is a narcissistic sociopaat, hence he is latter and his complete shameful. salesmanwho tells people what they want to hear and be up rallies A comedian that tries material. In short, he is one performerHe is now also as president. Initially he wanted to become a film director. That was canceled, so he made a kind of film from all his life. And now we are all in his film. « 

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