Impact on American Political Polarization

Remember back in April when President Trump posted that meme depicting himself as Jesus and everyone was like, Mbe he's the Antichrist We have some major news right now. Matt is now declaring Trump the antichrist. Whenever I see Donald Trump, spiritually the Holy Spirit always shows me that he is filled with the spirit of the antichrist. I've been saying since Trump got elected, he's definitely the antichrist to guys guys. You've been talking on your show about whether Trump is the antichrist. I have not said that Yes, he had America. two hundred and fifty years have gone from zero to one hundred in no time flat. As we wade through a new round of Is he or isn't he the Antich Christ? we are reminded that the US has a long history of declarations and accusations and just asking questions re the Beast. Today on today exxplained from Box, we amble through that history and ask, what are we doing, USA The port for today explain comes from Fetch Fetch is pet insurance if you hadn't figured it out. Do you have a pet According to a study from a pet insurance company from a few years ago, every six seconds a pet owner in the US a vet bill over a thousand dollars and it almost never comes at a convenient time So check out Fetch. you get paid up to ninety percent of vet bills. you can use Fetch for any vet in the U.S and Canada. Every vet is in network. Go to fetch com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet. com slash save With Finn we've built the number one AI agent for customer service that solves up to ninety percent of queries for businesses, tops all the performance benchmarks in the G two leaderboard, and it comes with a million dollar guarantee. Check it out at finin. Ai Christian. many people have been asking And so I will ask you, is President Donald John Trump the Antichrist? Yeah, I imagine I have a scoop. It was revealed to me. And upon this new rock, I'm establishing a new church Vox pololitical correspondent Christian Paz, who's been writing about the Antichrist. Iss Donald Trump the Antichrist? I can't see that. but if you were to look to certain Corners of the internet and of social media and of digital media, people who used to support Donald Trump have been starting to wonder that. It's coming up more and more, for sure. Yeah, it's coming up more and more. and I am old enough to remember a time when we did not in American life talk very much about the Antichrist at all. But the past maybe, I don't know, six months to two years Due he quite a bit about the Dark Lord. whyy are we hearing so much about the Antichrist now? I think there's both eternal reasons and specific to the two N twenties In general, right now the vibe among a lot of people who believe that the Antichrist isn't a real person or a thing to come in the future before the secondcond comoming of Christ feel that things are bad, that the economy is bad, that there's wars around us, that we live through life changing public health crises, pandemics. The signs of plague, pestilence, war, destruction and political transformations and changes are aligning and then you get added on top of that, that these wars are specifically happening in the Middle East, that there have been threats to the state of Israel, which is a key part to antichrist narratives. and that maybe there's a sense of betrayal or you know promise is not being kept or being misled. And that specifically gets to some of what these far right Trump Critics are saying that perhaps they have been led astray by a false prophet essentially. You said false prophet, I always think of the devil. That's not quite right. What is the Atichrist exactly? Yeah. the term antichrist only pops up about five times in the Bible. And it's never really in the context of an individual Yeah it's usually a sense that anntichrist is a term to describe a spirit person, people, movement that try to convince you to worship God differently than the way that Jesus established But then this gets merged with a bunch of other mentions specifically across the Old and New Testament of figures like in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul writes about a man of lawlessness in one of his letters to the Thessalonians, somebody who would establish themself and claim that they are God, that they are somebody to be worsipped. and then that's also connected to the book of Revelation, the infamous apocalyptic biblical scripture that writes about visions of what comes before Christ's second comoming, right? It's the end of the world narrative. And then there there specific references to a seven headed beast coming out of the sea, to another beast that walks on land, that these beasts are empowered by the dragon, which is understood to be Satan. And there's a lot of specific detail there about these beasts influencing people, influencing the faithful, taking over world governments, taking command of armies And all of these little mentions, including some mentions in the Old Testament, gets merged into the figure of the Antichrist, someone who will literally come before Christ returns before we all get raptured or judged So who are the people talking about the Antichrist concerned with the Antichrist right now You have voices like Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Cgresswoman from Georgia, who has know said on social media that Donald Trump carries the spirit of the Antichrist It's more than blasphemy. It's an antichrist spirit. Loud far right voices, whether that's Nick Fuentz Now, Trump compares himself to Jesus Christ and declared war on the church He is an antich Christ in league with Israel. Tucker Carlson, here's a leader who's mocking the gods of his ancestors mocking the God of Godds and exaling himself above them Could this be The Antichrist Who knows And then other folks on the intellectual part of the American right who have made the case that maybe he's not like the antichrist himself, but he has an antichrist spirit about him. Not seeing Trump is the antichrist, Dreer told the Wall Street Journal, but he's radiating the spirit of Antichrist. No question. The Wall Street Journal, April, twenty twenty six In eighteen months, I went from hesitantly voting for Trump to thinking there's a decent chance he's the Atichrist What a ride There are competing visions among these people who keep bringing the Antichrist to our attention of what the Antichrist is. Marjor Taylor Greene seemed upset when President Trump tweeted a meme of himself appearing to be Jesus Christ, But you also have Peter Thial, the tech billionaire who did a very interesting interview with Ross Douthit in He seemed to suggest if I was hearing him correctly, that like Greta Tunberg might be the Antichrist. In the seventeenth century, I can imagine a doctor Strange loveove. teller type person taking over the world. In our world, it's far more likely to be Greta Thunberg say Marie Taylor Green's interpretation of the Antichrist differ from Peter Teagles's because they are talking about two different Tw things. Theyre And it's funny because historically antichrists are like popes, emperors or kings. And then you have Gretitenburg. This is all wrong. The Peter Thial interpretation of the Antichrist, it's more rooted in the expectation that this anntichrist figure will command world governments, will command world armies, will essentially become a form of totalitarianism or authoritarianism where no one can oppose or resist this. And his perspective comes from the sense that AI is advancing progressing. He helped to contribute to this, right? Wouldn't the antichrist be like, great You know, we're not going to have any more technological progress, but I really like what Palantir has done So far, right? No isn't that a isn't that a concern? Wouldn't that be the you know, the irony of history would be that the man publicly worrying about the anntichrist accidentally hastens his or her arrival. U, they're all look, there're all these different scenario. I obviously don't think that that's what I'm doing What he's concerned about, however, is that this kind of advanced development of AI will be used as an excuse by governments, by international organizations to call for stronger and stricter regulations and oversight of how AI is developed, which then leads to the rise of a world government that uses artificial intelligence or some kind of international power that whieels artificial intelligence as It controls it and manipulates it under the guise of regulation or safety this something that is driving An policy at this point At this point, it's difficult for me to point to anything that is, you know policy that's either pro or anti antichrist. What I can say is so much of the foreign policy around supporting Israel, specifically fits into some of these general concerns about antichrist for a lot of right leaning Republican or conservative evangelical Christians, for example, part of why they are so loyal and want their representatives to be supportive and strong allies of Israel specifically. partart of revelation mentions that armies of the world will gather in the Valley of Armageddon to try to wipe out Israel. Then they gathered the kings together in the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon Revelation chapter sixteen, verse sixteen. That is a connection between religion and public policy or in this case, foreign policy. with some of the pro iser evangelical voices are so concerned for Israel's safety in part because of this theology. But even now in the present day, we have a president of the United States whose former allies Marjor Taylor Green, Tucker Carlson are openly comparing him to the Antich Christ. What does that mean for President Trump? Does this mean his evangelical supporters abandon him or criticize him or see him differently Yeah, at this point, it seems Two things are true that he still manages to hold massive amounts of support, more massive levels of support from evangelical Christians. They are still from what I've seen from polling of various religious denominations, they are still the subset of Christians and of believers who are most supportive of Donald Trump and of his policies of his presidency That support has dropped a bit. It's not as high as it was a year ago. His support among other denominations has dropped as well. But that evangelical slippage is significant. It is at least statistically significant. Whether that means that you'll see even more opposition on religious grounds to Trump I'm not sure about that I think what'll be more interesting is seeing who he ends up trying to set up as his successor. if it is JD Vance, or if it is Marco Ruby or if it's somebody we don't know about They all have very different bases of power and support. if you're thinking about religious denominations, trraditionally Marco Rubio has had more of the trust of evangelical Christians than maybe JD Vance. And now JD Vance is trying to carve out this, right? Trad Catholic kind of Base of support. I think that's why religion is going to continue to be such a central storyline in who succeeds Donald Trump and what we see in twenty twenty eight That was Vox's Christian pause, coming up a brief history of the Antichrist in American politics Support for the show comes from trust and will. 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They say they've done this hundred and fifty million tim an accountant. You can go to bomas dot com slash explained and use a code explained for twenty percent off your first purchase. That's V oMbS d. com slash explained, code explained at checkout Support for the Sday comes from what notot, and they provided me a pronunciation key that says a what not. That's how it's pronounced. What notot, but it's one word and whatnot. If you sell products online or a store full time or as a side hustle, you know how difficult it can be to get noticed Kush. You know how difficult it can be to get noticed generally, but imagine if you sell products online or in a store. You could spend hours sourcing inventory setting up your storefront and creating listings And then you're left waiting, hoping the right customer eventually comes across what you're selling. Whatnot wants to change that model. Whatnot is the largest dedicated live shopping platform, whether it's beauty collectibles, electronics, luxury, fashion, even cookies, you guys. And our colleague, Claire White has tried Whatnot. I had a really great time going through the variety of auctions that they had on Whatnot It's not just clothes, it's not just jewelry. it's not just tech even, but vintage China, antique pieces, places around the world where folks are selling knick knnacks from their vintage stores, from their archive, whatever it is There's a ton of variety on whatnot, Just beyond What you would think for an auction house? Search whatnot W H A T N O T. O word in the app store, downownload and you can start selling right away It took me a while to figure it out is today explained I can't believe you figured it out m Matthew Avery Sutton, and I'm a professor of history at Washington State University. I teach courses on religion and politics and my most recent book is called Chosen Land How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity. All right, so as we all know, America is approaching its two hundred fiftieth birthday, two hundred fifty years of history behind us Where would you start the story of the Atichrist in American politics Boy, we could certainly start that story, you know really in biblical times, which of course has nothing to do with North America. But in the North American context, I think the The way we think of the antichrist today really begins in the eighteen eighties and the eighteen nineties. and it has to do with the rise of the modern nation state, with global militarization and the kind of creation of the modern world order So Americans you know had been pretty optimistic, forward thinking, they believed that they were building the kingdom of God on earth, that they were kind of creating utopia Then they hit the Civil War, they were dealing with this problem, which was the growing divide over the issue of slavery. And once Christians start killing other Christians, it became really, really difficult to justify an optimistic, hopeful politics. And so these apocalyptic ideas began to seep into everyday theology, began to seep into everyday church life And then they hit the Industrial Revolution. and then they saw all these immigrants come over, many of whom were Catholics and Jews. And so for Protestants who were used to calling the shots, who were controlling much of the destiny of the United States through the nineteenth century, A small group of them began to rethink their theology and began to think, you know what Maybe we're not building the kingdom of God. Maybe we're in fact preparing, know for Armagedd, we're preparing for the Antichrist. and then they began to scour the news and to study events and to align them with the Bible to try to make sense of what they saw happening all around them. So as this small group of Protestants begins to reconceptualize what they thought of as the end times, at the core of their story was this concept of the Antichrist, this global leader Who was going to take power, who was going to oppress Christians, who was going to transform the world And so what they did is they began holding conferences and writing books and debating these kinds of issues and arguing about who might be the Antichrist? Where might He appear? How do we know how close we are to the end Times. And they ended up launching a movement and then by about World War one they gave the movement a name and that was fundamentalism. then They rebrand themselves in World War II as evangelicals. And so the fundamentalists and evangelicals are the folks who really are mobilizing around this idea that the Antichrist is out there somewhere, and we better be ready for them. When Americans in the early days, so the eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, were thinking about the Antichrist What were the signs that they were looking for? There are a handful of signs. Some of them are really hard to demonstrate. So they talked about, you falling away from true Christianity, but of course, you could make that argument in every generation. The classic is, immorality, that the kids today just aren't following rules like their parents. So you know that also works for every generation But the much more interesting one was the return of Jews to Palestine and the reconstruction of Israel as a nation state. that the fundamentalists began predicting this in the eighteen eighties, eighteen nineties. So as the Zionist movement takes off and then Israel is formed in late nineteen forties, it becomes absolutely clear to them that everything they've been predicting is correct. The Jewish democratic state begins its new life in the ancient homeland of the Jews This is what they have waited for This is what they have prayed for The other thing that they're expecting is the rise in wars and rumors of wars. That was something that Jesus had told hisis disciples to expect in the last days And so World War O becomes a moment to Basically to crow about how they got it right. and then certainly World War II is another one And then the creation of the League of Nations and then the United Nations. After the war Statesmen of the world headed by President Wilson sought to prevent its repetition by founding a League of nations. It is now my duty My honor and my privilege in the chair So call call a boat O the approval of the Chter of the United Nations kind of global international organizations that would create the mechanism by which the Antichrist could take power, could seize power. So all of these things become huge, you know, blinking red lights telling fundamentists and evangelicals that they've got it right, that their reading of the Bible is lining up with world events When we look back to the times in which these two terms emerge, evangelical fundamentalist Who were the figures? Who were people saying, oh, this person might be the Antichrist, or this might be the evidence that, you know, we're approaching Revelation So there were two ways they conceptualized it. One was to identify the actual anntichrist, but the problem with doing that was that the anntichrist was going to be a deceiver. like that's what the Bible says. And so they knew it was going to be hard to figure out exactly who it was, but they would still speculate And often from generation to generation, there are specific figures. So in the nineteen thirties, Mussolini absolutely seemed to fit the b that. was, he's trying to resurrect the Roman Empire. That seemed to be one of the key characteristics of the Antichrist. Mussolini the would be Caesar, the founder of fascism. It started with an armed gang and finally built it into an army, seizing power after a sham march on Rome in nineteen twenty two. Inana We jump forward to the nineteen nineties, and perhaps it's Saddam Hussein because he's trying to rebuild Babel, the ancient biblical city You know But there's also then this idea, what about American leaders? What role are they playing? And so many of them believe that while the Antichrist probably would not be an American because biblical authors had no concept of the United States, of course They thought that American leaders might be complicit, that they might help facilitate the rise of the Antichrist And often it was liberals. It was internationalists. So Franklin Roosevelt, Barack Obama. thirteen percent of Americans one in six and twenty two percent of Romney voters believe Obama is the anntichrist. Incredible thoseose kinds of folks got a lot of traction among fundamentists and evangelicals as potential allies of the Antichrist, and usually unwittingly, know not intentionally working with the Antichrist, but it iss helping set the stage for Americans to lose their sovereignty to this diabolical global new world leader. It's debatable, I think, how seriously we should take various American leaders being called the Antichrist. It does make me wonder though, whether this interest in the Antichrist has actually shaped American politics. Did we hit a point in the country's history where it was like, oh, FDR is the Antichrist and thus we must X, Y and Z Working hand in hand with the rise of the religious right was the Ascendency of Ronald Reagan There's a great spiritual awakening in America Ronald Reagan was actually a natural partner for many of these folks because he seemed to be obsessed with ideas of the Antichrist and with the end times. Eeschatology and Bible prophecy came up And Ronald Reagan made the comment that We could be the generation that sees Armagedd. And so while it certainly was not shaping his policy, it was an obsession for him and it was something that his critics often pointed to to criticize him and to say that you know he was working too closely with these evangelical freaks and was too obsessed with these kinds of issues. Reports of mister Reagan's references to Armageddon has caused about one hundred mainstream Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish leaders To sign a statement of concern. The statement says that the Armageddon theology is a false reading of the Bible and that belief in it diminishes concern about the possibility of nuclear war. New York Times nineteen eighty four In my scholarship, I argue that in fact it's extraordinarily important for politics, that certainly in the nineteen thirties, that when we have the rise of the modern New deeal liberal state, it's no coincidence that we have the rise of fundamentalist antiberalism, and that is grounded in this kind of apocalyptic theology But we see it again more recently with the rise of the religious right. And the reason it's so important is because it becomes a tool for mobilizing people for action that if you believe the rise of the Antichrist is imminent, what comes right after the Antichrist is the return of Jesus, the secondcond coming. And so you've got to be ready for that and you've got to be ready for the judgment that's going to come. And so you want Jesus to find you being an active and good and faithful servant, somebody who's using your gifts to do everything you can to prepare the rest of the world for the end times. And so that means that folks who are true believers in this apocalyptic antichrist theology, rather than just kind of wait with indifference because it's gonna happen, instead, they have to get their asses out there and get to work because they know that Jesus is coming at any moment and he's gonna expect them to be doing everything they can to prepare the way for His second coming, And that means fighting the Antichrist Okay, so what's happening right now? in evangelical communities. How would you situate this in the long history of what Americans have been thinking about the Antichrist Yeah, so the Antichrist for me is the gift that keeps on giving that he really works for works for every generation. And so it's always about Christian folks reading their Bibles and aligning them with world events and trying to make the two compatible. And so with each generation, it's going to be a different idea about what the Antichrist is. It's going to be a different idea about where history is going, where the trajectory of the nation falls on that.