The ideological scriptwriters of Donald Trump's film are a motley anti-liberal bunch

He had to take a deep breath when I asked him
what he thought of America’s vice-president JD
Vance during a lunch meeting at the Netherlands
Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS) in
Amsterdam.

“A terrible man! Driven by pure ambition.”

But Philip Gorski is first and foremost a scholar.
He has studied the rise of Christian nationalism
in the United States, a key factor in Trump’s—
and Vance’s—success.

Together with sociologist of religion Samuel
Perry, he published The Flag and the Cross three
years ago, a historical and sociological study of
the ‘white Christian nationalism’ in the US that
played a major role in Trump’s first election in
2016. This form of nationalism, steeped in racism,
anti-liberalism and nostalgia for an imagined
past, wages spiritual warfare against a
“hollow” secular society.

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

How does he look at it now? A week after lunch,
Gorski and I sat down in his office at NIAS to talk
about how he assesses the situation in the US
now, three years after his book and the first 100
days of Trump II.

What did you get right in the book, and what did
you miss?
“When it first came out, I was often accused of
alarmism and pessimism. Now I think: we weren’t
pessimistic enough. What Trump is doing
doesn’t surprise me, but the speed at which it
is happening is shocking. I am also surprised by
how quickly all kinds of institutions have given
in. In our book we still thought: America is not
Hungary. But just look at how law firms, universities
and companies are now falling in line.”

Isn’t Harvard’s resistance encouraging?

“Yes, but even that university is already under
pressure to give in. It’s not just about federal
money — US elite universities are hugely dependent
on rich donors. The Presidents of these
universities are constantly trying to raise money.
That makes universities vulnerable. Some donors
are close to Trump and threatening to stop
their donations, including at Harvard.”

So you weren’t pessimistic enough then. But
aren’t you too pessimistic now? He’s falling in
the polls.
“Trump is such an erratic and chaotic figure that
you can’t predict what will happen. Some mornings
I wake up convinced the US is heading for
full-blown authoritarianism. Other mornings, I
think there’s still room for resistance. A lot will
depend on what happens in the next six months.”

Is Trumpism an ideology?
“Not in the way that Marxism or liberalism is,
with a set of core principles and a theory of society
and history. Rather, it’s more of a cult of personality
that works like an ideological magnet.
The coalition of groups that has formed around
Trump is quite disparate — but they share a few
core traits: a will to power and a shared enemy.
They despise the liberal, democratic establishment
and want to overthrow it.”

Let’s go through them. But first: is there any
historical precedent?
“Definitely. The idea that this is something entirely
new in the US is just wrong. After the Civil
War (1861-1865), a tyrannical one-party regime
rooted in racial terrorism dominated the South.
You could speak of a ‘southernification’ of US
politics. There are numerous similarities. The
South had the Big Lie that the Civil War was not
about slavery but about states’ rights. Trump
has the lie of the “stolen” election of 2020. He’s
building on the myth of the Lost Cause, the noble
struggle that was unjustly lost and must be
fought again. In a broader sense, you could say
that the political cultures of North and South
America are converging. Our idea was always:
yes, over there they have strong men and dictatorships,
but we’re democratic. That no longer
holds.”

Now those factions in the MAGA coalition,
Make America Great Again. Which ones do you
identify?
“I’ve studied white Christian nationalism most
closely, though even that’s not a unified movement.
The best-known group by far are the evangelicals,
who believe in personal surrender to
Jesus and a Christian society, with anti-abortion
as a central issue. They emerged in the 1970s
and 1980s, but they are no longer as dominant.
In that well-known photo of religious leaders
praying with Trump in the White House, you don’t
see evangelicals, but leaders from the Pentecostal
movement — independent churches often
formed around a charismatic preacher.”

Catholics also play a role.
“Yes, that is the third subgroup. The ultra-conservative
Catholics who question the separation
of church and state and often romanticize Franco’s
Spain or Salazar’s Portugal. They appeal to
traditional Catholic theology and metaphysics
and have more intellectual firepower than the
other groups. That is why they appeal to elites
like JD Vance — or political scientist Patrick Deneen,
who wrote Why Liberalism Failed in 2018.
Meanwhile Deneen advocates regime change.”

That’s already quite a motley crew. And the
fourth current?
“The least known are the so-called Christian “reconstructionists”,
a persuasion with roots in the
19th century. They want to update Calvin’s Institutes
(1536) and dream of a theocracy as they
believe he established in Geneva at the time. A
society organised according to biblical laws, especially
those of the Old Testament. One leader
of their movement is the theologian Douglas
Wilson, who also writes Christian fiction, a popular
genre in the US. They are ‘post-millennialists’:
they believe Jesus will only return after the
Kingdom of God has been established on Earth,
not the other way around. First Satan must be
defeated.”

And Christians are just one part of the MAGA
coalition?
“Alongside them, at least four other groups can be
identified. First, the “broligarchs” — tech magnates
like billionaires Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, and
Elon Musk. We’ve all seen how important Musk is
to Trump, positioning himself as the man to clean
out the civil service. Then you’ve got the anti-feminists
of the “manosphere” with idols like Joe Rogan,
Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson, who promote
masculine self-esteem to young men who
feel threatened by feminism, with martial arts and
so on. Another group is the “nativists” who push
for restoration of the white majority and believe
Americans should have more children. There is a
group that calls itself “quiverfull”. That quiver must
be filled with 12, 16 or 18 “arrows” (i.e.) children.
Finally, there are the hardcore white supremacists
and their militias groups like the Proud Boys. Of
course, these groups often overlap.”

The turn in Silicon Valley — once hip and liberal
— has surprised many. Self-interest?
“Money is an important factor. But there’s also a
futuristic worldview behind it — driven by technology,
an apocalyptic spirituality, and science
fiction. This is no coincidence. From the 1960s
onward, Northern California, home of Silicon
Valley, was the center of the new age and human
potential movement, alternative cultures seeking
to fully develop human capabilities. Many
tech pioneers came from that world. Conspiracy
theories, back then mostly left-wing, were part
of it, as was distrust of institutions. That whole
movement shifted to the right. COVID played
a major role. Yoga moms began to worry about
vaccines, ended up in QAnon or similar circles
and are now part of MAGA.”

So how many Americans are we talking about,
all in all?
“Roughly 30 to 40 percent — the “always Trumpers”.
It’s not a majority but they’re far better organised
and more motivated than the rest.”

Thanks for the worrisome tableau. Now for a
few headlines around Trump, how should we
place them? JD Vance?
“A key figure because he is a bridge between
the different elements of the MAGA coalition.
He fits right into the conservative-Catholic segment
since his conversion, but he also has ties to
the tech sector, where Peter Thiel has taken him
under his wing. He is friends with Curtis Yarvin,
a right-wing revolutionary who dreams of an
American king leading the country as a CEO. And
he is credible to less-educated Americans because
of his humble origins in the Appalachians.
The man is very intelligent, but also malevolent
and deeply hypocritical. That is what makes him
so agile. A true opportunist.”

Musk stepped down as DOGE’s big cleaner.
What was his role?
“He is the archetypal broligarch. But also a believer
in creative chaos. Musk has said he wants
to build “legions” of children before the Apocalypse
breaks out. With him and other tech billionaires,
you see a bizarre mix of Christian End Times thinking and science fiction, which they
grew up with. The idea is that the earth is heading
for a diabolical world government that we
need to disrupt at all costs. Otherwise, there is
nothing left but to flee the planet and relaunch
humanity elsewhere. That is the post-humanism
of these people, which has boomed due to AI and
the internet.”

That seems unlike Trump. Doesn’t he have more
in common with someone like the reactionary
Steve Bannon, who opposes Musk?
“Bannon is a Traditionalist, belonging to a distinct
category altogether. These are deeply reactionary
anti-modernists who believe there
was once a Golden Age with a mystical unity of
religion and politics. That has been lost, but to
that tradition, which is much older than Christianity,
we must return. That too has a sixties side:
they draw on Hindu philosophy and the idea of
a cosmic cycle that goes from light to dark and
back again. We would now be in the kali-yuga,
the darkest period, preceding a new cycle. First
we have to go through total destruction before
something new can be born.”

How does Trump fit into his own movement?
“I can ponder about him for a long time. Look,
you don’t become president in America because
you have such an elaborate ideology but because
you come at the right time. Twenty years
ago, Trump would not have stood a chance,
now a good portion of society was ripe for him.
Psychologically, he is a narcissistic sociopath,
hence those incessant lies and his complete
shamelessness. The latter appeals to people.
He is a salesman, telling people what they want
to hear, and at his rallies a comedian trying out
material. In short, he is a performer, which he is
now as president. Initially, he wanted to be a film
director. That didn’t work out, so he has turned
his whole life into a movie of sorts. And now we
are all in his movie.”

Text by Sjoerd de Jong (NRC), translated by Rachida Azough (NIAS), photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images.