In recent weeks, right-wing commentators have suggested Donald Trump, their once saviour, may be the Antichrist instead. Pundits have offered competing readings of this shift: is it a joke? A schism in Trump’s base? Good news for America’s midterms? But Trump’s transfiguration is no cause for celebration. Whatever else this new rhetoric portends, it reveals a spreading apocalyptic world view that endangers democracy.
Students of politics have long understood that the stories people tell themselves have at least as much power as the facts. In America, now, one story gaining traction is that of a coming apocalypse: there are signs, this story goes, of a final battle between good and evil, before the world ends. A 2022 Pew poll found 39 per cent of Americans believe they are living in the end-times, and this population overlaps substantially with Trump supporters.
