The doomsday cult whose doomsday fears are true

When Donald Trump was indicted, his base exploded in rage and calls for violence. They posted lurid threats against Attorney General Merrick Garland and his family, special counsel Jack Smith, and the FBI. They called for deposing President Biden by force, for civil war, and for lynching Democratic officeholders.

Of course, any nameless troll on the internet can talk tough. The more alarming part is that it wasn’t just anonymous nobodies on message boards, but actual Republican politicians feeding the flames. Kari Lake, failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate and certified delusional fanatic, threatened to unleash mob violence against the federal government and law enforcement. Sitting Congressman Andy Biggs promised “war” and threatened an “eye for an eye.”

The panic, the fever pitch of hysteria, the berserk fury: In all respects, these MAGA Republicans are acting like a doomsday cult whose prophesied End of Days is approaching.

But one crucial fact separates them from all the failed apocalyptic sects throughout history: There’s good reason to believe that their doomsday fears are going to come true.

Obsession with decline and restoration

The GOP’s fanatical devotion to Trump is best understood not as a new development, but as the culmination of something that has been building for years. Their entire philosophy looks backward to a golden era that never was. Every social and political change that’s taken place over the last several decades they view as evidence of American corruption and decline.

We can sketch the outlines of this mythical era. It’s a white-dominated society where other races are inconsequential. It’s a patriarchy where men have the power and the income and women are mothers and homemakers. It’s a Christian theocracy where conservative churches define what morality is and enjoy government favor and special privileges. It’s a laissez-faire, Ayn Randian capitalist economy where big business writes the law to suit itself and where the rich are free to do as they wish.

This Republican utopia is an obvious myth. The world was never exactly like this, and to the degree it did resemble their vision, it wasn’t pleasant, fair, or peaceful. But that doesn’t stop modern conservatives from believing they can restore this fantasy world.

America’s first Black president was a shattering interruption of reality into their delusions. That, plus the arrival of marriage equality despite all their attempts to stop it, was conservatives’ moment of realization that the arc of history was bending away from them. Ryan Busse, a former gun company executive, gives an eye-opening statistic that shows how they responded:

So you have this sort of uncapping of hate and conspiracy, much of it racially driven, that the NRA was tapping into. Prior to 2007, people in the United States never purchased more than 7 million guns in a single year. By the time Barack Obama left office, the United States was purchasing almost 17 million guns a year. And so I think it’s impossible to discount the degree to which Obama’s presidency lit this whole thing on fire.

“Former Gun Company Executive Explains Roots of America’s Gun Violence Epidemic.” Corey G. Johnson, ProPublica, 2 June 2023.

By 2016, the floodgates of racist anxiety had been thrown open. Conservatives believed that the election was their last chance to “reclaim” America for themselves. “The Flight 93 Election“, a breathless essay from the Claremont Institute, captures their mood of impending doom.

This upsurge of racist panic, their desperate urgency to turn back the clock, led directly to Donald Trump. His “Make America Great Again” slogan traded directly on conservatives’ sense of mythologized nostalgia. His immigration bans delighted white supremacists, and his abortion-banning judges thrilled Christian theocrats.

But for all the damage he did, Trump couldn’t stop the world from turning. The only reason he became popular when he did is because conservatives’ numbers and influence were already dwindling. And he couldn’t reverse that trend.

The fall (and rise) of America

As the old saying goes, you can’t step twice in the same river—but conservatives want to. Their fondest dream is to freeze society—as it is, as it was, or as they imagine it was. They want to halt demographic change in its tracks, ensuring that America stays a white, Christian-dominated patriarchy forever.

While the Republicans are joined at the hip with the Christian Right, nonreligious voters favor Democrats. That’s a problem for the Right, because nonbelievers are rising, while Christianity doesn’t have the pull that it used to.

Latinos are a case in point. They’re a crucial swing demographic, and with their reputation for deep religiosity, it’s often assumed that they’ll be receptive to conservative messaging. Latino outreach used to be a key part of Republican strategy—even Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty bill!—but those days are past for several reasons.

Among them, the number of nonreligious Latino Americans is climbing. It was 10% in 2010, 18% in 2013, and now has reached 30%, the same as the US population in general. Among Latinos between 18 and 29, fully half have no religious affiliation.

Millennials haven’t gotten any more conservative or more religious as we age. By some measures, we’re actually getting more liberal. Meanwhile, the up-and-coming generation is even more progressive and less religious than its predecessors.

READ: After the indictment: The deeper political schism behind the spectacle of Trump

White Christians were a majority of the US population from its founding until as recently as the Obama administration. That gave them tremendous influence regardless of who was in power, since they could claim with some justice that they represented the will of the people. But the number of white Christians has been dwindling for years. It fell below the critical 50% mark around 2016, and it’s still falling. Today, it’s down to around 42%.

Belief in God, church membership, church attendance, and the importance of religion to people’s lives are all at all-time lows. And there’s no reason to believe they’ve found the bottom. As more-religious older generations fade away and less-religious younger generations replace them, these trends will keep gathering momentum.

As their voters age and die off, the religious right is staring down the barrel of demographic annihilation. America is becoming more liberal, more diverse, and more secular. We welcome these trends, but religious conservatives see them as the ultimate defeat and the destruction of everything they care about. They feel like they’re under a death sentence and they’re counting down the days until it’s carried out.

Lashing out at a future that doesn’t include them

This is why I say MAGA Republicans are a doomsday cult whose doomsday beliefs are true. Whether they admit it or not, they’re dimly aware that their time is indeed running out. That’s what fuels their rage and desperation.

The Republicans’ ugly turn can be understood in this light. Attempts at persuasion having failed, they’re now trying to impose their ideas on the rest of us by force, regardless of how unpopular those ideas are. It’s a spiteful tantrum, lashing out against a future that doesn’t include them.

Abortion bans are an attempt to put women back in their place. The book bans, the rage against “woke” corporations, the anti-gay and anti-drag laws: all these are attempts to shore up the sagging, crumbling dam of white supremacy and enforced gender roles. Even the random gun violence, especially the mass shootings targeting immigrants and Black churches and LGBTQ people, are futile efforts to terrorize the changing world into submission.

Unfortunately, in the short term, they can still win elections. America’s undemocratic political system gives them a fighting chance of hanging on to power, even as their numbers dwindle.

But in the long term, they can’t stop these cultural shifts. Their clumsy, brutal attempts at forcing everyone to conform will only further anger and repel people, and thus accelerate the pace of change.

The grand irony is that this doomsday cult, unlike all others in history, is bringing about the very doomsday they fear.