APOCalypse 3 end times

estb 4 24

merri ok

see wingnuttery

SEE NAOMI GIL D TECHNOFASCIST

JDV RWW 9 26

SECULAR VARIANT IS COLLAPSE OF WESTERN CIV SEE RENEE GOOD 1 26 COMMIE TAKEOVER GLOBALIST NWO?

SEE SATAN // ANTI-CHRIST

EVANG 6 ALL IN 3 26 IRAN WAR

SEE LIBTARD PREP OLIGARCHS SECULAR VERSION, GO TO MARS, NZ

AHA NOT PM = // CIVIL WAR ~ GUBMINT

---

---

RWW--> $

ROUGHLY TWENTY-FOUR HOURS FROM NOW, the Republican party could be looking at a set of catastrophic results in the midterm elections. If polls are to be believed, the party’s defeat could be severe enough to represent a repudiation of the party’s entire direction over the past decade.

Yet pro-Trump media figures are urging their audiences to focus their attention on an even more dire possibility: a total global apocalypse. Whether it’s the prospect of a world-ending war, a debilitating cyberattack, or some other kind of catastrophe, luminaries on the right increasingly feel the end may be nigh.

Much of these media figures’ focus for the past week has been on the idea that Western governments are hiding the fact that an unnamed apocalyptic event unrelated to the midterms is imminent.

“I want to tell you to prepare for impact,” podcaster Glenn Beck warned his audience on Wednesday.

The apocalypse fever sweeping the right has been embraced by pundits like Beck and former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, and has prompted one Republican congressman to try to allay those fears by insisting that no sort of “shit hitting the fan” scenario is about to occur.

Still, the pervasive idea of coming civilizational collapse has prompted a wave of prepping advice on the conservative internet.

The disaster watch began in late October after

....

-=-=

RWW

09/16/2026

byKyle Mantyla

• Michele Bachmann thinks the rise of Democratic Socialist candidates is a sign of the End Times: "Could there be a closer definition of the biblical Last Days that the Bible speaks of?"

-=-=

-=-=

an tc 9 26 bk rev

“A moment of reckoning has arrived for the West,” reads a recent recruitment ad for Palantir, a Silicon Valley firm that increasingly provides data-driven “intelligence” for intelligence, police and military agencies – as well as blue-chip corporations and non-profits. “On the factory floor, in the operating room, across the battlefield,” the ad intones, “we build to dominate.”

How do we make sense of this convergence between advanced technologies and unapologetic violence, between “rational” AI and a primordial view of the world that seems to revert to a language of blood and soil, friends and enemies, “us” and “them”? In op-eds, talk shows, and political analyses, a single word has risen to prominence: fascism.

As a term, “fascism” is highly provocative, but seemingly untimely. It conjures up powerful images of jackbooted throngs of followers repeating chants and salutes, visions of black-lettered and blood-red banners. Yet these images are typically associated with political orders from a century ago in interwar Europe, a dusty relic from a previous age where “evil” was identified and annihilated.

So what is fascism in the present? How can it help explain contemporary technological, social and political dynamics? Two recent books attempt to diagnose these conditions: End Times Fascism And the Fight for the Living World by writer Naomi Klein and filmmaker Astra Taylor, and The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy by journalist Gil Durán.

End times fascism

For Klein and Taylor, what we see now is not a repetition but an evolution. Fascist ideologies have been injected into a broader apocalyptic vision.

“End times fascism is a fascism embedded in an understanding that something immense is ending, and it responds to this discomfiting truth with unabashed cruelty,” they write.

ALT RT IN EUR ACCEPTS AGW BUT SAYS THUS WE MUST BUNKER~ DARK HORDES?

In this vision, it is taken for granted that our economic, institutional and environmental systems are collapsing. Financial inequality is surging, with unaffordable houses and skyrocketing cost-of-living. Ecologies are crumbling, with earth systems hitting planetary limits. And that’s just a few of these stacked crises.

But an apocalyptic mindset, grounded in fundamentalist religion, stresses that crisis is not to be fixed, but fast tracked. Dysfunction and disorder are necessary to arrive at something more glorious, the labour pains to a great rebirth. Here, apocalyptic religion and political fascism agree: the current world is corrupt and cannot be saved; it must be burned to the ground and remade from scratch – or escaped altogether, for a greater paradise.

For its proponents, the end times are here — and only by embracing and accelerating this winner-takes-all transition will the chosen elite assure they can survive and even thrive.

Klein and Taylor follow this thread across three core sections.

Messianic Dreams traces the birth and rise of the Zionist dream, through to its present vision of genocidal reset in Gaza – where the glorious next stage of one society is built on the ashes of another. The authors explain these moves are not just about “righteous revenge” or “national security”, but have a distinct cosmological goal: to “move us all significantly closer to the prophesied end of times.”

Escape to the Cloud unpacks big tech’s fervent faith in AI superintelligence and the double-edged utopia or dystopia it would usher in. Here, claims of existential risk resulting from “the singularity” – where AI becomes sentient and human/machine norms break down – are essentially self-serving, directing investment and attention to tech development. They prop up the power of the already powerful.

(These claims of existential risk, which have been around for a long time, have been big news recently, with warnings from everyone from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to former AI staff and the “Godfather of AI”.)

And Prepper Nation steps through the push to bunker the United States against future threats and deport the alien others who are corrupting its purity. Here, elites ride out the apocalypse by establishing their own tech infrastructures, ethnostates, finance streams, and even their own (literal) bunkers.

For Klein and Taylor, fighting end times fascism starts with fighting its core premise that the world is doomed: a sinking ship beyond saving. They locate hope in embracing “hereness” and “staying”, rather than leaving. Their plea is to embrace our broken reality and engage in the slow, messy work of improving it – rather than abandoning it (and democracy) to a scorched earth authoritarian order.

Zohran Mamdani – the progressive mayor of New York City, who pulled off a remarkable grassroots campaign and embraces the city’s diverse foods, festivals and communities – is held up as a champion of this “here and now” mentality.

End Times Fascism is a thoughtful and engaging read that deftly weaves journalism into a cohesive premise about our current political condition.

The authors deserve particular praise for making careful distinctions between the distorted versions of Judeo–Christianity weaponised by fascist entrepreneurs – a blend of Holy war and culture war fought by the Chosen – and mainstream understandings of doctrine.

Indeed, as the book explains, it was longstanding Christian injunctions to love thy neighbour – including the migrant – that partially motivated Minnesota’s antifascist pushback to ICE deportations. Churches and faith organisations took part in protests, set up community kitchens and offered aid. Far-right fundamentalists, by contrast, cherry-pick the Bible passages they like, while ignoring core injunctions to “act justly, walk humbly, and love mercy” (Micah 6:8): to embrace the stranger, rather than expel them as Other.

Yet if the book represents the best of popular journalism, it also comes with its limitations. Klein and Taylor are resolutely focused on people, places and events, rather than attempting to unpack their ideologies in a more systemic way. The result is that end times fascism becomes linked to the actions of egotistical and powerful men, from politicians to tech titans. US President Donald Trump in particular is the common thread, appearing over and over again throughout.

So when Klein and Taylor suggest, at the end of the book, that end times fascism is not about Trump, and will continue when these men disappear, their claim runs against the book’s premise. Place powerful elites to one side, and end times fascism becomes difficult to envision. What does it look like when it moves off the front page and out of elite hands in everyday contexts?

Nerd Reich

In Nerd Reich, reporter Gil Durán, a longtime San Francisco resident, looks to Silicon Valley. He focuses on how “the world’s richest men are building a new political order.” Durán’s primary antagonist is Peter Thiel (who also appears in End Times Fascism), the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir: “a man fusing business, politics and religion into one terrifying bundle of power”.

For Durán and others, Thiel is the lynchpin for a new breed of Silicon Valley-driven fascism, whether concretely (through donations) or ideologically (through his books and speeches). Thiel has increasingly moved beyond the tech world to offer political diagnoses and future visions that find sympathetic ears in elite circles.

Where do these ideas come from? Durán suggests they can be traced back to the Sovereign Individual, a 1997 book of future predictions based on the transition to the information age, by former Times (UK) editor William Rees-Mogg and financial advisor James Dale Davidson. Strangely, Durán never really carries out a close reading of this book he regards as an ur-text. Instead, he chooses to highlight some key claims and its general reception.

Durán’s circle of rich fascists ranges from technologists to politicians. It includes well-known figures like Elon Musk, Vice President JD Vance and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. But it also features lesser-known figures, like cryptocurrency entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan, who wants Silicon Valley to carry out an “ultimate exit” from the US altogether, and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who elevates the acceleration of “techno-capital” and denigrates democracy.

Each of them, in their own way, has leveraged wealth from the finance and tech industry to grab political and social influence and push forward their vision of society and the state.

What exactly is fascist about these individuals and their ideas? For Durán, tech fascism “bundles powerful technologies” like AI, crypto and social media “towards authoritarian goals” that benefit a “small, interconnected group of oligarchs”. They wish to privatise what is public and “eliminate democracy”, he writes.

And yet the book lacks a deeper or more systemic unpacking of tech fascism. What are its core values? How do these technologies actually carry out authoritarian goals? And what might this mean beyond power games in a US bubble?

The closest we get to answers is two breezy paragraphs on page 240. They tell us tech fascism “updates this ideology for the AI age” by controlling “reality through algorithms” and launching the “next generation of killer robot drones”. And it’s all driven by a venture capital system that has “run out of unicorns and must now hunt Antichrists to meet its unquenchable thirst for acceleration”.

The strength and weakness of Nerd Reich, then, rests on its journalistic approach. Drawing on a decade of newsroom experience, Durán weaves in insider knowledge of Silicon Valley.

He provides a play-by-play of San Francisco City Council election manipulation, for instance, where a flood of Big Tech money aimed to flip local politics from progressive to conservative. And he serves it all up with visceral language — like “an image dripping in fascist cosplay” — that leaves no doubt as to how he views these men and their manoeuvrings.

The downside of this approach is that chapters fragment into dozens of “human interest” style vignettes, with only a gossamer-thin thread to connect them.

The reader wades through a whirlwind tour of names, dates and places. Garry Tan, CEO of venture capital incubator Y Combinator. Sam Bankman-Fried and his fraudulent FTX cryptocurrency exchange. Michelle Stephens and her Acts 17 organisation, which hosts events hoping to bridge technology and Christianity. Bryan Johnson, who believes he can live forever via products like his own bespoke “snake oil” elixir.

And Curtis Yarvin, the political blogger whose illiberal ideas have found traction in Washington.

In each case, we get titbits without a deeper throughline. How exactly does a long backstory on Yarvin — including his love life and use of psychedelics — shed light on his increasingly influential ideas about remaking the state as a startup? The reader must draw their own conclusions.

Technofascism and everyday people

In both these books, the lens could be described as the Big Man – the powerful politician, swaggering tech founder, or deep-pocketed venture capitalist who can leverage their immense resources to transform their visions into fascistic realities. This cast of strong antagonists lends itself to strong storytelling — concrete people who can be pointed to and called out.

But this focus on unsavoury elites leaves some key questions unanswered. Where did these fascist energies originate? How have they been updated? What are the grievances and desires at the heart of this ideology? And how are these values packaged, narrated and circulated in ways that make them compelling to everyday people?

Today, we are surrounded by platforms, models and algorithms that hold up a vision of reason and rationality. Yet politically, we see a return to myth, bigotry and barbarism. These twin forces are not a paradox but a program. Technofascism leverages advanced technology to bolster authoritarian ideals and regressive values that carve up the world along bloodlines, gender lines and borderlines.

But how do these twin forces prop each other up? What role does the “techno” in technofascism play? I see three core functions.

Technology augments, providing a practical outworking of fascist visions by operationalising difference and domination. Palantir’s data-driven deportation partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a perfect recent example of transforming fascist ideals into a concrete program of platforms, software and servers that can be leased and run.

Secondly, technology alienates. It creates a vacuum of meaning that is filled by powerful mythologies that address grievances and reimpose order on the world. Meta-narratives like the Great Replacement Theory, suggesting non-white immigrants are replacing white populations, translate complex crises into tangible figures. Anti-immigration marches in Australia were a recent troubling example. They transformed a complex set of pressures — from rising costs of living to climate anxieties — into a powerful myth with a single scapegoat: the migrant.

Finally, technology manipulates. It creates environments that leverage desire while cultivating fascist ideologies over time. Manosphere influencers translate misogyny, insecurity and xenophobia into viral packages of content. Ex-radicals describe a pipeline effect where media played a key role in nudging them towards more right-wing stances. Eventually, they arrived at violent, dehumanising visions that can only be described as fascist.

Together, these books shed light on the fascistic energies that increasingly seem to permeate our present moment. This is not a problem for other places and times, but one that confronts us here and now.

As one scholar stressed after three decades of researching authoritarian personalities: “I study normal folks, not Nazis.” Grasping the core logic of this fascist phenomenon is the first step in combating and countering it.

Luke Munn, Research Fellow, Digital Cultures & Societies, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

-=-=

---

rww 926

• Madeline Peltz @ Number Two Pencil: Turning Point USA tour features influencer who thinks women shouldn’t have the right to vote

Joshua Haymes, a former pastoral intern at Pete Hegseth’s church, is a Christian nationalist who has also said Adolph Hitler was “misunderstood.”

• Michael Luciano @ Mediate: JD Vance Says He’s Doing ‘God’s Work’ and ‘If That Leads to the End Times, Ok’

Vice President JD Vance claimed that he is “doing as much of God’s work as possible,” and added that he is at peace if doing so means bringing about the end times.

-=-=

---

AN 5 26

Talk of the Antichrist has surged in President Donald Trump's first year in office, and the discussion has broken out beyond the traditional right-wing circles.

Christian Paz, writing for Vox, reported Tuesday that talk of the Antichrist has become a larger conversation among more mainstream political circles than the typical evangelical prophecies.

The end-times conversation connects a renewed apocalyptic panic to those desperately searching for ways to grapple with a more complicated "crisis-driven" world by ascribing the "Antichrist" thinking to any figure who could match charismatic leaders in technology, war or politics.

The idea that Trump could fit that description has been proposed by far-right influencers like former Rep. MarjorieTaylor Greene and anti-Semitic commentator Nick Fuentes. Even Tucker Carlson asked the question. It came as Trump posted an AI photo of himself depicted as Jesus Christ. He later claimed that he thought it was a "doctor."

“But he’s radiating the spirit of Antichrist, no question," conservative Rod Dreher told the *Wall Street Journal*.

In March, CNN reported that billionaire Peter Thiel has been hosting secret lectures about the Antichrist in an undisclosed location in Rome.

"But the appearance of Thiel on the Vatican’s doorstep has raised eyebrows, given the tensions between Thiel’s thinking and that of Pope Leo XIV," the report said. "Two Catholic institutions have distanced themselves from the lecture series, which continues through Wednesday."

On Monday, the pope published his first encyclical, warning that artificial intelligence is causing problems for humanity, particularly when it comes to its use in war.

Meanwhile, "Thiel has previously written and lectured on the subject, arguing that the Antichrist is not necessarily a person but could come as a global government system. It would take control, he has argued, by exploiting people’s fears around artificial intelligence, climate change or nuclear war."

Paz, writing for Vox, explained that the colorful imagery and ambiguity in the Bible talking about the Antichrist can attract people trying to solve a kind of prepper puzzle.

“They read the Bible like it’s a secret code book, and that if they can unlock the code, then they can understand what’s going to happen in the end times,” historian Matthew A. Sutton told Vox. Sutton focuses on American apocalypticism at Washington State University. “It’s a very modern way to read the Bible compared to what you would’ve seen through much of church history.”

When he says "modern," he means the last 100 years. But as the world grapples with climate change, another war in the Middle East, the possibility of a pending economic catastrophe and leaders like Trump, talk of the Antichrist and the end times are being used to explain what people see as troubled times.

“Dressing political theory in apocalyptic robes carries risks," Sutton told Vox, though it's hardly a new idea. But it can become dangerous. "When powerful actors reframe ordinary policy debates, such as about guardrails for AI, as a battle against the antichrist, they raise anxieties, delegitimize compromise, and insinuate that democratic deliberation is spiritually suspect.”

But the panic about Trump has turned the world upside down over the course of his second term. So, while the right is spinning conspiracy theories about his being the Antichrist, he also fits the mold, the report said.

"He is surely a charismatic leader; he’s launched civilizational wars in the Middle East; he’s survived assassination attempts, mimicking the fatal, but healed, wound of the beast of Revelations; and he’s blasphemed and used the trappings of religion to advance his personal brand," said Paz for Vox.

Religious Studies Professor Robert Fuller called talk of the end times a "crisis mentality" and perpetuates hate.

"It makes compromise unthinkable since no one compromises with the devil. It justifies hatred and violence, recasting these traits as virtues," he said.

---

MMA

Christian media figures have claimed that the Iran war could signal “the second coming” or the “End Times” and said “we are watching incredible prophecy in this time come to pass”

Written by Payton Armstrong

Published 03/04/26

Right-wing Christian media are praising President Donald Trump’s decision to join Israel in launching military strikes against Iran, with some figures likening Trump to Cyrus the Great and Constantine the Great and claiming that “we are watching incredible prophecy in this time come to pass.”

Christian media figures have said the war could be a sign of “the emergence of the Antichrist, the tribulation period, the battle of Armageddon, the second coming,” claiming that he has “literally become Constantine the Great”; asserting that “God is using President Trump in a prophetic moment”; and telling audiences, “It’s all going to be happening in God's timing.”

Trump joined Israel in striking Iran — a longtime goal of right-wing evangelicals who believe in End Times prophecy

• The U.S. and Israel launched wide-ranging military strikes on Iran, reportedly killing multiple high-ranking Iranian leaders and many civilians, and thrusting the region into a new era of instability.As of March 3, at least six American service members have reportedly been killed in action since the conflict began, and Trump has said, “There will likely be more before it ends.” Additionally, a girls’ elementary school in Minab was hit during the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign, killing 165 people and injuring 96 others, according to Iranian state media. NPR, [2/28/26, 3/2/26; BBC, 3/3/26; The Guardian, 3/1/26]

• • Military commanders have been accused of tying the Iran war to biblical prophecy, with one combat-unit commander reportedly telling noncommissioned officers that Trump is “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” Military.com reported: “An organization that has been fighting against religious extremism in the United States military for two decades has reported more than 200 new complaints since Saturday’s initial strikes against Iran, with members across all services claiming that high-ranking officers are tying the mission overseas to fulfilling a Christian prophecy.” Military.com, [3/3/26]

• • For years, Christian media figures have likened Trump to Cyrus the Great and claimed he is “anointed” by God.Vox explained the comparison in 2018: “Many evangelical speakers and media outlets compare Trump to Cyrus, a historical Persian king who, in the sixth century BCE, conquered Babylon and ended the Babylonian captivity, a period during which Israelites had been forcibly resettled in exile.” NPR, [1/20/25; Reuters, 3/22/24; Vox, 3/5/18]

• • Evangelical leaders and right-wing media figures have long claimed Israel is central to the supposed End Times and Iran is “not simply a talking point, but what many … believe is a land of biblical significance” and “considered a major player in End Times prophecy.”For years, those figures have cited various conflicts in the Middle East to warn that the End Times are either here or imminent, and have suggested that Iran could represent the antagonist “Gog” or “Magog” in a biblical prophecy. According to Britannica, in the Bible, “the names Gog and Magog are applied to the evil forces that will join with Satan in the great struggle at the end of time.” Baptist News, [3/2/26; Media Matters, 11/7/23, 7/19/11; Harvest, 3/2/26; Right Wing Watch, 6/20/25; Britannica, accessed 3/3/26]

• • Conservative media figures have so far been divided over Trump’s war with Iran. Many prominent right-wing figures have supported the war, but a wide variety of streamers and podcasters have broken with the administration, with Tucker Carlson calling the attacks “absolutely disgusting and evil.” Media Matters, [3/2/26]

• ### Right-wing Christian media celebrated Trump’s war with Iran as a fulfillment of prophecy, saying that Trump is “literally becoming Cyrus the Great” and that “the return of Jesus is back on the menu”

• FlashPointhost Gene Bailey and “self-styled prophet” Lance Wallnau likened Trump to Cyrus the Great liberating Babylon, with Wallnau saying, “Cyrus Trump holds the cards.”Bailey opened a segment discussing Iran by saying: “History has a strange way of repeating itself. … When Cyrus the Great entered Babylon, he didn't crush a people. He didn't crush a people group. He liberated them. The Persians still call him Cyrus the Great because he restored dignity, honored faith, and broke the back of the oppressive regime. His name is etched in Persian memory, not as a tyrant but as a deliverer. So, let's fast forward two thousand five hundred years now, many Persians see something similar to Donald Trump.” Wallnau later said, “Cyrus Trump holds the cards.” Bailey has interviewed Trump on FlashPoint at least seven times. Trump appointed Bailey to an advisory board on his Religious Liberty Commission, and told the host during an interview, “We’re with you 1,000%.” YouTube, *FlashPoint* [2/28/26; Media Matters, 6/12/25; The Wall Street Journal, 10/9/24]

• • Wallnau declared: “The return of Jesus is back on the menu.”Wallnau said: “Things are happening right in alignment with actual feasts. … There's always a feast day manifestation because Israel and the return of Jesus is back on the menu.” Right Wing Watch, [3/2/26]

• • Also onFlashPoint, right-wing pastor Andrew Sedra said “we're seeing President Trump literally become Constantine the Great, he's literally becoming Cyrus the Great.”Sedra celebrated that “Trump is going after the head of the snake, which is Islam,” adding, “It is a very, very good time to be alive where we're seeing President Trump literally become Constantine the Great, he's literally becoming Cyrus the Great. He's taking decisive action to make sure that Christendom freedom will last across the West for a hundred more years.” Sedra also said, “God is using President Trump in a prophetic moment of time to execute judgment on evil and wicked civilizations.” YouTube, *FlashPoint*, [2/28/26, 2/28/26; Daily Mail, 6/22/23; Ministry Watch, 3/11/24]

• • Pro-Trump pastor and podcaster Greg Laurie — who interviewed Secretary of State Marco Rubio in October — declared that the war could be a sign of “the emergence of the Antichrist, the tribulation period, the battle of Armageddon, the second coming.” Laurie, who hosts The Greg Laurie Show, said: “It reminds me of the words of Jesus who said, ‘When you see these things begin to happen, look up because your redemption is drawing near.’ As far as I can see, the next event on the prophetic calendar will be the rapture of the church. … When that event happens, all of the prophetic things that are going to take place are like dominoes closely stacked to each other. And once the first domino falls, the others will fall: the emergence of the Antichrist, the tribulation period, the battle of Armageddon, the second coming, the millennial reign of Christ, heaven and Earth become one, and somewhere in that prophetic scenario is the invasion of Magog with her ally Persia. So, it's all going to be happening in God's timing.” YouTube, [3/1/26; The Greg Laurie Show, 10/28/25; Christianity Today, 5/12/25]

• • Trump ally and “prophet” Amanda Grace claimed that the strikes on Iran were “prophesied back in December,” adding, “We are watching incredible prophecy in this time come to pass.” Grace often shares what she calls prophetic warnings and alerts and “a Word from the Lord” on YouTube and has interviewed members of the Trump family including Eric and Lara Trump. YouTube, *Ark of Grace Ministries,* [2/28/26; Media Matters, 5/30/24; YouTube, accessed 9/2/25]

• • Pro-Trump “prophet” Julie Green said, while discussing Iran, “We should be celebrating and being in comfort and being at peace knowing that God is in control.” Green, who has hosted Eric and Lara Trump on her online show, told her audience: “Prophetically, God has been talking about what we're seeing right now. So this is something that we should be celebrating and being in comfort and being at peace knowing that God is in control, knowing that God is having his way and he is removing every evil leader out of their powerful positions.” Rumble, *Mornings with Julie*, [3/2/26; Media Matters, 10/4/21, 5/30/24]

• • Right-wing pastor John Hagee streamed a sermon on YouTube titled “God's Coming Operation ‘Epic Fury’” in which he said that “we rejoice in the prophetic scriptures.” Hagee, who founded and chairs a group called Christians United for Israel and has previously argued for military strikes against Iran, opened his sermon by stating: “We thank you for our president, Donald Trump, whose wisdom and courage has crushed the enemies of Zion. Today we rejoice in the prophetic scriptures of Ezekiel, revealing God's operation fury for the enemies of Israel.” YouTube, [3/1/26, 3/1/26; The Nation, 6/24/25; The Guardian, 3/6/23]

• • Pastor Sean Feucht — a self avowed Christian nationalist who recently announced a “revival” partnership with the federal government for the country’s 250th celebration — noted during a YouTube stream that his evangelical group has had a presence in the Middle East since “the height of ISIS” and said, “God has us positioned there for the end-time open doors of what he's going to do in Iran.”Feucht added: “We're going to see the gospel go forth like never before.” Right Wing Watch reported that during a February livestream, “Feucht announced details of what he called the ‘Roots Of Revival’ tour in which the federal government will partner with him as he hosts prayer events ‘from coast to coast [in] all the historic and epic places of revival and awakening that were birthed in America.’” YouTube, [3/1/26; Right Wing Watch, 2/11/26, 4/21/23]

• • Right-wing pastor Jack Hibbs uploaded a sermon on YouTube in which he discussed the strikes against Iran in front of a screen saying “Bible prophecy update.”Hibbs, who in 2024 was invited by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to serve as the House of Representatives’ guest chaplain, invoked a verse from Jeremiah 49, which references “the latter days,” and said, “Is that what we're watching? Is that what we're seeing? We'll see. We shall see. But that prophecy has never been fulfilled. Not in total.” YouTube, [3/1/26; Media Matters, 1/31/24; One for Israel, accessed 3/3/26]

• • Joseph Z — who regularly shares “prophetic updates” on YouTube and in his bio has said he practices “Last Days Prophetic Journalism” — said strikes against Iran “could be Bible prophecy playing out” and “we're going to see an absolute revival come to Iran.” He suggested “what took place in Jeremiah 49” could “be a prophetic fulfillment of what's happening in Iran.” YouTube, [3/1/26, accessed 8/11/25; Right Wing Watch, 8/12/24]

//

1. ### Right-wing media figures are getting briefed on the Iran war before Congress

03/02/26 3:17 PM EST

2. ### Trump and his MAGA allies increasingly embrace extreme prophetic media

05/30/24 9:00 AM EDT

3. ### MAGA media feud erupts over Trump’s war against Iran: “We're not supposed to be running around doing this anymore.”

03/02/26

---

---

see theocRacy apoc xian nat’l

'Deeply alarming': Christian fundamentalists see Trump’s military policies as biblical war

After U.S. President Donald Trump ordered missile strikes against Iran and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — the country's far-right Shiite fundamentalist leader since 1989 — was killed, a long list of other countries were drawn into the conflict. Iran launched retaliatory strikes against U.S. installations in Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia was attacked by Iranian drones.

Meanwhile, Israel and Hezbollah (a pro-Iran Shiite militia in Lebanon) fired missiles at once another. From Riyadh to Beirut to Dubai, the Middle East is on pins and needles.

Trump is claiming that going to war with Iran is necessary from a national security standpoint. But MS NOW's Zeeshan Aleem, in an opinion column published on March 4, argues that Trump's Christian nationalist allies view the conflict as a holy war for evangelical fundamentalist Christianity.

"President Donald Trump can't get his story straight on why he launched a war against Iran," Aleem argues. "But some commanders in the U.S. military are apparently telling service members that they're on a mission to fulfill biblical prophecy. The independent journalist Jonathan Larsen reported that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has received more than 110 complaints from service members about their commanders' religious gloss on the war on Iran."

Aleem continues, "These complaints, according to Larsen's report, came from every branch of the military, across more than 40 different units, situated in at least 30 military installations…. MRFF President Michael Weinstein told Larsen that the complaints from service members shared a common feature: Commanders are describing the war as 'biblically sanctioned' and 'clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian End Times as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation."

Weinstein told Larsen, "Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be, zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100 percent accordance with fundamentalist Christian end-of-the-world eschatology."

When military commanders "are reportedly selling American aggression on Iran as a holy war," Aleem warns, it is "deeply alarming."

"Weinstein told Larsen that the complaints violate the Constitution's separation of church and state," Aleem explains. "But regardless of its legality, telling American troops that they're fighting for a Christian god against a Muslim country is medieval madness. It isn't the role of the U.S., per the Constitution, to promote any religion over another. Furthermore, the reported remarks from these commanders is likely to prompt U.S. service members to dehumanize Iran's population, and help set the stage for viciousness in combat and human rights violations. The military is not supposed to be a crusading political-theological movement, but a professional defense force."

//

an 3 26

People are growing increasingly uneasy as President Donald Trump's attacks on Iran are looking more and more like they could be part of a right-wing religious fanatic's fantasy for the apocalyptic.

The Cradle Media's Jonathan Larsen wrote that American soldiers were given a pep-talk about the war in Iran. A U.S. combat-unit commander told them that the attack is part of “God’s divine plan." He said that President Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus” for the specific purpose to ignite Armageddon.

“U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for 'Armageddon,' Return of Jesus Advocacy group reports commanders giving similar messages at more than 30 installations in every branch of the military," Larsen wrote.

The comments come as part of a lawsuit brought by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation; however, it is only one of "110 lawsuits brought in 48 hours from over 40 units across 30 installations," the report said. The complaints came from Christians, a Muslim and a Jewish soldier.

The Christian nationalist theory that Israel has a God-given right to much of the Middle East is one espoused by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. In a speech at a Christian Zionist church in Jerusalem in December, Huckabee conveyed his " purpose is to convert Israeli Jews to belief in Jesus in order to bring about the End Times," explained Religion Dispatches.

The concept is bad for anyone seeking peace in the Middle East, one 2024 report by Forward explained.

The sect of Christianity that Huckabee believes in holds that if they are able to remove Palestinians from the Holy Land, then Jesus Christ will return. He believes in “dispensational premillennialism,” which Forward describes as a belief that “the Rapture will come,” and deliver all evangelicals to Heaven as Israel is invaded by the armies of the world. It will cause Armageddon and prompt the return of Jesus Christ.

The language is making some fearful that the war waged wasn't really about Iran never obtaining nuclear weapons, which Trump claimed he destroyed last summer. It's a holy war, desperate to force Armageddon.

"Maybe it’s a bad idea to put people in charge of government who are eager for the rapture," lawyer and self-described nerd John Collins commented.

"Love when I'm in the military and my boss is, like, 'Time for Armageddon!'" commented author and journalist Emily St. James.

Writer and former Cato Institute policy analyst Will Wilkinson wrote, "Personally, I don’t think we should bring about Armageddon."

"One thing about the U.S., we definitely do not have insane religious zealots in charge,"said Heidi N. Moore, previously of the Wall Street Journal business side.

Writer and elections lawyer at the Cato Institute, Walter Olson, quoteda line from the 1965 song "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)" with lyrics by Tom Lehrer: "And this is what he said on/ His way to Armageddon.”

---}:

---

rww

no lnc many vids

'The Return Of Jesus Is Back On The Menu': MAGA Evangelicals Celebrate The Attack On Iran

03/02/2026

by Kyle Mantyla

When Israel launched an attack on Iran in June of 2025, religious-right activists celebrated, excited by the prospect that it could precipitate the End Times and the return of Jesus Christ.

Predictably, these same religious-right activists are once again overjoyed after the United States and Israel began jointly bombing Iran over the weekend, killing the nation's supreme leader and dozens of top military commanders.

While the attack has generated retaliatory strikes and fears of a wider Middle East war, evangelical Trump supporters are gushing over President Donald Trump's action, with megachurch pastor Jack Hibbs declaring that "for such a time as this, this man is being led by God."

During a special sermon on Sunday, Hibbs absurdly declared that "this is not regime change, this is removing the obstacle so that the people [of Iran] can pick their leadership," before marveling that the attack was carried out on 9/11 of the Islamic calendar.

"Who planned this?" he asked. "I think God planned it."

On Sunday, pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, delivered a special "prophetic sermon" in response to the attacks to explain "what God's plan of fury is for Iran."

"It's refreshing to know that God is in total control and he has plans that will not be removed," Hagee said.

During a service later on Sunday, Hagee led his congregation in thanking God "for the fabulous military victory over the enemies of Israel" and "for our president, Donald Trump, whose wise courage has crushed the enemies of Zion."

Christian nationalist worship leader Sean Feucht likewise praised the attacks, saying that God has positioned his own prayer team in Iraq in order to take advantage of "the End Time open doors of what he is going to do in Iran when this regime is prayerfully removed."

In a separate video, Feucht declared that the attacks represent "the greatest day of harvest" for Christians to spread the gospel in Iran.

"God is using this moment to open wide the doors for evangelism like we haven't seen in 50 years," he celebrated. "Let see the gospel penetrate this ancient land."

On Saturday, Trump cultist Shane Vaughn did an emergency broadcast to explain how Trump is a "prophetic instrument of God" who "has an assignment to protect Israel."

"Yahweh raised up a man to do what happened this morning," Vaughn proclaimed. "Donald Trump did not strike Iran today because of a foreign policy doctrine ... Yahweh, the God of Heaven, raised up Donald Trump for today."

The Christian nationalist program "FlashPoint" likewise did a special broadcast on Saturday, during which MAGA cultist Lance Wallnau insisted that Trump did not want to attack Iran but "God made the Iranians just recalcitrant" during negotiations, just like when "God hardened Pharaoh's heart" in Exodus, thereby forcing Trump to take action.

"They refused to budge," Wallnau said. "And when Trump saw that they were not going to move and that there was no sense in delaying, he went ahead and made the decision, as he always does."

Later in the broadcast, Wallnau noted that the attack fell just before the Jewish holiday of Purim, which commemorates the failure of Haman's plot to destroy the Jews as told in the book of Esther.

"Isn't it interesting that the ancient stronghold of the Prince of Persia that sought to exterminate all the Jews is now coming down again under the authority of another modern-day ruler who the prayers of God's people have been empowering?" Wallnau declared. "During their feast of Purim, when they had a reversal of a destructive threat, we're watching that reversal happen again in our day."

"Things are happening right in alignment with actual feasts," Wallnau added. "There's always a feast day manifestation because Israel and the return of Jesus is back on the menu."

---

---

OMFG ANTI-COMMIE WATERS INGRA HANTY BEFORE SEE BAD TRINITY

MMA

MAGA media demand Trump put down the Minnesota “revolution”

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 01/30/26

A week after Border Patrol officers gunned down nurse Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis, MAGA media’s biggest stars are portraying locals who oppose immigration enforcement officers’ brutal tactics as China-backed “revolutionaries” seeking “the complete overthrow of Western civilization” which they are urging President Donald Trump to put down at all costs.

Horrific videos of Pretti’s killing by masked agents of the state whose activities he had been filming spurred a backlash against the Trump administration’s immigration policy, with polls showing eroding support and some Republican officeholders and right-leaning streamers expressing dismay.

Even some commentators on Fox News, which initially plowed ahead in depraved service of the administration’s absurd argument that Pretti was a terrorist threatening the officers’ lives, backed down a bit. After Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade urged the president to send former Fox contributor and White House “border czar” Tom Homan to take control of the situation on Monday, Trump took Kilmeade’s advice, spurring premature media claims of a “pivot.”

But in this tug-of-war over the president’s brainbox, MAGA stars quickly regrouped and urged Trump not to back down, reverting to the language of war that has characterized right-wing media discussions of Minneapolis for weeks. And the tenor of their coverage has only become more disturbing over the course of the week.

Fox host Laura Ingraham, in her opening monologue Thursday night, claimed that the “mobs you've witnessed in Minnesota and in other far-left-wing pockets of America” are composed of “revolutionaries” who “smear and dehumanize as a prelude to the executions.”

Ingraham went on to argue that “behind all this” is “a national network of socialists, communists, and Marxist-Leninists” whose “goal is to destabilize the West and undermine trust in our institutions and eventually dismantle capitalism and replace it with a Marxist communist framework that eliminates private property in favor of state-owned enterprises.”

“So how do you defeat these well-funded, well-organized revolutionaries?” Ingraham asked. She replied to her own question, claiming, “We defeat the revolution by staying the course, by prosecuting criminal conspiracies to impede ICE and also their funding networks, and by reminding Americans that their safety and U.S. sovereignty will not be negotiated away, not now, not ever.”

Video

Citation

From the January 29, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

Ingraham further argued that the anti-ICE movement has “Chinese fingerprints all over it.”

The following hour, Fox’s Jesse Watters described Minneapolis as “antifa’s new favorite city” and local protesters as an “ICE watch mafia” with its “own socialist supply lines, logistics, and financial benefactors.”

“They're calling Minnesota a testing ground for a domestic revolution,” he added. “This is more than just about immigration. It's about the complete overthrow of Western civilization.”

Democrats want “more Renee Goods and Alex Prettis,” he added. “They think if they can stack enough bodies, Trump's going to back off.”

Video

Citation

From the January 29, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime

Watters later hosted MAGA streamer Tim Pool, who argued that “the terrifying thing about Minnesota” is not that federal officers keep killing civilians, but that “we're looking at a leftist base in this country that are being radicalized.”

“My concern is that there's, there's a bloodlust” among the protesters “that's not going to be satisfied,” he added.

Watters went on to say that “there's a certain faction of the left that wants the violence” and suggested that the media “has a little bit more responsibility in situations like this to calm things down.”

Then on Sean Hannity’s program, the host likewise denounced what he termed “the well-coordinated, well-funded, quote, resistance to ICE investigations in Minnesota,” which he claimed is engaged in “an attack on our very system.”

He went on to describe Democrats’ “current anti-ICE outrage” as “pure political theater,” adding that “ultimately, they want to dissolve our borders and fundamentally transform a country and the people that they despise.”

Video

Citation

From the January 29, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity

The vitriol on Fox’s evening shows is somehow less ominous than that coming from right-wing figures off its airways, though.

Tucker Carlson, who hosts one of the nation’s most popular podcasts, argued on Wednesday’s installment that in, “we are watching the destruction of the social fabric of the government and potentially of the nation.” He explained that the video of Pretti’s killing “represents chaos” and added: “Chaos is worse than illegal immigration. Chaos is worse than police brutality. Chaos is worse than anything. Chaos equals death. The death of people, the death of the weak, the death of countries.”

Carlson that Minnesota activists “want the chaos,” adding: “This is proof that what you're watching is not a series of protests about immigration. What you're watching are the beginnings of a color revolution, of a kind of insurrection against federal authority.” He further claimed that if that revolution is not stopped, the result will be “civil war” and “killing at scale.”

“We have to hold the line,” Steve Bannon likewise argued on Wednesday. “There can be no de-escalation at all. You don't need to bring down the temperature. Raise the temperature. Put them under pressure. They're the ones that are cracking.”

“This is an inflection point,” he added. “You blink now and you're going to blink forever. You bend the knee now, you'll bend the knee forever. If we stand in the breach and say, screw you, we're fighting for the country, right?”

And Nick Fuentes, the increasingly prominent white nationalist streamer, argued that if the “radical intervention” Trump is overseeing does not succeed, “all of white civilization just collapses.”

“You have to put yourself in the position of your grandchildren and great-grandchildren in the year 2100 and look around at your majority-minority country that looks like South Africa, where it's just trash and graffiti and filth and homeless people and vagabonds and criminals,” Fuentes explained. “And then you have to go back in time to now when we can prevent it. And then think about what you're willing to do to stop this. And then killing a stupid fat lesbian and a male nurse doesn't seem so bad, does it?”

“Do you know what 'Sieg Heil’ even means?” he concluded. “It means ‘hail victory.’ And not to go like full Nazi or something, but there is no substitute for victory. We have to win; they have to lose.”

//

1. ### After 36 hours justifying the killing of Alex Pretti, Fox News suddenly changes its narrative

:{:{01/26/26}:

2. ### The Fox News response to the federal government execution of Alex Pretti sets a new level of depravity

:{:{01/25/26}:

3. ### Fox’s absurd attempt to cast Tom Homan as Trump’s good cop on immigration

01/27/26

---

MMA

January 29, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): Peter, you wrote a whole book about how China is infiltrating the United States, the silent coup. And this has Chinese fingerprints all over it in my view, and it's not like you're going to have a direct line to the CCP. But given what you've witnessed and the revolutionary goals on the websites of some of these organizations, what's your sense?

PETER SCHWEIZER (GUEST): Yeah, there's no question there's an international component to it and China's involved. There is an organization linked to the CCP in China called the Center for the Study of Marxist Parties in Foreign Countries. And what they do is they track these political activities. And they've been running articles, analyses on their website in China, which is restricted, talking about color revolutions in the United States and how it might happen. They cover groups like the Party for Socialism and Liberation. They cover groups like the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, both who are neck deep in this action in Minneapolis and have been involved in many other protests.

The Freedom Road Socialist Organization has pledged its allegiance to the CCP. They have fraternal party ties, which means they're very close. And the political director of that party, Mick Kelly, lives in Minneapolis. He's been investigated in the past by the FBI for possible involvement for direct terrorism. He was never charged. But these are radical groups, same thing with PSL, sympathetic, tied to China. Its members have flown to China. So, this is part of something that China directly encourages, wants to see happening. And they are monitoring the situation in the United States as it relates to all kinds of social unrest like this.

---

---

pt 2

mission m 25 biker burd sp

jc says sell shirt to buy sword bc bad time coming

sword w cross on hilt iron cross?

JC will lead slaughter

lee 9 min in for pol israel

mission m 25 biker

31 min cufi hagee into pence w/ seal

pompeo real theocratic takeover in Iran

80 mill evange = 1/4 voters; cufu claim 10 m

settler i no no steal hse someone else will, i did not do it

Why evangelicals influence US foreign policy in the Middle East | EP1 | Witness Documentary

Cast

• Arik Ascherman

Self - Rabbi

Lauren Boebert

Self - Republican Rep., Colorado

• Gary Burd

Self - Pastor, Mission M25 Ministry

Ralph Drollinger

Self - Capitol Ministries

• Mohammed el Kurd

Self

• Lee Fang

Self - Reporter, The Intercept

• Diana Hagee

Self - Chief of Staff, John Hagee's Television Ministry

(as Diana Castro Hagee)

• Sandra Hagee

Self - Leader of the CUFI Action Fund

Robert Jeffress

Self

(as Pastor Robert Jeffress)

Benjamin Netanyahu

Self - Prime Minister of Israel

(archive footage)

Mike Pompeo

Self - U.S. Secretary of State 2016 - 2020

• Francis Schaeffer

Self

Pete Sessions

Self - Republican Rep., Texas

• Fayrouz Sharqawi

Self

Donald Trump

Self - 45th President of the United States

(archive footage)

• Michael L. Weinstein

Self

Lawrence Wilkerson

Self

---

an 6 25

'Biblical prophecy': Christian nationalists pushing Trump to 'usher in the End Times'

---

---

DUCK 625 QANON

NPR

https://www.npr.org › 2022 › 07 › 12 › 1111131901 › today-s-jan-6-hearing-examined-the-role-of-q-anon-proud-boys-and-oath-keepers

Today's Jan. 6 hearing looked at the role of Q-Anon, Proud Boys and ...

Jul 12, 2022The committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol held a hearing on Tuesday focused on the role of the conspiracy theory QAnon and extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

Author:Tom Dreisbach

bbc.com

Only include results for this siteHide site from these results

Share feedback about this site

BBC

https://www.bbc.com › news › world-us-canada-66169914

The 'QAnon Shaman' and other Capitol rioters who regret pleading ... - BBC

Jul 15, 2023A growing number of Capitol rioters have gone back on their guilty pleas and apologies - including one of the most recognisable faces from 6 January.

time.com

Only include results for this siteHide site from these results

Share feedback about this site

TIME

https://time.com › 6267335 › jan-6-qanon-shaman-jacob-chansley-released-early-prison

Why Jan. 6 'QAnon Shaman' Jacob Chansley Was Released Early | TIME

Jacob Chansley, the convicted Jan. 6 rioter who was dubbed the "QAnon Shaman" thanks to viral photographs of his outlandish getup, has been released from prison and transferred to a halfway ...

newsweek.com

Only include results for this siteHide site from these results

Share feedback about this site

Newsweek

https://www.newsweek.com › qanon-shaman-reacts-january-6-pardons-2018840

QAnon Shaman Reacts to Jan 6 Pardons: 'I Regret Nothing'

Jan 22, 2025Jacob Chansley was among more than 1,500 people convicted of crimes related to the January 6, 2021 attack that President Donald Trump pardoned.

apnews.com

Only include results for this siteHide site from these results

Share feedback about this site

AP News

https://apnews.com › article › fact-check-january-6-jacob-chansley-tucker-carlson-193191103193

Posts misrepresent rioter's actions in Jan. 6 Capitol attack

"BREAKING: Never before seen video of January 6 shows Jacob Chansley, the QAnon Shaman, being led through the Capitol by police the entire time that he was in the building," reads a tweet that had received more than 189,000 likes and more than 65,000 shares as of Tuesday. The tweet includes a clip from Carlson's show in which Chansley can be seen calmly walking around the Capitol with ...

lawfaremedia.org

Only include results for this siteHide site from these results

lawfaremedia.org

https://www.lawfaremedia.org › article › what-jan.-6-revealed-about-qanon-and-militias

What Jan. 6 Revealed About QAnon and Militias | Lawfare

Nov 8, 2023What a study of 18 anti-government extremists arrested in connection with Jan. 6 tells us about QAnon and militia fusion.

From flags etched with burning Qs to “Where we go one, we go all” T-shirts and the infamous “QAnon Shaman,” the presence of QAnon at the Jan. 6 Capitol attack was palpable. Also prominent, albeit somewhat less visibly, were various insignia signifying membership in far-right extremist groups like the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and Three Percenters.

The affiliations are distinct and without obvious overlap. QAnon adherents and these anti-government extremist groups seem entirely separate. They emerged as independent entities. People who dissected the early “Q drops” on 4chan and 8kun or who reposted QAnon conspiracy theories were not necessarily anti-government extremists, and their activities were primarily online. Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and Three Percenters, by contrast, were defined by anti-government extremist beliefs and tended to mobilize offline in structured groups. But Jan. 6 brought many of them together. Which raises the question: Did QAnon adherents and far-right extremists turn up at the Capitol through independent motives, or did they share something in common?

The evolution and convergence of the groups’ ideologies has been a significant topic of discussion among researchers. But fewer of them have considered the question in the context of Jan. 6.

With that in mind, I conducted a study of 18 individuals arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack. All individuals have alleged links to both QAnon and one of three far-right extremist groups: the Oath Keepers (nine of the 18), the Proud Boys (four of the 18), or the Three Percenters (five of the 18). My review of court documents, social media posts, and reporting about their cases—as well as scholarship on extremism—revealed three shared ideological pillars: a belief in government corruption, apocalypticism, and a responsibility to defend.

QAnon

First emerging on 4chan in 2017, QAnon is an umbrella of loosely connected conspiracy theories that revolve around the central idea “that a cabal of powerful elites controls the world, using their power to covertly abuse children.” QAnon spread mainly across social media, creating communities of the conspiracy’s followers on mainstream platforms. The wide range of conspiracy theories it includes gives QAnon a broad appeal, leading to a diverse demographic of followers: women, non-Republicans, and individuals who are well educated and financially secure.

QAnon has become well known for its conspiracy theories surrounding the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 presidential election. For instance, QAnon formed the backbone of viral conspiracy theories doubting the origin or existence of the pandemic, which helped inspire a wave of protests across the U.S. against lockdown procedures and other government mandates. Before, during, and after the 2020 election, online QAnon communities latched onto conspiracy theories of a “deep state” interfering in the 2020 election to steal Donald Trump’s election win, including the beliefs that “middle-of-the-night dumps of fake mail-in ballots [swung] red states to blue” and “Republican votes had been changed or thrown out thanks to foreign plots, complex CIA vote-harvesting programs, and the machinations of a truly evil election administrator—the voting-machine company Dominion.”

Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, Proud Boys, and the Militia Movement

:{:{The 18 arrestees I studied all have alleged ties to anti-government groups, including the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, or the Proud Boys. Although there is some variation in whether the groups are properly described as militias—for instance, the Proud Boys are sometimes described as “street fighters” rather than a militia—researchers have often considered them in the broader context of what’s known as the “militia movement.” Founded in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 2009 by Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, the Oath Keepers aim to recruit former military and law enforcement personnel, and they operate in local and state chapters scattered across the country. The Oath Keepers seek to uphold their interpretation of the Constitution against perceived federal tyranny. }:

The Three Percenters are a decentralized movement founded in 2008 with multiple organizations that adhere to its ideology. Their name originates from the false historical belief that only 3 percent of American colonists fought against the British, leading to their claim that only 3 percent of Americans are needed to overthrow today’s tyrannical federal government. Finally, the Proud Boys were founded in New York City in 2016 and functioned as a street-fighting group violently opposing those they viewed as threatening the values of “Western culture,” such as Antifa, Black Lives Matter, feminists, immigrants, Muslims, and others. The Proud Boys have collaborated in the past and continue to collaborate with radical anti-government extremist groups, white nationalists, and neo-Nazis in events that frequently result in violence.}:

The Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters have occupied prominent places in the militia movement since their creation because of their ideologies centered around militia conspiracy theories like the New World Orde_r_. The Proud Boys, sometimes referred to as an “alt-lite” street fighting group, have recently taken a clearer place alongside the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters in the militia movement. In the months leading up to the Capitol attack, the Proud Boys became increasingly connected with numerous militias, and their ideological similarities were on display when they collaborated with the Oath Keepers on Jan. 6.

:{:{For that reason, it is helpful to consider all three groups in the broader context of the modern militia movement in the United States, which dates back to the 1990s. The movement, composed loosely of militias and anti-government extremist groups, formed in reaction to federal gun control measures and deadly standoffs between civilians and federal agents.}:

Groups within the movement continue to be characterized by their emphasis on paramilitary activities and belief that the U.S. government is tyrannical, collaborating with the New World Order to oppress Americans under the rule of a one-world government. The militia movement gained momentum from its inception around 1992 (corresponding with the Ruby Ridge standoff) until the late 1990s. However, after Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995—an act that had been reportedly inspired by pro-militia literature and conspiracy theories—the movement’s activity declined significantly. Another wave of anti-government groups in the militia movement emerged after the election of President Barack Obama in 2008. Finally, the militia movement rose in a third wave after the election of President Trump.

With each of these resurgences, the dominant ideology of the militia movement has shifted. Most notably, the focus pivoted away from targeting the federal government after Trump—whose candidacy the militia movement had supported—won the election. Instead, focus moved toward “other perceived enemies, such as Antifa” and opposing “state-level gun control measures, state-level pandemic-related restrictions, and Black Lives Matter protests.”}:

The Militia Movement Meets QAnon

Recently, dominant ideologies within the militia movement have shifted yet again, this time finding a rallying point around QAnon conspiracy theories. As early as 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a report claiming that anti-government extremists “are increasingly subscribing to and propagating the QAnon conspiracy theory, which asserts that pro-Trump forces will soon take down the so-called deep state.” Throughout 2020, as members of extremist groups coalesced in what researchers have termed a “militia-sphere,” their messaging latched on to QAnon conspiracy theories.

The confluence is perhaps not surprising, as both ideologies share three common ideological foundations. The first is a deep belief in government corruption. For the militia movement, the corruption is located in the American federal government, particularly among members of the Democratic Party. Several conspiracy theories that took root decades ago serve to reinforce this belief. For example, the New World Order conspiracy theory, which originated in the 1990s, claims that a cabal of global elites has infiltrated the U.S. government and is actively working to erode American sovereignty with the goal of eventually bringing all Americans under a global government through the United Nations. The militia movement claimed that government corruption was evident from Jewish banking conspiracy theories, alleged communist infiltration into the federal government, and COVID-19 conspiracy theories.

For QAnon adherents, the corruption is also located within the American federal government, where a purported cabal of elites practicing Satan-worshiping rituals and running a child sex-trafficking ring are secretly plotting against Donald Trump. When Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, QAnon adherents extended that theory, decrying an alleged leftist conspiracy to steal the election.

:{:{Suddenly, QAnon election fraud conspiracy theories’ claims aligned quite well with the militia movement’s preexisting ideological foundation of federal government corruption. Arrestees echoed QAnon concepts of the deep state and 2020 election fraud while combining them with militia ideas like communist infiltration of the federal government, with one arrestee claiming that the “country has been SOLD to CHINA,” since “China gave us a god damn virus, they stole our elections, [and] bought our politicians.” }:

Other arrestees interpreted QAnon 2020 election conspiracy theories as further evidence of preexisting government corruption founded in militia ideas of global government takeover, alleging that the election was stolen by a “criminal, corrupt government establishment that has been compromised by foreign nations that are under the control of global, elite technocrats.”}:

The second ideological pillar QAnon and the militia movement share is known as apocalypticism—the belief that the end of society as we know it is imminent. In the militia movement, this apocalyptic theme presents itself through predictions of a future conflict between members of the movement and the federal government (either a second revolutionary war or a second civil war). Militia members believe that they will triumph at the end of this conflict and have an opportunity to rebuild a utopian society from the ashes of the previous American civilization. In QAnon, apocalypticism is most evident in the prophecy of the “Storm,” a day of reckoning in which the agents of the deep state will be revealed and arrested before being shipped off to Guantanamo Bay to face military tribunals and eventual execution.

My review of the 18 Jan. 6 arrestees’ social media posts and digital communications identified apocalyptic rhetoric echoing—and even merging—both QAnon and militia movement ideologies. The arrestees imagined widespread violent conflict against the government in which “patriots” would purge the federal government of “treasonous” political leaders and reconstruct their ideal society, sparked by patriots’ intervention in the political processes of Jan. 6. All of this is consistent with the militia movement’s historical embrace of violent, revolutionary rhetoric, resting largely on the idea that the American people are headed toward an unavoidable “future conflict with the federal government.”

:{:{The third shared ideological pillar is the notion of a responsibility to defend}:. QAnon, in imagining nefarious actors in almost all aspects of public life, built a community of “people who are determined to think you’re in danger, and that it’s their job to protect you, while the only real danger is their protection.” Although notably applied to children, as seen in QAnon adherents’ consistent “save the children” messaging, QAnon’s responsibility to defend also included Donald Trump and his presidency following the 2020 election.

QAnon conspiracy theories about the 2020 election imbued in Q’s followers that “Trump had no chance of losing as long as the election was conducted fairly and legally,” whereas a Biden victory “meant the election was stolen and illegal.” By raising the stakes of Trump’s electoral loss to the destruction of fair government, QAnon election conspiracy theories created a responsibility to defend Trump’s presidency: A Trump loss, as one arrestee stated, meant “we have zero democracy.” Likewise, many of the 18 arrestees alluded to the militia movement’s long-standing self-identification as saviors of the nation. They appeared to view themselves as “patriots” who had legitimate authority to use violence and intervene in political processes to defend the nation and Trump against the corrupt government and Antifa, who were trying to push through a “stolen” election.}:

Implications

:{:{These shared ideological foundations create common ground for otherwise unrelated groups, at least as they pertain to the 18 subjects of the study. The 2020 election and its aftermath revealed a bond between QAnon and the militia movement that is likely to persist because of the Biden administration’s perceived illegitimacy and threat to liberty. QAnon election fraud conspiracy theories may also draw in more extreme groups such as the “boogaloo bois," whose growing presence in the militia-sphere may represent the emergence of “a faction that is particularly receptive to opportunities to conduct violent actions under the umbrella philosophy of accelerationism.”}:

Researchers also fear that QAnon conspiracy theories may attract individuals from the mainstream to the militia-sphere, particularly when they are banned from social media for QAnon-related posts. Such individuals are then more likely to be exploited by organizations in the militia movement and other far-right groups on alternative social media platforms.}:

The confluence of ideas presents opportunities for reciprocal radicalization. There is also a risk of broader ideological convergence, which “confuses counterterrorism defenses, eroding predictability and challenging law enforcement and intelligence categorizations,” making it harder for authorities to “adequately prepare countermeasures, let alone warn and defend potentially targeted communities and sites.”

Now, the 2024 presidential election is approaching, again conjuring images of Q flags waving alongside fatigues-clad extremists in stack formation. In the face of these far-right convergences, was Jan. 6 only a snapshot?

---

PBS

https://www.pbs.org › newshour › nation › jan-6-rioter-known-as-qanon-shaman-sentenced-to-41-months

Jan. 6 rioter known as 'QAnon Shaman' sentenced to 41 months

Jacob Chansley, the spear-carrying Jan. 6 rioter whose horned fur hat, bare chest and face paint made him one of the more recognizable figures in the assault on the Capitol, has been sentenced to ...

usatoday.com

Only include results for this siteHide site from these results

Share feedback about this site

USA Today

https://www.usatoday.com › story › news › factcheck › 2023 › 03 › 13 › fact-check-false-claim-qanon-shaman-amid-jake-angeli-jan-6-tape-reveal › 11431180002

Fact check: False claim about QAnon shaman amid Jan. 6 tape reveal

Mar 13, 2023A March 7 Facebook post (direct link, archived link) makes a claim about Jacob Chansley, widely known as the QAnon shaman, and his presence at the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. "Never before seen video of ...

abcnews.go.com

Only include results for this siteHide site from these results

Share feedback about this site

ABC News

https://abcnews.go.com › US › qanon-emerges-recurring-theme-criminal-cases-tied-us › story?id=75347445

QAnon emerges as recurring theme of criminal cases tied to US Capitol ...

On Jan. 6, the influence of QAnon on rioters was evident in the mountain of social media videos and photos depicting their raid on the Capitol complex.

nytimes.com

An abiding sense of loyalty to the fringe online conspiracy movement known as QAnon is emerging as a common thread among scores of the men and women from around the country arrested for their participation in the deadly U.S. Capitol insurrection, court records reveal.

The FBI first labeled QAnon and its fluid online community of supporters as a "dangerous extremist group" in August 2019, and over the past two weeks it has featured prominently in criminal indictments filed against many of those alleged to have participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, including a number accused of egregious crimes.

Among them is Douglas Jensen, the bearded man seen in a viral video wearing a distinctive "Q" T-shirt, menacing a lone black U.S. Capitol Police officer as he led rioters through the halls and pushed the mob deeper into the Capitol building. Jensen later told investigators that he "intentionally positioned himself" toward the front of the mob so his T-shirt would be visible to cameras and "Q" could "get the credit," according to an FBI affidavit.

A man later identified as Douglas Jensen confronts police as Trump supporters demonstrate on the second floor of the Capitol near the entrance to the Senate, Jan. 6, 2021.

Mike Theiler/Reuters

Cleveland Meredith Jr., who the government also believed to be a supporter of QAnon theories, allegedly posted online about his desire to execute House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by "putting a bullet in her noggin on Live TV," according to court records. He went to Washington, D.C., armed with multiple firearms and more than 2,500 rounds of ammunition in his possession, according to prosecutors. He was late to the rally because his car broke down.

At least three more individuals charged on Tuesday are believed to be supporters of the QAnon theory, according to new FBI records.

The high profile of QAnon adherents in the Capitol riots represents what experts describe as a stunning evolution from a harmless fringe forum for people peddling outlandish conspiracies to a gathering space for those intent on plotting domestic terror -- and the transformation could present a vexing new challenge for law enforcement.

"We don't have a good predictor of where it's going to go," said Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor and expert in homegrown terror groups who called it "extremely troublesome" to see some elected officials fanning the flames of twisted QAnon theories.

### MORE: How Trump obliterated norms and changed the presidency

"You actually have elected members of Congress who, at best, are not condemning Q, and at worst are actually espousing some of the crazy conspiracy theories -- dangerous conspiracy theories," McCord said.

Two newly elected members of the House of Representatives pushed QAnon messages ahead of the 2020 elections. And notably, President Donald Trump brushed aside questions about QAnon when pressed about it before the election in October, saying he knew "nothing" about it.

"I do know they are very much against pedophilia, they fight it very hard," Trump said while refusing to condemn the false theories at an Oct. 15 town hall event.

Just weeks earlier, at a White House press briefing in August, the president said QAnon followers "love the country" and added that he appreciated their support -- which in turn helped embolden belief in the movement.

"He said a whole lot by not saying a whole lot at all. For a lot of us supporters, we knew that he really couldn't come out and say, 'Oh yes, I support it," Gina Sink, 55, a QAnon supporter from Lexington, N.C., told ABC News at a Trump rally in September following the president's comments.

"Following the November 3, 2020 election, many QAnon adherents began pushing false and discredited theories of massive voter fraud and that the 2020 election had been 'stolen' from President Trump," the Department of Justice warned in a new affidavit on Tuesday.

### MORE: President Trump does not denounce QAnon, baseless Osama bin Laden conspiracy theory at town hall

On Jan. 6, the influence of QAnon on rioters was evident in the mountain of social media videos and photos depicting their raid on the Capitol complex. Several rioters were seen wearing "Q" clothing, and chanting slogans tied to the movement. In a Jan. 13 bulletin prepared by the FBI for law enforcement partners, federal agents reported that "symbols associated with QAnon conspiracy theories" were widely displayed by rioters.

In charging documents, federal prosecutors have noted the apparent influence of QAnon among several participants accused of threatening violence during the siege.

Jacob Chansley, the horned helmet-wearing rioter who was one of the most widely recognized from the incident, is also believed to be a supporter of QAnon theories.

Jacob Chansley yells inside the Senate Chamber, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

Win Mcnamee/Getty Images, FILE

"Chansley is an active participant in -- and has made himself the most prominent symbol of -- a violent insurrection that attempted to overthrow the United States Government on January 6, 2021," government prosecutors said, using some of its bluntest words yet to describe the riot.

The Jan. 6 attack proved deadly to at least two QAnon adherents. Rosanne Boyland, 34, who was reportedly crushed by the crowd at the Capitol complex, had recently started following QAnon conspiracy theories online, her sister later told the Associated Press. And Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by a U.S. Capitol Police officer inside the Capitol, was later characterized in an FBI bulletin as "an alleged QAnon-supporter."

Ashli Babbitt in a driver's license photo from the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA).

Maryland MVA/Calvert County Sheriff via AP

QAnon, which first surfaced in 2017, rests on the baseless theory that Trump is fighting against a global network of billionaire pedophiles, devil-worshipping Democrats and baby-eating Hollywood stars and their "deep state" counterparts embedded in the U.S. federal government's sprawling bureaucracy. A growing group of followers consumed and contributed to the false narratives first on the freewheeling social media site known as 4chan, then on other social media sites, fueled by what they thought were cues from "Q," a secret intelligence official they believed was leaving clues about government corruption. It is not clear if "Q" even exists.

Many of the claims are dark and outlandish, and for years adherents to the theory were considered mostly fringe and not a significant threat. They had "keyboard bravado," as one FBI special agent said last week, and were confined to the darkest corners of the web.

But recently, numerous violent incidents have been linked to people who support QAnon theories, and recent polling suggests that the conspiracy theories are reaching wider audiences than previously thought. For example, more than one in three Americans believe a so-called "deep state" is working to undermine Trump -- another unfounded conspiracy commonly peddled by QAnon users -- according to an NPR/Ipsos poll conducted in December.

### MORE: Horn helmet-wearing, painted face Capitol rioter should remain in custody: DOJ

For law enforcement officials seeking to prevent future violent attacks, the rise of QAnon is presenting fresh challenges. Authorities tasked with monitoring online extremism must now grapple with how to evaluate and combat emerging plots without infringing on constitutionally protected free speech.

"We have to separate the aspirational from the intentional and determine which of the individuals saying despicable things on the internet are just practicing keyboard bravado, or they actually have the intent to do harm," said FBI agent-in-charge Steven D'Antuono during a press briefing last week.

In the wake of the Capitol attack, the FBI prepared a document meant to assist law enforcement partners in identifying QAnon "indicators" online, defining phrases and hashtags used by its followers. But the document also notes that "the FBI does not initiate any investigative activity based solely on the exercise of First Amendment activities."

### MORE: The men behind QAnon

In a separate bulletin distributed to law enforcement partners on Jan. 13, the FBI warned that conspiracy-minded followers of QAnon may feel emboldened after the perceived "success" of the Capitol assault.

"Some [domestic violent extremists] view the 6 January event as a success, in conjunction with the potential to exploit follow-on lawful gatherings and ideological drivers -- including conspiracy theories, such as QAnon -- likely will also inspire some [domestic violent extremists] and others to engage in more sporadic, lone actor or small cell violence," the bulletin warned.

Ahead of the inauguration, law enforcement officials are keeping a close watch on the threat posed by QAnon-aligned "lone wolves." The Washington Post reported Monday that the FBI privately warned its partner agencies that QAnon adherents have discussed returning to Washington for Joe Biden's swearing-in, posing as National Guard troops.

*ABC News' Alex Mallin contributed to this report.

---

New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com › 2021 › 11 › 17 › us › politics › qanon-shaman-jan-6-sentenced.html

Jan. 6 Defendant Known as QAnon Shaman Sentenced to 41 Months

Nov 17, 2021A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: Jan. 6 Rioter Known as QAnon Shaman Gets 41 Months.

---

[### How the 'Stop the Steal' movement outwitted Facebook ...

_NPR_

https://www.npr.org › 2021/10/22 › facebook-groups-j...](https://www.npr.org/2021/10/22/1048543513/facebook-groups-jan-6-insurrection)

Oct 22, 2021 — But that only sent Stop the Steal loyalists to other groups on Facebook filled with misinformation and claims the election was stolen. It was a ...

[### How Facebook played a role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot

The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com › 2021/10/22 › jan-6-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/22/jan-6-capitol-riot-facebook/)

Oct 22, 2021 — On Jan. 6, Facebook staffers expressed their horror in internal messages as they watched thousands of Trump supporters shouting “stop the steal” ...

[### How the 'Stop the Steal' movement outwitted Facebook ...

NPR

https://www.npr.org › 2021/10/25 › how-stop-the-steal-...](https://www.npr.org/2021/10/25/1048918715/how-stop-the-steal-movement-outwitted-facebook-ahead-of-the-jan-6-riot)

Oct 25, 2021 — Leaked documents from inside Facebook show the social network was caught flat-footed by the "Stop the Steal" movement, which culminated in the Jan. 6 siege on ...

[### January 6 insurrection and Facebook: Internal docs paint a ...

CNN

https://www.cnn.com › 2021/10/22 › business › januar...](https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/22/business/january-6-insurrection-facebook-papers)

Oct 24, 2021 — The analysis does note, however, that once Facebook saw the results of Stop the Steal on January 6th and took action, it was able to deploy ...

[### Facebook Hosted Surge of Misinformation and Insurrection ...

ProPublica

https://www.propublica.org › article › facebook-hosted-...](https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-hosted-surge-of-misinformation-and-insurrection-threats-in-months-leading-up-to-jan-6-attack-records-show)

Jan 4, 2022 — On Nov. 5, Facebook banned “Stop the Steal,” a hugely viral group created on Election Day itself that quickly attracted over 300,000 members ...

[### Inside Facebook's struggle to contain insurrectionists' posts

Politico

https://www.politico.com › news › 2021/10/25 › facebo...](https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/25/facebook-jan-6-election-claims-516997)

Oct 25, 2021 — It also had a hard time curtailing groups from the far-right Stop the Steal movement — which alleged the election had been stolen from Trump — ...

[### The untold story of how the January 6 riots were planned ...

Fast Company

https://www.fastcompany.com › Tech](https://www.fastcompany.com/90980346/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-january-6-broken-code)

Nov 13, 2023 — The Stop the Steal Facebook group was born out of a mid-Election Day chat between a mother-daughter duo named Amy and Kylie Kremer, conservative ...

[### Facebook whistleblower documents offer new revelations ...

ABC News - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos

https://abcnews.go.com › Technology › story](https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/facebook-whistleblower-documents-offer-revelations-jan-response/story?id=80694096)

Oct 24, 2021 — Facebook removed the first large "Stop The Steal" group, but copycats and similar groups by other names remained on the platform through the Jan ...

[### Facebook bans all 'stop the steal' content

NBC News

https://www.nbcnews.com › tech › tech-news › faceboo...](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-bans-all-stop-steal-content-n1253809)

Jan 11, 2021 — "We are now removing content containing the phrase 'stop the steal' under our Coordinating Harm policy from Facebook and Instagram," they said.

[### Facebook 'Supercharged' Stop the Steal Campaign Ahead ...

Business Insider

https://www.businessinsider.com › Tech › Politics](https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-supercharged-stop-the-steal-capitol-insurrection-congress-mike-doyle-2021-3)

Mar 25, 2021 — A US Representative slammed Facebook for "supercharging" false claims of voting fraud and stolen elections that turned into real-world ...

---

rww

Lance Wallnau Says Trump's Strike On Iran Is Setting The Stage For 'The Antichrist Emerging'

06/23/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

On Friday, Right Wing Watch reported that President Donald Trump's religious-right activists have been nearly unanimous in their demand that the Trump administration lend its full support to Israel in its growing conflict with Iran because they believe that it is key to bringing about the End Times and the return of Jesus Christ.

On Saturday, after Trump ordered U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, MAGA cultist and self-proclaimed Christian nationalist Lance Wallnau immediately took to social media to post a video in which he claimed that Trump's actions were setting the stage for the rise of the Antichrist.

After claiming that Trump had been divinely raised up to topple the enemies of God, Wallnau warned that Iran might respond to the attack by activating "terror cells" in the United States to carry out deadly attacks in major cities like Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York because "those are the primary cities where the Persian community fits in."

"Persians are not Arabs," Wallnau said, praying that God will "expose what needs to be seen at the airports, anything with commercial airlines—that's what they did last time. They won't hijack, they will just attack them—Let's pray that they are thwarted by angels in Jesus' name and that God will turn whatever happens."

"Listen, if they do anything," he continued, "you know what that's gonna do? It's gonna put Trump's deportation agenda on steroids and 70 percent of Americans will say, 'If we've got these people—terrorists—in here shooting and trying to do mass events of injuring us, get them the heck out! All of them.' That's how Americans are."

On the supernatural side, Wallnau said that the strike on Iran was setting the stage for the End Times.

"Jesus is coming back and I believe that this is all part of him setting the stage for his return," Wallnau said. "It's going to be an opening of the window through the State Department for the gospel of freedom to be preached into the Middle East, into Asia during these a couple of years we've got with Trump. We've got to move fast [to see] that this Gospel of the Kingdom goes into all the nations. "

"Then I do think it's a possibility if Iran's vacuum isn't filled in a reformation, it will be filled with a bitter revenge that will take a little while and then you're going to see the Antichrist and wars in the Middle East come out of the unresolved bitterness against Israel and United States," he added. "This will fester and feed into the Antichrist emerging in that region."

---

---

AN GUK 4 25

Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor tell The Guardian that corporate city-states are back in fashion thanks to Trump politics indulging tax-hating millionaires and billionaires to start their own high-tech fiefdoms.

A “glorified gated communit[ies]” like Próspera on a Honduran island and Elon Musk’s distant proposal of “a handful of people and robots eke[ing] out survival on two barren orbs (a radically depleted Earth and a terraformed Mars) appear to be catching on with ultra-wealthy members of the Trump circle.

End-time communities were on the rise in 2023, when a campaigning Donald Trump promised to hold a contest that would lead to the creation of 10 “freedom cities” on federal lands. And since election, “would-be country starters have been on a lobbying blitz, determined to turn Trump’s pledge into reality.” Próspera Chief of Staff Trey Goff called the new energy in DC “absolutely electric, and legislation “paving the way for a bevy of corporate city-states” complete by the end of the year, Klein writes.

READ MORE: 'And everybody cried': Trump hijacks Oval Office meeting to claim 'highest mark' on cognitive test

It’s a fantasy word evolved from the “doom-prepping” movement of the first Trump administration, only now fueled by ultra-wealthy “religious end-timers.” It also hastens the degradation of the only world humanity realistically has, Klein and Taylor say.

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

“Indeed, in a strange twist on the Old Testament tale, Musk and his fellow tech billionaires, having arrogated god-like powers to themselves, aren’t content to just build the arks. They appear to be doing their best to cause the flood. Today’s right-wing leaders and their rich allies are not just taking advantage of catastrophes, shock-doctrine and disaster-capitalism style, but simultaneously provoking and planning for them,” says Klein, a Canadian author.

There is no second planet to occupy, however, and reducing humanity to a tiny dome on a distant island or mountain peak requires a commitment to letting a huge swathe of humanity die. So, how do you break the apocalyptic fever?

“… We help each other face the depth of the depravity that has gripped the hard right in all of our countries,” Klein writes. “We must first understand … [that] we are up against an ideology that has given up not only on the premise and promise of liberal democracy but on the livability of our shared world – on its beauty, on its people, on our children, on other species. The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants.”

READ MORE:'Screw up royally': How 'ignorant' Trump has 'broken the cardinal rule in American politics'

Second, Klein advises countering “their apocalyptic narratives with a far better story about how to survive the hard times ahead without leaving anyone behind. A story capable of draining end times fascism of its gothic power and galvanizing a movement ready to put it all on the line for our collective survival. A story not of end times, but of better times; not of separation and supremacy, but of interdependence and belonging; not of escaping, but staying put and staying faithful to the troubled earthly reality in which we are enmeshed and bound.”

Read the full Guardian article at this link.

REF

The movement for corporate city states cannot believe its good luck. For years, it has been pushing the extreme notion that wealthy, tax-averse people should up and start their own high-tech fiefdoms, whether new countries on artificial islands in international waters (“seasteading”) or pro-business “freedom cities” such as Próspera, a glorified gated community combined with a wild west med spa on a Honduran island.

Yet despite backing from the heavy-hitter venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, their extreme libertarian dreams kept bogging down: it turns out most self-respecting rich people don’t actually want to live on floating oil rigs, even if it means lower taxes, and while Próspera might be nice for a holiday and some body “upgrades”, its extra-national status is currently beingchallenged in court.

Now, all of a sudden, this once-fringe network of corporate secessionists finds itself knocking on open doors at the dead center of global power.

The first sign that fortunes were shifting came in 2023, when a campaigning Donald Trump, seemingly out of nowhere, promised to hold a contest that would lead to the creation of 10 “freedom cities” on federal lands. The trial balloon barely registered at the time, lost in the daily deluge of outrageous claims. Since the new administration took office, however, would-be country starters have been on a lobbying blitz, determined to turn Trump’s pledge into reality.

“The energy in DC is absolutely electric,” Trey Goff, the chief of staff of Próspera, recently enthused after a trip to Capitol Hill. Legislation paving the way for a bevy of corporate city-states should be complete by the end of the year, he claims.

Inspired by the political philosopher Albert Hirschman, figures including Goff, Thiel and the investor and writer Balaji Srinivasan have been championing what they call “exit” – the principle that those with means have the right to walk away from the obligations of citizenship, especially taxes and burdensome regulation. Retooling and rebranding the old ambitions and privileges of empires, they dream of splintering governments and carving up the world into hyper-capitalist, democracy-free havens under the sole control of the supremely wealthy, protected by private mercenaries, serviced by AI robots and financed by cryptocurrencies.

View image in fullscreen

Peter Thiel in Tokyo in 2019. Photograph: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images

One might assume that it is contradictory for Trump, elected on a flag-waving “America first” platform, to lend credence to this vision of sovereign territories ruled over by billionaire god-kings. And much has been made of the colorful flame wars between the Maga mouth-piece Steve Bannon, a proud nationalist and populist, and the Trump-allied billionaires he has attacked as “technofeudalists” who “don’t give a flying fuck about the human being” – let alone the nation state. And conflicts inside Trump’s awkward, jerry-rigged coalition certainly exist, most recently reaching a boiling point over tariffs. Still, the underlying visions might not be as incompatible as they first appear.

The startup country contingent is clearly foreseeing a future marked by shocks, scarcity and collapse. Their high-tech private domains are essentially fortressed escape pods, designed for the select few to take advantage of every possible luxury and opportunity for human optimization, giving them and their children an edge in an increasingly barbarous future. To put it bluntly, the most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating.

That is not so far away from the more mass-market vision of fortressed nations that has gripped the hard right globally, from Italy to Israel, Australia to the United States: in a time of ceaseless peril, openly supremacist movements in these countries are positioning their relatively wealthy states as armed bunkers. These bunkers are brutal in their determination to expel and imprison unwanted humans (even if that requires indefinite confinement in extra-national penal colonies from Manus Island to Guantánamo Bay) and equally ruthless in their willingness to violently claim the land and resources (water, energy, critical minerals) they deem necessary to weather the coming shocks.

Though it builds on enduring rightwing tendencies ... we simply have not faced such a powerful apocalyptic strain in government before

Interestingly, at a time when previously secular Silicon Valley elites are suddenly finding Jesus, it is noteworthy that both of these visions – the priority-pass corporate state and the mass-market bunker nation – share a great deal in common with the Christian fundamentalist interpretation of the biblical Rapture, when the faithful will supposedly be lifted up to a golden city in heaven, while the damned are left to endure an apocalyptic final battle down here on earth.

If we are to meet our critical moment in history, we need to reckon with the reality that we are not up against adversaries we have seen before. We are up against end times fascism.

Reflecting on his childhood under Mussolini, the novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco observed in a celebrated essay that fascism typically has an “Armageddon complex” – a fixation on vanquishing enemies in a grand final battle. But European fascism of the 1930s and 1940s also had a horizon: a vision for a future golden age after the bloodbath that, for its in-group, would be peaceful, pastoral and purified. Not today.

Alive to our era of genuine existential danger – from climate breakdown to nuclear war to sky-rocketing inequality and unregulated AI – but financially and ideologically committed to deepening those threats, contemporary far-right movements lack any credible vision for a hopeful future. The average voter is offered only remixes of a bygone past, alongside the sadistic pleasures of dominance over an ever-expanding assemblage of dehumanized others.

And so we have the Trump administration’s dedication to releasing its steady stream of real and AI-generated propaganda designed solely for these pornographic purposes. Footage of shackled immigrants being loaded on to deportation flights, set to the sounds of clanking chains and locking cuffs, which the official White House X account labeled “ASMR”, a reference to audio designed to calm the nervous system. Or the same account sharing news of the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent resident who was active in Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian encampment, with the gloating words: “SHALOM, MAHMOUD.” Or any number of homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s sadism-chic photo ops (atop a horse at the US-Mexican border, in front of a crowded prison cell in El Salvador, slinging a machine gun while arresting immigrants in Arizona …).

View image in fullscreen

Kristi Noem speaks during a tour of an El Salvador prison in March. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP

The governing ideology of the far right in our age of escalating disasters has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism.

It is terrifying in its wickedness, yes. But it also opens up powerful possibilities for resistance. To bet against the future on this scale – to bank on your bunker – is to betray, on the most basic level, our duties to one another, to the children we love, and to every other life form with whom we share a planetary home. This is a belief system that is genocidal at its core and treasonous to the wonder and beauty of this world. We are convinced that the more people understand the extent to which the right has succumbed to the Armageddon complex, the more they will be willing to fight back, realizing that absolutely everything is now on the line.

Our opponents know full well that we are entering an age of emergency, but have responded by embracing lethal yet self-serving delusions. Having bought into various apartheid fantasies of bunkered safety, they are choosing to let the Earth burn. Our task is to build a wide and deep movement, as spiritual as it is political, strong enough to stop these unhinged traitors. A movement rooted in a steadfast commitment to one another, across our many differences and divides, and to this miraculous, singular planet.

Not so long ago, it was primarily religious fundamentalists who greeted signs of apocalypse with gleeful excitement about the long-awaited Rapture. Trump has handed critical posts to people who subscribe to that fiery orthodoxy, including several Christian Zionists who see Israel’s use of annihilatory violence to expand its territorial footprint not as illegal atrocities but as felicitous evidence that the Holy Land is getting closer to the conditions under which the Messiah will return, and the faithful will get their celestial kingdom.

Mike Huckabee, Trump’s newly confirmed ambassador to Israel, has strong ties to Christian Zionism, as does Pete Hegseth, his secretary of defense. Noem and Russell Vought, the Project 2025 architect who now leads the office of budget and management, are both staunch advocates for Christian nationalism. Even Thiel, who is gay and notorious for his party lifestyle, has been heard musing about the arrival of the antichrist of late (spoiler: he thinks it’s Greta Thunberg, more on that soon).

But you don’t need to be a biblical literalist, or even religious, to be an end times fascist. Today, plenty of powerful secular people have embraced a vision of the future that follows a nearly identical script, one in which the world as we know it collapses under its weight and a chosen few survive and thrive in various kinds of arks, bunkers and gated “freedom cities”. In a 2019 paper titled Left Behind: Future Fetishists, Prepping and the Abandonment of Earth, the communication scholars Sarah T Roberts and Mél Hogan described the longing for a secular Rapture: “In the accelerationist imaginary, the future is not about harm reduction, limits or restoration; rather it is a politics driving toward an endgame.”

View image in fullscreen

Mike Huckabee touring Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem in 2008. Photograph: David Silverman/Getty Images

Elon Musk, who dramatically grew his fortune alongside Thiel at PayPal, embodies this implosive ethos. This is a person who looks up at the wonders of the night sky and apparently sees only opportunities to fill that inky unknown with his own space junk. Though he burnished his reputation warning about the dangers of the climate crisis and AI, he and his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) henchmen now spend their days escalating those same risks (and many others) by slashing not only environmental regulations but entire regulatory agencies, with the apparent end goal of replacing federal workers with chatbots.

Who needs a functioning nation state when outer space – now reportedly Musk’s singular obsession – beckons? For Musk, Mars has become a secular ark, which he claims is key to the survival of human civilization, perhaps via uploaded consciousnesses to an artificial general intelligence. Kim Stanley Robinson, the author of the sci-fi Mars Trilogy that appears to have partially inspired Musk, is blunt about the dangers of the billionaire’s fantasies about colonizing Mars. It is, he says, “just a moral hazard that creates the illusion we can wreck Earth and still be okay. It’s totally not true.”

Much like religious end-timers who long to escape the corporeal realm, Musk’s drive for humanity to become “multiplanetary” is made possible by his inability to appreciate the multispecies splendor of our only home. Evidently uninterested in the vast bounty that surrounds him, or in ensuring Earth can continue buzzing with diversity, he instead deploys his vast fortune to bring about a future that would see a handful of people and robots eke out survival on two barren orbs (a radically depleted Earth and a terraformed Mars). Indeed, in a strange twist on the Old Testament tale, Musk and his fellow tech billionaires, having arrogated god-like powers to themselves, aren’t content to just build the arks. They appear to be doing their best to cause the flood. Today’s rightwing leaders and their rich allies are not just taking advantage of catastrophes, shock-doctrine and disaster-capitalism style, but simultaneously provoking and planning for them.

What of the Maga base, though? Not all are sufficiently faithful to earnestly believe in the Rapture, and most certainly don’t have the cash to buy a spot in a “freedom city” let alone on a rocket ship. Fear not. End times fascism offers the promise of many more affordable arks and bunkers, these ones well within reach for lower-level foot soldiers.

Listen to Steve Bannon’s daily podcast – which bills itself as Maga’s premier media outlet – and you will be barraged with a singular message: the world is going to hell, the infidels are breaching the barricades, and a final battle is coming. Be prepared. The prepper message becomes particularly pronounced when Bannon switches to hawking his advertisers’ products. Buy Birch Gold, Bannon tells his audience, because the over-leveraged US economy is going to crash and you can’t trust the banks. Stock up on ready-to-eat meals from My Patriot Supply. Sharpen your target practice using a laser-guided at-home system. The last thing you would want to do is depend on the government during a disaster, he reminds listeners (left unsaid: especially now that the Doge boys are selling off the government for parts).

End times fascism is a darkly festive fatalism – a final refuge for those who find it easier to celebrate destruction than imagine living without supremacy

Bannon doesn’t only urge his audience to make their own bunkers, of course. He also advances a vision of the United States as a bunker in its own right, one in which Ice agents stalk the streets, workplaces and campuses, disappearing those deemed enemies of US policy and interests. The bunkered nation lies at the heart of the Maga agenda, and of end times fascism. Inside its logic, the first job is to harden national borders and expunge all enemies, foreign and domestic. This ugly work is now well under way, with the Trump administration, enabled by the supreme court, having invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to Cecot, the now infamous mega-prison in El Salvador. The facility, which shaves prisoners heads and packs up to 100 people into a single cell, stacked with bare bunks, operates under the civil liberties-destroying “state of exception” first declared over three years ago by the country’s crypto-loving, Christian Zionist prime minister, Nayib Bukele.

Bukele has offered to provide the same fee-for-service system for US citizens the administration would like to drop into a judicial black hole. “I love that,” Trump said recently, when asked about the proposal. No wonder: Cecot is the sick if logical corollary of the “freedom city” fantasy – a zone where everything is for sale and due process does not apply. We should expect much more of this sadism. In a chillingly candid statement, the acting Ice director, Todd Lyons, told the 2025 Border Security Expo that he wanted to see a more “business”-oriented approach to these deportations, “like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings”.

If policing the boundaries of the bunkered nation is end times fascism’s job one, equally important is job two: for the US government to lay claim to whatever resources its protected citizens might need to get through the tough times ahead. Maybe it’s Panama’s canal. Or Greenland’s fast-melting shipping routes. Or Ukraine’s critical minerals. Or Canada’s fresh water. We should think of this less as old-school imperialism than super-sized prepping, at the level of the national state. Gone are the old colonial fig leaves of spreading democracy or God’s word – when Trump covetously scans the globe, he is stockpiling for civilizational collapse.

This bunker mentality also helps explain JD Vance’s controversial forays into Catholic theology. The vice-president, who owes his political career in no small part to the largess of the premier prepper Thiel, explained to Fox News that, according to the medieval Christian concept of ordo amoris (translated both as “order of love” and “order of charity”), love is not owed to those outside the bunker: “You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.” (Or not, as the Trump administration’s foreign policy would indicate.) In other words, we owe nothing to anyone outside our bunker.

Though it builds on enduring rightwing tendencies – justifying hateful exclusions is hardly new under the ethno-nationalist sun – we simply have not faced such a powerful apocalyptic strain in government before. The “end of history” swagger of the post-cold war era is rapidly being supplanted by a conviction we are in the actual end of times. Doge may wrap itself in the banner of economic “efficiency”, and Musk’s underlings may evoke memories of the young, US-trained “Chicago Boys” who designed the economic shock therapy for Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorial regime, but this is not simply the old marriage of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. It’s a new, money-worshiping millenarian mashup that says we need to smash the bureaucracy and replace humans with chatbots in order to cut “waste, fraud and abuse” – and, also, because the bureaucracy is where the Trump-resisting demons hide. This is where the tech bros merge with the TheoBros, a real group of hyper-patriarchal Christian supremacists with ties to Hegseth and others in the Trump administration.

View image in fullscreen

Steve Bannon advances a vision of the United States as a bunker in its own right. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

As fascism always does, today’s Armageddon complex crosses class lines, bonding billionaires to the Maga base. Thanks to decades of deepening economic stresses, alongside ceaseless and skillful messaging pitting workers against one another, a great many people understandably feel unable to protect themselves from the disintegration that surrounds them (no matter how many months of ready-to-eat meals they buy). But there are emotional compensations on offer: you can cheer the end of affirmative action and DEI, glorify mass deportation, enjoy the denial of gender-affirming care to trans people, villainize educators and health workers who think they know better than you, and applaud the demise of economic and environmental regulations as a way to own the libs. End times fascism is a darkly festive fatalism – a final refuge for those who find it easier to celebrate destruction than imagine living without supremacy.

It’s also a self-reinforcing downward spiral: Trump’s furious attacks on every structure designed to protect the public from diseases, dangerous foods and disasters – even to tell the public when disasters are headed their way – strengthen the case for prepperism at both the high and low ends, all while creating myriad new opportunities for privatization and profiteering by the oligarchs powering this rapid-fire unmaking of the social and regulatory state.

At the dawn of Trump’s first term, the New Yorker investigated a phenomenon that it described as “doomsday prep for the super-rich”. Back then, it was already clear that in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, the more serious high-end survivalists were hedging against climate disruption and social collapse by buying space in custom-built underground bunkers and building escape homes on high ground in places like Hawaii (where Mark Zuckerberg has downplayed his 5,000 sq ft underground pad as a “little shelter”) and New Zealand (where Thiel purchased nearly 500 acres but found his plan to build a luxury survivalist compound rejected by local authorities in 2022 for being an eyesore).

This millenarianism is bound up with a suite of other Silicon Valley intellectual fads, all premised on an end-times-inflected belief that our planet is headed towards a cataclysm and it’s time to make some hard choices about which parts of humanity can be saved. Transhumanism is one such ideology, encompassing everything from minor human-machine “enhancements” to the quest to upload human intelligence into a still illusory artificial general intelligence. There is also effective altruism and longtermism, both of which skip over redistributive approaches to helping those in need in the here and now in favor of a cost-benefit approach to doing the most good in the long term.

Though they can appear benign at first glance, these ideas are shot through with dangerous racial, ableist and gender biases about which parts of humanity are worth enhancing and saving – and which could be sacrificed for the supposed good of the whole. They also share a marked lack of interest in urgently addressing the underlying drivers of collapse – a responsible and rational goal that a growing cohort of figures now actively shun. Instead of effective altruism the Mar-a-Lago regular Andreessen and others have embraced “effective accelerationism”, or the “deliberate propulsion of technological development” without guardrails.

Meanwhile, even darker philosophies are finding a wider audience, like the neoreactionary pro-monarchy rants of the coder Curtis Yarvin (another one of Thiel’s intellectual touchstones), or the “pro-natalism” movement’s obsession with dramatically increasing the number of “western” babies (a Musk fixation), as well as the exit guru Srinivasan’s vision of a “tech zionist” San Francisco where corporate loyalists and police join forces to politically cleanse the city of liberals to make way for their networked apartheid state.

View image in fullscreen

Marc Andreessen and Balaji Srinivasan speak during a panel discussion about bitcoin in San Francisco in 2014. Photograph: Paul Chinn/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

As the AI scholars Timnit Gebru and Émile P Torres have written, though the methods may be new, this “bundle” of ideological fads “are direct descendants of first-wave eugenics”, which also saw a small subset of humanity making decisions about which parts of the whole were worth continuing and which needed to be phased out, cleared out, or terminated. Until recently, few paid attention. Much like Próspera, where members can already experiment with human-machine mergers such as having their Tesla keys into their hands, these intellectual fads seemed to be the marginal hobby horses of a few Bay Area dilettantes with money and caution to burn. No longer.

Three recent material developments have accelerated end times fascism’s apocalyptic appeal. The first is the climate crisis. While some high-profile figures might still publicly deny or minimize the threat, global elites, whose ocean-front properties and datacenters are intensely vulnerable to rising temperatures and sea levels, are well-versed in the ramifying perils of an ever-heating world. The second is Covid-19: epidemiological models had long predicted the possibility of a pandemic devastating our globally networked world; the actual arrival of one was taken by many powerful people as a sign that we have officially arrived at what US military analysts forecasted as “the Age of Consequences”. No more predictions, it’s going down. The third factor is the rapid advancement and adoption of AI, a set of technologies that have long been associated with sci-fi terrors about machines turning on their makers with ruthless efficiency – fears expressed most forcefully by the same people who are developing these technologies. All of these existential crises are layered on top of escalating tensions between nuclear-armed powers.

None of this should be written off as paranoia. Many of us feel the imminence of breakdown so acutely that we cope by entertaining ourselves with various versions of life in a post-apocalyptic bunker, streaming Apple’s Silo or Hulu’s Paradise. As the UK analyst and editor Richard Seymour reminds us in his recent book, Disaster Nationalism: “The apocalypse is no mere fantasy. We are living in it, after all, from deadly viruses to soil erosion, from economic crisis to geopolitical chaos.”

The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants

Trump 2.0’s economic project is a Frankenstein’s monster of the industries driving all of these threats – fossil fuels, weapons and resource-ravenous cryptocurrency and AI. Everyone involved in these sectors knows that there is no way to build the artificial mirror world that AI promises to construct without sacrificing this world – these technologies consume too much energy, too many critical minerals, and too much water for the two to coexist in any kind of equilibrium. This month, the former Google executive Eric Schmidt admitted as much, Congress that AI’s “profound” energy needs are projected to triple in the next few years, with much of it coming from fossil fuels, because nuclear can’t come online fast enough. This planet-incinerating level of consumption is necessary, he explained, to enable an intelligence “higher” than humanity, a digital god rising from the ashes of our relinquished world.

And they are worried – just not about the actual threats they are unleashing. What keeps the leaders of these entangled industries up at night is the prospect of a civilizational wake-up call – of serious, internationally coordinated government efforts to rein in their rogue sectors before it’s too late. From the perspective of their ever-expanding bottom lines, the apocalypse is not collapse; it’s regulation.

The fact that their profits are predicated on planetary devastation helps explain why do-gooder discourse among the powerful is giving way to open expressions of disdain for the idea that we owe each other anything by right of our shared humanity. Silicon Valley is done with altruism, effective or otherwise. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg pines for a culture that celebrates “aggression”. Alex Karp, Thiel’s business partner at the surveillance firm Palantir Technologies, the “losing” “self-flagellation” of those who question American superiority and the benefits of autonomous weapons systems (and, by association, the lucrative military contracts that have made Karp’s vast fortune). Musk informs Joe Rogan that empathy is “the fundamental weakness of western civilization” and he vents, after failing to purchase a supreme court election in Wisconsin: “It increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence.” Meaning we humans are nothing but grist for Grok, the AI service he owns. (He did tell us he was “dark Maga” – and he’s not the only one.)

In arid and climate-stressed Spain, one of the groups calling for a moratorium on new datacenters calls itself Tu Nube Seca Mi Río – Spanish for “your cloud is drying my river”. The name is fitting, and not just for Spain.

An unspeakably dismal choice is being made before our eyes and without our consent: machines over humans, inanimate over animate, profits over all else. With stunning speed, the big tech megalomaniacs have quietly rolled back their net-zero pledges and lined up by Trump’s side, hellbent on sacrificing this world’s real and precious resources and creativity at the altar of a vampiric, virtual realm. This is the last great heist, and they are getting ready to ride out the storms they themselves are summoning – and they will try to defame and destroy anyone who gets in their way.

Consider Vance’s recent European sojourn, where the vice-president harangued world leaders for “handwringing about safety” in relation to job-destroying AI while demanding Nazi and fascist speech go uncurtailed online. At one point he made a telling aside, expecting a laugh that never came: “If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.”

View image in fullscreen

JD Vance speaks at the Munich Security Conference in February. Photograph: dts News Agency Germany/REX/Shutterstock

His comment echoed those made by his equally humorless patron Thiel. In recent interviews focused on the theological underpinnings of his far-right politics, the Christian billionaire has repeatedly compared the indefatigable young climate activist to the antichrist – a figure he warns was prophesied to come bearing a misleading message of “peace and safety”. “If Greta gets everyone on the planet to ride a bicycle, maybe that’s a way to solve climate change, but it has sort of this quality of going from the frying pan into the fire,” Thiel intoned.

Why Thunberg, why now? In part, it’s clearly the apocalyptic fear of regulation eating into their super-profits: accordingto Thiel, the science-based climate action Thunberg and others demand could only be enforced by a “totalitarian state”, which he claims is more dire a threat than climate breakdown (most distressingly, the taxes under such conditions would be “quite high”). There may also be something else about Thunberg that frightens them: her steadfast commitment to this planet and the many life forms who call it home – not to simulations of this world generated by AI, or to a hierarchy of those deserving of life and those who are not, nor to any of the various extra-planetary escape fantasies the end times fascists are selling.

She is committed to staying, while the end times fascists have, at least in their imaginings, already left this realm, ensconced in their opulent shelters or transcended to the digital ether, or to Mars.

Shortly after Trump’s re-election, one of us had the opportunity to Anohni, one of the few musicians who have attempted to make art that wraps its arms around the death drive that has gripped our world. Asked about what connects the willingness of powerful people to let the planet burn and the drive to deny bodily autonomy to women and to trans people like her, she responded by drawing on her Irish Catholic upbringing: it’s “a very long-held myth that we are enacting and embodying. This is the culmination of their Rapture. This is their escape from the voluptuous cycle of creation. This is their escape from Mother.”

How do we break this apocalyptic fever? First, we help each other face the depth of the depravity that has gripped the hard right in all of our countries. To move forward with focus, we must first understand this simple fact: we are up against an ideology that has given up not only on the premise and promise of liberal democracy but on the livability of our shared world – on its beauty, on its people, on our children, on other species. The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants.

Second, we counter their apocalyptic narratives with a far better story about how to survive the hard times ahead without leaving anyone behind. A story capable of draining end times fascism of its gothic power and galvanizing a movement ready to put it all on the line for our collective survival. A story not of end times, but of better times; not of separation and supremacy, but of interdependence and belonging; not of escaping, but staying put and staying faithful to the troubled earthly reality in which we are enmeshed and bound.

This basic sentiment, of course, is not new. It is central to Indigenous cosmologies, and it lies at the heart of animism. Go back far enough and every culture and faith has its own tradition of respecting the sanctity of here, and not searching for Zion in an elusive ever-distant promised land. In eastern Europe, before the fascist and Stalinist annihilations, the Jewish socialist Labor Bund organized around the yiddish concept of Doikayt, or “hereness”. Molly Crabapple, who has written a forthcoming book about this neglected history, defines Doikayt as the right to “fight for freedom and safety in the places where they lived, in defiance of everyone who wanted them dead” – and rather than be forced to flee to safety in Palestine or the United States. Perhaps what is needed is a modern-day universalization of that concept: a commitment to the right to the “hereness” of this particular ailing planet, to these frail bodies, to the right to live in dignity wherever on the planet we are, even when the inevitable shocks forces us to move. “Hereness” can be portable, free of nationalism, rooted in solidarity, respectful of indigenous rights and unbounded by borders.

View image in fullscreen

Anti-Trump protesters march against the administration in New York in January. Photograph: Julius Constantine Motal/The Guardian

That future would require its own apocalypse, its own world-ending and revelation, though of a very different sort. Because as the scholar of policing Robyn Maynard has observed: “In order to make earthly planetary survival possible, some versions of this world need to end.”

We have reached a choice point, not about whether we are facing apocalypse but what form it will take. The activist sisters Adrienne Maree and Autumn Brown touched on this recently on their aptly named podcast, How to Survive the End of the World. In this moment, when end times fascism is waging war on every front, new alliances are essential. But instead of asking: “Do we all share the same worldview?” Adrienne urges us to ask: “Is your heart beating and do you plan to live? Then come this way and we will figure out the rest on the other side.”

To have a hope of combating the end times fascists, with their ever-constricting and asphyxiating concentric circles of “ordered love”, we will need to build an unruly open-hearted movement of the Earth-loving faithful: faithful to this planet, its people, its creatures and to the possibility of a livable future for us all. Faithful to here. Or, to quote Anohni again, this time referring to the goddess in which she now places her faith: “Have you stopped to consider that this might have been her best idea?”

---

---

---

rww

2nd on apoc

MAGA Pastor Shane Vaughn Says Trump's Tariffs Are 'Prophecy' In Preparation For The End Times

04/09/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Shane Vaughn is a viciously bigoted and racist right-wing pastor who openly admits that he is a full-blown "cult follower" of President Donald Trump.

As such, it was no surprise to see Vaughn go completely off the rails during his program Tuesday evening in defending Trump's tariff policy, which as been rattling the international economy and tanking the stock market for the last week, by declaring that it is all part of God's plan for the End Times.

"You're becoming part of a new world order [but] not in a bad way," Vaughn said. "The order of the present world is being shaken by a man called Donald Trump, the breaker himself. He is changing the world as we know it. Very few times in history does one man change the world—Alexander of Greece, Caesar of Rome, Charlemagne—on and on and on, there's few men that change the world—Napoleon—but when they do, the world shifts. You're standing in the shift. Donald Trump has gone to war with Babylon."

"It is prophecy being fulfilled," Vaughn continued. "Donald Trump has been raised up by Yahweh to destroy globalism for his beloved America. There's a reason for that: Yahweh divided the nations at the Tower of Babel and declared they would never ever unite until the son of God returns and sets up his government, his one world government, here on planet Earth."

"When I told you earlier you're living in a moment of a changing world, that was not hyperbole, that is a fact," Vaughn declared. "These tariffs, they are not just policy, they are prophecy. You've got to get that deep in your mind tonight, because now that globalism is dead, it is literally Trump against the world. He has turned the world upside down, and now the nations are clamoring, everything is unbalanced. And I know the mainstream media thinks that's bad, but they couldn't be further from the truth. This is the bold judgments coming upon the world. Yahweh has raised up a man, the breaker himself, to bring to pass those things that must happen in the End Times."

---

---

04/03/2025

by

Peter Montgomery

President Donald Trump told NBC News on Sunday that he was “not joking” about the possibility of seeking a third term as president, which is expressly forbidden by the Constitution. Trump has previously floated the idea, sometimes jokingly, at his political rallies.

While some Trump allies laugh off Trump’s comments as trolling designed to upset and distract his political opponents, Trump’s cheerleaders at Pentecostal-oriented media outlet Charisma told readers that a third Trump term could be part of God’s divine plan for America.

Trump was asked by NBC about one scenario floated by some Trump supporters, including “prophet” Shane Vaughn, in which Vice President J.D. Vance would run in 2028 with Trump as his vice presidential running mate, and then step down and hand over the reins. “That’s one” method, Trump said, claiming, “But there are others, too.”

The Constitution clearly forbids anyone from running for vice president who is not eligible to serve as president, which would disqualify Trump. But Trump has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to flout the Constitution, and his allies are currently seeking to dismantle the federal courts’ role as a check on unconstitutional or illegal behavior by the president.

Some journalists have grappled with whether and how to report on talk of a third term, which some see as nothing more than an effort to deflect media and public attention from the scandal over a serious breach of national security by top defense and intelligence officials.

But given the contempt that Trump and his supporters have shown for the rule of law, it’s impossible to say for sure that there is no such scheming under way. Those who planned the Project 2025 presidency plotted unconstitutional and illegal acts that Trump has moved to implement by executive order. Trump and many of his allies tried awfully hard to overturn the 2020 election and pushed then-Vice President Mike Pence to violate the law and Constitution to stop Congress for affirming Joe Biden’s electoral college victory.

One of Project 2025’s champions, MAGA operative Steve Bannon, told journalist Chris Cuomo earlier in March, “I’m a firm believer that President Trump will run again in 2028,” saying, “We’re working on it. I think we’ll have a couple of alternatives.”

We know that Bannon and Trump are both admirers of authoritarian leaders. Maybe they’re taking some inspiration from Trump’s allyin El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele, who ran for reelection last year despite the plain language of the Constitution against a president serving consecutive terms. After taking power in 2021, Bukele “moved quickly to weaken checks and balances, undermine the rule of law, and co-opt the country’s judiciary, consolidating power in the executive.” Sound familiar? Last year, Bukele and his allies made additional changes to the Constitution that further consolidate his power.

Rep. Dan Goldman toldMSNBC’s Jen Psaki that Trump’s claims should be taken seriously given that they are part of the president’s ongoing effort to “break our democracy.”

Since Trump made his weekend “not joking” comments, some of his allies have mocked the media for treating the possibility seriously. On the FlashPoint program, Christian nationalist Rick Green laughed about Trump’s “masterful” trolling, which he said is designed to distract Trump’s opponents. “I don’t think there’s anybody in the White House that actually takes this serious or would say there’s a way for him to do this,” said Green. “There is no way for him to do this. He knows that. He’s just trolling them.”

Green delivered the same message on the WallBuilders show April 2, calling Trump’s conversation about a third term “one of the greatest trolls ever.” But then he undermined that message by claiming that there’s “nuance” in the Constitution’s language forbidding a third term.

Some Republican congressional leaders have downplayed the possibility, saying Trump has a “great sense of humor” and is “messing with” his opponents. But other GOP officials, perhaps not sure themselves whether Trump is trolling or imagining himself as a forever president, have been less forceful. “I don’t think that’s a real serious conversation at this point in time,” RNC chair Michael Whatley toldFox News.

Meanwhile, over at Charisma, a wildly sycophantic pro-Trump media platform, content development editor Abby Trivett examinedwhat a potential third Trump term might mean from a “prophetic standpoint”:

Trump has been touted as potentially the “last president” of the United States as we know it.The New World Order also could be lurking just around the corner, if the U.S. really were to acquire Greenland and resume greater control of the Panama Canal.

From the moment Trump took office in 2016, many prophetic voices declared that he carried a “Cyrus anointing”—a God-ordained leader raised up to fulfill a specific purpose. But what if Trump’s assignment is not yet complete? Could a third term—whether through legal technicalities or unconventional political maneuvers—be part of God’s sovereign plan?

As we race toward the end times, could this all very well be part of God’s divine strategy to restore righteousness, protect religious freedom and push back against dark forces seeking to weaken America?

Far from being a mere political event, a third Trump term could be a sign of God’s mercy—a window of opportunity for the nation to return to its Judeo-Christian roots. The church must rise with boldness, covering Trump in prayer and interceding for God’s purposes to prevail. If this is indeed a sovereign move, it may mark not only the preservation of America but also a powerful catalyst for revival, reformation and a renewed stand against the encroaching darkness of the age.

---

===

alternet-424 no lnx

Extreme apocalyptic rhetoric is everywhere

Steve Bannon speaking with attendees at the 2023 Turning Point Action Conference at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. Image via Gage Skidmore.

Lindsay Beyerstein April 23, 2024

Judging by her 100,000-follower X account, Danielle Johnson was a typical astrology influencer. She chided Cancers to stop being chaotic and Tauruses to lay off the carbs. She burned candles, cast spells and peddled energy healing sessions.

It was your standard sunny apolitical pseudo-spiritual shtick, but her tone darkened abruptly in the days leading up to the solar eclipse.

Jones started sharing antisemitic conspiracy theories and QAnon verbiage. She retweeted far-right conspiracy mogul Alex Jones, antivax loon Naomi Wolf and a Jew-hating flat-earther.

As an astrologer, Johnson was primed to believe that celestial bodies influence daily life, but this was different. She seemed to believe something terrible was coming and that real-life action was needed.

She begged her fellow spiritual healers to keep their people safe. On April 5, she tweeted, “WAKE UP WAKE UP THE APOCALYPSE IS HERE.” The coming eclipse, she said, was the epitome of spiritual warfare. It was time to pick a side.

In the early morning hours of eclipse day, Johnson plunged a knife into the heart of her boyfriend, threw her children from a speeding car, and plowed into a tree at a hundred miles an hour. Johnson is dead, as is her boyfriend and her infant daughter. We are left with grief and questions.

In light of her social media and the tarot cards strewn around the crime scene, investigators initially suspected that the apocalyptic anxiety may have been a factor in the killings, but now they say we’ll never know. Johnson and her boyfriend are dead and it’s hard to explain what went wrong. Neither Johnson nor her partner had a record of domestic violence. Johnson’s mother confirmed that her daughter had a history of postpartum depression.

Johnson’s case isn’t as clear-cut as that of Taylon Celestine who announced that God had commanded her to start shooting people because of the eclipse before she opened fire on I-10 in Florida, hitting two drivers.

Extreme apocalyptic rhetoric is everywhere. Most of us shrug it off and get on with our lives, minding our carbs and keeping the chaos in check, but some people are vulnerable. Maybe they’ve been spiritually or politically radicalized, maybe they’re suffering from mental illness.

Politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene, operatives like Steve Bannon and Alex Jones, and clerics like demoted bishop Joseph Strickland flooded the zone with eclipse-related bulls—t. They spoke of martial law, demonic portals and the urgent need to repent before the judgment of God. Donald Trump routinely tells his followers that he is their retribution and promises to lead them in the Battle of Armageddon. This kind of talk has become so normalized it’s hard to draw causal connections between rhetoric and violence. That’s the point.

These far right eclipse influencers probably didn’t mean to incite violence — this time. The eclipse was just more low-effort content. They keep themselves rich and powerful by keeping their audience in a constant state of terror and rage. They’ll exploit whatever’s in the news to do it. Stoking this turmoil is useful because these people can be activated, like when the faithful were called to the Capitol on January 6 for “spiritual warfare” against the seat of American democracy.

Terrified true believers are a fertile field for stochastic terrorism. That’s when a demagogue with a huge platform demonizes an enemy knowing that in a country with any number of disturbed people and who knows how many guns, something terrible could easily happen.

The gym chain Planet Fitness has received bomb threats at 38 locations across the country after the anti-trans Twitter account LibsofTikTok (LoTT) put the establishment on blast for canceling the membership of a patron who photographed another guest in the women’s locker room and shared on to social media, accusing the person of being a man. Schools and hospitals have also been hit with bomb threats after negative attention from LoTT.

If someone follows through on one of these bomb threats, it will probably be impossible to prove that LoTT is to blame. That’s the nature of stochastic terrorism. It creates a climate of fear where people and businesses may not speak out for fear of being targeted.

It’s too late to help Danielle Johnson, or even to fully understand what drove her crime spree. But it’s not too late to repudiate the apocalyptic clout-chasing that she was tapped into.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Alex Jones is 'a dangerous kind of mentally ill' and even 'more unhinged and weirder' in person: Ex-wife ›

How Steve Bannon uses his Capitol Hill 'cavelike studio' to fuel House GOP chaos: report ›

Watch: Marjorie Taylor Greene accused of kicking woman after telling activist to 'move to another country' ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

How Alex Jones mainstreamed conspiracy theories : NPR ›

Did Steve Bannon just turn Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz ... ›

Marjorie Taylor Greene: Capitol attack 'would've been armed' if I was ...

---