The White Rage Apocalypse and Their HOLY WAR

holy war

“In 2016, I declared I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.”

~ Donald Trump, March 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference

“It’s coming to war. A holy war for the white race, a white homeland, a future for our people.”

~ Mark of the Texas Aryan Nationalist Skinheads

— An essay by Kayla Smith

Introduction

As the United States enters the quadrennial term, with the 2024 Presidential Election in November, we are witnessing a battle of apocalyptic rhetoric promoting systematic destruction.¹With political leaders propagating apocalyptic meta-narratives of their opponents and labeling said opponents as national “threats to democracy,” the increasing pervasiveness of political polarization has pushed the country into a state of unease.² Alongside this propaganda, the U.S. is also seeing primarily right-wing elected officials incite radicalization, ethnonationalism, and extremism among white supremacists. These officials actively weaponize religious symbols and political conflicts to promote their agendas and apocalyptic worldviews.³
The apocalyptic rhetoric and dangerous demagoguery from political actors and elected officials have amplified a sinister precedent carried by the white power movement. According to these officials, “the blood of our country” is being “poison[ed].”⁴ They frame this narrative as evidence to support a revolution in defense of “true” democratic rights and the values of the “hard-working” American.⁵ Their language echoes the messages delivered by white supremacists. Like the white power movement, hidden within the messages of far-right political leaders is a call to drastic, often violent, action.
American politically-motivated violence began most notably in the mid-18th century, primarily spurred by politicians provoking violence to yield political outcomes.⁶ Emphasizing the rise of far-right and white supremacist political violence in the late 1960s and 70s, Rachel Kleinfeld’s essay, “The Rise of Political Violence in the United States,” notes that this violence — particularly planned violence rather than spontaneous hate crimes — are older and more established than typical terrorists and violent criminals.⁷ In the 21st century, apocalyptic rhetoric from politicians continues to incite extreme anti-democratic behavior that fuels white supremacist culture. White supremacists and nationalists believe this violence is necessary to preserve the Founding Fathers’ original political goals outlined in response to a perceived decline of the state.⁸ As apocalyptic radicalization spreads, white power groups, fueled by their beliefs, are reacting with rage, violence, and terrorism.
Though not all white power groups utilize physically militant action, extreme, terroristic cases of the “white rage apocalypse” are growing increasingly sinister, violent, and threatening to American democracy. White supremacists’ dangerous rhetoric states that “introducing diversity” into the “white nation” is responsible for the white race’s “replacement.” The concept of a diverse nation (inclusive of different ethnic backgrounds, gender identities, religious identities, etc.) is thus treated as a direct threat to the dominance of whiteness and white culture in the United States.⁹ Identifying as the “true” Aryan American Christians, inheritors of Israel and the Kingdom of Yahweh (the new America), these “Soldiers of God” have declared war on democracy.¹⁰ These Soldiers of God, white nationalists and members of the white power movement, consist of groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, White Aryan Resistance (WAR), National Alliance, Aryan Brotherhood, Posse Comitatus, “any number of skinhead groups and militias,” Heritage Front, National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP), White Maidens, Women for Aryan Unity, Aryan Nations, and more.¹¹ These movements are not homogenous; instead, they display a varied range of identities, tactics, education, ideologies, and political affiliations. Despite these differences, the individual movements and groups all share similar core beliefs and motivations that overlap with the white supremacist movement: that is, “the belief that the white race is superior to all others,” and more importantly, the belief that there is a systematic “conspiracy to destroy the white race.”¹²This standpoint supports the extremist call to “unify in advocacy of violence in response to perceived persecution.”¹³ Beneath the umbrella of white supremacy, these white nationalists and white power activists believe that, by overthrowing the current system (controlled, they feel, by Jews, immigrants, and non-white peoples) and establishing their “New Aryan America,” they will re-conquer, reestablish, and re-secure their rightful position as the superior race — as descendants of Adam, chosen by God.¹⁴ The following paper explores this apocalyptic Holy War against democracy and how American political actors’ apocalyptic rhetoric incites, reinforces, and perpetuates such expectations and ideologies. Focusing specifically on President Donald Trump’s political polarization and demagoguery through his exploitation of white rage, the paper investigates how polarization and weaponized hatred, reinforced through apocalyptic meta-narratives, are anti-democratic and lead to the death of American democracy.

“Violence as a Trigger for War”: Charlottesville as the Catalyst

“This represents a turning point for the people of this country,” proclaimed American politician and former Klansman David Duke as he and hundreds of members of the white supremacist movement gathered throughout downtown Charlottesville, Virginia. On the evenings of August 11th and 12th, 2017, the “Unite the Right” rally sent crowds of torch-bearing white nationalists, supremacists, Neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and numerous other groups parading across Lee Park and the University of Virginia campus. Congregating around the monument in the park’s center, protesters cheered as Duke declared, “We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump because he said he’s going to take our country back.”¹⁵
Emblematic of the Nazi Third Reich’s doctrine of racial purity, Blut und Boden (“Blood and Soil”), participants of the Charlottesville rallies believed in the Great Replacement theory. At the foundation of the “Unite the Right” rally is the movement’s declaration, which hinges on a belief in “the impending destruction of the white race.”¹⁶ With what they perceive as an ongoing “white genocide,” their fears mobilized into an ongoing war. White nationalists and racists view the Charlottesville rally, like other recent demonstrations, as an example of what Neo-Nazi and former Klansman, Jeff Schoep, describes as the “white civil rights movement.” At a 2017 Pikeville, Kentucky rally, Schoep claimed, “We are the front line of the fight for the white race. We are the shock troops for the white race.”¹⁸ White nationalists both feed a narrative that depicts a systematic replacement of white people, as well as use this “myth” to suggest that the potential consequences of racial equality justify violence and death as necessary collateral in the preservation of white populations.¹⁹ As the Charlottesville movement marched, they repeated chants: “You will not replace us/Jews will not replace us,” “Blood and Soil,” “White Lives Matter!,” and the “Fourteen words: ‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.’” Their message was loud and clear: this is a race war where “the other,” a threat to the white race, must be eradicated.
The Charlottesville rally quickly descended into violence through confrontations with counter-protesters. Neo-Nazi James Alex Fields rammed his car into a crowd, injuring 19 and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Police did not intervene until Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency near noon on August 12th. In his statement, Trump reprimanded the violence but refused to denounce the racial and nationalist groups or their perspectives. In the ensuing aftermath of the “Unite the Right” rally, and following Donald Trump’s controversial response, more fuel was added to the raging flame and civil unrest. Instead, he claimed, “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides — on many sides.”²⁰ Upon issuing this response, the president was met with criticism and scrutiny. He then released additional statements stating that racists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other hate group criminals “are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”²¹ The belated criticism was short-lived, as Trump quickly recanted much of the statement in defense of his initial response during a press conference on August 15th, 2017. During this pre-recorded and highly publicized speech, he once again shifted the blame to target both sides.
Trump’s language, as pointed out by CNN’s Ryan Young, was ambiguous and left plenty of room for interpretation. Trump’s vague claims, sometimes referred to by professor of psychology Brian P. Tilley as “dog whistles,” likely created a false sense of moral clarity for his white nationalist supporters and fanned the white rage apocalypse.²² Charlottesville was only a precursor. The rally functioned as a catalyst for the violence that ensued after the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s apocalyptic rhetoric (i.e., “America First,” “Make America Great Again,” “Stop the Steal,” and, more recently, in 2024, “This is not a Prosecution. This is a Persecution,”) provided before and after events like Charlottesville, offered (and offers) his followers justification for pursuing a domestic and global war in the name of Aryan America. The Charlottesville rally would be a major advancement for the white nationalist cause, a divine purging born from white rage and divine politics.

White Rage and the Religion of Whiteness

As stated by the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) New Hate and Old 2022 report, white supremacist sentiments go beyond mere racism and bigotry. Rather than a collection of prejudices, white supremacy is a complete ideology and worldview that is as deeply rooted as religious beliefs. Its historical origins in the United States stem from the antebellum South in response to abolitionist movements during the Civil War era. Whiteness being treated as a dominant higher power, socially, culturally, economically, and politically, traces back as far as the 14th to 15th centuries during the age of exploration and colonization throughout the Western world. Catlyn Kenna Keenan emphasizes American white supremacy’s interconnected relationship with American Christianity. The “creation of race” was born from Christianity’s colonial and institutional history. Intersecting with patriarchal structures, the production of wealth, political order, and capital in European markets granted whiteness to its tendencies of subjugation. Whiteness later granted the ownership of wealth, land, women, and slaves.²⁴ Owning and enslaving racialized bodies, under the Christian doctrine, was sanctioned and justified as an institutional mechanism that reinforced white power. The creation of race thus became intertwined with religion. As historian George Frederickson notes, “the symbolic association of blackness with evil and death and whiteness with goodness and purity unquestionably had some effect in predisposing light-skinned people against those with darker pigmentation.”²⁵ With Scripture acting as ‘truth,’ and the violent spread of Christianity amongst colonized peoples, the narrative of the “less than” permeated white Christian perspectives and faith, further racializing non-whites.
As racism spread across America following the Transatlantic Slave Trade, American Christianity served as civil law and established standards that enforced subjugation over and justification of enslaved Africans from the fifteenth into the eighteenth centuries. The “institutionalization of fear” justified increasingly violent forms of control as abolitionist movements, slave rebellions, and political tensions escalated. The religious creation of race was later strengthened with the introduction of “racial essentialism” – an idea that reinforced the social hierarchies established by whiteness. Racial essentialism in the 19th century heavily integrated political, economic, religious, medical, and educational institutions with racism, introducing race as a means of determining a group’s capabilities, intellect, biological “differences,” and value.²⁶ Even after the emancipation (January 1st, 1863) and liberation of African Americans (slavery was officially ablished and made illegal on December 6th, 1865) following the Civil War (April 12, 1861– Apr 9, 1865), the emergence of racist hate groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, cemented white rage as a rationale for challenging the cultural landscape that began to shift away from a slave-owning country. The Jim Crow era (ranging between the 1870s and 1960s) reinforced the anti-Black sentiments and extreme racism of white hate groups through the legalization of Black oppression. The Jim Crow Museum underscores this reinforcement, stating that white supremacist beliefs “undergirded” the Jim Crow system:

[White] people were superior to black people in all important ways, including but not limited to intelligence, morality, and civilized behavior; sexual relations between black people and white people would produce a mongrel race which would destroy America; treating black people as equals would encourage interracial sexual unions; any activity which suggested social equality encouraged interracial sexual relations; if necessary, violence must be used to keep black people at the bottom of the racial hierarchy.²⁷

The Jim Crow era also made room for further rationalization of racial essentialism through the rise of eugenics and scientific racism, primarily in the 1930s. The practice of Jim Crow eugenics brought legitimacy to the racial systems that continued to subjugate and persecute African Americans. White nationalist and supremacist ideologies of biological superiority were intensely perpetuated by eugenics, which ran parallel with the rise of anti-Semitic eugenics in 1930s Germany. The biopolitics and racial ideology of Nazi Germany drew their inspiration from American racism, a significant point investigated in James Q. Whitman’s book Hitler’s American Model. Whitman draws attention to Hitler’s praises of America’s racial laws in his manifesto Mein Kampf. This racial exchange is revealing in how deep the mutual influence of racism and eugenic practices between Jim Crow America and Nazi Germany went. In their mutual exchange, Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitism and xenophobia spread across America following the birth of white national and religious identities. Fear and hatred fueled the conspiracies that the “other” were seeds of Satan who threatened to spoil the blood of the white homeland and its people. The diaspora of white rage adopted ideologies of Nazism, Christian Identity, paleoconservatism, racialism, separationism, and other forms of racist hatred.²⁸ With Christianity’s justification of racism, the relationship between race and religion deepened.
Today, these racial ideologies are amplified by the Great Replacement theory, which takes the racist sentiments from the past and reinterprets them as modern apocalyptic narratives of systematic destruction. To this point, the narrative of white rage justifies who is deserving of living and dying. Whiteness becomes a theological system that brings into existence the “other” and perpetuates their existence with the division of racialized people into categories of good and evil. Originating from fear turned resentment, “the religion of whiteness is rage. Rage gives way to various forms of violence,” and white supremacy is the epitome of this violence.²⁹
Whiteness is a structure of generative power and is “precisely a racialized, social, affective, and religious norm that allows for manifold expressions of (out)rage at the perception that such a norm would be challenged or dislodged.”³⁰ The narrative norm of white racial dominance in the United States has adapted to the shifting progressive culture (i.e., the increasing diversity and striving for racial equality) throughout the country and the world. The contemporary ideology of white supremacy focuses on the “Great Replacement theory” as its basis and generates a new narrative of the extinction of the white race due to growing populations of non-white peoples in Western nations.
The Great Replacement theory, deriving from French nationalism in the early 20th century, was popularized by French writer and critic Renaud Camus in his 2011 essay Le Grand Remplacement. Central to this theory is the perspective that the white race is being replaced by an influx of non-white people, immigrants, and refugees (moving into European countries) and that this change threatens white culture and society. Despite Camus denying racism or anti-Semitism, the Replacement theory rapidly permeated anti-Semitic and fascist ideologies. Adopted by white supremacist movements, the Replacement theory pivoted the narrative to “white genocide.” Chants such as “The Fourteen Words: ‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,’” and “You will not replace us,” were made in the “efforts to wake white people up to their ostensible dire racial future.”³¹ With the emergence of the Great Replacement theory and claims of Jewish control of the world, the radical spread of these racial assertions in far-right circles, on social media, and in online chat rooms has helped fuel terrorist attacks and racial violence against ethnic minority populations in Western countries. Frequently, the perpetrators of these crimes cite the Replacement theory, claiming that overpopulation or preservation of land and cultural ideals justify killing “invaders.” Spurred by an apocalyptic rage, hatred of their enemy, and love for their nation, the violence committed by individuals in the white power movement is “meant to mobilize white people around the world to wage a race war.”³²
The impact of religious influences was not lost as the movement’s narratives shifted, with the sentiments of modern-day white supremacy still reflecting its Christian predecessor. The narratives spun throughout white supremacy’s history are all plagued with perceived crises of a world populated and controlled by Jewish and non-white people. In the white supremacist perception, the white race is on the brink of extinction at the hands of racialized people. Distress over losing ownership of the world and the future stems from white supremacists’ fears of the “other.” All non-white populations previously deemed “subhuman” are now evil “enemies” of the world. The theological concept of apocalypse is embedded within the rhetoric of the white power movement, weaponized in a way that launches new white supremacist narratives for not only “unity amongst the right[eous]” but to “take back America.” Charles Lee, Grand Dragon of the White Camelia Knights of the KKK of Texas and member of the radical right, reflects as much:

There is no doubt in my mind that it’s all originating with the Jews, and it’s all part of Satan’s plan to destroy white Christians…There is the myth of equality being forced down the throats of white kids, whose eyes tell them differently. This has to stop. We have to remove the foreign, liberal, and the Jewish influences if we, as a people and a nation, are to survive.³³

Christian Identity, which political historian and author Kathleen Belew notes as one of the movement’s two most prominent theologies, “foretold the impending end of the world…call[ing] its adherents to arms,”

The faithful would either have to outlast the tribulations to see the return of Christ, becoming survivalists, or would have to take up arms to clear the world of nonbelievers in the End Times. Nonbelievers, in Christian Identity, included all nonwhite people. In other words, Christian Identity transfigured race war into holy war.³⁴

In their embrace of terrorism, accelerationism, and violence, the white power movement and Soldiers of God believe they will be successful in the rebirth of America and the world and “freedom” for the perpetrators of this war, undermining the democratic system and its values in the process.³⁵

The Brief Origins of Apocalypse

The origins of apocalypse and apocalypticism are significant when identifying their shift in meaning over time. According to American biblical scholar John J. Collins on apocalyptic eschatology, an apocalypse is defined as “a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient.”³⁶More distinctly, apocalypse is a genre written for a specific audience during a specific time. Apocalyptic literature is crisis literature. Emphasized by Professor of Religious Studies Mitchell Reddish, “These writings were produced during a time of perceived crisis to offer hope to oppressed and beleaguered individuals by giving them an alternative picture of reality.”³⁷ The perceived crises may vary from militaristic, political, or religious oppression, and a sense of alienation and reclusiveness. No matter the form the crisis comes in, real or perceived, the keyword is “perception.” It is important to note that in this crisis writing and reaction, each apocalypse is written to address a significant circumstance during a given period, meaning that traditional apocalyptic literature does not directly translate for 21st-century readers to apply to their modern contexts. Yet, apocalyptic narratives possess “symbolic flexibility,” as each story utilizes a dense network of cryptic imagery and symbolism that “allows the audience to experience for themselves the revelation that is being ‘re-presented or re-actualized for them.’”³⁸
The apocalyptic narratives pertaining to Christian rhetoric, separated from their traditional literary format, “connect[s] intimate experiences of life with larger questions and issues… smooth[ing] over contradictions that might give rise to dissonance or doubt.”³⁹ The interpretive flexibility of apocalyptic narratives enables the audience’s response to any rhetorical situation to “repurpose otherwise irreligious events to their own ends…mov[ing] beyond the sacred and deploy[ing] vigor to otherwise secular topics.”⁴⁰Apocalyptic flexibility can construct a new apocalypse to be interpreted. With this in mind, apocalypse can be redefined in the context of the apocalyptic rhetoric of whiteness. In Michael Scott Walton’s dissertation, he redefines apocalypse to mean: “an event or series of events that a rhetor transforms into an imminent and cataclysmic end to the structures, systems, and institutions that make up an audience’s known world.”⁴¹ A new question arises with Walton’s new definition: “Whose world, exactly, is expected to end?”⁴² Discourse surrounding the apocalypse of the world is often framed as a universal concern for all of humanity. Increased interest, concern, and anticipation of the apocalypse, the “end of the world,” “human extinction,” and “global catastrophe” are reflected in pop culture media, social science studies, and political and global affairs. Despite the global interest, the leading institutions, scholarship, and studies in the field of global catastrophe are predominantly Western and white. In the overrepresentation of white and Western contributors, non-Western and non-white perspectives are often disregarded and underrepresented. Professors Audra Mitchell and Aadita Chaudhury note that apocalypse discourse from white, Western entities imagines the “end of the world” as the end of the institution of whiteness; it foresees the collapse of the generative power and hegemony of whiteness. Whiteness’ apocalyptic frameworks “are too often constructed through forms of power that negate, oppress, and super-exploit particular human bodies, societies, and ways of being.”⁴³ Considering the relationship between whiteness and the global formations of colonization and capitalism, the fear in question is of the end of the privileges and control sustained by whiteness that these systemic structures benefit from. Ownership is rooted in whiteness, and thus, ownership of the world is made possible with whiteness at the helm. Mitchell and Chaudhury expand on this ownership,

These multi-scalar structures work by segregating bodies through the inscription of racial difference, privileging those they recognize or construct as ‘white’ and unequally distributing harms to those that they do not. Whiteness is also a form of property that accrues benefits – including material, physical, and other forms of security – and pervasive forms of power, across space, time, and social structures. Due in part to its transformation through long-duration, global patterns of violence and conquest, whiteness takes unique forms wherever and whenever it coalesces, so it should not be treated as universal – despite its own internal claims to this status.⁴⁴

For the white power movement, apocalypse of the world begins when ownership of the world is shared with non-white bodies. Power is now shared with the global threat: those who are threatening have education, the right to practice non-Christian faiths, and the right to vote, and they have growing wealth and social influence. The shift in power is devastating because it means the end of structures dominated by white power, and this perceived apocalypse only serves to incite a violent response to the white race’s demise.
Walton’s definition of apocalypse expands from his core idea of white nationalist rhetoric, as it is significant to the political weaponization of white nationalist apocalyptic narratives. White nationalist rhetoric is a linguistic tool that constructs new apocalypses informed by the Great Replacement theory, further reinforcing the meta-narrative of the systematic destruction of white populations and culture by non-white populations.⁴⁵When non-white populations enter a “white” nation, white nationalist rhetoric constructs and weaponizes apocalyptic narratives that situate progressive ideas (diversity, inclusion, and racial equality) as destructive. The rhetoric also establishes that liberal ideas deceptively program the country to continue the systematic replacement of white people. White nationalist rhetoric evokes the worldview that “encourages audiences to view minorities as threats to the white nation and to act in violent self-defense.”⁴⁶ These narratives spread from small, isolated sects of white supremacy groups into large movements across the country, allowing for their apocalyptic expectations to seep further into the mainstream. More dangerous than this seepage are elected government officials utilizing apocalyptic rhetoric and demagoguery for their political agendas. Clear in the aftermath of Trump’s 2016 presidency and the current state of affairs as of 2023-24 is that white nationalist apocalypticism poses a great threat to the integrity of America’s democratic values and the civil rights of immigrants and American citizens. As such, political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt state: “Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves...Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box.”⁴⁷

Political Apocalypticism and Apocalyptic Rhetoric

The strength of apocalyptic narratives, within apocalyptic literature, makes the genre particularly intriguing. Many apocalypse stories have been adapted and reinterpreted to fit the standards and circumstances of new, more modern movements. Born from these circumstances is the “political myth.” Coined in Henry Tudor’s 1975 book of the same name, a ‘political myth’ is a narrative whose purpose is to emphasize the links between the governing and its subjects, as well as the past, present, and future of certain groups.⁴⁸ Political myths are dramatic stories and reconstructions of histories established “in order to come to grips with reality,” and “through which ‘collectivities’ — in this context especially nations — establish and determine the foundations of their own being, their own system or morality, and values.”⁴⁹Political myths help political communities form because, due to each group’s collective solidarity around their constructed identities and past, the myths “justif[y] why those who govern have the right to do so and why the community should obey them.”⁵⁰
The keyword, when examining the impact of political myths, is “perception.” According to philosopher Chiara Bottici and author Challand Benoit, a political myth becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.⁵¹Furthermore, because political myths affect and shape what a community considers legitimate, they become tools for society to understand and assess global politics. Political myths “constitute the ideological baggage of nationalist ideologies,” and are, subsequently, woven into a“religion of politics.”⁵²According to Emilio Gentile’s Politics as Religion, “myths give the nation-state a saintly quality and represent it as a sublime ideal for which people are prepared to die.”⁵³
In political mythologies, there exists a marriage between political ideology and religious dogma. Political myths often build narratives that, in some form, blend religious or moral ideals with political ideologies. Communications professor Dana Cloud contends that these narratives remain true to their target audiences, whose religion and politics inform one another.⁵⁴ In the context of political apocalypticism, the fusion of religious and political expectations and ideologies provides a foundation for Philip Lamy’s concept of the “human apocalypse” – a theory that suggests that humans are capable of promoting evil and becoming agents of salvation.⁵⁵
Like any religion, a political myth “attempts to provide and govern a social worldview.” In their most incendiary form, these myths “have [the] power to create conflicts and prejudices against other groups and facilitate stereotyping and scapegoating by influencing the group’s ideas.”⁵⁶Political myths emphasize a perceived, necessary dualism within a group’s ideology. This dualism, found in apocalyptic narratives, highlights a moral and spiritual conflict represented through a battle of good and evil forces. In the context of white nationalism, this spiritual conflict is identified to exist between nonwhite populations, immigrants, and refugees (i.e., the ‘evil’ forces), and the white race (i.e., ‘good’ forces). Moreover, the tension between good and evil in the political myth justifies an “ethical choice.” The reference to ethics is essential in the political myth because it reinforces the perspective that “...it [is] acceptable to believe that desperate measures must be taken” to preserve and defend a group’s country, values, and civil rights.⁵⁷
For the white power movement, as with other groups who embrace political mythologies, the ‘ethical choice’ enables white nationalists to position themselves within their communities, that is, as righteous and morally justified in their violent self-defense. The ethical choice confirms that the perceived apocalyptic threat will eventually lead to the destruction of the systems (of power and dominance) that they benefit from. The rhetoric surrounding the ethical choice in the white power movement’s political myth, thus, becomes a technique used to “justify atrocities against minorities deemed threats by those in power.”⁵⁸This ultimate battle of ‘good’ versus ‘evil,’ in which extremist white audiences view themselves, encourages violence, war, terrorism, and genocide to meet their ideal goal (i.e., a white world occupied by the white race for the white race).⁵⁹
Both cosmically apocalyptic and politically rhetorical, “political myths” enable “the anxieties of both the ruler and ruled [to] be solved, emotions [to] be controlled, radical changes [to] be promoted, certain memories [to] be maintained, political choices [to] be manipulated, and finally national identities [to] be constructed and maintained.”⁶⁰The establishment and preservation of the national identities created through the political myth are significant in the notion of a new nation, hence the secularized religious narrative of the apocalyptic “final kingdom.” Here, the myth of the “final kingdom of the end times” represents a vision of the apocalypse that shall occur, leading to the creation of a new nation for the perceiving citizens of said kingdom/empire. The myth further reinforces the apocalyptic narratives central to shaping a community’s understanding of reality by creating a certain history of development and expansion.⁶¹Political scientist Manuel Garcia Pelayo establishes that apocalypse could serve as a development of the myth of ‘the kingdom of the end times.’ This kingdom serves as the basis, where “great injustice and destruction are perceived,” and where salvation comes through the secularized “final fight against the forces of evil, where the forces of good (justice, truth…) are meant to prevail.” This transforms into Stella Marega’s “the final kingdom.” Thus, the building of a new Christian nation follows the catastrophic final event in which a messianic leader or savior shall lead.⁶²
The myth of the final kingdom has historically been noted as common amongst political entities of colonial or imperial histories. Marega further underscores that the “idea of empire” is “intrinsically linked” to apocalypse, especially in its tendencies to connect with political characters.⁶³These characters often consist of 1) the eschatological destiny assigned to political subjects, 2) the attribution of messianic features to charismatic leaders, and 3) the use of apocalyptic symbols and prophecies in political propaganda. The United States of America, which Maerga uses as an example of the myth of the final kingdom exhibits the sacralization of politics and “the messianic myth of the universal empire [that] advocates defense against chaos and tyranny…”⁶⁴For the white power movement and white nationalist narratives, the United States will serve as the battleground for the apocalyptic conflict seeking to subvert and destroy all that they believe to be theirs: an American nation, a Western culture, and the world as its birthright.

Meta-narratives of White Nationalists and the Vision of New America

The political myth of the final kingdom for the white nationalist narrative establishes the final kingdom as the United States of America, and with Walton’s amended definition of apocalypse, pre-civil war America is the ideal image of the “white nation” envisioned by the white power movement. The white power movement views America as a great nation. However, with racial equality and the maintained idea that “all men are created equal,” America is also a mythical nation. Charles Lee agrees:

We’ve got to get back to it. America was a great country before we turned our backs on religion…We turned our backs on our God so we won’t hurt some Buddhists, Muslims, or atheists’ feelings. Don’t fly the American flag because it offended the Arabs. And we were fighting for them.⁶⁵

The white rage apocalypse encompasses the notion that “our national identity (‘land of the free, the home of the brave’) is both fact and fiction,” reinforced by the “self-deception” of “liberal narratives” that claim liberty and individual freedom are meant for all peoples, both white and non-white.⁶⁶Members of the white rage apocalypse do not believe that liberal narratives are God’s will for the world and his children. God’s will, for white supremacists, is the fulfillment of the Identity prophecy, the establishment of Aryan Israel, and assuming their rightful place in the over of the nation and the world.
The intent of white nationalists who can pull together the radical right is the development of a new Aryan America, in which “their America” is a pure land of one race, not tainted by the sin of miscegenation.⁶⁷ White America is a Christian nation, absent of “foreign” and “satanic” religions that do not worship their God. White America does not permit non-white immigration, and any white immigration is limited to those beneficial to the state. This white nationalistic vision is revered and sought after by Identity Christians. Though not all white nationalists and supremacists identify as religious, the pursuit of a purely Aryan nation, free of non-white people, immigrants, and refugees, is a shared goal in the white power movement. The demonization of non-white populations and their “destructive programs” in the perceived white nation is built upon the Great Replacement Theory – a core element of white nationalist apocalypticism. Walton notes that white nationalist apocalypticism does not necessarily imagine a physically destructive event, but rather the end of the institutions defined by the domination of white populations and Western culture.⁶⁸The apocalyptic rhetoric is delivered through meta-narratives that frame the “other” (non-white people, immigrants, and refugees) as threats to institutions of white power and privilege.
According to John Stephens and Robyn McCallum, the meta-narrative (also master or grand narrative) is “a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge and experience.”⁶⁹The meta-narrative functions to maintain and legitimize modes of power and conformity to “socially determine and approve patterns of behavior, which they do by offering positive role models, proscribing undesirable behavior, and affirming the culture’s ideologies, systems, and institutions” through repetition of smaller or localized narratives over time.⁷⁰Like the political myth, the metanarrative emerges during conditions of distress, instability, cultural conflicts, social or economic changes, and political threats to control the “pace and scope of political, social, and cultural changes happening in the present” by offering order, rationality, and consensus to the turmoil.⁷¹ Meta-narratives alter how we understand and perceive reality, and like the political myth, these narratives formulate dualisms such as good and evil, and us and them. This apocalyptic xenophobia “only rationalizes violence and ostracization of the already marginalized.”⁷²
Andrew F. Wilson’s research on white nationalist apocalyptic discourse (using the Stormfront website as the study) observes the intersection of “faith, nation, and conspiracy has yielded a particular iteration of white nationalism” that clings to the “sense of belonging to…an ethnonationalist ‘spiritual homeland’” in the face of apocalyptic fears.⁷³Walton notes that this reveals that white nationalism is not solely regulated to preserving the geopolitical boundaries of a predominantly white nation like the United States, but also preserving the spiritual boundaries of nations dominated by white Christian culture.⁷⁴Whiteness now defines the spiritual ownership of the nation for white nationalists. Far-right Christian values deriving from racism and white supremacy stem from the belief that the white race is the true Israel of the Bible, with America serving as the spiritual homeland of God’s people. Furthermore, Walton emphasizes the nation as a “haven” as the more significant point of the rhetoric of the white power movement. Since this rhetoric is established in the Great Replacement theory, when the haven for a dominant white culture is threatened, the meta-narrative frames the nationalists as heroic defenders.⁷⁵Believing it to be their heritage and responsibility to their nation, race, and God, their revolution will not be bloodless. Bloodshed is necessary for the current system to fall and for evil to be eradicated:

Aryan Nations Oath of Allegiance: I have the sacred duty to do whatever is necessary to deliver our people from the Jews and bring total victory to the Aryan race…We hereby invoke the blood covenant and declare that we are in a full state of war.⁷⁶

How Democracies Die - Declaration of War

Like the Aryan Nations Oath of Allegiance, another declaration of war was made by the infamous white supremacist, founder of the America First Movement, and far-right political commentator Nick Fuentes,

We’re in a holy war, and I will tell you this. Because we’re willing to die in this holy war, we will make them die in the holy war. And they will go down. We have God on our side, and they will go down with their Satanic master. They have no future in America. The enemies of Christ have no future in this world.⁷⁷

Fuentes made this declaration on the live-streaming platform “Rumble,” where he gave a speech that heavy-handedly insinuated Jewish control of all media and government institutions. He aggressively demonized them as “Jew[ish] murders” who believe all Christians must die.78 Fuentes echoed a claim that many before him have made: the enemies of Christ have no future in America and the world, and they must die so that the people of Christ may live.
William L. Pierce’s The Turner Diaries, though not a Christian text, is still one of the most important and influential extremist books for survivalists and white supremacists on the art of racist guerrilla warfare and terror. Rather than enemies of Christ, Pierce imagined the enemies of the Aryan state, still drawing upon the apocalyptic metanarrative of corruption of the “System” by Jews, liberalism, and the passing of anti-racism laws. Most importantly, The Turner Diaries would set a precedent for decades to come. The Turner Diaries details a deadly insurrection on the Capitol building alongside other organized attacks as they engage in warfare with the “System.” Described as “beautiful” and celebratory, the atrocities depicted convey the hatred and rage rooted in the fantasy of the novel, as well as in people like Pierce,

We saw beautiful blossoms of flame and steel sprouting everywhere, dancing across the asphalt, thundering in the midst of splintered masonry and burning vehicles, erupting now inside and now outside the Capitol, wreaking their bloody toll in the ranks of tyranny and treason…Despite all the noise and smoke and wreckage caused by our attack on the Capitol, only 61 persons were killed, we learned from later news reports. Among these are two Congressmen, one subcabinet official, and four or five senior Congressional staffers. But the real value of all our attacks today lies in the psychological impact, not in the immediate casualties.⁷⁹

The Turner Diaries functions as a how-to guide for underground communication, mobilization, and bomb-building using ammonium nitrate and bunker oil – all tactics used to bomb the Capitol building in the novel. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols mirrored these strategies in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing massacre. The Turner Diaries has offered a blueprint for numerous groups and individuals, and has been cited in at least 40 terrorist attacks and hate crimes.⁸⁰More insidious are the consequences of the book on January 6th, 2021.
Life imitated “art” when white supremacists and Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., after Joe Biden was named the 2021 presidential election winner. Following the commands of Donald Trump just hours prior at his “Save America” rally (where he encouraged his followers to gather outside the Capitol), between 25,000 and 30,000 participants convened at the Ellipse Building. They planned to march and lay siege to the Capitol. Large waves of protestors broke into the building, prompting the center of the U.S. government to go into an emergency lockdown.
Trump did not call off the insurrection, nor did he recant his claims of a fraudulent election – despite the lack of evidence. Instead, he asked everyone to remain calm and then proceeded to sympathize with the movement, stating, “I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You’ve seen the way others are treated…I know how you feel, but go home, and go home in peace.”⁸¹Unsurprisingly, the riots continued and, tragically, became increasingly violent.
Kathleen Belew emphasizes that the Capitol attack was not just a protest. She says that “...given the discovery of undetonated pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails, the fact that several people carried restraints, and the erection of a gallows, it is surprising that the body count was not higher. But we must recognize that this wasn’t meant to produce a high number of casualties but, [was]... a demonstration of power.”⁸²She continues to underscore that the purpose of the January 6th attack was to recruit and radicalize others to the cause, mirroring sentiments in The Turner Diaries and those of the Soldiers of God. By making inflammatory claims of a stolen election and voter fraud, Trump and his followers diminished the democratic process, further accelerating the dangerous partisan polarization and political rhetoric that threaten democratic norms. Ultimately, the “Stop the Steal” campaign and the January 6th insurrection undermine American democracy, its institutions, and its people, something the white power movement has always sought to do.⁸³
January 6th was a clear indication of the white power movement’s declaration of war against democracy and willingness to commit violence. The event further reflects white nationalists’ embrace of the apocalyptic myth. The “Save America March” demonstrated the reinforced narrative of “a nation at risk” or “nation under threat,” with Trump exploiting people’s fears and prejudices. The rallies weren’t merely about a stolen election, they were also a response to what the white movement perceived as the loss of a much larger future Trump had promised: that is, his intention to take back America,“[protect] the Constitution,” and save their democracy from fake news and corrupt media, rigged elections, open borders, Chinese communism, etc.⁸⁴In their attempt to take “back” America, the white power movement displayed a terrifying trait that is common within apocalyptic mythologies and amongst white supremacists: an embrace of lawless, erratic, and violent behavior. Acts of domestic terrorism, a key characteristic of the white power movement, reflect the movement’s pursuit of accelerationism. Accelerationism frames society as irredeemable, prompting the belief that “accelerating” the collapse of contemporary American society will make room for the establishment of a new order. For white nationalists, the ideal new society is an Aryan state, while accelerationism promotes violence as the preferred means of achieving the white movement’s political goals. In other words, white supremacists willingly embrace terrorism as an ethical means to their preferred end.⁸⁵
This violent predisposition has prompted white supremacists to carry out numerous domestic terrorist attacks and violent assaults. Such incidents include the El Paso Shooting in August 2019, the attempted bombing of a Colorado synagogue to start a “holy war,” the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting in October 2018, the 2017 Charlottesville car incident, the Emanuel AME Church Shooting in June 2015, and more over the last few years. These attacks all cite some form of the Great Replacement Theory or sentiments of the apocalyptic xenophobia of white supremacy. In 2019, following the devastating shooting in El Paso, the Senate and House of Representatives passed the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2019. The Department of Homeland Security also issued a report stating white supremacist groups to be the most persistent and lethal threat to domestic security. The Center for Strategic and International Studies reported a rapid increase in domestic terrorist attacks connected to white supremacists in 2020, “There was a substantial increase in terrorist attacks and plots at demonstrations in 2020, with the percentage of all domestic terrorist activity jumping from 2 percent (1 of 65 incidents) in 2019 to 47 percent (52 of 110 incidents) in 2020.”⁸⁶The percentage remained high in the following year.
The violence and rage of the white power movement have proven to be lethal. White supremacists use their acts of violence, reinforced by their apocalyptic meta-narratives, to attempt the destruction of racial and cultural “threats” and, more broadly, the society they believe nourishes these threats.

How Democracies Die - The Rule of the Demagogue and Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s role in the incitement of the Capitol insurrection was pivotal for the white rage apocalypse. Similar to white nationalistic rhetoric, Trump’s use of language “reinforces the otherhood of non-whites” and utilizes rhetoric to “dehumanize nonwhite, non-American populations.”87 In analyzing Trump’s “Save America March” speech, he exhibits “weaponized communication” that intentionally exploits the apocalyptic fears of white supremacists and blends them with the emotional appeal of the white working-class American. In the article “The Emotional Politics of Making America Great Again,” the authors discuss Trump’s use of emotional tactics in his rhetoric that temporarily provoke feelings of shame for the “trouble” their country is in.⁸⁸Trump first frames the nation as losing ground and fear-mongering about the devastating state the country is in. He then shifts his followers’ anger towards other political officials for the political loss of opportunities and wealth in America. In doing so, he “encourage[s] his audience to transform their shame and fear into anger” in a Buffalo speech on the lack of “decent working-class jobs,”

Do not get scared and do not feel guilty. It is not your fault. It is politicians representing all of us who have no clue. Totally incompetent. These are people that represent us at the highest level, including the president of the United States, and look at what has happened here.⁸⁹

Trump’s campaigns for “Make America Great Again” encapsulate this use of emotional rhetoric to elicit specific responses from his followers to control a particular narrative. Trump then channels their shame into pride, as seen in his Sarasota speech the day before the election, where he promised to ‘make America great again’,

You have one day to make every dream you ever dreamed for your country come true. You have one magnificent chance to beat the corrupt system and deliver justice. You will deliver justice for every forgotten man, forgotten woman, and forgotten child in this nation…We will start winning again and winning like you've never seen before, [I] tell you. We’re going to win again.⁹⁰

Through promises of improving the economy, restoring jobs for the working class, strengthening the military, easing political tensions with foreign nations, securing the borders, reducing crime, and supporting the nation’s veterans, Trump built multiple narratives that established loyalty from his followers. As such, he also maintains their anger and fear directed at refugees, immigrants, and his political enemies in a Marshalltown speech,

I feel we have to stop illegal immigration. When I announced I was running for president, I did this on June 16, I brought up illegal immigration. This would not even be talked about if I did not bring it up; Let me state this as clearly and as nicely as I can: I am going to keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country.⁹¹

In these cases, Trump portrays himself as a savior-like figure meant to guide the country back to its former glory – an example of a “messianic leader.” In a High Point speech, Trump’s “restoring America” narrative, interwoven with Christian nationalism, generates the emotional response of hope for the economic future and collective national pride in his audiences,

We will rebuild our roads, our bridges, our tunnels, highways, airports, schools, and hospitals. American cars will travel the roads; American planes will soar the skies; and American ships will, again, patrol the seas. American steel will send those new skyscrapers into the clouds. American hands will rebuild this nation, and American energy, harvested from American sources, will power our nation. American workers will be hired to do the job. We will put new American steel into the spine of this country. I will fight for every neglected part of our nation – every single part of this great nation. And I will fight to bring us together as one American people. Imagine what our country could accomplish if we started working together as one people, under one God, saluting one flag.⁹²

The primary question as to why Donald Trump is embraced as a political leader by far-right supporters and white supremacists is clear: Donald Trump is a demagogue. A demagogue is a leader who rhetorically exploits some form of conflict, discourse, or issue by appealing to the desires and prejudices of their audience for the sake of political prerogatives. According to political scientist Sigmund Neumann, the modern demagogue is “the leader of the people and the substitute for institutions in a time of transition.” He further states that the demagogue cannot be “dismissed merely with moral indignation as a man who promises everything knowing he cannot keep his promise,”

The most powerful modern demagogues are sincere and fanatic believers in their mission as "saviors" of their people… [The] defect in self-valuation makes them the heroes of the masses who are harassed by uncertainty. The real demagogues give them faith and security because he is so sure of himself. He regards himself as God-sent, almost God-like.⁹³

Trump’s demagoguery incites fear, anger, and pride, and carries the dangerous apocalyptic narratives that drive the white power movement that he readily exploits. His continued attacks against nonwhite populations – particularly immigrants and refugees, regardless of whether they are seeking asylum or crossing the border illegally – “articulate and continue to fan the flames of white resentment, which easily collapses into what cannot be called anything else other than white rage. From the expression of enraged offense to the impassioned call to violence…Trump operate[s] as a heuristic figure who reveal[s] and channel[s] the white rage that shows up as white violence.”⁹⁴ Trump’s role is crucial in inciting violence and terrorism and reinforcing xenophobia from white supremacists. As of February 2024, Trump released a series of statements and plans for the upcoming election in November that further exploit the apocalyptic rage and resentment of white nationalists and supremacists. The Trump administration’s 2025 Immigration Plan (for re-election) details an aggressively polarizing scheme of what his team considers “the Largest Domestic Deportation Operation in History.”⁹⁵ The plan intends to violate the civil rights of immigrants for the sake of mass deportations. Some of the violations consist of enacting the troubling 1789 Alien Enemies Act that would prevent access to the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause from immigrants with criminal records, enlisting the National Guard and local law enforcement to assist in raid deportations, ending automatic citizenship of U.S. born children of illegal immigrants, and detaining immigrants in “sprawling camps” while they wait to be expelled.⁹⁶On the Republican-sponsored social media platform “TruthSocial,” where posts are unironically called “truths,” further leaning into the demagoguery, Trump posted his plan,
Page Two: We encourage all willing States to deploy their guards to Texas to prevent the entry of Illegals, and to remove them back across the Border. All Americans should support the commonsense measures by Texas authorities to protect the Safety, Security, and Sovereignty of Texas and of the American people. When I am President, on Day One, instead of fighting Texas, I will work hand in hand with Governor Abbott and other Border States to Stop the Invasion, Seal the Border, and Rapidly Begin the Largest Domestic Deportation Operation in History. Those Biden has let in should not get comfortable because they will be going home.⁹⁷

His plans will likely affect communities primarily of color, as the highest rates of immigrants in the country tend to be in densely populated and urban areas.
Keeping up with Trump’s extreme immigration agenda is the apocalyptic rhetoric he uses to further fuel anger and fear toward immigrants and refugees, echoing white supremacist narratives. In multiple interviews, he has called Mexicans rapists and claimed that foreign leaders are emptying their insane asylums of migrants across the borders, compared migrants to Hannibal Lecter (a fictional serial killer and cannibal), and even stated that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”98 ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt connects Trump’s comments to the dangerous rhetoric that incites violence from extremists,

Insinuating that immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ echoes nativist talking points and has the potential to cause real danger and violence. We have seen this kind of toxic rhetoric inspire real-world violence before in places like Pittsburgh and El Paso. It should have no place in our politics, period.⁹⁹

Consequences: Democratic Backsliding and Future Threats

According to Levitsky and Ziblatt, democracies work best and survive longer when the state reinforces unwritten democratic norms. Such norms that keep our system fair are mutual toleration, defined as a mutual acknowledgment and acceptance of competing parties as legitimate rivals, and forbearance, in which politicians refrain from exploiting the institutions for their own prerogatives.¹⁰⁰These two norms, as the authors emphasize, help protect American democracy from polarization. Yet, American democracy has continued weakening since the 1980s, with the slow erosion of our democratic norms. When political parties and dangerous demagogues undermine the democratic process by questioning its legitimacy, reinforcing partisan polarization, and attempting to subvert Constitutional rights for political agendas, democratic backsliding is the result. The extremist demagogue can emerge even in the most robust democracies; however, Levitsky and Ziblatt emphasize that the “essential test for democracies” is whether political leaders and parties work to prevent demagogues from gaining power from the start.¹⁰¹This was not the case in November 2016, when Donald Trump was elected president and brought with him a “dubious allegiance to democratic norms.”¹⁰²Trump’s actions throughout his presidency (including pardoning official malfeasance, inciting racist and right-wing extremists, attempting to illegally overturn the 2020 election, and his numerous attempts at passing laws and acts that violate Constitutional rights) have gone unchecked by the Republican Party. Failure to do so led to the events of January 6th, 2021. The current damage resulting from the Trump administration reveals the American democracy to be incredibly vulnerable, which only proves to be more dangerous as the white power movement continues its holy war. Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz’s Freedom in the World 2021 report illuminates the democratic backsliding and vulnerability of the United States, stating “Over the past 10 years, the United States’ aggregate Freedom in the World score has declined by 11 points [94 points in 2010 to 83 points in 2020], placing it among the 25 countries that have suffered the largest declines in this period.”¹⁰³Their report further emphasizes that the exposure of the U.S. democracy’s vulnerabilities will have serious implications on global civil freedoms, noting that authoritarian states can use America’s domestic flaws to subvert the Democratic System on a global scale.¹⁰⁴Even on the national and domestic level, the extent to which American democracy’s weak spots are exploited by political and white nationalist apocalypticism is grim. Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plan demonstrates this exploitation. January 6th is also proof of this.
How Democracies Die highlights that democratic backsliding begins at the ballot box and that the electoral breakdown can happen without the public's realization. Elected autocrats can maintain the illusion of democracy while “eviscerating its substance.”¹⁰⁵ The authors continue to state that anti-democratic policies can be “legally” passed by the courts, even under the guise of improving democracy – all of which can go unnoticed by citizens. People will continue living under what they believe to be a democracy. To bring attention to the dire state of American democracy (further fueled following Trump’s 2016 presidency and the “Unite the Right” rallies in Charlottesville), Levitsky and Ziblatt say: “Because there is no single moment, no coup, declaration of martial law, or suspension of the constitution, in which the regime obviously “crosses the line” into dictatorship, nothing may set off society’s alarm bells…Democracy’s erosion is, for many, almost imperceptible.”¹⁰⁶
America has moved well past this point in its current state post-January 6th; the insurrection and countless terroristic attacks across the country make crystal clear the damage apocalyptic expectations can do to a democracy. The declaration of war is a direct result of democracy’s weaknesses.
With the Presidential elections at the end of 2024, the future remains uncertain: if Trump is reelected, the consequences for the Democratic system may be dire, but so could the consequences of Trump not winning the election (evident by January 6th, 2021, and Charlottesville). Even as of 2024, with Trump facing lawsuits for past transgressions and his insistence on “election interference” and an ongoing “persecution,” there is a sense of dread of how the white power movement may respond if things don’t go according to its plan. American democracy’s exposed vulnerability brings into question: what is “true” democracy for white nationalists, supremacists, and separatists? In the white apocalyptic vision, a democracy of freedom and full Constitutional rights granted by a non-corrupt government is the ideal. However, white nationalists’ version of democracy will not grant those who aren’t descendants of Adam, inheritors of Israel, and Yawhew’s Kingdom the same freedoms. American democracy and therefore the American nation will be exclusively reserved for those of Aryan descent, Identity Christian, and “true” (white) American blood. The violence, rage, terrorism, and assaults are all consequences of the apocalyptic narratives that claim that non-Aryans do not deserve freedom, sanctuary, equality, or democracy. In this view, democracy was never the solution, never an option, and never a right for anyone who is not white.

Conclusion

The white power movement’s embrace of violence and war is to protect the white race from what it sees as its imminent demise. Considering what apocalypse signifies for white supremacists, the phrase “If America ends, the World ends too” is indicative of the apocalyptic expectations of the Soldiers of God, and their extinction should they continue to share power with non-white bodies. The white power movement’s apocalypse comes in the form of the “other,” the Jew, the immigrant, the non-white, and the perceived enemy that threatens the white existence. The apocalypse the white power movement envisions is a “corrupt” system that is controlled by the “other,” introducing values that do not align with their own. The white power movement perceives its haven, its America, and its culture in danger of destruction. The white rage apocalypse – incited by metanarratives of the Great Replacement Theory and reinforced by demagogues like Trump – is a “white revolution,” a racial holy war born from and fueled by white rage and perceived divine politics.
These Soldiers of God believe that it is their purpose to reconquer, re-establish, and re-secure their rightful position as the superior race by waging a war – a war against democracy. For the nation and the world to be “true” for the white rage apocalypse, the democracy that promises racial equality, inclusion, progression, and freedom can’t exist, for their democracy only promises freedom for the white race. Forti Simona sums up the apocalyptic war and the ownership exerted by whiteness and white rage over the nation and the world:

When racism turns into ‘state doctrine,’ it also becomes the theoretical point of reference for a practice that (to make life ‘productive’) can organize hierarchically and differentiate, to include and exclude beings from the human field, making the death of one a necessity for the life of all. The politics of race, no less than the Stalinist politics of classes, assigned some to extinction; it represents, for Foucault, the extreme and ‘exemplary’ way in which power manages to carry out a colossal enterprise of regimentation and killing, which talks of the ‘law of life’ and of ‘humanity reborn.’¹⁰⁷

As reflected in a statement by Mary Guy, professor of public administration at the University of Colorado Denver, “We have a democracy that is at risk of suicide.”¹⁰⁸With this, the final question arises: when we consider the history of America, the current state of its politics, and the ongoing war by white supremacists, for the nonwhite, the “other,” has democracy truly existed? If just by their existence, the world declares war on their racialized bodies, is the promise of freedom a promise that extends to them? For the white rage apocalypse, the answer is simple: it’s not, and it never was.

Footnotes

¹This statement was written in February 2024, prior to the 2024 presidential election. As of 2025, Donald Trump is the president of the United States.

²Shaun Raviv, “Divided We Fall.” Georgia State News Hub, May 6, 2021. https://news.gsu.edu/research-magazine/divided-we-fall.

³Michael Scott Walton, “Defending White America: The Apocalyptic Meta-Narrative of White Nationalist Rhetoric,” Theses and Dissertations (2020), 8491, 13, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/8491; John Stephens and Robyn McCallum, “Retelling Stories, Framing Culture: Traditional Story and Metanarratives in Children’s Literature,” Children’s Literature and Culture (New York: Routledge, 1998), 6. The meta-narrative is “a global or totalizing cultural narrative schema which orders and explains knowledge and experience.”

⁴Trip Gabriel, “With ‘Poisoning the Blood’ Comment, Trump Escalates Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric,” The New York Times, October 5, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/us/politics/trump-immigration-rhetoric.html.

⁵Stephen C. Finley, Biko Mandela Gray, and Lori Latrice Martin, eds., The Religion of White Rage: Religious Fervor, White Workers and the Myth of Black Racial Progress, (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 2, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctv182jr9w.

⁶Rachel Kleinfeld, “The Rise of Political Violence in the United States,” Journal of Democracy, 32, no. 4 (October 2021): 160–76, https://journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the-rise-of-politicalviolence-in-the-united-states/.

⁷Kleinfeld, “The Rise of Political Violence,” 160–76.

⁸Howard L. Bushart, John R. Craig, and Myra Edwards Barnes, Soldiers of God: White Supremacists and Their Holy War for America, (New York, NY, Kensington Books, 1998), 11-12.

⁹Walton, “Defending White America,” 4.

¹⁰Bushart, Craig, and Barnes, Soldiers of God.

¹¹Bushart, Craig, and Barnes, Soldiers of God, 2.

¹²Bushart, Craig, and Barnes, Soldiers of God, Introduction; 209.

¹³David Strassler, Abraham Foxman, Peter Willner, Howard Berkowitz, Robert Sugarman, Kenneth Jacobson, and Jeffrey Sinensky, “The Literature of Apocalypse: Far-Right Voices of Violence.” Rita & Leo Greenland Library and Research Center Anti-Defamation League (1996), 1 https://www.adl.org/resources/news/literature-apocalypse.

¹⁴Bushart, Craig, and Barnes, Soldiers of God, 5.

¹⁵Debbie Elliott, “The Charlottesville Rally 5 Years Later: ‘It’s What You’re Still Trying to Forget.’” NPR, August 12, 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/08/12/1116942725/thecharlottesville-rally-5-years-later-its-what-youre still-trying-to-forget.

¹⁶“‘The Great Replacement:’ An Explainer,” ADL, April 19, 2021, https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/great-replacement-explainer.

¹⁷“Jeff Schoep,” Southern Poverty Law Center, Accessed February 27, 2023, https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/jeff-schoep.

¹⁸“Jeff Schoep.”

¹⁹Bushart, Craig, and Barnes, Soldiers of God, 12.

²⁰Meghan Keneally, “What to Know about the Violent Charlottesville Protests and Anniversary Rallies,” ABC News, August 8, 2018, https://abcnews.go.com/US/happencharlottesville-protest-anniversary-weekend/story?id=57107500.

²¹Keneally, “Violent Charlottesville Protest.”

²²Brian P. Tilley, “‘I Am the Law and Order Candidate’: A Content Analysis of Donald Trump’s Race-Baiting Dog Whistles in the 2016 Presidential Campaign,” Psychology, 11, (2020) 1941-1974, https://doi: 10.4236/psych.2020.1112123.

²³“New Hate and Old: The Changing Face of American White Supremacy Executive Summary,” ADL, Accessed November 9, 2023, 13, https://www.adl.org/new-hate-and-oldthe-changing-face-of-american-white-supremacy-executive summary.

²⁴Catlyn Kenna Keenan, “Behind the Doors of White Supremacy,” Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2014), 329, 19, https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/329.

²⁵George M. Frederickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 26 quoted in Keenan, “Behind the Doors,” 21.

²⁶Keenan, “Behind the Doors,” 24–26.

²⁷David Pilgrim, “What is Jim Crow,” Jim Crow Museum, September 2000, Edited 2021, https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/what.htm.

²⁸ ADL’s New and Old 2022 report defines paleoconservatism as “an obscure segment of the American right that seeks not only limited government and traditional values but also a return to older, less enlightened attitudes on subjects such as race, religion, ethnicity and gender.”; “New Hate and Old,” ADL, 21.

²⁹Finley, Gray, and Martin, eds., The Religion of White Rage, 5.

³⁰Finley, Gray, and Martin, eds., The Religion of White Rage, 5.

³¹“New Hate and Old,” 13.

³²Kathleen Belew, “The White Power Movement at War on Democracy,” HFG Research and Policy in Brief, January 2021, 8, https://www.hfg.org/hfg_reports/the-white-power-movementat-war-on-democracy/ based on the research from Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018).

³³Bushart, Craig, and Barnes, Soldiers of God, 10.

³⁴Kathleen Belew, “War on Democracy,” 8.

³⁵“White Supremacists Embrace ‘Accelerationism’,” ADL, Accessed April 18, 2024, https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/white-supremacists-embrace-accelerationism. Acceleration is “the perceived escalation by nefarious entities to advance “degenerate” values and influences such as multiculturalism, liberalism, and diversity, among others. Adopted by white supremacists, accelerationism is the desire to hasten the collapse of society through violence and deliberate political engagement that supports destructive and divisive societal elements.

³⁶John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature, (United Kingdom: Eerdmans, 2016), 5.

³⁷Mitchell Reddish, Apocalyptic Literature: A Reader (United States: Hendrickson Publishers, 2015), 24.

³⁸Alison McQueen, Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times (Cambridge UP, 2018), 50-51.

³⁹ Sharon Crowley, Toward Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism (U of Pittsburgh P, 2006), 105 quoted in Walton, “Defending White America,” 5.

⁴⁰Walton, “Defending White America,” 5.

⁴¹Walton, “Defending White America,” 5.

⁴²Audra Mitchell and Aadita Chaudhury, “Worlding beyond ‘the’ ‘end’ of ‘the world’: white apocalyptic visions and BIPOC futurisms,” (International Relations, 2020), 34(3), 309-332. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117820948936.

⁴³Mitchell and Chaudhury, “Worlding beyond ‘the’ ‘end’,” 309-332.

⁴⁴Mitchell and Chaudhury, “Worlding beyond ‘the’ ‘end’,” 309-332.

⁴⁵Walton, “Defending White America,” 4.

⁴⁶Walton, “Defending White America,” 4.

⁴⁷Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (New York: Crown Publishers, 2018), 5.

⁴⁸Güldeniz Kıbrıs, “Political myths as tools for nationalist propaganda,” Journal of Abant Cultural Studies (2019), 4(7): 2.

⁴⁹Henry Tudor and George Schöpflin, “Political Myth,” Nations, Identity, Power (London: Hurst & Company, 2000) quoted in Kıbrıs, Kıbrıs, “Political myths,” 2.

⁵⁰George Hosking and George Schöpflin eds., “The Functions of Myth and A Taxonomy of Myths,” Myths and Nationhood (New York: Routledge, 1997), 19-35 quoted in Kıbrıs, “Political myths,” 2.

⁵¹Chiara Bottici and Challand Benoit, “Rethinking Political Myth: The Clash of Civilizations as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy,” European Journal of Social Theory (2006), 9 (3): 329 quoted in Kıbrıs, “Political myths,” 2.

⁵²Kıbrıs, “Political myths,” 1-3.

⁵³Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006) quoted in Kıbrıs, “Political myths,” 3.

⁵⁴Walton, “Defending White America,” 25.

⁵⁵Daniels, A Doomsday Reader, 9.

⁵⁶Daniels, A Doomsday Reader, 9; Kıbrıs, “Political myths,” 2.

⁵⁷Walton, “Defending White America,” 24.

⁵⁸Walton, “Defending White America,” 7.

⁵⁹Kate Chesley, “Political Scientist Studies Apocalyptic Political Rhetoric,” Stanford News, December 29, 2017, https://news.stanford.edu/2017/12/29/political-scientist-studies-apocalyptic-politicalrhetoric/.

⁶⁰Kıbrıs, “Political myths,” 3.

⁶¹Molly Patterson and Kristen Renwick, “Narrative in Political Science,” Annual Review of Political Science 1(1) (November 28, 2003) 315-331, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.1.1.315.

⁶²Stella Marega, “Apocalyptic Trends In Contemporary Politics,” Revista Estudios, ISSN-e 16593316, ISSN 1659-1925 Diciembre 2017 – Mayo 2018, no. N° 35 (2017): 10, https://www.academia.edu/37753072/Apocalyptic_Trends_In_Contemporary_Politics

⁶³Marega, “Apocalyptic Trends,” Revista Estudios, 10.

⁶⁴Marega, “Apocalyptic Trends,” Revista Estudios, 3; Marega, “Apocalyptic Trends,” Revista Estudios, 11-12.

⁶⁵Bushart, Craig, and Barnes, Soldiers of God, 10-12.

⁶⁶Bushart, Craig, and Barnes, Soldiers of God, 12.

⁶⁷Bushart, Craig, and Barnes, Soldiers of God, 5.

⁶⁸Walton, “Defending White America,” 1.

⁶⁹Stephens and McCallum, “Retelling Stories,” 6.

⁷⁰Stephens and McCallum, “Retelling Stories,” 6.

⁷¹ Kıbrıs, “Political myths,” 4.

⁷²Walton, “Defending White America,” 8.

⁷³Andrew Fergus Wilson, “The Bitter End: Apocalypse and Conspiracy in White Nationalist Responses to the Islamic State Attacks in Paris,” Patterns of Prejudice 51, no. 5 (2017): 412–31, doi:10.1080/0031322X.2017.1398963.

⁷⁴Walton, “Defending White America,” 10.

⁷⁵Walton, “Defending White America,” 10.

⁷⁶Bushart, Craig, and Barnes, Soldiers of God, 10.

⁷⁷VITO (@VitoComedy), “At Last Night’s America First Rally, Founder Nick Fuentes Called for a Holy War against the Jews, Promising That He and His Followers Would ‘Make Them Die.’ Popular Influencer @SNEAKO Appeared on Stage to Support the Movement, Saying Fuentes Will Be Future President of the USA. X, July 17, 2023, https://twitter.com/VitoComedy/status/1680852059741106176.

⁷⁸Prem Thakker, “White Supremacist Nick Fuentes Calls for ‘Holy War’ Against Jews,” The New Republic, November 1, 2022, https://newrepublic.com/post/174372/white-supremacist-nick-fuentes-calls-holy-war-jews.

⁷⁹ Andrew Macdonald, The Turner Diaries (Washington, D.C.: National Alliance, 1980), 82.

⁸⁰Alexandra Alter, “How ‘The Turner Diaries’ Incites White Supremacists,” The New York Times, January 12, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/books/turner-diaries-white-supremacists.html.

⁸¹Kat Lonsdorf, Courtney Dorning, Amy Isackson, Mary Louise Kelly, and Ailsa Chang, “A Timeline of the Jan. 6 Capitol Attack — Including When and How Trump Responded,” NPR, February 28, 2024, https://www.npr.org/2022/01/05/1069977469/a-timeline-of-how-the-jan-6-attackunfolded-includi ng-who-said-what-and-when.

⁸²Belew, “War on Democracy,” 1.

⁸³Belew, “War on Democracy,” 1.

⁸⁴Brian Naylor, “Read Trump’s Jan. 6 Speech, A Key Part Of Impeachment Trial,” NPR, February 10, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-ofimpeachment -trial.

⁸⁵Miller, “‘There Is No Political Solution’.”

⁸⁶Catrina Doxsee, Seth G. Jones, Jared Thompson, Kateryna Halstead, and Grace Hwang, “Pushed to Extremes: Domestic Terrorism amid Polarization and Protest,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, May 17, 2022, https://www.csis.org/analysis/pushed-extremes-domestic-terrorism-amid-polarization-andprotest.

⁸⁷Walton, “Defending White America,” 12.

⁸⁸Douglas Schrock, Benjamin Dowd-Arrow, Kristen Erichsen, Haley Gentile, and Pierce Dignam, “The Emotional Politics of Making America Great Again: Trump's Working Class Appeals.” The Journal of Working-Class Studies (June 1, 2017), 2475-4765, 5, https://doi.org/10.13001/jwcs.v2i1.6039.

⁸⁹Schrock, Dowd-Arrow, Erichsen, Gentile, and Dignam, “The Emotional Politics,” 8.

⁹⁰Schrock, Dowd-Arrow, Erichsen, Gentile, and Dignam, “The Emotional Politics.”

⁹¹Schrock, Dowd-Arrow, Erichsen, Gentile, and Dignam, “The Emotional Politics.”

⁹²Schrock, Dowd-Arrow, Erichsen, Gentile, and Dignam, “The Emotional Politics.”

⁹³Sigmund Neumann, “The Rule of the Demagogue,” American Sociological Review 3, no. 4 (August 1938): 487, https://doi.org/10.2307/2083896

⁹⁴Finley, Gray, and Martin, eds., The Religion of White Rage, 3.

⁹⁵Ronald Brownstein, “Trump’s Immigration Plan Is Even More Aggressive Now,” The Atlantic, February 8, 2024, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/02/trumps-immigration-plan-is-evenmore-aggr essive-now/677385/.

⁹⁶Charlie Savage, Maggie Haberman, and Jonathan Swan, “Sweeping Raids and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans,” The New York Times, November 11, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/11/us/politics/trump-2025-immigrationagenda.html.

⁹⁷Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump), “Page Two: We encourage all willing States to deploy their guards to Texas to prevent the entry of Illegals, and to remove them back across the Border…,” Truth Social, January 25, 2024, https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/111818563406841830.

⁹⁸Savage, Haberman, and Swan, “Sweeping Raids.”

⁹⁹Savage, Haberman, and Swan, “Sweeping Raids.”

¹⁰⁰Levitsky and Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, 8.

¹⁰¹Levitsky and Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, 8.

¹⁰²Levitsky and Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, 8

¹⁰³Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz, “Democracy under Siege,” Freedom House, November 9, 2023, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2021/democracy-under-siege.

¹⁰⁴Repucci and Slipowitz, “Democracy under Siege.”

¹⁰⁵Levitsky and Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, 5.

¹⁰⁶ Levitsky and Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, 5-6.

¹⁰⁷Forti Simona, “The Biopolitics of Souls: Racism, Nazism, and Plato,” Political Theory 34, no. 1, (2006): 11, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20452432.

¹⁰⁸Lisa Mascaro, “Conservative Groups Draw up Plan to Dismantle the US Government and Replace It with Trump’s Vision,” AP News, August 29, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-conservatives-trump-heritage857eb794e505f1c6710eb0 3fd5b58981.

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