The Nihilists Are Coming Back to Washington
With Inauguration Day around the corner, many people are wondering what kind of government we should expect over the next four years. Having spent much of the past autumn attending events with sectors of the hard-core members of the MAGA movement and tracking the activists and allies likely to have some influence, I have a short answer. But before I defend my all-in-one label for the incoming administration—spoiler alert, it’s in the title!—I’d like to offer some highlights from my recent travels and conversations.
First, victory has not put these folks in a gracious mood. Donald Trump ran on the promise of exacting vengeance on “the enemy within,” and his allies are more determined than ever to deliver. At last month’s AmericaFest, an annual conference organized by Turning Point USA, which drew some 20,000 attendees to the Phoenix Convention Center in Arizona, Steve Bannon condemned the “cancer” of bipartisanship and promised, “We’re going to fix bayonets, and we’re going to advance.” In an earlier interview with Bannon, Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee for the FBI, vowed to “go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media” who supposedly “helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.” (That they won an election straight up has done little to disabuse these types that Biden’s electoral puppet masters maintain a tight hold of the strings.)
To that effect, Patel has reportedly drawn up an “enemies list” that includes employees from the Department of Justice as well as journalists. At AmericaFest, Jack Posobiec, still famous for sponsoring the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, was among those willing to name names of those who will soon face the wrath of government: Liz Cheney, Alvin Bragg, George Soros, Nancy Pelosi, and “the backstabbing snake RINOs in the House and Senate because if we catch any of you then all will be brought to accountability.”
Kari Lake, who lost her recent bid for senator from Arizona and has been tapped by the incoming president as director for Voice of America, put insufficiently loyal Republicans at the top of her hit list.
“We gotta win because they are trying to destroy our country,” she said. “And that means when President Trump is going there to implement his policies, we must destroy any person who is trying to stop those policies from making their way into our lives.” Sebastian Gorka, the incoming senior director for counterterrorism, echoed the need to punish disloyal Republicans and called the people convicted of felonies in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol “political prisoners.”
According to the people who now have control of the federal security apparatus, the gravest threat to America is fellow Americans, and the crowd was reassured that vengeance was coming.
Praising Kash Patel, Bannon told the audience, “He understands who needs to be investigated. The January 6 committee and the Biden White House.” He continued, “We’re going to investigate you, we’ll do it all above board, and you’re going to go to prison for a long time. Someone said Trump’s retribution will be the golden age,” he mused. “I want good, old-fashioned, Old Testament retribution.… and one last thing,” he added, closing his speech, “Trump 2028. MSNBC, Fuck you!”
It’s also worth noting that the people around Trump—rather predictably at this point—remain organized around “the leadership principle.” (I put this in quotes because, yes, I am translating from the original German.) Every policy and principle is contingent; what really matters is backing Donald Trump in whatever he wishes to do at that moment.
“The transformation of the Republican Party is not yet complete,” far-right activist Charlie Kirk said in his speech at the start of the conference. “If you are a Republican from a deep red state and you voted for Joe Biden’s nominees, and you’re giving Donald Trump a hard time about his nominees, we will primary you and remove you from office. And for all those red state senators out there, let this be a warning to you.” So, if Trump wants Tulsi Gabbard, a remarkably Assad- and Putin-friendly figure, to lead America’s intelligence services, well then, let it be so!
Trump’s control, within this sphere, extends not just to all levers of government but to the truth itself. When Trump declared that the 2020 election was stolen, speakers at religious-right conferences, pastor gatherings, and strategy meetings repeated the claim like a mantra. Now that the 2024 election was apparently not stolen—never mind! If Trump calls the January 6 assault on the Capitol a “day of love,” Kirk is there to say, more or less, that it was a day of prayer. President Joe Biden was “putting people in prison for going into the Capitol rotunda and praying,” Kirk told the Phoenix crowd.
The reference to prayer is apt because this movement is really a religious movement of sorts. Speaker after speaker at AmericaFest, starting with Kirk, gave credit to God for Trump’s win. Kirk was also quick to credit his own organization, which activated a robust pro-MAGA youth movement, chased after low-propensity voters, and mobilized thousands of conservative pastors across the country to bring out the vote.
Whether the religion of MAGA counts as Christianity, however, might be best left to the armchair theologians because many representatives of the movement have expressed hostility to Christianity as it is practiced in much of America today.
“I’ve made it my mission to eradicate ‘wokism’ from the American pulpit,” said Lucas Miles, the head of TPUSA Faith and the author of a book titled Woke Jesus: The False Messiah Destroying Christianity, from the main stage. According to Lucas, Christianity started to go south in “the late 1700s” and then “came in with the social gospel, came in with the historical Jesus movement. Came in with liberation theology and Black liberation theology.” Lucas claims to be working with a network of 3,500 churches on “a kind of a digital Nicene Creed and Council,” referencing a fourth-century synod that established the basic doctrines of Christianity. “We have to decide which Jesus we believe in,” he said.
On a panel titled “Faith in Action, Faith in America”—which was moderated by Rob McCoy, a pastor and longtime associate of Charlie Kirk who is well known for his engagement in right-wing politics—Shane Winnings, a pastor who heads up a resurrected version of the earlier men’s ministry Promise Keepers, agreed. “Promise Keepers needs to speak to issues of the day, and if we’re in an election season we need to tell people what’s demonic and what’s godly and how they should be voting,” he said to loud applause.
At the same panel, Eric Hayes, field representative with Turning Point Action, a spinoff of Turning Point USA that engages in more direct political activism, likewise took the view that non-MAGA Christians simply aren’t respecting their faith. “There is absolutely no biblical justification to vote Democrat,” he said.
This new MAGA religion has found a powerful recruiting tool in transgender issues, the movement’s new culture-war weapon of choice. Speaker after speaker appeared to suggest that the main policy goal of all Democrats everywhere is to promote gender-change operations on children. Whatever one may think about this issue, which pertains to a very small number of American adolescents, it is important to recognize that the movement’s fervid, ceaseless, and all-consuming preoccupation with it isn’t primarily motivated by a desire to reduce harm or save lives. (After all, as far as I could tell, there was no mention at this conference of gun violence, presently the leading cause of child deaths in America.) It is deliberately stoking discord and the politics of outrage to distract Americans from a reactionary agenda.
Much of the postelection analysis has centered on the notion that the election was a referendum on inflation. For a sector of the electorate, that was certainly the case. But if anyone thinks the MAGA movement is planning to effectively address the “pocketbook issues” facing ordinary Americans, this conference should serve as a wake-up call. There appeared to be few specifics on helping the American workforce; the sole worker-centered breakout session, titled “Blue Collar Conservatism: Pro-Worker Labor Policy and the Right to Work (National Right to Work),” was focused on union-busting. The other economic theme of note was bashing the “administrative state.” Getting government out of the way of billionaires remains the North Star of the MAGA economic ideology, and so the upward redistribution of wealth is likely to be the one sure bet in the coming administration. And as the wealthy get wealthier, it will be ordinary Americans left to contend with the negative externalities of rampant deregulation.
As the new administration takes office, what are we to make of the MAGA vision, as articulated by its most fervent advocates? They certainly aren’t “conservative,” given the apparent thirst for revolution. They aren’t “populist” because the policies they endorse will benefit plutocrats of all stripes: the cronies, the monopolists, and the producers of technology that are spreading untruths and fracturing community trust. I used to prefer “religious nationalist” or “Christian nationalist” as descriptors for this rough-hewn gathering, and I think that still describes an important sector of this movement’s leadership and constituency, as well as the political dynamic of which they make use. But perhaps it diminishes the primacy of sectarian politics in their religious ideology.
A better label might be reactionary nihilists. That’s what you call people who just want to blow it all up. It might also prove a handy guide in interpreting the actions of the incoming administration. As they roll out this or that policy initiative—invade Greenland, seize the Panama Canal, rename the Gulf of Mexico, impose tariffs here or there—don’t ask yourself, “What are they trying to build?” Ask yourself, “Who are they trying to hurt?” Or, alternatively, “What are they trying to destroy?”
With nihilists, too, it is important to set aside talk of “goals” and “reasons” for actions. The majority of their floated initiatives, like the annexation of Canada, are simply for show. The right question in these circumstances is: “For whom is this performance intended?”
Lastly, nihilists are not known as team players. When they’re not trying to deny the truth and destroy things, they tend to turn on one another. I can’t predict who will win the Trump administration’s coming internal power struggles, but if I were a betting person I’d put my money on the people with money—that is, the people with something to sell to the incoming government. The theocrats, too, are sure to be rewarded with power, along with payouts in the form of taxpayer subsidies to religious schools and institutions. As for legions of the MAGA faithful, they’re likely to get little more than the appearance of the vengeance they were promised.