Trump is the American Bin Laden

But far less impressive.

Donald Trump is the American Osama bin Laden. Both wealthy heirs, both part of the 6’3” and Up Club, both have hot daughters/nieces, and many wives. Osama had Al Qaeda (Arabic for “The Group”), an Islamic fascist group with global ambitions. Trump has The Family, the Christian political organization with an 80 year history, that puts on the National Prayer Breakfast, among many other forms of, what George H. W. Bush called, “quiet diplomacy, not secret, but quiet diplomacy.” The Family, previously known as the Fellowship, is the outgrowth of International Christian Leadership, founded in 1947. Osama had Islamofascist Al Qaeda/The Group, and Trump has the Christian fascist The Family. The Family is exposed in author Jeff Sharlet’s book of that name, along with the book C Street, about the house run by The Family that acts as a lodge for congressmen in Washington, DC, blurring the lines between church and state so much that they vanish. The books have been turned into a documentary on Netflix. The founder of this fundamentalist group for political theological activism, Dr. Abram Vereide, was a Norwegian immigrant who sensed an opening in early 20th century religious marketplace. There were lots of populist evangelists, like Billy Sunday and Charles Finney, but there hadn’t really been an evangelist of similar impact and scale for the elites. That is what Abram wanted to do—that was his opening. So he organized prayer groups (they call them prayer cells, like Islamic terror cells, but with rich white men in nice suits, often in country club settings) and Bible readings and prayer breakfasts. He was very successful—he pops up in pictures with famous, powerful people, kind of like an unfunny Forest Gump.

Going back to the earliest days of The Family, back when it was known as the Fellowship, there was one guiding idea, and that was to be a spiritual force driving the worldwide postwar effort to destroy communism. American elites saw one role for America in the postwar world, and that was to lead the struggle against communism. That is what the Cold War was about. The question should be asked—who was leading this worldwide struggle against communism before America took it upon itself? Nazi Germany of course. But the problem with Nazi Germany was it was missing the spiritual element. Vereide derides them as vulgar materialists. The Nazis were National Socialists—the nationalist part was fine for American purposes, but not the materialist socialist part. And even though they weren’t real socialist, they weren’t theocrat by any means. Indeed there was a leading priest in Germany, Gedat, before the war started who tried to synthesize Nazism with Christianity, but Hitler considered him an enemy and he went into hiding. Vereide’s vision was to pick up on this kind of missed opportunity to synthesize Christianity with fascism, and he thought America could take that mantle and run with it all over the world.

So what the family was interested in creating through their influence in Washington, DC was a national theo-fascism, which would succeed where Hitler’s too materialistic, not spiritual enough, National Socialist fascism had failed. For Hitler, the nation itself was everything, “the nation is life itself,” he said once. But for American Christian fascism, this is wrong—the nation is not life itself, the nation is just a tool for the will of God. Hitler‘s fascism was about his will merging with the national will and implementing that will by any means necessary. Vereide spread his message in Germany after the war and there was a lot of reception to it. The idea that their totalitarianism had gone wrong because it was about worshiping one man instead of worshiping God. So Jeff Charlet in his book makes the point that after Nazi Germany ended, fascism didn’t end, it was modified, and exported. The totalitarian fascism of the Nazis came to be viewed as heretical and wrong because it was based on loyalty to just one man. The improved Christianized Americanized fascism was about loyalty to God, and by extension loyalty to Industrial and corporate Power. Vereide’s political theology was focused on spreading his idea to elites, because elites were best positioned to do God’s will, so they almost see themselves as leaders of industry and leaders of corporate America, as men chosen and guided by God. And so this totalitarianism of God merges easily with the totalitarianism of corporations that defines our current situation.

In 1953, when the Family (then the Fellowship) launched its National Prayer Breakfast, there was a concern that communism had the spiritual upper hand because of its convincing critique of capitalist exploitation and alienation. Capitalism produces its own negation by the forms of life it creates, and the social facts of inequality associated with it. The spiritual element works against capitalism, while it works for communism. This seems paradoxical. Even though communism is atheist, it has a spiritual force that capitalism can’t have, because it addresses real material conditions of life in a way that capitalism never can. Capitalism typically requires some kind of religious element to prevent true spiritual power from emerging, which only comes from overcoming the false consciousness of capitalism. Religion helps consciousness remain false consciousness within the capitalist system. The atheism of communism allows us to use spiritual force within the material world—this is why communism was able to spread all over the world so fast, because it treats the suffering of daily life as a spiritual problem and attacks it with spiritual urgency, whereas in a capitalist system, the suffering of daily life is taken for granted, and so ignored, and all spiritual energy goes toward worshiping a God in heaven that doesn’t exist, while actually existing material conditions keep getting worse and worse.

The first National Prayer Breakfast was held 1953, and opened with the words, delivered by Senator Frank Carlson: “We believe it is imperative, in order to preserve our sacred freedoms, that we have a strong and courageous God-fearing people, and a total mobilization of all the spiritual forces of this nation.” Carlson was Vereide’s closest ally in the Senate, and came up with The Family’s slogan: “Worldwide Spiritual Offensive.” The enemy of that Spiritual Offensive was clear—the Left, in all its forms. Trumpism is essentially the populist, secular version of that—an ongoing spiritual offensive against the Left, with which he associates all of society’s ills. He speaks of the Left like it poses an existential threat—like it is Satan itself.

Total spiritual mobilization, spiritual offensive...is there any doubt that this is the Christian fascist mirror image of the Islamofascism of Al Qaeda? And is there any better description for the phenomenon that has now come to dominate our politics known as Trumpism? Of course, Trump himself is not religious, and thinks church is a joke—this is actually one of the more relatable things about him. At his first National Prayer Breakfast as president in early 2017, Trump used his time for spiritual remarks to instead trash the low ratings of the new version of The Apprentice hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger—he said that Arnold needs to pray to God for better ratings. Extremely funny. That shows how seriously he takes religion and church and The Family and so on. But what Trump does take seriously is power. And The Family takes power seriously as well. Trump knew that he was a hard sell, and that he could be alienating, and The Family knows that its political-theology of American Christian Fascism can be a hard sell and alienating, so they both needed each other. The Family, more than anything, loves to be in the shadows. When Doug Coe took over after Abram Vereide died in 1969, he changed the name from the Fellowship to The Family, and stated that the group should be a “non-organization” as much as possible, less public than the Fellowship had been. The name change to the Family is also significant—families are private. And since Trump is the last person anyone would ever associate with American Christian Fundamentalism, it allows them to get more of their agenda done than they would otherwise be able to. And Trump, who burns a thousand bridges a day, needs a reliable, strong source of political support and power, which The Family will always provide.

Trump was willing to overlook the fact that people like Mike Pence were religious zealots who shared no real similarities in life experience or social values with him. Trump has five children by three different women, and Trump famously said in a meeting once that if it was up to Pence, every gay person would be hung. Trump was a New York liberal for most of his life so he has no real problem with homosexuals. And American Christian fascist power was willing to overlook trumps vulgarity, because he was able to achieve a kind of critical mass of popular support, that the more traditional Christian fascist politicians were able to do. It was always hard for them, but especially after George W. Bush, a born-again Christian who is a devotee of prayer breakfasts and Bible studies and so on, became among the least popular presidents ever because of the Iraq War. These Christian totalitarian fascists are all over The Trump administration, Mike Pence of course is a Fundamentalist, but so is Mike Pompeo, Bill Barr, Kaylee McEnany, Kellyanne Conway, Mick Mulvaney, and many more. What does Trump value most? Loyalty. And that’s what he gets from these people. Who has been more loyal to him than Pence, Pompeo, and Barr? Nobody. And why are they so loyal? Because they truly believe they are implementing God‘s will, and Donald Trump is an imperfect means for doing that, but they are wise enough in the worldly ways of power to know that that is how things go. Pompeo openly says that the United States is engaged in a holy Christian war against Islam, which is why he is so bellicose towards Iran—it isn’t just geopolitics, it’s theological militarism. So his loyalty makes sense—he wants to stay in power so he can fight and win a holy war against global Islam. Kellyanne Conway’s loyalty was such that she only resigned once the toll her work for Trump was taking on her family life was repeatedly, humiliatingly dragged into the public spotlight. Bill Barr has defended all of Trump’s most brazen maneuvers, in a way that Jeff Sessions, more of an old school racist than a true Christian fascist, never did.

Sometimes The Family’s political theology is referred to as “country club fundamentalism,” because it appeals to country club clientele. This is another reason why Trump is so perfect. He is the quintessential country club guy—he even owns a bunch of them—but he doesn’t act like it. He acts like the average guy who drinks too much Diet Coke, eats too many Big Macs, and watches too much cable news. He’s an everyman who owns country clubs. The perfect figure to bring country club fundamentalism to the masses. Trump is like a mass evangelist, like Charles Finney, the missing piece that The Family’s elite Fundamentalism has been looking for. So he facilitates the synthesis in that way too. What are Trumps rallies if not quasi-religious events? They are modern incarnations of the religious revivals held during the Great Awakenings.

Some of the other politicians The Family has tried to support have been totally undone by scandal because they have so much Christian guilt and so on. Trump has no guilt or shame so he can never become undone, which is rare for a politician so closely associated with American theocrats. Another reason Trump is so perfect for them.

Trump is much closer to Vereide’s political theology than even he realizes. In the early days of Vereide’s elite fundamentalist work, he was in a group called The 12, a council of Christian evangelical leaders who wanted to transfer their fundamentalism into the feel-good, business friendly terms of author Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote The Power of Positive Thinking. This was Donald Trump’s father’s favorite book, and was a huge influence on Donald. Peale even officiated Trump’s first wedding. Indeed, positive psychology probably his only real belief, and it can be observed in almost everything he does. If reality isn’t cooperating with you, don’t let that stop you—it’s reality’s fault, not yours. This has been a hallmark of Trumpism all along, but we especially see it now, with his unwillingness to accept his loss to Joe Biden. So in a real way Trump, who is very much guided by Peale, is the synthesis that Vereide and his early Christian fascists have been dreaming about—a bridge between elite fundamentalism, positive psychology and the business world.

The journalist Glenn Greenwald has famously refused to call Trump a fascist, even as he calls Bolsonaro of Brazil a fascist. Instead of calling Trump a fascist, Greenwald says Trump has “fascist impulses.” I think in a way Greenwald is right, Trump does have fascist impulses, because everything is very impulsive for Trump, he’s a creature of pure will. He is a walking impulse. But there is also the fascist infrastructure of American Fundamentalist political theology in place that now has this wildly impulsive man, to go along with their disciplined, non-impulsive Christian fascism, which they haven’t quite had before. The point is that Donald Trump doesn’t need to be a fascist, because he is, even if half-knowingly, leading the charge of the American Christian fascist movement. He is to America’s The Family what Osama bin Laden was to Al Qaeda. But Trump did no work to establish his group—he just happened to be the perfect antithesis for them, and he was smart enough to know they had power, and to give them whatever they want. Trump doesn’t really even believe in the American Christian Fascism of The Family, he just uses it. Osama at least really believed in his Islamofascism, and he built Al Qaeda from the ground up himself.