In Christian eschatology, Antichrist refers to an entity (person or movement) prophesied by the Bible to oppose Jesus Christ and falsely substitute themselves as a saviour in Christ’s place.
Why does that make us think of Donald Trump?
There have been many like him: Caesar, Nero, Alexander, Ivan the Terrible, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot are just a few examples. All were cruel, heartless and sociopathic. Few had Trump’s power and global reach.
His project to Make America Great Again is a gigantic theft and deceit against the American people, with abhorrent consequences: huge personal wealth from bribes for himself and his family; loss of life, health, liberty and wellbeing for millions of US citizens, US residents and recipients of USAID; the collapse of US institutions and governing structures such as the constitution, Congress, the judiciary, universities, the free media, and the public regulators who provide protections for citizens and the environment; the unleashing of fossil fuel companies to wantonly plunder the environment, pollute the atmosphere, destroy a habitable climate and replace it with an uninhabitable one; disrespect for internationally agreed treaties and agreements which regulate individual and national behaviours,; the bullying and threatening of trading partners and allies such as Greenland, Canada, Panama, the European Union and many others; and the support for other like-minded figures around the world who are committing crimes against humanity.
Most visible in this Antichrist axis of evil are Putin of Russia and Netanyahu of Israel. Trump has the power to stop both these men in their crimes but has chosen instead to give them leeway and support.
Russia has kidnapped 35,000 Ukrainian children and placed them in camps in Russia or with Russian families. A million Russian soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed or injured in Putin’s war. Thousands of innocent children in Gaza have been deliberately and casually killed or injured by Israeli bombs or bullets, starved, left homeless and without their families. The known death toll there is now well over 50,000.
China has taken Uighur children and adults and placed them in repressive re-education camps. In the USA, migrant families are being heartlessly broken up in pursuit of Trump’s agenda to incarcerate and deport undocumented migrants and others considered undesirable.
These modern Antichrists are cruel, evil, rampant, dominant and seemingly untouchable in human societies today.
Native and First Nation populations all over the world have long been victims of racism, colonialism and oppression. They have suffered theft of their land, containment, slavery, humiliation, impoverishment and death at the hands of European settlers..
Oppressive behaviour, indifference to suffering and unrestrained greed goes back over all the known centuries, races, continents and religions. Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Caucasians, Mongols, Chinese, Japanese and Polynesian peoples have all been victims and oppressors.
Most commonly the motive is wealth and power, usually cloaked in claims of necessary national renewal or survival, a male personality-disorder-driven, ego-driven search for power. It is vile, evil, despicable, base, inhumane, destructive, aggressive, everyone knows that, and it is never justified but is always present.
Similar abominations are being deliberately, obscenely, illegally and cruelly inflicted today without justification on Palestinians and Ukrainians and many others, in many parts of the world, in China, Myanmar, Africa, South America and now the USA.
Catastrophic risks
There are many potential catastrophic risks which can threaten human survival or existence. Examples are a third world war involving all great powers and nuclear or biological weapons exchanges, a meteor hitting the Earth, climate change or a natural pandemic.
All are possible.
Within Christian eschatology, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are harbingers of the end of times for humanity (before the second coming of Christ).
In John’s Revelation, the first horseman rides a white horse and is given a crown as a figure of conquest. The second carries a sword and rides a red horse as the creator of (civil) war, conflict, and strife. The third, a food merchant, rides a black horse symbolizing famine, and carries scales. The fourth and final horse is pale, upon it rides Death, accompanied by Hades. ( “Apocalypse of John”, The King James Bible).
Conquest and Warfare are here today brought on by the Antichrists. Famine will likely soon follow, then Death, Hades, and potentially the end of time for humans.
The beauty
R.M.Ballantyne describes, in The Coral Island, the boys’ first outing in their boat onto the lagoon:
‘It was a bright, clear, beautiful morning, when we first launched our little boat and rowed out upon the placid waters of the lagoon. Not a breath of wind ruffled the surface of the deep. Not a cloud spotted the deep blue sky. Not a sound that was discordant broke the stillness of the morning, although there were many sounds, sweet, tiny, and melodious, that mingled in the universal harmony of nature. The sun was just rising from the Pacific’s ample bosom and tipping the mountain-tops with a red glow. The sea was shining like a sheet of glass, yet heaving with the long deep swell that, all the world round, indicates the life of the ocean; and the bright seaweeds and the brilliant corals shone in the depths of that pellucid water, as we rowed over it, like rare and precious gems. Oh! it was a sight fitted to stir the soul of man to its profoundest depths, and, if he owned a heart at all, to lift that heart in adoration and gratitude to the great Creator of this magnificent and glorious universe’.
Glorious prose, magnificent sentiments, describing a beautiful world.
We now know and understand, from the work of many brilliant people, so much about the planet on which we all live, the solar system, galaxy, and universe; the botany, biology, plants and animals including humans who populate planet Earth. Brian Cox, David Attenborough, Chris Packham, Alice Roberts, and their BBC teams, and many others, have astonished us with their explanations of all the complexities, inter-related interdependencies, systems and relationships.
And we now know a very great deal about the human animal who is so inventive, adaptable, brave, cooperative, capable, stoic, humorous, caring, sociable, emotional, creative and generally admirable. We know our evolution, history, achievements, capabilities, successes, failures and weaknesses, individually and collectively, and it’s all breath-takingly amazing.
The rise to power of the Antichrists
There are billions of humans, all different. A few behave like Jesus Christ or Nelson Mandela, and a few like Antichrists – Putin, Netanyahu, Trump, Kim-Jong Un, Xi Jinping and their followers. In between these extremes lie the rest of humanity, living their lives ordinarily as best they can, some doing good, others less so, some setting an example by their clever or constructive behaviour, others led astray somehow into wrongdoing.
Routes to Antichrist status are through a military, religious or family coup, corrupt business practices, or a corruption of the democratic process. Trump achieved dominance by a combination of the latter two, creating a society divided into his supporters and the opponents whom he stigmatises as ‘enemies from within’.
The end scenario
The ruthlessness and personal ambitions of the Antichrists are unlimited. Driven and excited by their unimaginable power and what it can achieve for them, they use all possible means to retain and extend it – corruption, inflicting pain on others, military action, bribery, business malpractice, pseudo-legal proceeedings, information control, incarceration, even murder.
Putin’s Ukraine war is financed almost entirely by the export of fossil fuels. The climate harms these cause will result in great suffering and loss of life. Indeed they could terminate most of humanity. China continues relentlessly to be the largest country emitter of carbon dioxide, and continues to build new coal-fired power stations, as does India. The Middle-Eastern petro-states, autocracies all, enrich themselves with their main asset, fossil fuels.
All these countries are dictatorships, exploiting all areas including the Arctic and Antarctic, in search of mining and extraction opportunities. Destruction of the natural world is a given. Amazon forest destruction continues apace.
The USA has cancelled all renewable energy and green initiatives and environmental protections, expanding drilling and fracking operations, even in national parks and protected areas. Endangered species are threatened. National parks and wilderness areas have had their protected status removed, in preparation for their sale or exploitation for drilling and logging.
This is all contrary to international agreements about curbing climate change and protecting wilderness areas, which independent experts have repeatedly declared is a worsening crisis and an existential threat to all humanity. On the present trajectory the Earth will become almost uninhabitable within 100 years, maybe less, and billions of people will die or starve. This is now a world at war with itself, according to the CEO of COP30.
It is grotesque that much of the world’s population is at or below the poverty level and the whole of humanity is now threatened by the climate promoted by the Antichrists and associated oligarchs assembling and using their extremes of wealth and power so destructively and unaccountably.
One commentator on Reddit put it this way:
“…..If humans survive those (climate) scenarios, life on Earth would more resemble that of a moon colony.”
Dr Luke Kemp at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge can foresee an equally apocalyptic end, but also holds out some hope. He observes that people are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites. He says: “Collapse isn’t just caused by structures, but also people. If you want to save the world then the first step is to stop destroying it. In other words: don’t be a dick.”
Also very relevant to this debate is the work of Daniel Schmachtenberger.
There is enormous complacency or apathy amongst many people that their current material comforts can continue indefinitely, even though scientists say otherwise. 89% of the public across the world want strong climate action from their governments.
But the Antichrists don’t, they are greedy for limitless wealth and power, and fossil fuels are their way to get and retain it. They have no care for the public. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, ‘never in the field of human conflict was so much hatred injury hardship and death caused to so many by so few’.
Unless we accept Somerset Maugham’s bleak belief that humankind is but ‘the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant planet’, the fight for human survival needs rocket-boosters under it, with strong-arm tactics against the Antichrists. In the real world, the meek cannot inherit the Earth if it has already been stolen from them.
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