Apocalypse Soon?
- garylachman8
- 1 day ago
- 13 min read
A new edition of the Italian translation of my book Dark Star Rising came out earlier this year, and my publisher, Tlon, has invited me to speak about the book and more recent developments at Spazio Settee Libreria in Rome, on 6 March. I was asked to write a new preface, to bring things "up to date." With events developing practically by the minute, that proved very difficult, and although I waited until the last nanosecond of the deadline until submitting the piece, what I delivered seems old news by now.
Here is the new preface to the book in English. Alert readers may feel a touch of deja vu at the start. We writers are often cannibals, and I used some material from an earlier post for this preface to the new edition to what more and more seems to me to be a book that, sadly, saw what was coming and has now arrived.
In May 2024, I indulged in some social media. The occasion was Donald Trump’s conviction on all thirty-four counts for paying hush money to the porn star Stormy Daniels about a sexual relationship they had, so it would not interfere with his 2016 presidential campaign. I posted an image of Trump on X, with the caption “Dark Star Sinking?” The caption was a reference to my book, Dark Star Rising - a new edition of which you have in your hands - which looks at the strange “occult politics” that seemed to be at work during Trump’s first administration. At the time of the trial, Trump was busily campaigning for a second term, hoping to regain the presidential seat that he claimed Joe Biden had ‘stolen’ from him in 2020.
As many did, I thought that with his conviction, Trump’s chances of returning to the White House had diminished considerably. Although it is perfectly legal in the United States for a convicted felon to run for president, one suspects - at least I did - that most people would think twice about voting for one. As I show in Dark Star Rising, Trump had some hefty support during his first presidential bid, from disaffected anti-PC youth posting magical memes on the internet, to advisors imbibing the esoteric political ideas of the far right Traditionalist Julius Evola, to the “power of positive thinking” and Trump’s own savvy with media and his peculiar form of demagoguery and seemingly natural talent for creating chaos. But after living through Trump’s first time as president and with the dark cloud of his conviction over his head, I felt that it would take more magic than this to put him back in the Oval Office.
I should have realised this was wishful thinking. Trump has a reputation as a “comeback kid,” and although at seventy-nine he is certainly no kid, that he has comeback is indisputable. Whether it was the power of his positive thinking or some other agent at work, following those convictions, Trump seemed to have entered a path on which he could do no wrong. First, a heavily conservative Supreme Court effectively made Trump immune from prosecution in the Stormy Daniels case, but also in the wider, more significant case of his responsibility in the storming of the Capitol by his supporters in January 2021, in a bid to prevent the formal recognition of Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential race. The judges came to a decision that gives the president - whoever it might be - “absolute immunity” in the performance of his duties. This decision effectively places the president beyond the law. Dangerous enough, whoever might be in office, one would think. But in the context of a second Trump term - well, as some critics of Trump expressed it, the consequences could be catastrophic. And if the reports of what is happening in America since Trump’s re-election are anything to go by, it seems his critics may have been right.
For Trump’s supporters though, the many who make up the ranks of the MAGA movement - which is as much a religious, spritual movement as it is a political one - it’s no surprise that nothing seems to stop Trump, and that obstacles fall by the wayside at his approach. They are convinced that Trump has been given a divine mission, by no one less than God Himself, and that nothing will prevent him from fulfilling it. What is that mission? To turn the United States, now fallen into corruption and sin through decades of “progressive” thought, back to its Christian roots. Trump will “make America great again,” and he will do it in the name of the Lord.
It may seem odd that the same character who first rose to power through the possible influence of occult means, as Dark Star Rising argues, should now identify himself with the righteous Lord of evangelical Christianity. But the devil, we know, can quote scripture, and Trump himself has a history of using those around him who see benefit to themselves through his success, and then jettisoning them when necessary. So his apparent embrace of hot Gospel Christianity may only be a strategic move.
Yet for those who see him as a saviour, there is no doubt. If there was, it was dispelled when Trump survived an apparent assassination attempt at a campaign rally in July 2024. Trump turned his head at the precise moment when a bullet would have struck home. Instead it merely grazed his ear. The photograph of the bloodied Trump, rising up from the huddle of Secret Service agents, raising his fist and shouting “Fight! Fight!”, with the American flag flapping behind him, predictably went viral almost immediately. Yet I have to admit, that when I saw it, I couldn’t help but think it was staged. It was just too perfect, and reminded of me nothing so much as the famous photograph by Joe Rosenthal of the Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima during WWII.
The photograph has, of course, become ‘iconic’, in our contemporary misuse of that over-abused word. Yet we still don’t know much about Trump’s would-be assassin nor about the wound he suffered. The ambiguity has, of course, led to much speculation about conspiracies and the whole incident being orchestrated to present Trump as a hero, bravely challenging the evil forces of the ‘Deep State’. Given that Trump himself inaugurated the age of “fake news” and “alternative facts” - as spelled out in Dark Star Rising - the thought that this and a second attempt on his life may have been orchestrated is, for some people, worth considering.
Yet for Trump and his followers, if there is a director at work, setting the stage for him, it is the Lord himself. Trump has claimed that it was Providence itself that made him turn his head at exactly the right moment to avoid the bullet. Others in his camp claim to have seen an angel gently nudge him out of the way. If so, this angelic protection did not reach as far as Corey Comparetore, one of Trump’s followers, who was hit and killed. Either angels can save only one life at time, or the one involved didn’t think the life of a supporter important enough to save.
Such questions, however, do not trouble those who see Trump as a means by which America could become a Fundamentalist Christian nation. Following Trump’s miraculous near-death escape, many of his followers took to brandishing a bandage on their ear, in an act of sympathetic magic with their saviour. If one needed any evidence that the MAGA movement is truly a cult, this should have been sufficient. As I say in Dark Star Rising, Trump’s sway over his followers is exactly the same as a magician’s over his victim or a guru’s over his devotees. He is somehow able to reach some mythic, archetypal part of their psyche, beyond the reach of the critical mind. The mob that ransacked the Capitol, led by Jacob Chansley, the “Qanon shaman,” was an expression of the irrational forces that Trump had unleashed. If one wanted an historical precedent, one could see that uprising as Trump’s “beerhall putsch,” a first showing of a force that would, once canalised, become very powerful. Going by reports of what is happening since Trump’s second election - with his ICE agents disappearing people at random - it seems that what had started as mob chaos is now more disciplined.
In Dark Star Rising I look at some of the characters who claimed to have helped Trump win his first term, through using the internet as a medium for “chaos magic.” The people who were behind this, the then fashionable Alt-Right, are not in the picture now. Yet those who are on Team Trump these days, during his second term, are even more dubious than the far right acolytes of Pepe the Frog, the once innocuous cartoon amphibian slacker, who became, through the power of “meme magic,” a potent political talisman. For one thing, they are not on the sidelines cheering Trump on, but occupy positions of power within his administration. For another, they have the means in their hands to “create reality” on a massive scale, not only through the agency of social media - an alternative reality through which Trump knows how to navigate - but through concrete political and physical force. And, perhaps most distressing, they have a plan.
Although during his campaign, Trump disavowed any connection to or even knowledge of Project 2025, it has become clear since he’s taken office for his second term that it has been on his agenda all along. What is Project 2025? Effectively it is a plan to dismantle much of the US federal government, to cut spending on or to eliminate outright the “progressive” programs put in place by the previous Democrat administrations, and to return the United States to what its proponents believe is its true stature as a Christian nation. The overarching ideology behind Project 2025 and other related directives at work during Trump’s second term is Christian Nationalism. And according to some critics, in a somewhat bizarre twist - although these days practically anything goes - the advocates of a Christian USA are collaborating with proponents of a super-libertarian technocracy that is contemplating if not actively preparing for an “end times” scenario that would see the Trumpian faithful - and the technologically well-heeled - saved, while the rest of us go down the tubes.
If this sounds like the equivalent of some Netflix sci-fi dystopia, you’re not far off. The disturbing thing is that many of the people in power who would be capable of making this possible, seem to take it seriously. Alarmist, you think? Think again.
The central architect of Project 2025 is Russel Vought, currently Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, and who served in the same capacity during Trump’s first administration. Vought is a far-right Christian Nationalist associated with the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, whose aim is to rid the government of liberal and progressive elements and replace those with others of a Christian Nationalist persuasion. He’s called for an absolute ban on abortion and while ostensibly recognising the separation of church and state established by the founding fathers, has stated publicly that this does not mean that the state should not be influenced by the church. The essence of Christian Nationalism is the belief that America should be a Christian nation, not a secular one, and that Christian values - specifically those of evangelical Christianity - should not only be embraced by the state, but enforced by it too.
Vought is not alone in this belief. J. D. Vance, Trump’s vice-president, is also a Christian Nationalist who likewise opposes abortion, and also same-sex marriage, and gun control. Vance has been associated with a Christian Nationalist movement called the New Apostolic Reformation. This embraces a Christian Supremacist ideology that claims that Christianity is a superior religion and that, ipso facto, Christians are superior people who are best qualified to be in charge of things. They call for an outright Manichean “spiritual warfare” between the forces of good and evil, evil in this case being democrats, liberals, and those who are “woke, the culmination of which will bring on Christ’s second coming. Vance is also a devotee of the radical far-right “monarchist” political theorist Curtis Yarvin, who rejects democracy and advocates a postliberal form of government he calls “technomonarchism,” a kind of technocratic state overseen by a king. Trump’s own floating of the idea of himself as king may very well have trickled down from Yarvin’s heady and often contradictory rhetoric. The “No Kings” demonstrations across the United States on 18 October 2025 which drew more than seven million people suggest that not many in America agree with Yarvin.
Pete Hegseth, Trump’s “Secretary of War” likewise embraces Christian Nationalist values. Hegseth is a member of an evangelical church whose ethos supports the idea that women are created by God to be submissive to men. Hegseth has been accused of sexual assault and although no charges were brought against him, his outspoken advocacy of “traditional” roles for men and women, suggest his idea of the perfect wife would be a compliant producer of children. Vance has also made clear that childless women are somehow less loved by the Lord, and he’s publicly stated that women should be prolific mothers, and increase the flock of the faithful on principle.
Stephen Miller, a key Trump advisor, while not an outright Christian Nationalist, is an outspoken proponent of White Nationalism, an ideology that informs Trump’s hardline on immigration. His association with Breitbart News and high recommendation of the racist novel The Camp of the Saints - both featured in Dark Star Rising - as well as his often vocal advocacy of Christianity (Miller is Jewish) makes him right at home with his fellow Trumpists.
On the side of the angels - or at least of the people who claim that they have the angels on their side - is Trump’s spiritual advisor, the televangelist Paula White-Cain, who also serves as senior advisor to Trump’s newly formed White House Faith Office. She has had several incarnations as a charismatic proponent of what’s known as “prosperity gospel,” the belief that God rewards the faithful with material benefit - which suggests that the rich are favoured by Him. Trump’s own adherence to “positive thinking”, a Christianised form of “mental science,” is a variant of this. Among her achievements is converting Trump to Christianity. Another is her all-out attempt to secure Trump’s victory in 2020 by calling on “angelic reinforcements” and speaking in tongues on a live-stream video. The forces of evil may have won out and “stolen” the election, but the video went viral.
Others within the ranks of Christian Supremacists, Dominion Theology, and White Christian Supremacy, have seen Trump has an agent sent by God to begin the countdown to the “end times”. Prophecy has been made and they see him as evidence of its fulfilment. One item of evidence is Trump’s support for Israel’s actions in Gaza, which they see as setting the stage for the final battle between the forces of light and those of darkness. Yet not all of God’s agents are behind Trump. Majorie Taylor Greene, an American member of the House of Representatives and outspoken Christian Nationalist, who at one at point called for the execution of Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama, has in recent times turned against Trump because of his refusal to release the files relating to the convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Others whom we might think would not break bread with such ideas as Christian Nationalism seem also to have been bitten by the apocalypse bug. Peter Thiel, the German ultra-libertarian technology billionaire, was raised in Evangelical Christianity, and is a mentor and political donor to J.D. Vance. Like Vance, Thiel is critical of liberal democracy and also like Vance he is a student of Curtis Yarvin, cottoning to his vision of a so-called “dark enlightenment” - which sounds more like an ‘endarkenment’ - a neo-reactionary call to reject modern politics. Thiel has his own vision of the “end times,” speaking darkly of the Antichrist (whom he sees in Greta Thunberg) and of a coming collapse of the current social order as a prerequisite for a new reign of technocratic rulers.
This odd union of “end times” theology and techno-libertarianism has made some acute minds sit up and take notice. In a chilling article for the Guardian, “The Rise of End Times Fascism,” (April 13 2025) Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, spell out what they see as a highly possible denouement to a mashup of Trump’s chaotic administration, Christian Nationalist millenarianism, and the survivalist vision of techno-giants such as Thiel, against the backdrop of climate change and social instability. They argue that Thiel and others like him are preparing for a coming time of “shocks, scarcity, and collapse,” and are actively making this possible by their opposition to ecological concerns and regulations. They believe that they have the right to “exit” from society and its obligations and to build secure “bunkers” for themselves, in which to sit out the inevitable breakdown in fabulous comfort and luxury, protected by their private security forces. They, in a word, are the “chosen,” as are the ranks of “warriors of God” making up the armies of Christian Nationalists. Trump’s own “America First” rhetoric and his aim of clearing out undesirables and securing borders is, Klein and Taylor argue, a larger, more mass-oriented project of creating a kind of “fortress state,” that will stave off the hordes of immigrants along the lines of The Camp of the Saints. Both visions - of a corporate state and a fortress nation - share much, they say, with the fundamentalist vision of the Rapture, when the faithful will be swept up to Heaven, and the unbelieving rabble left to fend for themselves among the carnage.
Such apocalyptic expectations are not uncommon among fascist ideologues. In Russia, Alexandre Dugin - whom the reader will meet in these pages - has long called for some final, smackdown faceoff between what he calls the Atlanticists, the maritime, mercantile nations and Eurasia, the mother of all continents. The modern world so offends Dugin that he can think of nothing better to do with it than knock it down, a symptom, I’d say, of existential exhaustion. He too has a religious vision and he too has made himself quite at home with fascism. My book The Return of Holy Russia (2022), a follow up to Dark Star Rising, looks at the millenarian ideas informing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, to which Trump has all but given his blessing.
If Klein and Taylor are right, there are powerful forces at work in the US and wider world, who seem bent on bringing about a future that strikes me as a nasty blend of The Handmaid’s Tale and the 2009 apocalyptic blockbuster 2012. As I say at the end of Dark Star Rising, “the future perhaps is not only in our hands, but in our minds, and the reality that awaits us in the time ahead may be germinating there now.” Let’s hope that an “end times” is truly on its way, but not the one the forces of darkness are counting on.