Make America Great Again as White Political Theology

Abstract

“Trumpism” is not a coherent socio-political doctrine. Where it does cohere is in its symbolic attempts to parry the cultural shocks endured by the self-perceived victims of liberal progressivism – those who see whiteness not as a privilege, but as a state of fragility, those who also narrate this fragility as constitutive of the end of Christian America or, more broadly, Judeo-Christian civilization. The rationale for Trumpism is not simply policy-based, or economic. Rather, resonating under Trumpism and the promise to Make America Great Again (MAGA) is a white political theology which is deployed in a new “spiritual war” for the soul of America and indeed, the soul of the West. More troubling is how this “spiritual war” articulates itself in the new culture wars and, for some, the inauguration of a geo-political apocalypse which finally resolves the clash of civilizations. This article investigates how MAGA functions as white political theology both within the White House and amongst Trump’s base. Following from this, we explore this political theology as a vast ideological apparatus engendered by neo-liberalism in spiritual-racialist terms.