“He’s on a mission from God & nothing can stop what is coming.”
So reads the infamous meme that President Trump recently shared on his social media site. The notorious Pepe the frog cartoon figure, which the alt-right has appropriated as an overt antisemitic dog whistle, is lurking in this image showing Trump walking down a dark street.
The bizarre slogan combines a line from the “Blues Brothers” comic movie with an allusion to QAnon’s promised “storm.”
It’s a measure of the extent of the chaos Trump has caused — and his numbing 2,200 or so posts over Social Truth in the past four months — that many of us either missed this post or else just rolled our eyes and shrugged our shoulders.
It belabors the obvious to point out how totally inappropriate it is for a public official — in this case the official holding the highest elected executive office in our secular country — to declare he’s on a “mission from God,” much less to spread antisemitic memes. Nevertheless, freethinkers and secularists should remain indignant over Trump’s messianic pandering.
Michelle Goldberg, the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s 2024 “Clarence Darrow Award” honoree, recently warned in her New York Times column, “Beware: We are entering a new phase of the Trump era,” that the danger right now is “getting accustomed to what used to seem unthinkable.”
A colleague of Goldberg in a Times analysis has unpacked the hypocrisy of Trump’s attack upon academic freedom, such as alleging Harvard and other universities are “totally antisemitic” while at the same time posting such an image. Trump’s dalliances with antisemitism include (according to his first wife) keeping a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside, asking military officials in his first term “Why can’t you be like the German generals?” and telling his first Chief of Staff John F. Kelly that “Hitler did a lot of good things.”
Yes, his daughter converted to her husband’s Judaism and is raising their children Jewish. Plus, Trump has propitiated rightwing Christian evangelicals with his support of Israel and via moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. Yet, Trump has invited Holocaust denier and white supremacist Nick Fuentes and antisemitic rapper Kanye West to dine with him. Additionally, Trump’s running mate JD Vance and ally till recently Elon Musk have openly supported Germany’s alt-right political party Alternative for Germany.
When asked about the antisemitic symbol in the meme, the White House said: “President Trump has done more than any other president in modern history to stop antisemitic violence and hold corrupt institutions, like Harvard, accountable for allowing anti-American radicalism to escalate.” However, as the Times reports, “Since reclaiming the White House, Mr. Trump has brought into his orbit and his administration people with records of advancing antisemitic tropes, including a spokeswoman at the Pentagon.”
While the antisemitic image has received the most press, let’s turn to our president’s vow that he’s on a “mission from God.”
Christian nationalists have long anointed Trump as their version of the biblical King Cyrus (the pagan ruler exulted in the bible for delivering Israel from Babylonian captivity). But since surviving his assassination attempt last summer, which Trump almost immediately proclaimed “an act of God,” he has dialed up his messianic claims. “God spared my life for a reason,” he said in his presidential victory speech. He elaborated on this theme in his Inaugural: “I was saved by God to make America great again.” Many of his followers concur and bow down.
Finally, look at that menace contained in Trump’s reposted meme that “nothing can stop what’s coming.” How dare a U.S. president make such a statement, tied as it is to a fascistic threat involving a judgment day of mass arrests and worse.
For these reasons and many more, freethinkers and other Americans who care about our constitutional rights and our democracy must continue to organize and speak out against the revocation of our liberties and the rule of law. The Freedom From Religion Foundation is proudly co-sponsoring the “No Kings” Day of Action on Saturday, June 14.
Sign up to be counted as an FFRF supporter at one of more than 1,300 separate events around the country — including somewhere near you. That’s truly a worthy “mission.”
Disclaimer: The views in this column are of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
