Sanctified authoritarianism — apartheid nostalgia and the deepfake Jesus Trump

Social media erupted after Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ in April 2026.

This follows his self-portrayal as the pope in late 2025, recurring attacks on Pope Leo XIV and his ongoing provocations toward Iran: some call Trump’s antics blasphemy, others, predictably, simply go along with it. For Trump ideologues, Deepfake Jesus Trump was not blasphemy, but prophecy.

Immediately after, Monty Python’s famous quip popped into my head: “He’s not the messiah; he’s a very naughty boy!” Yet, to a growing segment of the Christian right, Trump has become nothing short of a messiah.

This is not unique. The apotheosis of Trump is the culmination of a longer politically idolatrous history within Christianity, predating to antiquity. In America, historian Richard Hofstadter identified this in 1963 as evangelical anti-intellectualism in American life: one that privileges emotion and “common sense” over reason and facts.

More recently, Kristin Kobes du Mez also demonstrated how white Christianity has fused with militarism, patriarchy and authoritarian politics. Trump did not invent this tradition; America normalised it.

As such, what we are experiencing now is but the overture of evangelical populist demagoguery ―Trump’s cult-like appeal lies in his rejection of complexity. To many conservative Christians, reason and empirical evidence are not analytical tools, but existential threats. Reasoning itself becomes a pesky nuisance as Trump transformed into an idol of religious certainty, conservative grievances and Christian soteriology, in geopolitical conflicts divided neatly between “good” and “evil”.

Within this framework, Trump is recast as a Cyrus-like redeemer: a political saviour tasked with freeing “god’s chosen people” from perceived societal exile, from “liberals, muslims, gays, and DEI”. These and other thought-terminating clichés (often conflated under “wokeness”) coalesce into a single politico-religious narrative called “Trumpism”. One in which Trump emerges as a divine bulwark.

New media have intensified this. Social media platforms serve as engines of what sociologists call “algorithmic conspirituality” – the fusion of conspiracy theories and spirituality in online spaces. Algorithms do not merely distribute content any more; they often intensify (irrational) belief systems by feeding uncritical users emotionally charged “rage-bait”. In this environment, Trump no longer remains a politician. He becomes a divinely appointed strongman; his legitimacy perpetually validated through his appeals to right-wing moral panic.

This has dangerous consequences: the 2021 Capitol riots inter alia demonstrated how online conspirtuality translates into real-world “uncivil religion.”

Ever since, similar controversies have emerged: Pete Hegseth framed the US’s aggression against Iran explicitly through evangelical and apocalyptic liturgies: a “holy war” of biblical proportions, against “radical Islam”.

Apartheid nostalgia

However, such tropes are not restricted to the US. In South Africa, Trumpism finds fertile ground in Afrikaner apartheid nostalgia, Christian nationalism and historical revisionism. The apotheosis of Trump has been popularised by fringe ideologues such as Helgard Müller, whose book (Donald J. Trump: The Son of Man, The Christ) portrays Trump as the literal “Son of Man” – Müller’s pseudo-theological treatise reads as both a cult-manual and white supremacist religious canon.

More worryingly, organisations within the broader Afrikaner-right have actively nursed their own brand of Trumpism. Events such as the Future of Nations conference, hosted by Lex Libertas and Ernst Roets, have congregated local right-wing actors (ie Jaco Kleynhans), not coincidentally with European far-right groups and American Maga loyalists. They are part of a transnational illiberal/fascist revival, brought about by Trump veneration.

The rhetoric that emerges from these spaces is strikingly familiar.

Afrikaners (just like Trump ideologues) frame themselves as Christians under siege: echoing longstanding ideologies rooted in colonialism, Calvinist theology and separatist worldviews. The 1838 Battle of Blood River, for instance, is reinvoked by Afrikaners as tangible divine favour, despite deeply historical-critical scholarly interpretations of true events. Moreover, such revisionist self-perceptions cast Afrikaners as a Biblical Israel, embattled, yet divinely ordained.

American Christian nationalism operates in much the same way. After World War 2, McCarthyist America saw itself as under siege by secular communists, only to reimagine itself (under Trumpism) as “one nation under God”. Out of this zeitgeist emerges the very “prophetic” veneer through which this idyllic destiny of universal Christian chosenness and existential anxiety is validated. The convergence of these contexts is not accidental; they are rooted in a shared framework of Christian exceptionalism and existential crisis.

At their core lies the concept of whiteness. Not a racial category, but a socially-historically constructed hierarchy rooted in imperialism, Christianity and ethno-supremacy. Today, evangelical Christianity provides the theological vernacular through which this system is translated. It reframes politics as a cosmic battle: elevating the West as righteous crusaders, versus the Middle East as its malevolent existential threat.

Trump emerges as the divine military messiah of this eschatology. To Maga and conservative Afrikaners alike, Trump is not simply a political leader. He is Christianity’s apocalyptic wrath against its enemies, made manifest. The danger lies not only in the ostensible belief that Trump is Christ, but in the political consequences of such apotheosis. Once Trump’s authority is sanctified, dissent becomes heresy, while freedoms are recast as obstacles to divine self-determination. This is the logic of Christian nationalism, whether in the US or South Africa.

The point, then, is not to diminish Trump’s hagiographic deepfake as Jesus, tempting as that may be. It is to acknowledge what it reveals: a political-theological regime in which dictators cloak themselves in sanctified authoritarianism. One where ancient myths hijack democracy and a Christian theocracy is born. DM