I am sorry to report that electoral victory has not made them gracious toward their many perceived enemies.
Nor has it diminished their appetite for conspiracy theories, violent fantasy, and strongman politics.
LAS VEGAS, AUGUST 2023.
Hand gun and rifle themed American flags, Trump hats and MAGA gear sold during the ReAwaken America Tour on Oct. 22, 2022 in Manheim, Pa.Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty Images
The documentary film team from Germany meets me in the hotel lobby near the Strip.
They are young, vigorously athletic, tall, mostly blond, and dressed in hipster grunge.
They have spent much of the past year traveling and filming in conflict zones around the world.
I am happy to have been invited to accompany them as a guide of sorts.
We head into a public park whose grounds are dominated by enormous white tents.
A large placard announces the event:Reawaken America.
The setting is somewhat atypical for the ReAwaken America Tour, as I know from prior experience.
The organization usually prefers to host their roving events at megachurches.
Outside it is scorching, with temperatures in the low hundreds; thankfully, the tents are lightly air-conditioned.
The first thing I notice is that the T-shirts are getting nastier.
SIZE MATTERS blares one mans shirt over enlarged images of bullets of various calibers.
Its RINO season, reads another, with an image of Trump carrying a long gun.
Another mans T-shirt features dozens of white male soldiers and the words DIVERSITY IS DESTRUCTION across the bottom.
He also maintained that the COVID vaccines contained luciferase, a dreadful compound allegedly made of Jeffrey Epsteins DNA.
The rhetoric coming from the podium is even more violent than the slogans on the T-shirts.
Satan dwells where the former temple of Apollo is.
And it also tells you that Satan dwells where Antipas was partnered.
Clay hands off the microphone to Mike Flynn, who describes the global alliance against the United States America.
The audience roars their approval.
When [Hunter Biden] is convicted .
Liberals, democrats, communists, lizard things, we got a lot of words for these creatures.
He demands the restoration of the rightful president of America.
What does he want the anointed one to do once restored?
Revenge, cold and bloody.
All we need is a body of water, a length of rope, and a heavy millstone.
What we want is Nuremburg trials 2.0.
We are going to see extreme accountability.
Natural accountability, he shouts, his voice getting louder.
Permanent accountability with extreme prejudice!
One of the German team members asks me, uneasily, Are we safe here?
I reply that this place is probably no more dangerous to us personally than the rest of Las Vegas.
I believe this to be true, but it sounds hollow even as I say it.
So the danger is to the rest of the country, he says, nodding.
The racism, too, is more transparent than usual.
They show up in similarly themed T-shirts and are featured on the podium.
Even the preachers invited to speak at the event seem exceptionally focused on making their enemies feel the pain.
The Black pastor Mark Burns, a stalwart warm-up act at Trump rallies, follows Peters onstage.
There is no acknowledgment of Peterss anti-Black racism, but there is plenty of additional rhetorical bloodshed.
Then she begins to shout.
Its time for the heavens to open and people to receive, people to receive the truth about Jesus!
She continues in ever-higher registers, No weapon formed against us shall have dominion, it shall not proffer.
On earth as it is in heaveeeeeeeeen!!!
She screeches for some time, then moderates her tone.
Thats our task, to lift this place from the hell theyve created for our children!
Who is the they shes talking about?
Its the people who own every cent in this world and also keep track of it, she explains.
Hitler was fighting the same people were trying to take down, McKay had said.
These people are so elusive and slippery and cunning that we ended up having World War II.
When the clips were publicized on MSNBC, McKay and Ward were disinvited.
The masterminds are the IMF, the World Bank, and financial elites, Ms. K intones.
Clay Clark pops up again to say that there is hope for persecuted real Americans after all.
You just need to put your money in the right place.
Clark introduces the audience to the head of a company called Beverly Hills Precious Metals.
The man from L.A. offers the promise of a financial bolt-hole for the coming apocalypse.
you’re free to do that now for minimal fees.
The amounts under discussion you could start with as little as $100!
are perhaps more revealing, I reply.
Many appear to spend a fair amount of time outdoors.
She briefly tells me her life story: She runs her own hair salon but revenue has flatlined.
Her marriage fell apart a decade earlier, and one of her kids no longer speaks to her.
I think they got to him, she says.
Them, she says distractedly, gesturing toward some presumably evil plot taking place outside the tent.
When she speaks of her son, her expression is so forlorn that I feel a certain sympathy.
It is perfectly understandable that some people develop the urge to burn it all down.
But that doesnt make it a victimless crime.
PHOENIX, DECEMBER 2024.
The crowd is significantly younger than that at ReAwaken America, but the vibe feels quite familiar.
And their spiel hasnt changed.
Kicking off the four-day conference, Kirk gives credit to God for Trumps triumph.
He is truly a president of forgotten Americans.
As speaker after speaker entertains the crowd it is clear that religion is a major theme.
But it isnt the gospel as many if not most American Christians would have heard it.
Divine providence works through Donald Trump as its instrument, says Steve Bannon.
Ive made it my mission to eradicate woke-ism from the American pulpit, he says.
Came in with liberation theology and Black liberation theology.
We have to decide which Jesus we believe in.
Speaker after speaker makes it clear that vengeance is the essence of the new religion.
Nominee for FBI director Kash Patel, Bannon assured the audience, understands who needs to be investigated.
The January 6 Committee and the Biden White House.
Its not just blood that theyre after; they want a show.
This is the thing that Trump surely understands best.
Policy simply doesnt matter.
Copyright 2025 Katherine Stewart.
