“Antichrist” as a Political Label

Calling your political foe the “Antichrist” has strayed so far from the biblical data that the practice has become flat-out ridiculous.

Once the political food fight—now a standard feature of countless podcasts and social media—began in earnest, it was necessary to find an unflattering label to slap on your opponent (or their tribe), so as to either marginalize them or tag them with an easily identifiable but obvious pejorative moniker.

Early labels were simply “left-wing,” or “right wing,” echoing the partisan labels based on where people sat in the French National Assembly during the Revolution. On the right, we heard the pejoratives used of Democrats and their supporters: “drive by media,” “libs,” and “environmentalist wackos.” Not to be outdone, the left managed to change the meaning of “conservative” (of which I am one, of the Reagan, limited government variety), into a term of derision. According to the liberal left, “conservatives” dislike minorities, women, reject science, are suspicious of progress, and renounce all forms of libertine sexual freedom and cultural expression. Conservatives are thought to be Bible-thumping backwater Christian fundamentalists (and almost always hypocrites) by the non-religious “others” who don’t know enough about Christianity to make any sort of accurate determination about what Christians actually believe and practice.

Then came Trump and MAGA. If you liked Trump, MAGA was doing the Lord’s work. If you didn’t like Trump, MAGA became something to decry as the identifier of all things detestable. The MAGA hat was now the ultimate declaration of one’s political fealty to Trump. To the left, wearing one was seen as an offensive insult needing to be ripped off the wearer’s head.

When the edginess of those labels wore off, both sides needed new “bad words” to define the other side. This whole process reminds me of the showdown between the two competing baseball teams in the beloved movie, The Sandlot. In a famous scene, the teams hurl insults at each other until one of them drops the bombshell, “you play ball like a girl.” There is no greater insult possible. There was nothing left to say. With the use of “Antichrist” as a political label, we have come to a similar dead-end.

The Democrats went from being called “liberals” to being labeled “woke” and haters of America. MAGA supporters were, in turn, called “racists” and “fascists.” The latter label was a feeble attempt to echo Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (which critiques both Hitler and Lenin). In the eyes of many on the left, MAGA was framed as a resurgence of fascism—with the embarrassing twist that many who used the term could not clearly identify its origins or historical meaning. Trump was compared to Adolf Hitler by those with little knowledge of actual Nazi atrocities, beyond recognizing Hitler as one of the worst figures in recent history; and so his name was thrown at Trump as just another in a series of escalating bad words.

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