The Antichrist and White Nationalism

There was a sobering article on Axios yesterday outlining the different ways that Donald Trump has been unraveling LBJ’s civil rights legacy, and has been rolling back protections that have shaped American life for close to sixty years.

I’ll put a link to the article below, but in the meantime here are a couple of quotes that stood out to me:

“Two months into his term, Trump already has overturned, weakened or targeted LBJ policies on voting rights, desegregation, the environment, immigration, education, affirmative action and health care.”

“Within hours of taking office, Trump revoked LBJ’s 1965 executive order mandating ‘equal opportunity’ for people of color and women in the recruitment, hiring and training of federal contractors.”

“Trump’s new order triggered sweeping changes to anti-discrimination rules — including a little-noticed memo stating that the federal government no longer would unequivocally prohibit contractors from operating ‘segregated facilities.’”

The article also gave a few examples to contrast what happened sixty years ago compared to what is happening now under Donald Trump:

1965: Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act after the attack on unarmed peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Ala. He had encouraged the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to march for voting rights to sway the public.

• 2025: Republicans in Congress have blocked attempts to reauthorize elements of the Voting Rights Act, while Trump has pushed for national voting restrictions as part of his false claims of rampant election fraud.

1965: Johnson signed the Higher Education Act, creating scholarships and low-interest loans for Black, Latino, Native American and low-income white students.

• 2025: Trump is seeking to eliminate the Department of Education and has waged war on universities, slashing federal funding and launching investigations into 45 colleges over their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices. The crackdown has endangered Black and Latino student groups founded during LBJ’s era.

1965: LBJ signed a bill abolishing the racist national origins quota system for immigration.

• 2025: Trump is considering a travel ban on as many as 43 countries, expanding restrictions he imposed in his first term as he cracks down on both legal and illegal immigration.

One last quote from this article gets to the very heart of the issue with the Trump Administration.

“Guiding the Trump Justice Department’s policies is a broad reinterpretation of Civil Rights-era laws to focus on ‘anti-white racism’ rather than discrimination against people of color.”

Here’s why that matters:

One executive order that Trump signed back on January 20^th was to halt the U.S. refugee resettlement program. According to the document, “This order suspends the USRAP until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States.”

The interests of the United States. That’s a very interesting phrase, because apparently the interests of the United States became a little bit more obvious just a couple of weeks later.

On February 7th, Trump signed a separate executive order cutting U.S. funding to South Africa and, within that order, specifically referred to Afrikaners, a white minority group in South Africa.

His order directed Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to prioritize humanitarian relief to Afrikaners who are victims of “unjust racial discrimination” and resettle them in the U.S. under the refugee program.

An AP report this week said that 67,000 white South Africans have already expressed interest in Trump’s plan to give them refugee status. And, why shouldn’t they? They fit in exactly with the interests of the United States.

All of this brings to light the ugliness that is right beneath the surface of the whole MAGA movement. That ugliness is how white nationalism, antisemitism and a hatred for immigrants are getting mixed in with all of this hyper-patriotism about America, and love for Donald J. Trump.

Even worse, all of this is poisoning the church, as more and more Christians are being exposed to these extreme beliefs, and coming to accept them as being a part of Christianity.

The truth is, however, that all of these things are antithetical to what Christianity really stands for. The Bible says that God is NOT partial to one race or ethnicity over another, and that people from every nation, tribe, and language will be in the Kingdom of God.

“for there is no respect of persons with God.” – Romans 2:11

“After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.” – Revelation 7:9

And because the Bible so clearly teaches us that ALL people from EVERY race and ethnicity will be in the Kingdom of God, it also makes perfect sense that in the Antichrist kingdom, one particular race will matter more than the others.

But here’s the bottom line. If you or someone you know is beginning to get wrapped up in white nationalism or other race-based beliefs, please consider what spirit is leading you to do that. Because I can tell you one thing, it is NOT the Holy Spirit. ♦