APOCALYPSE LATER

For most of our history, human beings have lived with the expectation that the End of Days will be upon us. How has this shaped our psychology and also our politics?

- SUFFIAN HAKIM

WHEN DONALD TRUMP was elected into office in 2016, many right-wing publications hailed him as a sort of messianic figure. It went as far as France, where right-leaning financial newspaper Les Echos described him as the “saviour of a country at the edge of the Apocalypse”.

Trump himself fuelled this. In one of his first speeches after taking office, he warned that the United States faced economic collapse and total annihilation at the hands of “radical Islamic terrorists”. He said, “Our country is going to hell. If we don’t get tough, and if we don’t get smart, and fast, we’re not going to have a country anymore.”