As the Russian military amassed on the Ukrainian border, various voices on the American right rushed to commend or excuse Vladimir Putin, the architect of the coming invasion. Their main motive seemed obvious: to appeal to Trump’s base by projecting onto Putin precisely what appealed to Trump himself—the image of the world leader as super-tough hombre.
Rapture. End Times. World War III. Such prophesies—including those that bring Russia into the mix—are nothing new. In certain American strands of apocalyptic thought, adherents have long put a Russian spin on the end of the world. Matthew Avery Sutton, the author of American Apocalypse, reflected in 2015 (in the aftermath of Putin’s takeover of Crimea) that as long ago as the 19th century, preacher John Nelson Darby fingered Russia as the West’s possible antagonist in a face-off between Christ and the Antichrist. Rumors of Russia’s potential role in the end of days surfaced again 100 years ago (during the country’s revolutionary transition to Communism); during the atomic- and nuclear-weapons race of the mid-1900s; and, closer to our day, during periods of conflict in the Middle East.