Matthew Fox on Trump and the MAGA Movement as the AntiChrist

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to what is going on for New Thought from
the Edge of Arm. Each week on home Time's flagship
radio show, veteran broadcaster, author, and media consultant Sandy Sedgebeer
conducts thought provoking interviews with inspirational authors, artists, musicians, scientists, speakers,
and filmmakers who are working at the point where spirituality

(00:32):
and science meet consciousness, at the very edge of arm.
Here is your host, Sandy Sedgeber.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Hello. While lecturing in Auvieto, Italy earlier this year, bestselling
theologian and episcopal priest Matthew Fox encountered the iconic Frisco
the Preaching and Deeds of the Antichrist, painted in the
cathedral at the outset of the sixteenth century by Luca
signor Elli. The author of forty three books on culture

(01:04):
and spirituality, including Original Blessing, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ,
and a Spirituality named Compassion, Matthew Fox has been awarded
many many honors, including the Abbey Courage of Conscience Peace Award,
whose other recipients include the Dalai Lama Mother, Teresa Rosa Parks,

(01:26):
Maya Angelou. He has also sparked much controversy. Matthew Fox
joins me now to share why signor Eli's Fresco inspired
him to write his most controversial book to date, Trump
and the Mega Movement as Antichrist, a handbook for the
twenty twenty four election. Matthew Fox, Welcome.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Hello, Sanley, Good to be with you again.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
You too, Matthew. You've always shied away from using the
term Antichrist because you said it was often used to
spread control and fear. What was it about that Frisco
that changed your mind?

Speaker 3 (02:08):
Well, first of all, it was a surprise. A friend
of mine who's Italian, brought me into the large cathedral
in Orvieto, and this is a chapel, a big chapel
within the cathedral. And he didn't say anything about it.
He just brought me in and going to put me
in front of the of the mural. And I stared
at it, and at first I thought it was Christ preaching.

(02:30):
But then I noticed some things were off, like his
hair was weird, it was up. It looked a little
bit like horns, hair and horns. And as I stared
at it, then I sat out loud to myself, it
feels like Donald Trump. There's the picture. And then I

(02:50):
looked at the title and it said the Antichrist or
the preaching of the Antichrist. And if you look at
the pain now, Elizabeth was painted by Lucas and in
fifteen oh one, and it's quite a painting. I counted
one hundred and fifty six characters in it, different figures.

(03:13):
And his own self portrait is down in the left
hand corner. That's him with the long blonde hair, and
next to him is fra Angelico, the Dominican painter who
actually painted in the chapel before he did fifty years
before he did. Fra Angelico painted a few paintings and
then he was called the room to do more, and

(03:33):
the chapel was left unpainted until fifty years later they
hired Lucas Signiorrelli. But you can see, of course the
preacher in the center with the devil whispering in his ear.
But in the background you have these someone called the
people in Black there a Black Ku Klux Klan, or
another one called them Ninja warriors. But there are definitely

(03:58):
signs of disturb and trouble. And if you look carefully
at the audience. Down the left hand corner, someone is
choking someone and someone else is bleeding and someone else
is dead. So these listeners to the Antichrist. There's a
lot going on in the audience, and of course that
was the case in Trump's rallies as well. And also

(04:20):
they are famous people in the audience, for example Christopher Columbus. Now,
of course Columbus sailed in fourteen ninety two and this
is painted in fifteen oh one, so less than ten years.
Columbus is already famous, but he's in this picture. Among
the people who are listening to the Antichrist, as are

(04:41):
a group right after behind the devil and the Antichrist,
a group of Dominicans and Franciscans and Cistricians, so they're
talking about this too. And then there's healings going on
in the background. Someone's been raised from the dead. And
again on the left hand sid there are more people
who are wounded and die and uh. And so the

(05:03):
Antichrist has powers, including the power to heal people and
to raise people from the dead. So there's a lot
going on here, and I think it's very significant that
the artist brings in contemporary history such as Christopher Columbus
and so forth. He also has a son of the Pope,

(05:23):
the illegitimate son of the pope who was a very
evil man who murdered people, and the Pope assigned him
to look over or Vieto. So he's kind of a
local uh mafia kind of person, and he's in the
picture too. So it's interesting because the archetype of the

(05:45):
Antichrist to his own time, to his own time, and
that's what I chose to do after this. This painting
really impressed me, and it was in June, early June,
the summer, and on the way back, I said, I
wonder what I should do with this, and then I realized, well,

(06:07):
this election is happening in America and is so applicable.
And the first my first response to the painting was
this feels like Donald Trump. So I wrote this book,
and in the process I discovered that Freud, of all people,
we don't think of Freud and cathedrals very often, but
Freud saw this picture and he was utterly mesmerized by

(06:31):
blowing away by He returned to Orvieto three times to
study this picture, and he said it was the most
important painting of his life. And what's that did he say? One, Well,
there's a whole book written about it. And I reproduced
parts of that book, a whole book written. It's called

(06:52):
Freud Visits or Vietro.

Speaker 4 (06:55):
And.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
It was important to him for a lot of reasons,
but because, for one thing, Jews have been called Antichrist
for centuries, is part of the anti Semitism of Christian
society and church, and so that was part of it.

(07:17):
But also that, as you know, Freud wanted to examine
evil and what are the dark forces in human nature?
And I found in that book on him there's an
amazing letter that he wrote when he was a young
man living in Paris. And in the letter he says,

(07:40):
my friends, when they have a day off, they love
to go out and go to museums and all that stuff.
But what I do when I have a day off,
I go to the top of Notre Dame, the roof
of Notre Dame, and hang out with the gargoyles and
the demons. Now here's a young man in his teens
when he wrote that, And I think that's so interesting

(08:03):
because that is what he did his whole life, isn't it.
He met with gargoyls and demons, you know, the unconscious
of the human species. And so I think that that's
a big part of this painting. And he saw it.
The year that his father died is when he first
saw the painting, and he was still in mourning the
Jewish tradition of mourning for a year a loved one

(08:24):
who passes. And this really struck him for that reason too,
because he had this relationship with his father where he
felt that his father was not fully manly, because his
father told him a story once when he was eight
years old. He said to his son, he said, I
was once walking down the street and this is in Vienna,

(08:47):
and a man came by and threw my hat in
the street. And Freud said to his father, what did
you do, daddy? And his father said, I went and
picked up I had well floyd. That stayed with for
his whole life because he felt it named the Jewish
male as being less than male and less than strong,

(09:11):
just standing up to being abused, and and he often
evoked that that story, and he there's another story that
came out that he actually uh when he was a
man and had children. He was in a park and
someone did that to him, and he picked up an
oar from a boat and went chasing after the guy

(09:34):
and they say, everyone in the park started running away.
But that was Freud's attempt to overcome the passivity that
he had recognized in his father. And so I.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
See that today reflected in many people, don't we?

Speaker 3 (09:54):
Yes? Yes?

Speaker 2 (09:58):
So in up in the Mega movement, you really you
say that you consider the archetype of the Antichrist is evil,
and you name eighteen elements of the Mega Movement that
carry Antichrist energy. We can't go into all of them.
I mean they range from lies and insurrection and climate

(10:20):
denial Project twenty five, abortion laws, democracide, blasphemy, what do
you think is the worst one.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
And of course the embrace of Christian nationalism and fascism
Project twenty twenty four. Well, I think that denial of
climate change is what could be worse than not trying
to slow down the destruction of Mother Earth. I mean,
everything else goes when we have when the seas rise,

(10:56):
when we have droughts and char't grow food when we
have There's all this this fire today both in Europe
and in America about immigration, But when the seas rise,
there's going to be this emigration of millions of human beings.
So we think immigration is tough today, wait till emigration

(11:20):
comes in the form of men, because so many giant cities,
as you know, are on the ocean around waterways, of course,
and uh so just that alone. But we're talking about drugs,
about wildfires, We're talking of course about the rising of
the of the temperature, and of course the extinction of

(11:41):
millions of species literally is going on, and as your
country is going to feel before long, the shifting of
the tie of the the currents. You know, because it
was in the twelfth century, you know that when Hildegard

(12:02):
was living, that those currents warmed up Europe and that's
what really amount brought forward the new Renaissance of the
twelfth century. That perishoneu great historian, and my mentor said
with him in Paris. He he says it, you know,
the climate change is what made the difference. And things

(12:22):
moved from that Romanesque defense of architecture to the Gothic architecture,
and the feminine came roaring in, and the green man
with the goddess and all this, and of course the
new universe, the university movement, so a whole new movement
of education, a whole new movement of science arose and

(12:46):
so something just the opposite may well be happening now,
and Europe may go cold again, which would be devastating
in so many ways. So I think, you know, you
asked me the one. I think so many of them
stand up, but that's one that stands up for me,
because there's something that is on everybody's mind. Is not
about whether you're a believer or an unbeliever and an

(13:08):
atheist or humanist or Muslim or anything else. We're all
feeling it, and it's going to affect not just our
species but all all living beings on the planet, so
I think, and so obvious. So and yet Trump is
in total denial of this, and or he pretends to
be because he wants to, of course. And then behind

(13:32):
it is, of course capitalism. He wants to make more
money fast where we can still sell all the oil
that we can do, as he says, drill, baby, drill.
And so I would say, since you asked me that question,
it's a hard question to answer.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
Is a hard question to answer, because I mean, every
single one of them is relevant. But in our last interview,
you shared what Thomas Berry, the eco theologian and scientists,
said about saving the planet which was, we do not
save what we do not love, and we will not
love what we do not consider as sacred. So basically,

(14:11):
you know, we're losing our love for our planet and
for the sacred.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
That's what we see exactly. I had a dream twenty
twenty five years ago and it said to me this,
he said. It said, there's nothing wrong with the humans
piece today except one thing that's shocking, and it's only
one thing with us. Hey, let's go to it. You
were forgotten the sense of the sacred. That's the dream

(14:37):
said to me. And I think it's true for the
very reason you just spoke, and that insight from Thomas Berry,
that we do love what we consider sacred. Yeah, for
example our children, but there's so much the sacred and

(14:57):
when you really look at it, and it's because it
all hangs together, it's all interdependent. If we don't, but
if we lost a sense of the sacred, see that
that which is what the dream was telling me, then
nothing is important really except grabbing our piece of the pie,

(15:18):
you know, or playing out our addictions or our projections,
or our anger or our greed. Just playing that out
and calling that, you know, our life's work.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
But ethics is always sacred spirituals about it.

Speaker 3 (15:38):
What Stonehenge was about. Look at the muscle and the
effort they put into that. We we still can't grasp it.
How they toaded these these multi ton rocks but before
wheels were invented. And and why what what brought them
to do that? Well, it was our relationship to the sky.

(15:59):
It is Mother Earth and Father Sky. It was that
curiosity because they noticed the sky changed, the seasons, solstice
coming up, economics, spring, winter, fall. They know things are
going on out there. Things are going on, and they

(16:19):
wanted to connect to it. And you know, out around
the great psychologist says, there's no living ritual that doesn't
bring psyche and cosmos together. And of course in the West,
I think ritual has become very dull and boring because
it's about finding a prayer and a book page or something.
That's not what ritual is meant to be. It's meant

(16:41):
to be a dynamic reunion of the human imagination and
human soul and psyche with the great universe. And here
we have this blessing today called web, telescope and hubble
and us there but bringing in the wonder and the beauty,
the sacredness of our story, of our having arrived after

(17:05):
thirteen twenty eight billion years in this amazing universe and
this amazing planet where life is happening and flourishing, and
we're human intelligence has joined the parade, joined the circle.
And what are we doing with it? Making war, reinventing war,
doing it more, doing it more lethally, and even more

(17:28):
on Earth? Now we hate even Earth, not just our
made up hatred towards one another in our ideologies and
our nations, but now we were showing our hatred to
Mother Earth. And you know it's preposterous, and of course
it's absolutely suicidal for our species. So and the young
and two of this. And you know they don't want

(17:51):
to raise children.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
Who complain, who complained them.

Speaker 3 (17:59):
Who could blame them? And so you know, our species
is really at the edge. And you know, one thing
I meditate on is these other our home and ed
brothers and sisters, the Neanderthal the And now we have
a list of fourteen. We keep uncovering them. Now, especially
in Southeast Asia, we're finding more and more species of hominids.

(18:23):
But the thing about all fourteen, and they're going to
be more they're all extinct, they're all gone. We're the
only ones standing. You think we will be proud enough
and smart enough. We we praise ourselves for our intelligence,
but morally and spiritually we're we've lost the sacred you see,

(18:46):
and therefore we're acting stupid. We're full of folly. We're smart,
but we don't have wisdom. We have we have rational
intelligence that we must marry it with has been before
us too late.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, you propose that MAGA really stands for making making
America grotesque again, as in the time of slavery and
Jim Crow genocide towards Native Americans and more. I mean
this reversal of the tide, you know, the move back
to authoritarianism and patriarchy and the suppression of women's rights,

(19:24):
et cetera. It's like a mind virus that's affecting the
entire world. Why do you think it's happening now? I mean,
what who is behind them all this?

Speaker 3 (19:41):
Well, I think that we've lost a sense of the
secret that I think that the cap I think capitalism
in its extreme form, and there's plenty that are going
around now. I mean, the richest man in America, in
the world, I think and must because now has an
ear not unlike the devil of Trump, perhaps the most

(20:09):
powerful man in the world. So greed, I think greed
is behind it. And what they want to do this
Project twenty twenty five is really to take away the media.
I mean they've done it in Hungary, and you know,
Trump is very admiring of Hungary, and they have erased

(20:33):
democracy and displaced it with authoritarianism. And of course it
includes killing the press and the justice system. You have
to get all those. I mean Hitler's gave us a
blueprint in the nineteen thirties and this is very parallel.

(20:55):
So it's about ultimate control. And I do think patriarchy,
I do think the whole excessive reptilian brain definition of
manhood or masculinity is very much behind it. And it
shows I mean goodness like taking away the rights of
women to determine their decisions about their body. I mean,

(21:18):
what if women propose that they do that to men?
They take away in events right to make decisions about
their own body. And this is fifty to fifty one
percent of the human race. And of course it taps
into old practices, as you say, it's coming back, but

(21:38):
it's also I mean there is also the opposition and
you know, the the what can I say, the more
sane approach to being human is never necessarily guaranteed to
be a majority of the people. And so, as Margaret

(21:59):
me used to say, you know, a small group can
change history if they gather and if they they spread
the word. So and of course the media is owned
by so many of these greedy I mean, think of
Fox News in America and that whole system from a

(22:21):
man who you people know well in England to pardon me,
Murdoc Murdoc exactly, and he has so many imitators today,
you see. And of course the whole it's the technology
to this, this burst of social media and everything, and
there are very few rules is that the wild West

(22:45):
and anyone can get in there and then spread lies.
And of course, and then when you have a liar
in chief like Donald Trump, you know it was counted.
He told thirty three thousand lies while he was president
of the United States. Last time canny top at this time,
I mean, you have to laugh at it. But it's

(23:06):
the destruction because justice and truth go together. Thomas Aquinas
sive thirty cent that truth and justice are the proper
objects of the human heart, that we seek truth, we
seek justice, and you can't have justice if without truth
or the search for truth and facts. But here anybody,

(23:31):
especially anybody with money, like in America today, so many
people have imitated Murdoch millionaires and billionaires to create their
own networks and spew their lives and disinformation. And of
course Putin does that. All dictators do that they control
the press, and so they can make up what truth is.

(23:54):
And so that's I think that's a lot that's behind
it too.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
Would you say that, you know, people won't control people
that are very afraid. It's you know, there's fear behind it.
There is some fear that you know they can only
assuage by having control.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
Yes, a fear like greed is behind it. And a
one teacher of mine, Lakota teacher, Native American ghost us,
he said, in our tradition we say that fear is
the door and the heart that lets evil spirits in.

(24:35):
And to me, that's a very profound observation. And he
said any next sentence was and so all prayer is
strengthening the heart so that evil spirits do not come
in through that door of fear and of course, a
fear is the opposite of love, and so that's where
you have love that Christ represents, not just Christ, Uda too,

(25:00):
and all spiritual teachers represent that, but Christ certainly did
on the one hand. But then you have fear, and
so that's Antichrist. You can't run on both love and
fear now, and of course we all have fear of
all things. But what do you do with it? You see?
Do you turn it into what you just named, you know,

(25:21):
a whole system of control and patriarchy and power over
and autocracy. Is that what you do with your fear?
Or do you learn to incorporate it into your love
and into it into courage, which is cur alargy, a
big heart, and then you lead with that compassion like

(25:46):
Hildegarden Bingen paints and talks about. That's the Christ energy and.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
That's in short supply, and.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
That's in short supply and of course generosity. See that's
the thing about the archetype or the naming of the
Antichrist is the opposite of the Christ. And the Christ
is in all of us as who the guardians, and
we're capable of love, we're capable of forgiveness, we're capable
of generosity, we're capable of courage all that, but we

(26:19):
have to bring that forward. And you see, I think
a big problem in America is education because we've been
so preoccupied with not confusing religion and church that we've
left a value system out of education. And you know,
Einstein said that. Einstein said, quote, I abhor American education unquote.

(26:42):
And why did he say that? He tells us, he says,
we've been given two gifts, the gift of the rational
mind and the gift of the intuitive mind. He said,
values have found in the intuitive mind, not in the
rational mind. But we live in a culture that honors
the rational mind, and that means a school system and

(27:03):
ignores the the intuitive mind.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
Intuitive value is a huge thing. You know, someone who
has no values flounders. You know, they don't have a
compass to live by.

Speaker 3 (27:18):
Wow. Yeah, right, what does the compass we live by?
And what are the principles we can agree on, the
values we can agree on? And that's just breaking up
I think, not just in America, but in many in
many places. And your fear, what you say about the
fear is a big part of it. And and and

(27:39):
even the immigration thing, that's built around fear, fear that
we'll lose our culture or that you know, or whatever,
and so we should be sitting down and dialoguing about
that and talking about it and arguing about it and
dealing with that level of the fear. But you know,

(28:03):
out of Rock Beca is my favorite psychologist. He's been
recognized finally as being the father of humanistic psychology. Died
in nineteen thirty nine. But he said, you do not
cure an ailing democracy with more democracy. You need to
pay more attention to the irrational. And of course that

(28:24):
to me, that's Einstein's intuitive and the role of art
and the role of creation. He says, creation itself is
the epitome of the irrational. It's so full of wonder
and surprise and newness and creativity. That's what we should
be examining of this time in history, because democracy as

(28:48):
we've been doing it is not working well today obviously,
and yet, as Churchill said, is the worst except for
all the other options of government. So we've got to
clean it up, we've got to bring it into this
postmodern era. But instead we're abandoning it. And Trump has
his eyes on Putin, and you know, we haven't you know,

(29:10):
he's trying to hire people who admire Putin. That's part
of the cabinet he's putting together. But there's going to
be resistance for sure from many, even in his own party.
So it's not a done deal.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
That's good to hear, but we need to go to
a break now, so we'll come back to that when
we return. You're listening to What is going On? I'm
Sandy saig Beer. My guest today is best selling theologian
and the priest Matthew Fox, and we're talking about his
latest book, Trump and the Mega Movement as Antichrist, a
handbook for the twenty twenty four election. We'll be back

(29:47):
with more from Matthew Fox after this break.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
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Speaker 5 (29:58):
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Speaker 4 (32:01):
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Through the art of contemplation. You can use the gene
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is made up of these three levels shadows, gifts, and cities,
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(32:22):
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the gifts, and then the embodying of this higher consciousness
called the city. And the cities are very exalted words,
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(32:44):
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Speaker 2 (33:40):
Welcome back, Matthew Fox. You published the book in August.
The election has come and gone. We all know the result.
Now alongside their vote, many people I know in the
spiritual arena we're praying for the best outcome for humanity
at this time. Do you say think their pay was answered?

Speaker 3 (34:05):
No, I don't, But all is not lost. That in fact,
the resistance to this effort to end our democracy and
turn it into an autocracy. The resistance is growing and
it will grow because already Trump not in office yet,

(34:30):
but he's shown his disdain for democracy and for America
by many of these very peculiar persons he's chosen to
have cabinets and what it shows, I think is that
he wants to destroy and he actually has said this,
and that people who have been advising him the Project

(34:52):
twenty five proposes this, that we end democracy as we
have member and that we it be run by the billionaires.
That he's the kind of people he's appointing in great
number to his cabinet. I just read today that if

(35:14):
his cabinet is worth three hundred and fifty four billion dollars,
and these are just a certain number of people he's
he's appointed so far, in contrast, by his cabinet, the
whole lot was worth I think it was two hundred
million dollars. So it was kind of what class Trump

(35:38):
is drawing from. And of course he's made the point
that he wants to re engage the law that he
passed four years ago that cuts taxes for billionaires and corporations.
But and that means he's laying the cost on working people.
That's kind of the the surprise in the election that

(36:00):
the working people did not recognize that that was coming.
But I just read recently an interesting analysis of the election,
and I thought it really say something important when I said,
what really got Trump elected was the tone and the
author put that in italics, the tone that he carries. Yes,

(36:23):
he has his reputation. I've been accused of ninety one
felonies and he's been convicted of thirty four. But people
voted for him anyway. Why because his tone was so
angry that he that's what people voted on. We have
to realize that that the irrational. This is part of
what Rock was saying too, that the irrational is often

(36:48):
what draws us to politicians. Certainly that was the case
in the nineteen thirties. People were very There is a depression,
and there was the Armiste as the first one. Weren't
all the things that made Germans feel bad about themselves,
So there was that anger, and Hitler promised, I can

(37:09):
fix it. Mussolini said only I can fix it. Trump
said only I can fix it. And people want to
fix her because they're in trouble. And the working class
in America has been overwhelmed for decades, beginning with Reagan
as president, where you can see it on paper, where

(37:30):
the wealth has gone up to the one percent and
those in the middle of coll paying the bills, and
now this generation of young people cannot even buy a
house and many young men in their twenties are living
with their parents still and not getting married either because

(37:52):
and not going to college or developing a trade either.
I mean, there's there's a despair I think in the
soul of a lot of young people. They in addition,
of course two of the obviously we talked about earlier,
the climate change situation.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
But I'm not trying to go away. It's going to get.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
Worse, exactly exactly. And Biden made some really good efforts
at trying to contribute positively and to the climate situation.
But the rumors are now that Trump is even going
to pull out of the Paris Group. But again, tone

(38:34):
is is so important. I think it overrides quality, ideas
and structures. People vote from their gut work than from
their head, and so I think that. And really the
election was really quite close, and a lot of the

(38:56):
messaging you see a lot of the social media that
went so dark, and that had a lot to do,
I think with young people turning the back on Biden
more so than I mean on Harris more so. They
supported Biden strongly in twenty twenty, but many of them

(39:19):
and ninety million Americans chose not to vote at all. Now,
Trump won seventy seven million votes, I think it was,
but ninety million didn't vote at all. That to me
is a tremendously important fact that people are dropping out

(39:40):
of this thing called democracy. They chose not to vote
for either, and that's feeding that of course, is feeding
those who are shouting the loudest and organizing the best
and have the most money. So all this is part
of tone. Look, I think at the big picture it.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
Is you know. I think he wrote in the book
about the Youngian teacher Sue Mertens, who was quoting an
article on Young and the antichrist archetype, and she said
that Young had worn that archetypes hold a seductive quality
that lies in their numinosity, and it seizes hold of

(40:26):
the individual in a startling way, creating a condition amounting
almost a possession. Many people have said, we look at,
you know, the populations over the last few years since COVID,
and it's as if many people are in a trance.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
Yes, and that quote you he is very powerful. That
there's a Trump has been called charismatic by some people,
and that's what they're saying, there's an attraction there. To me,
the attraction is like watching a building burn, know that
it's the biggest thing happening in the room. And he

(41:04):
does that every day. He enters the media every day
because he's he's he's over the top about something. And
a good example is these people he's proposing for cabinet positions.
I mean it's over the top. And even Republicans saying,
what that person to run the Defense Department, et cetera,

(41:24):
et cetera, or this person to run the the the
Attorney General's office, the number one legal gathering place in
the country. This fellow Matt getzwell, well he got defeated already.
But the point is is not just those facts again,
it's the tone that that is. And I say, I'm

(41:47):
name in the tone now as disdain that I think
Trump is demonstrating disdain for human beings, for the planet,
for democracy, for the Constitution. And it's mesmerizing. Now. I
have a section where I talk about you and about

(42:08):
as one of those eighteen things I think where he
he takes the light that some people in his in
his gathering in the Mega movement, see him as another
Christ and they call him a messiah. And these are
people who claim to be religious or Christian or something,
and the headlines I reproduce headlines there, and again it's

(42:28):
funny really on the one hand, but on the other hand,
it's real. And these are people he is rewarding now
that he's elected and as all this power. Remember not
only has Congress and the Senate, he has the Supreme
Court in his back pocket. He made sure of that
last time he was president. And so he's rewarding some

(42:51):
of these people who think that about him because he's
the man is a narcissist, and he's a sick man,
and he's rewarding those who praise him. And he wants
to put opponents in jail. He says he's going to
do that. The fellow he wants to run the FBI
has said publicly that he's going to go after the

(43:12):
politicians and the judges who who disagreed with with Trump. Well,
you don't do that in a democracy, but you certainly
do do it in a autocracy or fascist stag and
so forth. So all that is in the air.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Some people say, you know, I heard this a lot
in the first time around, that you know, all of
the systems need to crumble, they're all corrupt. Someone needs
to come along and throw a Molotov cocktail into the
middle of it. And he is the Molotov cocktail. So
those people think that he's doing us a big favor.

(43:53):
You know, he's showing, he's highlighting everything that is wrong
for us decides that we want to fix it or
how we want to fix it, or if we want
to continue with what's wrong, what do you think is
going to happen?

Speaker 3 (44:10):
Well, I think the silver lining is that the Democrats
in the House of Representatives are very close. In fact,
the study came out yesterday shows that if the state
of North Carolina had not jerry mandered their system, that
in fact Democrats would have won the representatives more in

(44:34):
North Carolina and therefore would be in charge in Congress.
But that one House of Congress is very close, and
so that's going to be the place of resistance. That plus,
the press was left to the press, because some of
the press is already surrendered and have been bought off
of course, And of course, in this day and world,

(44:58):
press information and the whole systems are owned often by
very very rich oiligarchs themselves, and so that's another thing
that we don't have that diversity of press. You used
to have when you had small publishers and cities and
so forth. They've all been bought up by these conglomerates.

(45:19):
So but there is the press, and of course there
are the people, and people including myself, had to go
through a grief process because we we are aware with
around the Pike, with this system and the Project twenty
twenty five, that is really the blueprint for Trump's presidency,

(45:41):
and it was written by fascists, some of them call
themselves Christians. Some compared it to the because it is
so wrapped up in peculiar religion. And Trump is of
course praising all that, and he's rewarding some of these people.

(46:04):
So but the point is that that there's organizing now
to resent. There will be resistance, and it's going to grow.
And I think, and the spotlight, we're not going to
be as naive as we were I think the previous
four years when he was president. And I think that
there's going to be you know, a lot of what

(46:28):
can I say, chaos and consternation. But already you can
see that his many of his appointees as cabinet members
are collapsing in front of our eyes. He's not even
president yet. But it's it's scary and it's dangerous because
when he gets all the rings of power on January twentieth,

(46:50):
and then with the Supreme Court backing him up telling
him that he can't be sued as long as he's president,
you know it's going to be a crisis. But I
think that you know, I talked about the via.

Speaker 7 (47:08):
Negative other precedes the via creative, the via negative, or
the emptying, the darkness, the darken air, the soul, the
despair that is often a preluge to something all new.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
And you were just talking about how some people feel
the whole thing has to be changed. Well, it does,
but not by Molotov cocktails, and not by substituting Putin's
view of the world for our democracy. The fact is
that America there An article came out the Economists just
before the election said that a front cover is saying

(47:45):
America's economy is the envy of the world. That there's
a lot going on that Biden accomplished that is going
to be positive in the economy. But I think that
obviously the Democrats are out of touch with the working
class and they have to recover that, and they have
to get much better at communicating, and I think that

(48:08):
that kind of soul searching is going on now by
the left in America. And you know, there are a
lot of good people in politics at this time, and
younger people. That's another thing that's already happening. The younger
Democrats in the House are taking over the heads of

(48:30):
committees that previously run by people in their late seventies.
And so that's the beginning of a new movement too,
because you're going to need people that are energetic as
well as bright and not naive to take on the
Trump administration. I remember in America there will be elections
in two years, and that's a short time. So if

(48:55):
we can hold back this onslaught for two years, developing
a more grounded and more more working class centered message
and intention, you know, things may turn around very big

(49:15):
in two years, very big. And what sort of.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
Spots you had the book? Pardon what sort of response
have you had to your book?

Speaker 3 (49:29):
Well, you know, it was delayed coming out because of
the colored pictures. They didn't tell us that color pictures
would delay of three weeks, but they did, so it
didn't get as much exposures. I thought. I just heard
two days ago from a person who worked very close
in one very important campaign. I don't want to mention

(49:51):
his name, but he saw the book because we sent
the book to all the Democrat politicians, and he said
that we were kind of out of our mind, you know,
during the campaign, we weren't reading anything. But what you've
written here is true, and a lot of it is
about pseudo religion. And he said, you know, I wish

(50:13):
i'd had this earlier. So a lot of people have
loved it, but it hasn't gotten It didn't get out
there like we had hoped it would. But people were scared.
Churches were afraid to mention exists. Religious magazines were afraid.

(50:35):
Why because they're afraid that word Antichrist. But the truth
is that the right wing in the church has been
using anti Christ for decades and decades, so people didn't
balk when the right wing used it. But I notice
what I've done here is I've brought art and history

(50:56):
and theology into this. I'm not taking it out of
a Bible some literal fashion at all. I'm showing that
history was named in fifteen oh one by Lucas in
reality in art, and in the twelfth century Hildegarden began
now a doctor of the church, and I declare it

(51:16):
Saint painted a very powerful picture of the Antichrist. In fact,
she connects it to patriarchy because the picture includes a
very large penis as well as an entire Maybe we
could show that picture entire flying object that looks like

(51:37):
it looks like a b one bomber there at the bottom,
that flying black object with the teeth and the red eye.
She says, that is a well, it's dung, and there
are other words for it flying dung. But she says,
this was what the Antichrist brings into history. And you

(52:01):
can see how the people are afraid right under that
flying dung that looks like could be one bomber. And
then look at the painting on the left in the bottom,
that's mother church who's been invaded. She says, bye by
the Antichrist. So again, she in her time, is applying
the archetype to the structure of her time. And of

(52:24):
course the more dominant structure in her time was the church.
So and then notice, as I alluded to, this giant
penis is part of her picture of the of the Antichrist.
And to me, I think that is an unconscious statement
about patriarchy, about men out of control. And the top

(52:44):
picture you have the Christ on the right hand holding
up his hands like this today's peace signal, but in
his day it represents, says Hill, the guard of the painter,
it represents peace and the profits. But on the left
you have these animals. And of course this is the
way the apocalyptic literature in the Bible is. It's all

(53:07):
about symbolism, and of course the Antichrist is from the
apocalyptic tradition. But these animals each stand. One stands for greed,
she says, and one stands for war. And so but
they all have this rope. What are they doing with
that rope in the mouth. They're undoing. They're creating chaos.
They're undoing the binding together of society and of community.

(53:31):
That's what the Antichrist does. It creates chaos, which is
exactly what Donald Trump is all about. And it undoes
the binding ropes of justice that keeps society together. She says.
So this painting is very strong, but again just like
the sixteenth century painting we looked at, it is applying

(53:53):
her contemporary situation. And she says, notice that mother Church,
the thighs are red and white. She said that read
is blood, that there's blood on mother Church. So we
can apply that to today's political world. You see that
the Antichrist and taking over the political world. In the

(54:14):
Antichrist stands for the opposite of love and peace and
justice that the Christ stands for. That that is turning
bloody our politics in our political world. So this is
why I draw on history and art, because we're talking
about an archetype that is strong and like Jung said,

(54:36):
and he wrote a whole essay on it. Interestingly, I
found after the book came out that The Course of Miracles,
which is a book one thinks of as a mystical
book entirely, it has a whole chapter on the Antichrist.
And I read it and it's all about idolatry. The
first sixty percent of it is all about idolatry. And

(54:59):
that's interesting too because that echoes that chapter that you
alloted to too, that Trump is happy to be called a
new Christ and a new Messiah and so forth. He's
encouraging that. He he, he.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
We are almost out of time. I have one question
that I really want to ask you before we leave.
Andrew Harvey calls you our greatest living Christian theologian. One
Catholic priest who I won't name, called you a whack job.
I'm sure the far right have used many such epithets.

(55:40):
How would you like to be remembered.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
Well as a theologian who tried to bring the deeper
in more gracefilm teachings of both Judaism and Christianity into
the world. So that's why I wrote a we'll called

(56:08):
the Original Blessing. I think the whole theme of Original
Sin is we've got that second Matthew Oh, okay, so
that love and justice go together and also joy and celebration,

(56:29):
and we should be utterly grateful for the gift of
being in this universe of thirteen pointy eight billion years
that has blessed us by inviting us on board.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Matthew Fox, we are out of time now. I want
to thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you,
Simny Some and the Mega Movement as Antichrist. A Handbook
for the twenty four election by Matthew Fox is available
as an audiobook, an ebook, and a paperback. So for
more information about Matthew his books, courses, retreats, and events,

(57:03):
visit his official website, Matthew Fox dot org, and I
encourage you also to check out his website Daily Meditations
with Matthew Fox dot org. That's it for this week.
I'm Sandy Sedgbia. I'll be back at the same time
next week with another edition of What Is going On?
Till then, it's goodbye for me and thank you Matthew Fox.

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Matthew Fox on Trump and the MAGA Movement as the AntiChrist

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