Why did Trump kick-off his 2024 presidential campaign in Waco, Texas? Who were the Branch Davidians, anyway?
Julian unpacks the incendiary streams of far-right anti-government militia history and religious apocalypticism that our former president is tapping into as he faces legal jeopardy. It all goes back almost 300 years to the original Great Awakening that QAnon and New Age channelers tried to remix in 2020.
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Like me, I'm sure that any reference to the town of Waco, Texas brings up very specific
images to your mind.
That's where, in 1993, the fiery siege of David Koresh's Branch Davidian compound resulted in the loss of 86 people's lives.
So when Donald Trump kicked off his 2024 campaign to retake the White House in Waco, Texas, around the 30th anniversary of that tragedy, something seemed Off, to say the least.
On March 25th of this year, roughly 15,000 supporters stood with their hands on their hearts as a recording of convicted insurrectionists singing the Star Spangled Banner played and footage of the January 6th attack was shown on the big screens.
Trump's speech included the declaration that I am your retribution.
And he said this is the final battle.
But there was something about that day that I did not know until right now.
Hello everyone, welcome to Conspiratuality, where we investigate the intersection of
conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience, and authoritarian
extremism.
That last one is especially relevant today.
I'm Julian Walker and this is a special Unlock episode in which I'm bringing you a Patreon bonus piece that I recorded back in April of this year called The Final Battle.
It covers the dark historical threads of armed militia paranoia and anti-government domestic terrorism that were woven through Trump's campaign announcement as we head toward the election year of 2024.
But there's another reason I'm sharing this right now.
I was recently reminded of this episode because journalist and best-selling author Jonathan Karl has been on the cable news circuit talking about his new book, Tired of Winning, and especially about an opening chapter which details that Waco rally and Trump's speech about eight months ago.
It's really the first time that news outlets are giving this kind of significant coverage to that bizarre event.
What Jonathan Karl adds to the piece I'm about to share with you, unknown to me at the time, is this.
Everyone's favorite evil right-wing populist mastermind, Steve Bannon, who helped rescue Trump's flailing 2016 campaign and who told his War Room podcast listeners on January 5th that all hell was going to break loose on the 6th.
That's Steve Bannon, you know, the one who's already been pardoned federally by Trump for stealing millions from the We Build the Wall fundraising campaign, but who will still stand trial for the same crimes in New York City, in the same court as his old boss, in front of the same judge, some two months after the Donald is scheduled to appear during the 2024 election year.
Yeah, Steve Bannon, you know the guy.
He's involved again.
In this new campaign.
Delighted by the Waco event, he enthusiastically told John Carl that the speech was Trump's come-retribution moment.
And the journalist says he would only realize later, via a book recommendation from Steve Bannon, that this was actually a reference to the Confederate plot to kidnap and kill Abraham Lincoln after the South lost the Civil War.
When Carl asked if the choice of kicking off in Waco was wise, Bannon apparently grinned.
Of course, he said, we are the Trump Davidians.
But aren't you worried about violence?
Asked Carl.
No, said Bannon, because we will win.
Okay, so did you notice this weird thing that happened?
When Donald Trump launched his 2024 presidential campaign with his first rally of this year on Saturday, March 25th, he held the event in Waco, Texas, home to the notorious siege involving Branch Davidian cult leader, polygamist, pedophile, and self-proclaimed final prophet, David Koresh.
Now, we'll talk in a little bit about the significance of that siege, but for now, let's just note that it happened exactly 30 years ago, in 1993.
years ago in 1993. In fact it lasted 51 days spanning between February 28th and April 19th.
So to anyone for whom those events were significant, kicking off a political campaign
on the 30-year anniversary actually on a date pretty much bang in the middle of the period
during which the apocalyptic Christian leader and his sect were holed up in a compound heavily armed
surrounded by law enforcement and government agencies, that might send a message.
I mean, I could be reading too much into it, right?
Hello Patreon supporters.
the next video.
Julian here with another premium episode for you on the topic of political religion.
This one is called The Final Battle.
So what do you think?
Am I reading too much into Trump's Waco appearance?
Well, here are some highlights from his speech.
And 2024 is the final battle.
That's going to be the big one.
Our enemies are desperate to stop us because they know that we are the only ones who can stop them.
All of the hatred, rage, and contempt The radical left has for you and your values and this nation has been very much directed on me.
Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state.
They're not coming after me, they're coming after you and I'm just standing in their way.
Okay, so that's just boilerplate Trump, right?
But it's also significant that the nation has been on tenterhooks for the last two weeks regarding the supposed imminent announcement of an indictment out of New York County from Verdier Alvin Bragg.
As everyone knows this is the Stormy Daniels hush money case widely considered the least consequential of the major pending legal entanglements hanging over the former president.
It's been international news that Trump has said Alvin Bragg was backed by the rights boogeyman international Jewish banker George Soros.
He's also called him an animal and that he posted a picture of himself wielding a baseball bat next to a photo of the DA saying that there would be death and destruction if he was indicted.
It's also been news that Alvin Bragg has been the subject of death threats.
So for Trump styling himself as a man of the people unfairly targeted by a weaponized justice system with suspicious left-wing funding at the end of a week in which he had reportedly been rehearsing his perp walk amongst his inner circle should he be arrested.
And doing all of this in a town with such a storied relevance in anti-government circles, it really does seem quite telling.
Now, here's the other half of that shit sandwich.
Trump started the rally in Waco with an announcement over the PA for attendees to rise and place their hand on their heart.
They were then correctly told that they'd be hearing a song that was number one on iTunes, Amazon, and the Billboard charts.
It's called Justice For All.
I'm not going to play it for you.
It features a rendition of the National Anthem by the J6 Prison Choir, who were literally recorded singing through phones from prison.
The verses of the National Anthem pause to be interspersed with a Donald Trump voiceover reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
And that whole awful experience ends with the prison gang enthusiastically chanting, USA!
USA!
Six times.
Now, at the rally, supporters had been given signs to wave that read, Witch Hunt.
For those who have been wronged and betrayed, he said, I am your retribution.
He also called Alvin Bragg's investigation into him worse than ballot stuffing.
And of course, he also tossed out all of the predictable red meat.
You know, when elected, he's going to enact mass deportations, ban critical race theory, restrict transgender rights, and stop funding Ukraine's defense against Russia's invasion.
Now, I know all of this is probably familiar to you, because it's been such a big story in the news cycle.
But I wanted to start here and then zero in on two things.
The first will be the significance to anti-government militia movements of what happened in Waco, Texas 30 years ago.
And the second will be the even deeper religious underpinnings.
So, let me set the scene.
It was on August 21st, 1992, actually six months prior to the Waco siege,
that U.S. military officials Marshals began their efforts to arrest survivalist and former Green Beret, Randall Weaver, in Boundary County, Idaho.
He'd been under investigation since 1985 for threats against the government and for selling illegal weapons to a nearby white supremacist group.
Weaver had attended white supremacist meetings at an Aryan Nations compound and he had associated with a group called the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord.
Weaver had also been involved in a land dispute with a neighbor who he alleged was trying to set him up to be raided by the FBI.
He'd also invited a government informant, who he did not realize was one, to his house to discuss forming a group that would fight what he called the Zionist Organized Government.
And that's a term often shortened to ZOG, Z-O-G, used in anti-Semitic white supremacist circles.
In any event, Weaver had been arrested for selling sawn-off shotguns to militia members, but his legal team miscommunicated when he was to appear for his trial.
And that led him to not appear and to have a bench warrant issued for his arrest.
However, the marshals didn't try to bring him in until five months after the date he thought he was actually due in court.
So he could have had no confusion that he was really living on borrowed time.
Weaver and his highly religious wife Vicky had chosen to live with their four children in a remote cabin on Ruby Ridge in preparation for a coming apocalypse.
This made attempting to approach the cabin and take him into custody particularly tricky.
Over the course of the 11-day siege, Vicky Weaver, his wife, was shot and killed while holding their 18-month-old daughter.
In addition, their 14-year-old son Sammy and their dog were also killed.
Randall Weaver and his friend Kevin Harris, who was there supporting them, were both wounded Weaver's trial lawyers successfully argued self-defense for Weaver and the judge dropped all charges except the failure to appear and he ended up serving less than 16 months in prison.
A few years later, the state would award the three surviving daughters a million dollars each and give Randall $100,000 over the deaths of Sammy, his 14-year-old son, and Vicki Weaver, Randall's wife.
So, overall, with regard to the Ruby Ridge siege, the legal system, government investigations, and the media agreed in general that the raid was poorly executed and that aspects of how the government behaved were unconstitutional.
And this then gave anti-government militias, survivalists, and the kinds of hardcore religious sects that are stockpiling weapons in preparation for Armageddon a validating example of the unjust tyranny of the state.
But all of this was somewhat small potatoes in contrast to the much more widely known story of what would happen some six months later in Waco.
David Koresh had become the domineering leader of the Branch Davidian religious sect which inhabited the Mount Carmel Center Ranch.
Now the same UPS driver had been delivering package after package after package that appeared, he said, to be from an arms dealer.
One of which had broken open to reveal to that UPS driver that it contained hand grenades.
In addition, the Waco Herald Tribune had published a series of stories on Koresh's physical abusiveness towards the children in the group as well as his claim that he was entitled to multiple wives and that, in fact, he had fathered children with girls as young as 12.
On the strength of the weapons charges, ATF agents would attempt to execute their search warrant on the morning of Sunday, February 28th.
But a TV news reporter who'd been tipped off about the raid asked a mail carrier for directions, and that postal worker turned out to be Koresh's brother-in-law, and so the Branch Davidians were ready and armed to the teeth.
The resulting deaths of four ATF agents and six Koresh followers led to the FBI soon taking over from the ATF.
The siege would then last 51 days, with one faction in the FBI committed to negotiating, while another faction within The FBI was pushing for more forceful methods, things like shining bright flashing lights into the compound and bombarding it 24-7 with loud music and the sounds of jet planes, Buddhist chants, and rabbits being slaughtered.
Now there are many details of the convoluted story of what happened during the long siege, but it all ended up with the FBI saturating the ranch with tear gas in an attempt to drive Koresh and his followers out, and Mount Carmel Center then being engulfed in flames.
This all resulted in the deaths of Koresh and 81 other Branch Davidians, 28 of whom were children and 2 of whom were pregnant women.
Cultists have since then contended that the FBI was responsible for the fire.
But evidence from listening devices shows Koresh instructing more fuel to be poured onto piles of hay as Davidians killed their own children before then igniting the fires themselves at three different places and then dying by suicide.
Coming just six months after Ruby Ridge, and featuring not only the same government agencies, the ATF and the FBI, but some of the same officials in charge of those agencies.
Having the same legal focus on gun charges, and carrying that same odor.
Of state force.
With many controversies persisting to this day as to who started shooting first and what led to the fire, Waco became a powerful symbol of government misconduct and brutality against its own citizens.
And in fact, a 1999 Time Magazine poll showed that 61% of Americans believed that law enforcement had started the fires at Waco.
Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark ended up representing some branch Davidians in a failed civil suit against the government.
And he said, history will clearly record that the assaults on Mount Carmel Church Center remain the greatest domestic law enforcement tragedy in the history of the United States.
I want to share one more detail with you that is noteworthy in terms of an ongoing conversation that Matthew and I, mostly, are having about cult studies.
Apparently, Rick Ross of the Cult Awareness Network was quite public Going on TV shows to talk about his role in helping the FBI in their negotiations with Koresh.
And the FBI, for their part, said they did not rely on him for advice whatsoever during the standoff, even though they admitted they had interviewed him for input.
He said that he called the FBI directly and suggested they embarrass Koresh by exposing his faults to his followers as a way of proving he could not really be the Prophet.
Now two religious scholars, who also attempted to help resolve the conflict, named James Tabor and Philip Arnold, are quoted as saying, "...the crisis need not have ended tragically, if only the FBI had been more open to religious studies and better able to distinguish between the dubious ideas of Ross and the scholarly expertise."
These two were advising a de-escalation based on their accurate understanding that the Branch Davidians were an apocalyptic sect who would only interpret pressure and intense conflict as evidence for their religious prophecies being close at hand.
So how much of a symbol did Waco become?
Well, after being arrested for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, anti-government militia sympathizer Timothy McVeigh said he chose April 19th because it was the second anniversary of the Day of the Fire in Waco.
He and co-conspirator Terry Nichols told investigators that their primary motivation was to avenge the government's actions at Ruby Ridge and in Waco.
The Oklahoma City bombing of a federal building injured 600 and killed 168 people, 19 of whom were children under the age of six.
It remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S.
history and, until 9-11, had been the deadliest act of terrorism of any kind on American soil.
Since Ruby Ridge and Waco, the improved approach of what is called the Critical Incidence Response Group, or the CIRG, has been credited with the peaceful end to events like the 81-day standoff in 1996 with the sovereign citizen group called the Montana Freemen, As well as the 2014 Bundy standoff and then the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
But the militia recruitment and activity did spike right after the election of Barack Obama.
And all of that was further emboldened by the election of Donald Trump and then became even more active around the Stop the Steal movement.
And then remember how in 2020, 13 members of a Michigan militia group were arrested?
They were charged with orchestrating a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer
after Donald Trump had tweeted in all caps, LIBERATE MICHIGAN in support of right-wing protests going
on over COVID quarantine measures.
Bear with me now, because we're going to take a historical detour, and you'll see why.
As the last three years have unfolded, we've covered on this podcast from various angles how the popular QAnon idea of a Great Awakening during 2020 had echoes in it from past prophecies, but was also being remixed by New Agers and especially Dr. Christiane Northrup as heralding a kind of sci-fi spiritual ascension into
fifth dimensional reality, with COVID symptoms even being reframed as evidence of the
energetic cleansing preparing believers for the ascension process. Now, by the
way, Dr. Christiane Northrup also shouted out the Constitutional Sheriffs' Organization, and
in between angelic anecdotes and essential oil recommendations, she encouraged her
followers to read up on the original Posse Cometatus Act, which empowers militia groups, as well as on
specific gun rights legislation authored by Antonin Scalia.
Strip away the pseudoscience terminology and the New Age concepts and this Great Awakening Ascension stuff I mentioned is really not new at all.
There was, starting in the 1730s, a religious phenomenon referred to in America as the Great Awakening.
It actually swept across England and some of the American colonies.
And it was really the beginning of the trans-denominational Anglo-American evangelical movement.
So these were the first Christians born again in the Spirit and living a more personal relationship with Jesus and fervently committed to their salvation in daily life and to enthusiastically spreading the good news to others.
By the 1790s, historians describe a second Great Awakening happening in America, characterized by evangelical revival meetings, rejection of skepticism, rationalism, deism, and Unitarianism, and belief instead in enthusiastic, romantic, emotional experiences as emanating from the supernatural.
This period is also characterized by something called postmillennialism.
Now, this is the theological position that Christ will return after a thousand-year golden age of peace and moral righteousness.
So, postmillennial after the thousand-year period, right?
So, this postmillennialism meant that the duty of Christians At that time would have been to reform and convert others and seek to bring about God's will more fully on the earth so that the thousand-year period of peace and righteousness could begin after which Jesus would return.
But now, here's where one William Miller enters the picture.
You've heard me talk about him before.
He was a farmer and a Baptist lay preacher from northeastern New York.
He believed that the Bible could be understood rationally and literally.
He spent several years obsessively studying the book of Daniel.
And there was one particular verse that he believed contained the mathematical code for the date of Jesus' return.
By 1831, he was ready to tell the world what he had discovered back in 1822, that the second advent of Christ would occur in either 1843 or 1844.
Now, the verse is from Daniel 8.14.
1844. Now the verse is from Daniel 8 14. It says that after 2300 days the
sanctuary shall be cleansed. And Miller interpreted the start date as being the
rebuilding of Jerusalem by Artaxerxes of Persia in 457 BC.
And he interpreted the 2300 days as really meaning 2300 years.
And therefore that the return of Christ was close at hand.
After earth, the sanctuary, had been cleansed by fire.
So notice, this is a different flavor now.
Miller preached a pre-millennial apocalypticism in which a sinful earth is first cleansed by divine catastrophe so as to then begin the thousand-year reign of Jesus.
Now, via the publication and wide dissemination of popular periodical literature, Miller amassed some 100,000 followers in the United States, and word of his prophecy also spread to parts of Canada and England.
His most devout followers abandoned their crops, abandoned their livestock, they gave away their belongings, they sewed white ascension robes to wear in preparation.
And in the spring of 1844, when a great comet appeared in the sky, they anticipated the prophesied October 22nd date for Jesus' return with even more certainty.
So when the day, now known historically as the Great Disappointment, passed with nary a sign of the Savior, spoiler alert, a great frenzy of recalculation and reinterpretation ensued.
Over the coming weeks of revised dates and renewed disappointment, some subgroups formed with differing new prophetic beliefs and other members dispersed to be absorbed by pre-existing religious sects during this very fertile time of religious evangelical movements.
The most prominent church to emerge out of the Great Disappointment has been the Seventh-day
Adventists, and the most important figure in the founding of that church
is quite a fascinating character.
Ellen Harmon, later known as Ellen G. White, was born in Maine in 1827.
and And at the age of nine, she was hit in the face by a rock thrown by an older schoolmate who was chasing Ellen and her twin sister.
The blow left her unconscious, bleeding copiously, and resulted in a coma that would last three weeks.
On awakening, she had no recollection of the event and remained bedridden for many weeks.
This kind of brain injury is typical of patients who later develop something called temporal lobe epilepsy.
And if you're a longtime listener, you've heard me refer to this before.
In some cases, temporal lobe epilepsy expresses itself as a condition called Geschwind syndrome, which is characterized by hypergraphia.
Hyperreligiosity and atypical sexuality, usually a reduction in interest in sexuality.
Hypergraphia is the obsessive need to write excessively.
Hyperreligiosity perhaps requires no explanation.
And atypical sexuality, when it's combined with hypergraphia and hyperreligiosity, often expresses itself as a disdain for sex.
Somehow, these things combine as a result of those temporal lobe epileptic seizures.
During her life, White displayed all of these symptoms.
She wrote 130 books.
She had a puritanical disgust towards sex and masturbation and writes about that a lot in her books.
And she became most famous for her visions of God, which happened in a kind of trance state.
And became the basis for Seventh Day Adventism.
Now at the age of 12, Ellen White, or Ellen Harmon as she was called at that time, attended a William Miller revival meeting and became preoccupied with his prophecies.
She was 16 during the Great Disappointment, and then by 17 was traveling the country with her soon-to-be husband, James White, and a third preacher, Joseph Bates.
She would perform her visionary reveries in revival halls across Maine And the three would go on to found Seventh Day Adventism, based in part on a reinterpretation of William Miller's prophetic end date, as indicating an event that in fact did happen, but it happened in heaven instead of upon the earth.
Ellen would also preach against the use of tobacco, caffeine, and alcohol, and in favor of kosher foods, and eventually in favor of vegetarianism.
We can thank her for granola and breakfast cereals, as well as for soy-based meat alternatives.
These were all developed at her behest by Harvey Kellogg as foods that they together believed would quell sexual passions.
These innovations in the spiritual culinary arts were served at Battle Creek Sanitarium, the first Adventist health resort.
Now, in 1929, a Seventh-day Adventist named Victor Houtheff was kicked out of the Church for his heretical beliefs.
He started his own offshoot that was at first named after his book, Shepherd's Rod.
But later, it would be called the Davidian Seventh-day Adventists.
Like many breakaway prophets, he thought the Church had become too lax in its following of Scripture.
Part of Houtef's reformation included his sect becoming self-isolated away from the evils of a fallen world.
This included what he described as the siege he was under from mainstream Adventists.
In 1934, his group purchased 189 acres just outside Waco, Texas, which they called the Mount Carmel Center.
By the 1950s, Houtef's teachings are estimated to have had 100,000 followers worldwide.
He died unexpectedly in 1955, and a man named Benjamin Rodin, now claimed to be the new prophet, based on visions he said he was having, and you know where this is going, he would break away to form the Branch Davidians.
When Rodin died, his wife, Lois, became the new prophet.
And in 1981, a young man who came to be known as David Koresh would start attending her
Bible study classes.
So, we've come full circle.
Bye.
Self-isolating religious extremism.
Anti-government militias.
Apocalyptic prophecies.
QAnon, the conspiracy religion for the internet age that seeks to reanimate anticipation of a Great Awakening.
New Age spiritual channels claiming divine or even extraterrestrial visions and voices as perhaps Ellen G. White would if she was around today.
And Donald Trump somehow atavistically fumbling into standing in the center of these thematic currents, styled as the embattled savior of the people against a corrupt and unjust state.
Perhaps this explains the bizarre status Trump seems to hold in the collective imagination of his most religious followers.
I said he has a kind of atavistic intuition about how to wield these currents of incendiary emotion.
He's obviously not a religious man.
I think Donald Trump knows exactly what he's doing when he kicks off his presidential campaign with a rally in Waco, Texas.
When he stands there claiming that there is a witch hunt against him by a weaponized Justice Department, even as he anticipates multiple indictments of escalating seriousness coming his way.
The most consequential of which having to do with inciting domestic terrorism.
He knows that he's tugging on some razor wire threads on stage in Waco when he valorizes the jailed insurrectionists and tells the crowd that he is their vengeance and that 2024 is his final battle and that they're not coming for him.
They're coming for them, but he's standing in the way.
I don't have any prophecies about how this turns out.
I don't have any prophecies about how this turns out.
about how this turns out.
this turns out.
I just hope there are enough people in positions of power who understand just how flammable is the wave our former president is surfing as we head toward our next election year.
This bonus episode is part of a loosely organized series I've been doing on political religion.
You can find other installments scattered throughout previous bonus episodes and briefs.
