Monster in the Mirror

With its millenarian fantasies of “taking America back for God,” U.S. Christian nationalism has received analysis as a spur to extremist violence, a political theology birthed in the Reagan era, and the latest iteration of an American preoccupation with manifest destiny. But the narrative of heroic white Christians rallying against a foreign and sexually ambiguous threat also finds precedent in an unexpected source: the vampires, mummies, and aliens of late Victorian fiction. Like 21st century “patriots,” fin de siecle British audiences were obsessed with moral and political decline. In response, they immersed themselves in the “virtual reality” of their time: tales of Christian soldiers conquering a nefarious, far-reaching enemy–and, in so doing, inaugurating an “age to come” of revived national strength. This series examines how such narratives, perfected in novels like Dracula and War of the Worlds, prototyped the conspiratorial blend of fact, fiction, and faith that has become “all the rage” on the Right–in more ways than one.