Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Henry Giroux, Chaired professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University
The language of war has long wrapped itself in the rhetoric of courage and the honour of vengeance, drawing on moral and religious appeals to make violence appear necessary, even just.
Today, that language has returned. As war stretches across Gaza and Lebanon, Ukraine and Iran, the words used to justify it are as brutal, self-assured and distant as ever from the suffering they conceal.
A glaring example are the social media posts of United States President Donald Trump, who has in recent days threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” and called Iranians “crazy bastards” in a demand that they open the Strait of Hormuz.
The ongoing and cascading conflict with Iran, in fact, has been portrayed by Israel and the U.S. as an existential struggle between good and evil.
This is not the messaging of strategy or international law — it’s the renewed language of the Crusades, driven by ideological fervour and staged as a performance of power in which, in Trump’s world view, “might makes right.”
Biblical references
The tone is even more pronounced within segments of Trump’s political orbit, where the conflict is interpreted through apocalyptic and biblical narratives.
References to divine purpose and destiny, including Trump’s claim that he was “saved by God,” draw on a broader evangelical language that frames political conflict in theological terms.
In this environment, war is no longer a tragic necessity but a sacred obligation. This reflects a dangerous fusion of militarism, religious fundamentalism, spectacle and authoritarian politics that is redefining how military power is justified, experienced and normalized.
Religious fundamentalism doesn’t just accompany this violence; it sanctifies it. It functions as an alibi for power, cloaking destruction in the language of destiny while rendering its victims invisible. It turns domination into virtue and makes the machinery of death appear necessary, even divinely ordained.
War as sacred
This isn’t unintentional. It signals a shift in which war becomes a sacred imperative. Trump’s inner circle and his supporters often invoke scripture and religious imagery to cast violence as part of a divine plan. Some of them, like Sen. Lindsey Graham, have described the ongoing war in Iran as a civilizational or even religious war.
Pete Hegeseth, Trump’s defense secretary, expresses this world view most chillingly. He has declared that the mission of the U.S. military is “to unleash death and destruction from the sky all day long,” and has called for “maximum lethality, not tepid legality” as its guiding principle.
This reveals a policy of stripping war of restraint or law and openly aiming for annihilation. Hegseth has also invoked Crusader imagery and claimed that Trump has been ordained by God to wield military power. In his 2020 book American Crusade, Hegseth writes that those who value western civilization, freedom and equal justice should “thank a crusader.”
Domestic militarism
The same language that sanctifies violence abroad, like in Gaza and Ukraine, is similar to Trump’s calls for aggression at home — against protesters, immigrants and political enemies.
He has targeted political opponents, including James Comey and Letitia James, revoked visas for international students protesting Israel’s war in Gaza, and dismissed critics, including his Democratic opponent in the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris, as “radical left lunatics.”
Retribution and regarding opponents as mortal enemies are treated as justified, even necessary, blurring the lines between war-making and domestic repression.
In this environment, it’s easy for the lines between politics and theology to dissolve as well, weakening ethical restraint and defining conflict as sanctioned, even righteous, violence.
Beyond simply justifying war, the U.S. is once again framing itself as a white Christian nation, which normalizes exclusion, disposability, historical erasure and racialized violence.
Nonetheless, this fusion of faith and force is not universally accepted. As Pope Leo XIV said in his first Palm Sunday address, God is the “king of peace,” rejecting any claim that war can be divinely sanctioned.
War as entertainment
The religious framing of the war in Iran is converging with another shift: the transformation of war into spectacle.
Under Trump, violence is not only being justified; it’s being staged, estheticized and consumed, as White House promotional videos blend action-movie imagery with real footage of Iran bombings. This renders the war a stylized performance designed to excite, entertain and showcase technological power.
In this spectacle, human suffering recedes. Targets become co-ordinates, destruction appears cinematic and violence is stripped of its moral weight. What remains is the seductive image of power — war emptied of judgment.
When these efforts fuse with religious fundamentalism, the consequences can be profound. The theatrics of destruction become a sacred drama and the capacity to kill is defined as evidence of both national strength and divine purpose.
Under such conditions, war is no longer constrained by law, reason or democratic accountability. It is propelled by belief, emotion and spectacle.
Trump provides the script as his rhetoric intensifies this convergence. His suggestion that war might end when he “feels it in his bones” or his remark about bombing Iran “just for fun” shows how ignorance can become governance.
Making fascism possible
The human costs of the war in Iran are devastating. Bombing campaigns have inflicted widespread destruction across the country, with civilian casualties mounting steadily. Yet this death toll is increasingly obscured by the spectacle of war itself, reduced to background noise beneath the American celebration of military power.
The economic costs of the war to Americans are also staggering, estimated at roughly $1 billion per day, resources that could support social needs. Yet in a culture steeped in militarism, concentrated power and inequality, such considerations recede.
History offers stark warnings about such moments. The horrors of the past — from the Holocaust to the Vietnam War, the Rwandan genocide, the Pinochet dictatorship and the Iraq war — reveal how societies can be mobilized through propaganda, fear and the erosion of critical thought.
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They remind us what happens when violence is normalized, power is unchecked and human life is stripped of its value. Those conditions are visible again. But authoritarianism can only endure in a culture that enables it — where war, both at home and abroad, becomes a permanent feature of social life.
What’s at stake is not only the violence unleashed abroad but the political culture it legitimizes at home. When war is staged as entertainment and justified as a moral duty, its human costs disappear from view.
A society that embraces cruelty as virtue, ignorance as governance and violence as destiny risks losing its capacity for judgment. Under such conditions, democracy does not simply erode. It is obliterated, giving way to forces that make fascism possible.
Henry Giroux does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
– ref. Donald Trump’s profane threats against Iran expose the unhinged language of war – https://theconversation.com/donald-trumps-profane-threats-against-iran-expose-the-unhinged-language-of-war-279801