Trump's Crusaders Find Their Enemy at Home

The ideological offensive led by Steve Bannon to revoke the citizenship of Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected mayor of New York, and the latent threats from Pete Hegseth, who aims to have the Pentagon target Muslims as a primary objective, underscore a growing domestic front in the nation's political conflicts.

For Donald Trump and the most extreme far-right figures who influence him, the victory of Zohran Mamdani spoiled the celebration they had envisioned for the first anniversary of the election that returned them to the White House. The fundamental reason is that the newly elected mayor of New York—the nation's principal city and the financial capital of the West—embodies everything on the Trump movement's blacklist: he is Muslim, self-identifies as a socialist, and was not even born in the United States, the only fact that might otherwise reassure them, as it makes him ineligible for the presidency.

The results of Tuesday's election unsettled both the president and the strategist of the ultra-conservative international movement, Steve Bannon, who had previously warned about the "danger" of someone he labels a Marxist-Jihadi who "is bringing Bolshevism to our largest city." Upon learning the result, Bannon called for Mamdani's American citizenship, which he obtained in 2018 after being born in Uganda to parents from India, to be revoked. Trump, who had recently threatened during his famous meeting with Javier Milei to cut funds to New York—as he promised to do with Argentina—downplayed the results both in the "Big Apple" and in the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, asserting that Republicans lost because he was not on the ballot.

Another figure agitated by the outcome is the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. The man, a fanatic who sees himself as a 21st-century Christian warrior, has a tattoo on his arm with the phrase Deus vult—the motto used by Pope Urban II to rally the faithful to the Holy Sepulcher to displace Muslims—and another on his right pectoral of the Jerusalem Cross. In his book American Crusade, he makes statements such as:

"Islamism is the most dangerous threat to freedom in the world. It cannot be negotiated with, coexisted with, or understood; it must be exposed, marginalized, and crushed. Just like the Christian crusaders who repelled the Muslim hordes in the 12th century, American crusaders will need to show the same courage against the Islamists of today."

"The left does not want the true story of Islam and Islamism told. It wants to glorify and embolden it, hiding its flaws under a Persian rug and highlighting a sanitized version of its best qualities; all of which perpetuates the politically correct lie that Islam is a religion of peace."

"The increase in the Muslim population in England, coupled with the well-documented aversion of Muslims to assimilation, has resulted in several exclusively Muslim neighborhoods—yes, no-go zones—in various cities and a corresponding increase in the number of elected Muslim officials, most notably Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London."

Now, with "the devil" at home, the Pentagon will not have to travel as far to become crusaders. In fact, the deployment of National Guard troops initiated by the Trump administration from its first day in office has immigrants as its primary target. Coincidentally, the districts where these forces are deployed are under Democratic leadership. Furthermore, on Tuesday, Mamdani ran with the Democratic party's endorsement, as did the elected officials Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger in New Jersey and Virginia. In his speech to 800 generals on September 30, Hegseth had advised them to treat these domestic incursions as training exercises, after warning them that "we find ourselves under an invasion from within. It is no different from that of an external enemy, but more difficult, in many ways, because they don't wear uniforms."

Trump had highlighted this imagery in his message at the UN General Assembly, where he said the body was doing nothing to prevent "uncontrolled immigration." This Friday, he met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and after the Oval Office meeting with his favored far-right leader in Eastern Europe, he addressed the EU: "They should respect Hungary and its leader, and respect them a lot, because he is right about migration (…) look at what is happening to Europe, it is flooded and its crime rates are skyrocketing (except) in Hungary, where things are done the way they have to be done and the number of illegal migrants is zero. No one can set foot on the border without permission." As a friendly gesture, Orbán secured continued permission to buy energy from Russia without facing the sanctions maintained by both the U.S. and the EU.