Merry Christmas, I Don’t Want To Fight: Trump’s White House UFC Event and The Politics of Violence

As America’s 250th year approaches, it seems clear that Donald Trump intends to move forward with a planned White House UFC match as part of the nation’s official festivities. It’s an idea that’s been in the news for months and that has been met with derision among his critics for being a tasteless and “trashy” way to celebrate 250 years of American independence. 

I am uninterested in the supposed trashiness of the event and much more in the way it elevates America’s most violent professional sport to an emblem of national identity. To my mind, the choice to use the White House as a site of bloody, barbaric combat is a stomach-turning indication of how far our politics have fallen and a troubling affirmation of the dark impulses that helped give us Trump in the first place. 

I want to clarify at the outset that I know that mixed martial arts and other fighting sports can be and are pursued by people of various political stripes. And the exercise of the body through such controlled combat has often proved crucial as an outlet for people seeking to increase their sense of empowerment through self-defense or as a form of therapeutic treatment. 

So, I think I should concede that MMA doesn’t by default have to be a lurid exercise in alpha male bravado, exploitation, and bloodlust. But that is exactly how it’s touted by right-wing figures like Andrew Tate and Conor McGregor. And, of course, that’s precisely its function in Trumpian terms. After all, this is the man who encouraged his supporters to “beat the hell” out of opponents and has repeatedly boasted of his enemies losing and even dying “like a dog.” 

On this front, the natural alignment of fascism and blood sport is clear. Fascism is by its nature a kinetic politics, a constantly moving locomotive of aggression and hubris. 

Trump and his coterie, especially figures like Hegseth, also appear to understand politics as a an active, physical, violent thing. The truth is that this is both about what fascism cultivates in a people and the already existing impulses that allow it to take root in the first place. So I want to elaborate on how I think Trump’s planned White House UFC event serves to both reveal and to reinforce the underlying politics of the Trumpian moment.

The violence in us 

Adam Serwer wrote back in 2017 that, for Trump and his supporters, “the cruelty is the point.” He noted then that “Trump's only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty.”

Charlie Sykes echoed this in 2023 with an essay for MSNBC (now MSNOW), in which he argued, “…cruelty is no longer enough. As he seeks a return to power in 2024, Trump has already pivoted to brutality, and there is nothing subtle about it.”

What both Serwer and Sykes seized upon was the way that Trumpism not only draws out our worst instincts but is driven by them. What Trump is offering is satiation—of our anger, our resentments, and, yes, our bloodlust. 

This is part of the essentially fascistic nature of Trumpism. It is a mean, bare-knuckled thing, and MAGA leaders understand this. As Mussolini put it in “The Doctrine of Fascism”: 

A doctrine must therefore be a vital act and not a verbal display. Hence the pragmatic strain in Fascism, its will to power, its will to live, its attitude toward violence, and its value.

Fascism, for all its evils, is a politics that speaks to the human condition. It does not invent the domination, hate, and madness it imposes on the world, but rather elevates those things from within us. Violence and brutality are compelling because we are predisposed to find them compelling. We are drawn to the spectacle and find catharsis in the action. When I see footage of a UFC fight or another story about Trump’s insatiable cruelty, I don’t recoil because these things are alien to me but because they speak to the basest parts of the nature we all share. I recoil in recognition—of my neighbors and of myself. 

Consider the recent Jake Paul and Anthony Joshua heavyweight bout, held in Miami and featured on Netflix. Joshua, a former world number one and highly-decorated boxer, reduced Paul to a bloody pulp over six rounds, eventually breaking Paul’s jaw and drawing a knockout victory. Many people of my general political disposition took to social media to gleefully share images of Paul, looking dazed and afraid, being beaten to a mess. Andrew Tate also suffered a defeat over the weekend—knocked senseless by newcomer Chase DeMoor. His fight was treated with similar enthusiasm. 

On the one hand, I understand that Paul and Tate are contemptible men who chose to put themselves in the ring. On the other, I can’t help but feel discomfited by mass joy at a clearly concussed man spitting out blood and looking like human roadkill or another hobbled to the ground by obvious brain damage. 

This is both one key reason why sports like boxing and MMA are popular: it’s fun to see people who volunteered for it get beaten up by other, better athletes. But it’s also grotesque. It’s a modern, supposedly more sophisticated and controlled, iteration of the same spirits behind the Colosseum and mob-driven public punishments from beheadings to tarring and feathering, the latter an iconic image of the early days of the American Revolution. 

Some might chirp back that, especially in a case like Tate’s, justice was served. But justice in a liberal democratic order is meant to hold these instincts at arms length. In many modern democracies, punishments like the death penalty and solitary confinement have been banned or highly restricted as barbaric practices. It's politically and morally reckless to take refuge in the drive to violence as a remedy for injustice. 

This is an important point because the naturalness of violence and cruelty is precisely the argument that men like Tate and other enterprising extreme misogynists make. The heart of their worldview is that men are meant to rule and that they must rectify decades of immiserarating feminist culture that has left men impotent and disrespected. To do this, they must fine tune their inherent rapacity, aggression, and ruthlessness in order to subjugate the world around them—most importantly the women. 

Century of men

The gender and sexual dimensions of all this violence cannot be ignored. None of it is incidental. 

America has had many white supremacist presidencies, both in its antebellum years and into the 20th century. But the Trump administration is perhaps the first where male supremacy is at the ideological and spiritual core of its vision for the country. 

The Trumpian right has elevated an extremist form of alpha-male misogyny. Figures from the MMA world are central to that, especially people like Andrew Tate. 

Andrew Tate’s philosophy is easy to summarize in his own words: 

Life is competition. Competition is violence.

In many modern forms of competition we have attempted to water down the violent aspects, to replicate violence in the most sanitised way.

We have full grown men, growing as large and strong as possible - to put a ball in a net, as opposed to hurting each other. But the sentiment is the same. It's a group of men at war with another - with one team being victors. And the other being losers.

The largest, strongest, most beautiful tree.
Violently crushed the surrounding saplings, in the quest for resource.

[…]

We are born valueless. And you either build yourself into a King [sic] - or you fail.

Of course, in MMA, the violence is substantially less watered down. We are much closer to the  animalistic world of Tate’s man. Still, it’s important to understand that this ruthless Darwinism is only for men. Only men get to become “Kings.” So, as harsh and violent as his outlook might sound, it’s much worse for the women those men are meant to dominate. 

Tate’s brand of conspicuous wealth and cigar-smoking machismo has become a North Star for young men around the world, believing that his teachings on dating, business, culture, and politics will help them achieve success and respect. All of it is snake oil, but the most dangerous elements are his lessons on sex and relationships. Nearly all of these encourage men to belittle, terrify, and even assault the women around them, with the assurances that obedience and sex will follow. In one video, Tate gives the following advice for men whose partners accuse them of cheating (which, if they’re following Tate’s example, they surely are): 

It’s bang out the machete, boom in her face, you grip her up by the neck, ‘WHAT’S UP BITCH’...you go fuck her. That’s how it goes, you go slap, slap, grab, choke, ‘shut up bitch,’ sex.”

Women, in Tate’s view, are meant to “obey.” This is shocking and extreme, but it is not a fringe idea. During the 2024 election, Wired’s David Gilbert methodically laid out the parallels between Andrew Tate’s rhetoric toward women and that of the Trump campaign, including both Trump and Tate’s penchant for referring to women as “dogs.” And Gilbert noted then the mainstreaming of this male supremacist politics:

Trump’s misogynistic worldview has bled into other areas of conservative politics, too.

Even before Kamala Harris officially replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, the right was demonizing her as a “DEI hire” —a phrase Tate has used to criticize women in the past.

Prominent right-wing media figures have similarly made numerous misogynistic comments in recent months. In April, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk blamed birth control for creating “very angry and bitter young ladies” and falsely claimed that the medication “screws up the female brain.” Alec Lace, a regular Fox Business contributor, appeared on the station last month and felt it was OK to call Harris the “original Hawk Tuah girl, that’s the way she got where she is” before adding that she is a “DEI vice president.” And just last month, Fox News prime time host Jesse Watters claimed: “When a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman.”

At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month, the speaker list featured Dana White, who was caught on camera slapping his wife, and Hulk Hogan, who has been accused of physically abusing his wife. (Hogan filed a defamation suit over the claims but asked the court to dismiss it five months later.) It also included a number of conservative figures who have sought to blame the victims of sexual assault, such as David Sacks and Mark Robinson. The speakers also included Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida lawmaker who has been investigated but not charged by the Department of Justice for allegations of being part of a scheme to traffic a 17-year-old woman.

If anything, male supremacism and the toxic masculinity and misogyny undergirding it have become even more mainstream than they were just a year ago. The Tate brothers can travel freely, their ban having been lifted. The U.S. military is making actively weeding out gays and women. An adjudicated rapist is president. 

So what does it mean to turn ourselves over to this kind of social order? Like fascism itself, this male supremacist. The worldview is punishingly hierarchical—women are on the bottom, but they are just below the men who cannot compete in this system. They are Tate’s cursed “losers.” As Cynthi Miller-Idris explains in her book Man Up: The New Misogyny & The Rise of the Violent Right: 

Male supremacy also establishes hierarchies of superiority and inferiority within men, positioning a certain kind of man—referred to in some male supremacist circles as alpha males, or chads—as superior to everyone else. Anyone who doesn't fit the ideal, macho mold is seen as posing a threat to men and to the "real man" masculinity they embody.

This is what male supremacist and fascist politics offer: a violent, cutthroat society where the loser is scorned and victor takes the spoils. And it’s precisely the kind of order Trump wants to put on display with a White House UFC match. 

Using the White House to promote such an event is both an assertion of fascist politics and a tacit acknowledgment of how far we have already fallen. It promises to be a spectacle of toxic male supremacy, put on by an administration that touts the male “war fighter” as the peak of physical fitness. It’s an obsession, as I’ve noted before, with both male power and male bodies. 

As the ongoing saga of the Epstein files has helped to highlight, this is an administration built on the logic of abuse. Rape and domestic violence allegations follow not only the president but a number of his chief lieutenants and boosters. 

So I find it fitting that this White House so thoroughly embraces the most barbaric of modern sports, and one that past investigations have found is plagued by an extraordinarily high incidence of domestic violence reports against its stars.

Rape and abuse are the language of supremacy. That is what it offers women and men—yes, men, too. And that is the sort of power it promises weak men who mistake muscle for authority. From Mussolini to Trump to Tate, fascists are always rapists at heart. 

Born-again barbarians

The idea that violence chastens, purifies, and even redeems us is not new. It is, in much more sympathetic terms, the structure of the Christ story. But that is an account of selfless, sacrificial love overcoming the murderous violence that was  meant to destroy it. So, it is an enduring tragedy how many Christians throughout history have treated bloodshed as a divine act. 

In the context of MMA, some corners of modern Christianity have enthusiastically embraced the sport as an exercise in theology. As scholars Nick Watson and Brian Bolt observed a decade ago in 2015: 

Today over 700 evangelical US churches now integrate MMA (also known as cage-fighting) into their ministry programs. The phenomenon has even been featured in a recent documentary film, 2014's Fight Church.

Now, you can also find MMA gyms run by self-professed “men of God.” These places promise to condition the body and the soul. Take, for example, the unsubtly named Redemption MMA & Fitness in Taylor, South Carolina. On the website, boxing coach’s Evan Pierce’s bio reads:

My name is Evan Pierce — a warrior of God, a seasoned professional boxer, and a proud competitor in both Pro Boxing and Bare Knuckle Fighting. My foundation is built on faith, discipline, and an unshakable work ethic. Every time I step into the ring, I carry a purpose bigger than myself — to glorify God, push my limits, and one day claim the title of World Champion in Bare Knuckle Boxing

On their Instagram, you can find men sparring in tank-tops reading “Taxes are gay,” with the caption urging you to “Train. Fight. Resist. And stand up to the corruption!” 

Professors Watson and Bolt have stressed that, despite the contemporary inflections, this phenomenon has deep historical roots:

The notion that MMA and Christianity are compatible bedfellows is loosely based on the ideology of Muscular Christianity, a mostly-male, Victorian-era movement that linked the gospel with physical and mental toughness. Two leaders of the movement - Charles Kingsley, a clergymen and scholar, and Thomas Hughes, a celebrated Victorian era author (and boxing coach) - sought to counter the perceived feminization of church and to attract men to the faith.

The muscular Christian ethos was instrumental in the birth of modern sport, particularly in late 19th century British public schools. However, there was a marked decline in an institutional sport-faith link, which lasted until the 1950s. Then Protestant Christian leaders like Billy Graham saw sport as a potential evangelical tool and rekindled the church's promotion of it.

Since the mid-20th century numerous sport ministry organizations have been formed, such as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in the US and Christians in Sport in the UK.

Of course, the broader idea that physical conditioning is intertwined with spiritual well-being is an ancient one. The Greeks and Romans saw athleticism as exhibition for the gods, and war itself was an extension of these pursuits. But I must confess I am repelled by the suggestion there is anything Christ-like in closing off the airways, breaking the ribs, or irreparably damaging the brain of my fellow man. 

The Trump administration has frequently adorned its violent actions with religious affectations. One of the most perverse examples is the video put out this summer by DHS, promoting its authoritarian deportation and detention operations, and which quotes Proverbs 28:1: “The wicked flee when no man pursueth; but the righteous are bold as a lion.”

Yet Christ was the lamb, not the lion. It is the meek, so we’re told, who will be the ones to inherit the earth. And this gets me to something that Christianity and liberal democracy, properly understood, share in common. They ask us to deny millennia of human history, to defy the darkest parts of our nature, and to believe that we can transcend our basest instincts through mutual respect and community. 

Pulling punches 

I am not a pacifist, though I was in my younger years. I believe fighting and war can be necessary and can, in the broad sense, serve a good and just end. But I also believe that every small, individual act of harm or killing is a tragedy, a trespass against the soul. This is the cost of letting the violence in us speak. We shouldn’t take joy in it. 

Birthdays are a time when we take stock of our lives, the year behind us and the one ahead. Christmas, which billions around the world are about to celebrate, is a holiday for believers to meditate on the birth of Jesus and renew their commitments to the Christian virtues of peace, love, mercy, and goodwill to others. But as America turns 250, I fear we will be committing ourselves to our worst vices.

Featured image is Pollice Verso, by Jean-Léon Gérôme