Luca Signorelli, The Devil whispers to the Antichrist; detail from Sermons and Deeds of the Antichrist, 1499-1504
If we refer to the doctrine set out in Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians, we can then say, as we have already done in this section, that the katechon—the power that restrains and delays the end, which the Church Fathers identified with institutions (the Roman Empire and the Church itself)—is today in crisis everywhere, and we are witnessing, therefore, the advent of the anomos, a lawless power that brings ruin and proclaims itself to be God (which is why the Church Fathers identified it with the Antichrist).
This is evident in the United States, where institutions no longer seem to function and all power lies in the hands of a man who speaks and acts without any regard for the law (the same can be said of Israel) and masquerades as God. It is worth reflecting on this epochal situation, which involves the whole of the West. Given that institutions (the State and its historical structures) have lost all credibility, it is futile to base upon them the power that holds back the eschatological event. And this is all the more true insofar as anomos, the lawless one, is not an external principle, but rather the form that the institution itself assumes as it decays. Trump and Netanyahu do not come from outside: it is the State itself—the power that ought to hold back and delay the end—that becomes the agent which accelerates and precipitates it in its most ruinous forms.
Giorgio Agamben: State and anomie II
If we refer to the doctrine set out in Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians, we can then say, as we have already done in this section, that the katechon—the power that restrains and delays the end, which the Church Fathers identified with institutions (the Roman Empire and the Church itself)—is today in crisis everywhere, and we are witnessing, therefore, the advent of the anomos, a lawless power that brings ruin and proclaims itself to be God (which is why the Church Fathers identified it with the Antichrist).
This is evident in the United States, where institutions no longer seem to function and all power lies in the hands of a man who speaks and acts without any regard for the law (the same can be said of Israel) and masquerades as God. It is worth reflecting on this epochal situation, which involves the whole of the West. Given that institutions (the State and its historical structures) have lost all credibility, it is futile to base upon them the power that holds back the eschatological event. And this is all the more true insofar as anomos, the lawless one, is not an external principle, but rather the form that the institution itself assumes as it decays. Trump and Netanyahu do not come from outside: it is the State itself—the power that ought to hold back and delay the end—that becomes the agent which accelerates and precipitates it in its most ruinous forms.
Quodlibet, 27 July, 2026