The Dangerous Paganism of “FAFO”

About a year ago, Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself dressed as a mob boss next to a sign that said “FAFO.” Since then, he’s been working the acronym into his official media presence with gusto. The term was popular within the African American and military communities for years. The latter popularized it in segments of the MAGA movement long before Trump seemed aware of it; and it was adopted by the Left in the “never-Trump” movement. Now, since it’s reached the Oval Office, it’s all over the internet within right-leaning and left-leaning environments. 

The acronym stands for, politely, “fool around and find out.” In actual parlance, including in the president’s own posts and words, users exchange “fool” for a different “f” word. 

FAFO can be a merely descriptive warning about our world. It can be a warning to peers or children that our negative actions have negative consequences. Politically, it can refer to a “get tough” set of policies that in many respects are welcome and overdue. Enforcing our existing immigration laws, keeping streets safe, standing up for American interests in foreign policy, etc.—these are contexts in which Trump himself has used the term. 

But FAFO isn’t merely descriptive. It’s also aspirational. It’s a social and mental attitude. And in Trump’s usage, it’s clearly political, too, defining in broad strokes much of his foreign and domestic policy: if you cross me, I will happily “fool” you up. 

There’s some place for the sentiment. We can avoid hand-wringing about self-defense and being “nice” to criminals and just let the world know we will stand up for the honor of us and ours. 

But its vulgarity betrays the shadow side. 

The attitude invariably extends beyond a Christian morality. Aggressive domestic and foreign policy involves real, human lives. Attacking Iran, or Venezuela, or wherever else attacks humans. Deporting illegal immigrants or criminals deports humans. Consequently, these must be considered with as much weight as the worth of those lives themselves, even if the answer remains “attack” or “deport.”

But the “FAFO movement” is instead quick, glib, and bellicose toward human suffering. 

Fathers are deported, sometimes even to foreign prisons; churches and school areas are raided by masked men; bombs are dropped, and boats are sunk; protestors are injured or shot. The response from a growing number of conservatives is simply, “lol FAFO.” Sometimes people need deporting, places need raiding, and targets need bombing. But any such occurrence is not just glossed over—it’s celebrated, without one pause for thought or prayer. 

This is just a rehashing of Trump’s own personal ethics, at least as far as he’s made them known. It’s fundamentally aligned with the depressing modern philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, as Catholic philosopher Edward Feser has wonderfully spelled out. The world is approached through the ego; and any attempts to cross it—real or perceived—deserve aggressive response unbridled by anything but raw pragmatism. 

The FAFO movement is the embodiment of this Hobbesian worldview. It takes jocular delight in exerting your will over all who may oppose it.

This is obviously antithetical to the words of Christ. And His wisdom would be well-heeded. The FAFO attitude exalts the hammer to the point everything looks like a nail. In FAFO foreign policy, everything starts to look like “fooling around”—even normal exercises of national sovereignty or long-established norms of custom and treaties. 

This foreign policy is a hyperbolic and perverted version of realpolitik (itself open to charges of moral perversion), a twisting of Teddy Roosevelt’s foreign policy into the simple gangsterism of “yell loudly, and wildly swing a big stick.” 

Perhaps the Trumpian policy moves of the last year will, at the end of the day, prove to work. The global economy, American society, and international relations are complicated. And the FAFO attitude can accompany actually wise underlying policy choices. Insofar as it goes, I hope we do end up with a more peaceful world and a stronger America.

Yet for us Christians, the consequences do not matter alone. Equally important—even more so—is how we get there. Getting to the right place the wrong way is still wrong. Even if, as sometimes alleged, Trump’s FAFO words and threats are all empty bluff and bluster, negotiating with immoral threats is still immoral negotiation. And if we seriously believe in the Crucified Christ’s victory over the world, we’d rightfully doubt even the pleasant fruits of such strategies could persist for long. 

Lying, threatening injustice, callousness toward human pain, pleasure at our rivals’ injuries—even if they lead to the right policy decisions, the methodology is still unacceptable for a Christian leader. 

And if that descriptor of “Christian leader” seems ridiculous to apply to Trump, then maybe that should tell you something. 

Because ultimately, what’s most concerning about FAFO isn’t the policies themselves. There have been equally ridiculous policies in recent memory from other administrations, and some of the ideas might even prove successful. The danger is the mindset—especially the mindset among Trump’s Christian base. 

The Christian Right has long now been full of adulation for Trump. In the forced-binary of our political landscape, this is an understandable concession to an unconventional figure in whom seemed our only real shot for important conservative goals. Many of those goals were even won. But it’s morphing into a Pyrrhic victory. 

Adopting Trump as a political ally, or even endorsing some or most of his ideas, is one thing. He’s not a man without his virtues. But it’s another thing entirely to adopt his mindset, his fundamental philosophy, especially within Christian politics. It would be to trade in the Beatitudes to build an ideology around the Art of the Deal. In that ideology, the dealer always wins—and everyone else eventually loses.