ABSTRACT
Stephen King has been writing fictional versions of white supremacy since the late 1970s when he created the character Randall Flagg in the novel The Stand. Flagg is the archetype for all the other wannabe fascists that populate King’s novels, from Greg Stillson in The Dead Zone to those less obvious politically-motivated monsters such as Pennywise in IT and Andre Linoge in Storm of the Century. In fact, in general terms it is possible to argue that all the monsters in King’s universe—both human and supernatural—reflect, to greater or lesser degrees, anti-democratic values. King’s creation of white supremacist figures poses a prescient anticipation of Donald Trump’s political emergence in 2016. This assertion is confirmed in the acrimonious Twitter war that has erupted between King and Trump over the years of the latter’s presidency. King’s politics are deeply progressive and thus often run into conflict with Trump’s regressive and oppressive agenda. This chapter will analyze the Twitter feed that has fed this conflict in order to highlight the fictional examples of King’s right-wing ideologues and their remarkably similar methodologies.
