When the barbarians sacked Rome in 410 AD, it wasn’t just about looting gold and burning villas. It was a civilizational moment — the end of certainty. Rome thought itself eternal, the city of laws, order and divine destiny. But the empire had already decayed from within: corruption, decadence, over-extension, and too much reality TV in the Senate (well, metaphorically).
Fast forward to 2025, and the new Visigoth is not in animal skins but in a golf shirt — tweeting (or “Truthing”) from Mar-a-Lago. Donald J. Trump, the man who can turn a press conference into a siege, stands as both product and prosecutor of America’s imperial decline.
Where Alaric the Goth breached the walls of Rome, Trump breaches norms. Where barbarians once plundered treasures, Trump plunders truth. He doesn’t burn temples — he builds gold towers and names them after himself.
He is, in every sense, the barbarian America invited in.
The irony? Trump didn’t march from the wilderness; he emerged from the empire’s inner sanctum — Wall Street, reality TV, and campaign rallies where grievance replaced gospel. He doesn’t want to destroy America’s hegemony; he wants to own it, trademark it, and maybe franchise it in Florida.
But every empire that forgets humility eventually meets its barbarian moment. The British had Suez, the Soviets had Afghanistan, and the Americans might have Trump.
He’s not the destroyer; he’s the symptom — the mirror Rome never wanted to look into.
So yes, perhaps Trump is the modern barbarian who might sack the empire — not with swords, but with slogans; not by fire, but by fatigue.
And when future historians write about the fall of the American Empire, they might say:
“It wasn’t Russia or China that ended it — it was a man with a spray tan and a Sharpie.”
Centre for Nigeria Progress 