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maga
The Last Taboo: Why Are Voters Never Held Responsible for Their Choices?
Time to end the media silence over the American people’s headlong dive into authoritarianism.
Feb 13, 2025
In his book, The Present Age, the late sociologist Robert Nisbet applied a pithy descriptor to a phenomenon we have seen all too often in public life: the “no-fault” theory of political action, particularly in foreign affairs. “Presidents, secretaries, and generals and admirals in America seemingly subscribe to the doctrine that no fault ever attaches to policy and operations,” he wrote. “This No Fault conviction prevents them from taking too seriously such notorious foul-ups as Desert One, Grenada, Lebanon, and now the Persian Gulf.”
Nisbet did not live to see a spectacular example of his theory. George W. Bush, having failed to prevent the 9/11 disaster his own intelligence agencies foresaw, proceeded to initiate a years-long disaster in Iraq, a catastrophe of his own making. Yet what were the consequences? The American people rewarded him with a second term in the face of abundant evidence of his incompetence and bad faith.
It would appear that Nisbet’s thesis needs revision. What he said was blatantly obvious: of course politicians rarely blame themselves for their own egregious policy failures, for it characterizes the typical behavior of ambitious, self-confident, and often corner-cutting people.
We frequently hear calls for “accountability:” for politicians, tech moguls, and the like... How telling then, that there are no such calls for accountability when it comes to the American people.
What is more significant, and troubling, is the reaction of the people who elect them: why do they more often than not reward leaders who inveigle them into national calamity? Isn’t there also a no-fault doctrine that applies to the American voter, a doctrine that is for the most part rigidly observed by journalists, pundits, and the self-proclaimed wise men who monopolize the op-ed pages of the prestige newspapers?
From the platforms of the chattering classes, we frequently hear calls for “accountability:” for politicians, tech moguls, and the like. Holding someone accountable implies that the person in question is a functioning adult who can be considered responsible for his actions. How telling then, that there are no such calls for accountability when it comes to the American people.
Turning back to Bush, his reelection did not end his reign of error. His policy of radical financial deregulation, about which he and his underlings bragged incessantly, and about which the public had to know if it were remotely paying attention, led in his second term to the greatest financial meltdown in 80 years.
Temporarily chastened, voters latched on to Barack Obama as the savior du jour. It turned out that Obama was no Moses leading the people to the promised land. A nominal Democrat, he was more an old-school Rockefeller Republican whose two terms were mostly an uneventful placeholder in history—not that such administrations are necessarily bad, as the current all-enveloping chaos demonstrates.
But placid, play-it-safe presidencies are boring, particularly for an increasingly infantilized public that needs 24/7 entertainment to stave off that worst of mental states: honest self-reflection. So they grew tired of Perry Como’s crooning, hankering instead after Ozzy Osbourne smashing his guitar and biting the head off a bat. That explains a good deal about how we got Trump 1.0 and 2.0.
Placid, play-it-safe presidencies are boring, particularly for an increasingly infantilized public that needs 24/7 entertainment to stave off that worst of mental states: honest self-reflection.
Wait, say the pundits, weren’t great swathes of the American people in 2016 victimized by the system, suffering from “economic anxiety?” But exit polling data from 2016 showed that Hillary Clinton won by 12 points among voters making less than $30,000 a year and by nine points among those making between $30,000 and $49,999. Trump, on the other hand, won every demographic making $50,000 or more
In 2024, the U.S. economy was the best in almost 60 years, with October unemployment at 4.1 percent. This is not to argue that everything was ideal, but the economy was better than recent U.S. experience, and unemployment and GDP growth were far better than most developed countries.
Accordingly, pundits dropped the economic anxiety excuse. Instead, we have been inundated with think pieces about how Democrats in some unexplained way “lost the working class,” a demographic conveniently left undefined. This claim contradicts continued polling evidence that Trump consistently did better among more affluent voters. The notion that Trump has magnetic appeal among Americans living a precarious economic existence is largely myth.
Otherwise, the media has treated Trump’s election like an asteroid falling from the sky, a natural disaster seemingly without input from the electorate. Why? It may be that the press still refuses to violate the last moral taboo in American public life: the essential innocence and virtue of this country’s citizens.
Denouncing the rascality of politicians is a revered American tradition, from Artemus Ward to Mark Twain, to Will Rogers, right down to the late-night TV hosts of today. Even the ultra-refined Henry Adams, scion of the Adams's of presidential fame, approvingly quoted the line, “A congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and beat him on the snout!”
Perhaps the only well-known American literary figure to take a dim view of the people who actually elect the politicians was H.L. Mencken. He denounced vigilantism during World War I, Prohibition, the 1920s resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, and the revival of religious fundamentalism that same decade, not as some plague that befell the country from nowhere, but as an expression of Americans’ mob mentality, anti-intellectualism, and search for easy solutions.
Otherwise, American literary tradition gives us Walt Whitman singing the praises of his fellow citizens, Carl Sandberg (“the people, yes . . .”), Thorton Wilder and his sentimental tale of small-town folks, and Frank Capra’s maudlin cinematic paeans to the fundamental goodness of the common clay. Thousands of lesser lights have engaged in similar rhetorical puffery to the present day. The tragic, grown-up sense of social life in Victor Hugo or the great Russian novelists is absent from the American tradition.
Mystification merely being academic slang for bamboozlement, the theory never answers the question: why are the people so easily conned by the most childish lies and distortions...?
Editorial departments still hew to this convention. A journalist friend recently submitted a piece to a well-known center-left magazine arguing that some responsibility must attach to the voters for the 2024 election. The response: “We can’t say the American people are stupid,” even though the editor agreed with the author.
Political theorists from the center to the far left are also prone to this delusion. They have built an edifice of psychological denial on the idea that even if there is a pervasive system of illegitimate corporate or governmental control, it is miraculously unconnected with the character of the people the system administers. Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent is typical of the species, a late-20th century adaptation of Karl Marx’s theory of mystification: that the common people do not recognize their genuine interest because they have been mystified by the powers-that-be.
Mystification merely being academic slang for bamboozlement, the theory never answers the question: why are the people so easily conned by the most childish lies and distortions when accurate information is easily accessible, and never more so than today? (This is quite apart from the fact that Trump told voters very explicitly about the horrors he would inflict, meaning that something other than gullibility is also at work).
It wasn’t always thus: farmers in the 1890s, the core support for the old People’s Party, knew very well who was screwing them: the railroads, the banks, the grain traders. So did 1930s production-line workers in steel, autos, and rubber, struggling for union recognition: they knew it was their own employers, not foreign competition or some culture-wars chimera that was responsible for their miserable conditions.
But now, farmers vote overwhelmingly for Trump, despite their suffering under foreign retaliatory tariffs resulting from his ill-considered economic policy during his first term and likely further damage in his second. And unionization is at record post-World War II lows, despite the material benefits of union membership.
What changed? Historian Rick Perlstein, writing in The Invisible Bridge, said that in the 1970s, as the crises of Vietnam, racial unrest, and Watergate abated, the American people had a chance to learn from these events: in other words, to grow up and be responsible citizens.
They didn’t. Ronald Reagan’s soothing fairy tale of innocent virtue, of a country sinned against but never sinning, became America’s secular religion. I would extend Perlstein’s thesis by suggesting that this bogus innocence has become embedded in the American psyche and individualized into a personalized martyr complex. Every vicissitude of life is now the fault of some detested minority, or the elites, or the system generally.
The vanguard of this personality type, the people who actually generate the atrocious ideas the Trump regime is now implementing, is what substacker John Ganz calls the “creep-loser.” You know the type from high school: awkward, asocial, and full of resentment against the world for failing to recognize his genius.
Many of them become brooding, failed intellectuals, the sort that were the idea engine of authoritarian movements throughout the 20th century, and who now infest places like the Claremont Institute and Heritage Foundation. They are to MAGA what the Old Bolsheviks were to the Communist movement. It is no coincidence that Steve Bannon described himself as a Leninist. Their goal is simply destruction as revenge.
It is true that all of these resentful fantasists together would barely fill a stadium: hardly a key national voting bloc. But their nihilistic attitude is surprisingly prevalent among “real Americans” who never read Ayn Rand or attended Hillsdale College. Beginning in 2015, pollsters have been rather surprised at the frequency that respondents claim they just want to “burn it all down,” not troubling themselves with what will happen to the social infrastructure that supports their very existence.
If it reaches the point where Americans are sent to Guantanamo for their political opinions, what will be the reaction of the unserious?
Add to them the rapturist Christians, the hard core of the Christian fundamentalist voting bloc (the largest single constituency of the Republican Party). The belief that a millennial holocaust wiping out earth is something to look forward to is in its basic psychology no different from Hitler’s Götterdämmerung in the Berlin bunker or suicide cults like Jim Jones’ People’s Temple. Even the wider fundamentalist belief system is prone to rigidly separate human beings into the blessed and the damned, a mindset hardly consistent with pluralist democracy.
A final demographic is the most diffuse and least attached to any ideology: the tens of millions of unserious Americans who refuse to take anything seriously, for whom the smallest exercise of civic responsibility is either uncool, or boring, or a violation of their freedom to be irresponsible. Some of them voted for Trump because “he’s funny;” you may know the type. No doubt they think even now that plundering Greenland or sending combat troops to Gaza is comedy gold. Others will apply a sort of degenerate folk wisdom that they think is clever, saying they “always vote those in office out, and those out of office in,” or some similar nonsense.
Other unserious people feign a righteous anger over the price of eggs on the assumption that the White House controls the cost of consumer goods regardless of circumstances like bird flu. The price of eggs or broiler chickens is much more important to them than living under the rule of law or handing down a decent and humane society to their children.
Maybe we were always deceived by popular culture, or misread it.
If it reaches the point where Americans are sent to Guantanamo for their political opinions, what will be the reaction of the unserious? No doubt indifference, because it won’t affect them, just as arrests of Jews or Social Democrats didn’t affect “good Germans” in the 1930s. As for the true believers, whether religious fundamentalist or secular neoreactionary tech-nerd, they’ll be cheering it on: they never believed in any nonsense about democracy or human rights in any case.
How can America’s purported thought-leaders seriously maintain that a working majority of Americans (those who voted for Trump and those who didn’t bother to vote because they didn’t care) didn’t consciously will what is now unfolding? As Steve Bannon’s role model Lenin was reputed to have remarked, “who says A must say B:” people are intellectually and morally responsible for the consequences of their actions. To argue otherwise is the equivalent of saying that tens of millions of Americans are legally incapable of signing contracts, marrying, driving cars, or exercising the franchise.
Maybe we were always deceived by popular culture, or misread it. It’s a Wonderful Life is conventionally viewed as a heart-warming Christmas movie, with a depressing second act making the finale all the more sentimentally fulfilling, like Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Yet, but for the contingency of George Bailey’s having been born and lived, Bedford Falls inevitably would have defaulted to Potterville, hardly an affirmation of the goodness and civic-mindedness of the majority, who might have been expected to resist the designs of the grasping Mr. Potter.
Contingencies work that way in real life, too. But for the pandemic and the resulting inflation, we might be living in a different world. Alas, given the recent price of eggs, most Americans preferred to ditch safe, staid old Bedford Falls for the vulgar excitement of Potterville. The town’s owner, whether Mr. Potter or Donald Trump, will cheerfully ensure that while he might fleece you for every cent and jail you if you defy him, you’ll never be bored.
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Why Working People Need a Political Movement of Their Own
What are workers without a political home to do?
Feb 05, 2025
There is no question that the Democratic Party, once the party of the working class, is now the party of the professional managerial class.
Workers have been voting with their feet, while the Democrats have been marching in the other direction:
- Trump won 56 percent to 43 percent voters without college degrees, a proxy for the working class, according to exit polls.
- Trump won 52 percent to 46 percent those with total family income of $30,000 to $100,000, another proxy for the working class.
- Of those who felt that their family’s financial situation was worse today than four years ago, 82 percent voted for Trump. Of those who felt it was better, 83 percent voted for Harris, as the Democratic brand moved up the income ladder.
- Of those who said the economy is not so good or poor, 70 percent voted for Trump. Of those who thought the economy was excellent or good, a proxy for the managerial professional class, 92 percent voted for Harris.
- There is a very strong statistical correlation between the counties with the highest layoff rates and the decline of the Democratic vote. During the last four years approximately 80 million workers suffered through involuntary layoffs. (Please see Wall Street’s War on Workers.)
These trends have been a long time in the making. In 1976 Jimmy Carter received 52.3 percent of the white working-class vote. Biden received only 36.2 percent in 2020, and Harris 33.0 percent in 2024. Racism can’t be the major cause of recent declines, since Barack Obama did better with 40.6 percent in 2012.
Given the political chaos all around us, now is the time to experiment with new ways to rekindle a working-class movement.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are trying to attract workers to a class-befuddled MAGA movement dominated by millionaires and billionaires. Trump’s plutocratic cabinet makes clear that the working class does not have a political home in either party. The question is, how can a new one be constructed?
Turn the Democrats Into Progressive Populists?
It would be suicidal, some argue, for the working class to abandon the Democrats. Better that they exert pressure so that the Democrats become genuine economic populists. For that to happen, realistically, it must be proven that Democrats can win elections on a populist platform in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.
But Sherrod Brown, a very strong economic populist, lost his Senate seat in Ohio in 2024. Did populism drag him down? Brown, who lost by 3.6 percent, certainly ran better than Harris, who lost Ohio by 11.2 percent. Brown believes, however, that he was done in by NAFTA, the free trade bill pushed for and signed by Bill Clinton in 1993. He believes the Democrats are still being blamed for how that trade bill decimated industrial areas:
“But what really mattered is: I still heard in the Mahoning Valley, in the Miami Valley, I still heard during the campaign about NAFTA.
I’ve seen that erosion of American jobs and I’ve seen the middle class shrink. People have to blame someone. And it’s been Democrats. We are more to blame for it because we have historically been the party of [workers].”
The power of NAFTA, not the working-class racism, is also what delivered the South to the Republicans, according to Nelson Lichtenstein in his new book on the Clinton years, A Fabulous Failure. Even after Nixon used his racist Southern Strategy to lure the South away from the Democrats, Lichtenstein notes that congressional representation in the southern states was still evenly split between the two parties. After NAFTA demolished the southern textile industry, however, most of the South abandoned the Democrats.
NAFTA = Job loss = Democrats
That’s the formula Brown could not overcome. But how could NAFTA still have so much punch three decades after it was passed?
For most working people, free trade deals are a proxy for mass layoffs. NAFTA, and then deals allowing China into the World Trade Organization, led to millions of lost jobs, especially in manufacturing areas. The pain lingers because corporations learned that moving jobs, or threatening to move them, can make them more in profits, and so involuntary layoffs continue unabated, upending the lives of approximately 20 million workers per year.
The Democratic Party has refused to stop Wall Street and corporate America from using layoffs to raise cash for the richest of the rich. The Democrats also have failed to redevelop decimated areas by directly creating jobs, as the New Deal did during the Depression. Job stability is not something either political party cares about, because corporate interests come first, but the issue hurts the Democrats more because of its historical claim as the party of working people.
The Democratic Party has refused to stop Wall Street and corporate America from using layoffs to raise cash for the richest of the rich.
Sherrod Brown’s populism didn’t cost him the election. The Democratic Party’s lack of economic populism, including their advocacy for trade deals and their overall failure to protect the livelihoods of working people, eroded Brown’s base.
Run as an Independent?
Dan Osborn, a steamfitter and former local union president, tried another path by running as an independent Senate candidate representing Nebraska. (The Democrats did not field a candidate.) He did even better than Sherrod Brown, losing by 6.7 percent while Harris finished a whopping 20.4 percent behind Trump, but clearly more needs to be done.
Osborn is now setting up the Working-Class Heroes Fund, a political action committee to recruit and support working-class candidates. As he put it:
Whether they’re leaving their party or it’s young people registering to vote, I think there’s certainly an appetite for people who are just frustrated with the parties…. We just see things not getting done. The reason why they’re not getting done is because they’re all bought and sold, and they’re owned by corporations. That is truly the divider in the country. So, I think that’s where the appetite stems from.
To win Osborn needed about 20 percent of Trump voters, which in turn meant he needed to find areas of agreement with Trump while struggling to find a working-class position on immigration. On the one hand, he said that something had to be done to secure the southern border. “Our border’s broken,” he said. “Our immigration system is broken.” He also argued that hard-working immigrants who were in the country, paid their taxes, and didn’t commit crimes should have a pathway to citizenship.
A Movement, Not Just a Candidate
Running candidates independent of the two parties, but without playing the role of a spoiler, is a strategy worth trying. But the history of working-class movements suggests that significant political change requires the mobilization of large numbers of working people into organized political movements of their own making.
- It was the rise of the 19th populists, the Farmers Alliance, that eventually forced the political system to regulate the robber barons.
- It was the rapid rise of the labor movement during the Depression that mobilized mass support for the New Deal.
- It was the upsurge of the Civil Rights movement that led to the historic anti-discriminatory reforms passed during the Johnson administration in the 1960s.
These movements reshaped the political landscape and put working-class issues on the national agenda. They gave working people a home, a collective expression, a sense of belonging, and empowerment. My guess is that for some, MAGA has done the same.
The Democrats became the party of the working-class because the labor movement, after WWII, represented more than 30 percent of the workforce. If you count family members it represented a large majority of working people. Its agenda could not be ignored.
Today, however, with only six percent of private sector workers in labor unions, that voice is greatly diminished.
Can labor unions again grow rapidly? Not without major labor law reforms to level the playing field with corporate power. But those reforms will not pass without a mobilized working class that demands it. Even when Democrats have controlled all three branches of government, they have failed to pass such reforms. If we’re waiting for labor unions to again represent 20 percent of the workforce, we’ve got a long wait.
The political void needs to be filled with concrete activities that bring workers together and give them a sense of collective power.
Working people, union and non-union alike, can still be mobilized through civic engagement to express their hopes and desires. Workers could join something new, like a new Workers Populist Alliance, to develop and put forth a working-class agenda.
But such a formation can only get off the ground if it is sponsored and resourced by a group of progressive labor unions. If unions really backed it, workers just might come. We need them to step up and try a pilot in one state, like Michigan.
What should a Workers Populist Alliance stand for? Here’s a simple platform that surveys suggest would have wide working-class appeal:
- Increase the minimum wage to at least $20 per hour, provide paid family leave, and four weeks paid vacation a year.
- Save jobs by prohibiting large corporations that receive taxpayer money and tax breaks from laying off taxpayers involuntarily.
- Guarantee the right to a job at a living wage. If the private sector can't create those jobs, the public sector must.
- Stop drug company price gouging, and end health insurance rip-offs by replacing them with Medicare for All.
The political void needs to be filled with concrete activities that bring workers together and give them a sense of collective power. One activity would be to shove this agenda in the face of every candidate, from city council to President, asking them to publicly endorse it. The platform could be used to fight against millions of unnecessary layoffs caused by unmitigated corporate greed and provide a progressive alternative to MAGA. This could be done very systematically in town after town, county after county. The ask of politicians is simple: Which side are you on?
Are labor unions willing to build a new political movement outside of the Democratic Party? It would be an uphill battle because their shared roots run deep. But expecting the Democrats to change their stripes has been a recipe for failure the last 40 years. And so is believing that MAGA billionaires will have anything to offer working people other than more tax cuts for the rich, plus mass layoffs.
Given the political chaos all around us, now is the time to experiment with new ways to rekindle a working-class movement. Could this develop into a viable third party of working people? No one knows. But there is no doubt that working people need a new home of their making.
The billionaire class has two political parties. Working people need one of our own.
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MAGA's Global Roots: Why 'America First' Isn't American
To effectively counter MAGA, it must be accurately framed, not as an embodiment of American exceptionalism, but as part of a global populist strategy.
Jan 25, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's early actions in his second term under the "Make America Great Again," or MAGA, banner prioritized populist rhetoric over national interests. Withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization further isolated the United States and eroded its global leadership. Domestically, policies like federal hiring freezes, attempts to redefine birthright citizenship, and pardons for January 6 participants deepened national divisions and hindered effective governance. Meanwhile, rolling back protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or removing resources like the reproductiverights.gov website directly targeted "unworthy" groups of Americans. Although these actions energized his base, they sacrificed long-term stability and progress for short-term political gains. Beneath the "America First" rhetoric, these divisive policies weakened the country both at home and abroad.
The MAGA movement, championed by Trump during his 2016 campaign, is often framed as a uniquely American phenomenon. With promises to restore manufacturing jobs, secure borders, and challenge global elites, MAGA tapped into deep-seated grievances within the American electorate. However, while its slogans and imagery evoke American exceptionalism, its ideological and strategic foundations are not exclusive to the United States. Instead, MAGA represents a chapter in the global populist playbook that has been refined and exported across borders in recent decades.
To effectively counter MAGA, it must be accurately framed, not as an embodiment of American exceptionalism, but as part of a global populist strategy. Democrats and other opponents have struggled to expose its true nature, allowing it to masquerade as a grassroots response to American grievances. In reality, MAGA draws heavily from international populist tactics, employing nationalism, scapegoating, and anti-globalist conspiracy theories to consolidate. This is not about a secret "populist cabal" but about recognizing the shared strategies of political programs to counter them effectively. This challenge extends to all activists and policymakers working to counter MAGA's agenda of racism, xenophobia, and authoritarianism.
By recognizing MAGA as part of this global trend, its origins, contradictions, and vulnerabilities become clearer, providing a critical framework for countering its divisive agenda.
Recognizing MAGA's universal nature highlights its contradictions. While claiming to champion "the people," it advances policies that benefit elites, marginalize vulnerable communities, and undermine protections for workers and the environment. Situating MAGA within the broader context of global populism dismantles its American exceptionalist narrative, exposing its rhetoric as hollow and manipulative. This reframing is essential to addressing the systemic issues MAGA exploits and protecting democracy from its corrosive impact.
At its core, MAGA embodies a classic populist framework, dividing society into two opposing groups: the "pure" people and the "corrupt" elites or perceived enemies. While rooted in American political history, its binary "us vs. them" rhetoric mirrors strategies employed by populist leaders worldwide. MAGA's blend of nationalism, anti-immigration policies, economic protectionism, and cultural grievances aligns with populist campaigns in regions as diverse as Europe and Latin America. From Viktor Orbán's nationalist agenda in Hungary to Marine Le Pen's rebranding of far-right politics in France, the tools and messaging of modern populism have become strikingly uniform across borders. Far from an organic response to collective grievances, it is a calculated political strategy tailored to the cultural and domestic contexts of each country.
Much of MAGA's populist DNA can be traced to the political consulting work of Paul Manafort, a pivotal figure in Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. Before working with Trump, Manafort refined his strategies in Ukraine, where he advised pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych, who was later deposed following the Maidan protests and the Revolution of Dignity. Yanukovych's campaigns relied on nationalism, cultural division, and anti-elite rhetoric to consolidate power. These were tactics Manafort later brought to Trump's campaign, including the use of disinformation, targeted messaging, and framing Trump as an outsider fighting entrenched elites.
Manafort first entered Ukrainian politics during the Orange Revolution of 2004, when widespread protests erupted over electoral fraud favoring Yanukovych in a contentious runoff election. Following massive demonstrations, Ukraine's Supreme Court annulled the results and ordered a revote, which resulted in a decisive victory for Yanukovych's opponent, Viktor Yushchenko. While Manafort's initial efforts failed, his subsequent tenure as a campaign consultant for Yanukovych and the Party of Regions proved more successful.
Manafort is widely credited with shaping the Party of Regions' slogans and political rhetoric, emphasizing themes like the "threat of NATO" and the "suppression of the Russian language in Ukraine." These strategies deepened cultural and linguistic divisions within Ukraine, particularly alienating Russian-speaking communities in the country's east. He also crafted slogans appealing to national pride and promises of immediate improvement, such as "Improving Your Life Already Today" (Ukrainian: "Покращення життя вже сьогодні"). This approach sought to resonate with citizens' desire for swift change while portraying Yanukovych as the champion of "Ukraine first" policies in contrast to his rival, then-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
The Party of Regions portrayed Tymoshenko's pro-European integration agenda as a threat to Ukraine's sovereignty and traditional values. Their rhetoric suggested that closer ties with NATO and the E.U. would usher in liberal policies, including those supporting LGBTQ rights, which they argued would undermine Ukraine's cultural identity. By framing Western institutions as cultural aggressors, the Party of Regions positioned itself as a defender of national values, effectively galvanizing conservative segments of the population against perceived external threats.
Manafort also orchestrated sophisticated disinformation campaigns to undermine Tymoshenko and then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. This included creating a fake think tank to spread negative narratives through media outlets and manipulating online platforms to disseminate false information. Tymoshenko, like Yushchenko before her, was branded as a pro-American radical who prioritized foreign interests over Ukraine's well-being. These tactics, honed in Ukraine's politically fractured environment, were later adapted to resonate with the grievances and cultural divides of the American electorate.
While Manafort's role in shaping Trump's campaign was significant, his strategies are part of a broader international trend. MAGA's populism is not a spontaneous eruption of uniquely American discontent but a chapter in the global populist playbook. From exploiting cultural divisions to leveraging "anti-globalist" conspiracy theories, these methods have been employed, refined, and exported by populist leaders worldwide.
Understanding MAGA within this international context underscores the interconnected nature of modern politics, where ideas and strategies transcend national boundaries to influence movements across diverse cultural and political landscapes. By recognizing MAGA as part of this global trend, its origins, contradictions, and vulnerabilities become clearer, providing a critical framework for countering its divisive agenda.
Thousands of miles away from the U.S., a supporter of Romanian far-right candidate Călin Georgescu, who campaigned under a "Romania First" slogan, starkly declared: "She [Elena Lasconi] will pass a law on marriage between two men, I cannot accept such a thing," while asserting that Romania needed "a capable man to lead us, not a woman." Statements like these exploit cultural anxieties to galvanize conservative support, a hallmark of global populist movements.
The early 2000s marked the rise of a powerful wave of populism across Europe, fueled by economic stagnation, cultural insecurities, and widespread disillusionment with traditional political elites. This period saw far-right movements rebranding themselves as defenders of the "ordinary citizen" against globalist, technocratic, and multicultural agendas. Leaders such as Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and Matteo Salvini in Italy capitalized on these dynamics, reshaping the political landscape through nationalist rhetoric and anti-immigrant sentiment.
Marine Le Pen's leadership of the National Front (later renamed National Rally) exemplified the far-right's strategic makeover. While her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, had built the party on overt racism and xenophobia, Marine sought to soften its image without abandoning its core nationalist message. She framed immigration—particularly from Muslim-majority countries—as a threat to French identity and values, tapping into fears of cultural erosion.
Le Pen also embraced Euroscepticism, portraying the European Union as a bureaucratic overreach that undermined France's sovereignty. By combining economic protectionism with cultural grievance, she expanded the party's appeal beyond far-right fringes, positioning it as a populist alternative to the French political establishment.
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom adopted an equally divisive platform. Wilders presented himself as a staunch defender of Dutch culture, depicting immigration and multiculturalism as existential threats. His rhetoric painted Islam as incompatible with Western values, using inflammatory language to link immigration with terrorism.
Wilders also criticized the European Union, framing it as an elitist institution disconnected from ordinary citizens. Like Le Pen, he weaponized nationalist sentiments to challenge liberal democratic norms, portraying his movement as a bulwark against an overly accommodating political elite.
In Southern Europe, populism took on a more authoritarian tone under leaders like Matteo Salvini. As head of the League (formerly the Northern League), Salvini shifted the party's focus from regional separatism to a nationalist agenda. He vilified immigrants, often blaming them for economic hardship and cultural decline.
Salvini's rhetoric resonated deeply with Italian voters grappling with the aftershocks of the 2008 financial crisis. His rise to prominence illustrated how economic grievances and cultural fears could be weaponized to undermine establishment parties. Salvini also positioned himself as a critic of European integration, calling for stronger national sovereignty and rejecting E.U.-imposed policies.
Across the Atlantic, Trump's 2016 campaign borrowed heavily from the European populist playbook. Trump frequently employed anti-Muslim rhetoric, framing Muslim communities as security threats and proposing a "total and complete shutdown" of Muslims entering the United States. This culminated in the so-called Muslim Ban, a series of executive orders restricting travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.
Trump justified these policies as necessary for national security, leveraging fear and xenophobia to energize his base. Simultaneously, he criticized global institutions like the United Nations, portraying it as an encroachment on American sovereignty. This "America First" rhetoric closely mirrored themes seen in Viktor Yanukovych's pro-Russian campaigns in Ukraine, where nationalism and cultural division were used to consolidate power.
Trump's populist appeal also pitted him against establishment Republicans, a trend that had gained momentum during the Tea Party movement. By labeling establishment figures as "Republicans in Name Only" (RINOs), Trump positioned himself as the voice of disenfranchised Americans battling entrenched elites.
The European populist wave demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt its messaging to local contexts while drawing on common themes of nationalism, anti-globalization, and cultural conservatism. Leaders like Le Pen, Wilders, and Salvini pioneered tactics that not only reshaped their own political landscapes but also provided a blueprint for populist movements worldwide.
The modern American populist movement that evolved into MAGA traces its roots to the Tea Party, a movement that rose to prominence in the late 2000s with significant backing from the Koch network. Many of Trump's staunchest supporters within the Republican Party have roots in the Tea Party, highlighting a continuity of populist sentiment. Studies have shown that individuals who supported the Tea Party in the early 2010s were more likely to align with Trump's agenda in subsequent years, demonstrating the movement's lasting influence on the Republican Party's ideological trajectory.
A key figure in this transition was Steve Bannon, the co-founder of Breitbart News and later the CEO of Trump's 2016 campaign. Breitbart News played a pivotal role in promoting Tea Party ideas and candidates, amplifying the movement's anti-establishment and nationalist messaging. By the mid-2010s, Bannon was leveraging the momentum of the Tea Party to advance a more explicitly nationalist agenda, aligning himself with Trump and broadening the scope of American populism.
Bannon's strategic vision extended beyond the United States. He actively sought to unify and strengthen populist movements in Europe, forging connections with right-wing parties and leaders. His efforts aimed to create a global network of populist movements united by shared principles of nationalism, anti-globalism, and opposition to progressive international institutions. By fostering these alliances, Bannon sought to build a cohesive international populist front that could challenge the global liberal order.
By understanding its connections to international populism, it becomes clear that MAGA is a calculated political construct rather than a genuine grassroots movement.
The transition from the Tea Party to MAGA underscores the evolution of modern American populism. While the Tea Party emphasized economic grievances and a distrust of government, MAGA expanded its appeal through cultural and nationalist rhetoric, effectively reshaping the Republican Party's identity. Bannon's role as a bridge between these movements highlights the deliberate efforts to harness and repurpose the Tea Party's energy for a broader populist agenda.
By situating MAGA within this lineage and connecting it to international populist trends, it becomes clear that modern populism is neither a spontaneous phenomenon nor a uniquely American one. Instead, it reflects a calculated and evolving strategy that draws from shared grievances and ideological frameworks to build power both domestically and globally.
Alexander Dugin, the Russian political philosopher and architect of Eurasianism, has played a significant role in shaping contemporary populist ideology. His Fourth Political Theory rejects the supremacy of liberal democracy, offering an alternative that combines traditionalism with elements of socialism and nationalism. This framework provides ideological backing for populist leaders seeking to distance themselves from Western liberal values, advocating a return to traditional cultural and religious norms.
A similar narrative has emerged in the United States, where "liberal values" are portrayed as an external, malevolent force threatening Western traditions. This narrative creates a shared ideological foundation among global populist movements, highlighting their interconnected strategies while adapting to different cultural contexts.
The convergence of these ideologies highlights a broader trend in modern populism: the collaboration and exchange of ideas among populist leaders worldwide. This interconnectedness has enabled the rapid dissemination of populist rhetoric and strategies, strengthening the global populist movement. Parallel populist victories in Europe and the rise of MAGA in the United States underscore the growing international reach and influence of these movements.
Modern populism also facilitates and normalizes the presence of far-right radical groups. In the United States, MAGA exhibits subtle overlaps with Third Position politics in its emphasis on "America First" nationalism and critiques of globalism. Trump's appeal to the working class, paired with his anti-elite and protectionist economic rhetoric, reflects a syncretic approach. Like the Third Position's rejection of both capitalist elites and socialist internationalism, MAGA positions itself as a champion of the "forgotten" American worker while opposing progressive social movements.
This fusion of cultural conservatism and economic populism resonates with a wide range of disillusioned voters, blurring traditional ideological lines. While MAGA remains distinct from historical Third Position movements, its hybridization of nationalism, economic populism, and anti-elite rhetoric demonstrates how these ideologies evolve within contemporary populist frameworks.
The authoritarian undertones of populist movements are increasingly evident. Trump's actions on the first day of his second term, such as the swift pardoning of January 6 insurrectionists, including Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders, signal solidarity with violent actors. This move not only rehabilitates these groups but also reinforces their alignment with MAGA.
Globally, similar ties between populist movements and extremist groups are evident. In Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has connections with far-right groups like the Identitarian Movement and neo-Nazi networks, using nationalist rhetoric to intimidate opponents. Hungary's Fidesz party, under Viktor Orbán, benefits from the support of groups like the Hungarian Guard, known for targeting Roma communities and promoting anti-immigrant sentiment. Italy's Lega, led by Matteo Salvini, is linked to far-right factions such as CasaPound, which employ neo-fascist rhetoric and violence to advance nationalist themes.
Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro has relied on paramilitary militias to target leftist politicians and activists, while India's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under Narendra Modi, maintains close ties with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a paramilitary group accused of inciting violence against minorities. These movements use nationalist and anti-globalist rhetoric to consolidate power, suppress dissent, and perpetuate divisions.
The global populist movement is further bolstered by influential figures like Elon Musk, who recently expressed support for the AfD via X. Musk's involvement in Trump's administration underscores the deepening connections between global populist leaders.
Modern populism has created a volatile political landscape, not only undermining liberal democratic norms but also fostering syncretic alliances that blur traditional ideological boundaries. These movements often build connections with extremist groups, activist organizations, and unconventional political networks, drawing strength from shared grievances and interconnected strategies. This convergence amplifies their influence and extends their reach beyond government institutions into civil society. Addressing the global nature of populism, and its ability to co-opt diverse political and activist frameworks, is essential to countering its divisive and authoritarian tendencies while safeguarding democratic principles and inclusive social movements.
MAGA is not a uniquely American movement but part of a global populist strategy that exploits cultural anxieties, nationalism, and anti-globalist rhetoric to consolidate power. By understanding its connections to international populism, it becomes clear that MAGA is a calculated political construct rather than a genuine grassroots movement. Recognizing these global parallels and shared tactics is essential to countering its corrosive impact on democracy and fostering a more inclusive political dialogue. Exposing MAGA as part of a broader authoritarian trend is not just a defense of American values but a necessary step in protecting democracy worldwide.
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