I think the MAGAs continue long after Trump has become irrelevant.
What we now have is a full-time RW angry pitchfork-waving mob who are kept on the boil by the for-profit political media activism I cited above. They are not going away; in fact they’re being actively recruited every day by forces that Trump has no real connection to. (But that Trump certainly benefits from).
Every country has plenty of psychopaths somewhere in their political shadows who want to be god-emperor of their country. Who (mostly) lack a mob to propel them there.
The USA has DeSantis, Cruz, and a host of names we don’t know yet. Were he younger or had Trump arisen 10 years earlier, Joe Arpaio would’ve been a plausible candidate.
Rest assured the existence, and more importantly the persistence, of this frothing mob is making a LOT of current minor leaguers on the far right salivate about their chances to grab that gleaming brass ring.
Ref the current thread about a possible Trump + Cruz ticket in 2024, the path to becoming the next figurehead at the head of the mob may not actually pass through Trump. As long as Trump occupies the current mindshare, he has a blocking position and none other shall pass. But even if Trump remains alive, he may not be able to pass the mantle himself to his chosen sucessor; it’s simply not in his gift. As he fades from influence, the random flux of events and the many other eminence grises on the far right may be far more influential in settling on the mob’s new champion than Trump is.
It will go on in some form just as the Tea Party did. The Tea Party and MAGA Venn diagrams of followers pretty much coincide though I think the Tea Party circle is slightly smaller but contained within the MAGA circle. Just a matter of changing hats- white hoods gave way to tricorns and the tricorns gave way to red baseball caps. The driving racism and feeling of perpetual victimhood remain. These sheep will allow themselves to be herded by any alpha male dog whether it be Cruz or more likely DeSantis.
At its heart, MAGA is fundamentally a Conspiracy Theory. There are many facets to their beliefs, but in essence, they all end up being a CT. “America was great until the Democrats ruined it!” “They want to take your guns!” “They want to teach Satanism in schools!” “They want to destroy the White Race!” “They stole the election!” “They’re all secret Pizza Restaurant Pedophiles!”
As with any CT, it will gradually fade, but never go away completely. Today’s big CTs almost always end up as just the background noise of general CTist thinking. “Of course JFK was murdered by the CIA working with Cuban Communists and the Mafia”, “Of course the Moon Landings were fake”, “Of course 9/11 was an inside job”. Believing that Trump won in 2020 will become just another routine Touchstone of Truth™ that CTist will use to evaluate each other’s levels of purity, no matter what the New CT of the Day is. “Oh, sure, of course he doesn’t think that Estonia is secretly behind Putin being deposed! He still thinks Biden “won” the “election” LOL!”
But that’s not the MAGA movement. Going on in “some form” isn’t going on. If MAGA was the Tea Party, and before that it was “something else”, and after MAGA it will become “something else” again, we’re not talking about MAGA.
I think it’s a matter of nomenclature. The movement is white nationalism and perpetual victimhood. Whether it is currently named the KKK or the Tea Party or MAGA is just putting fresh lipstick on the pig.
That is a very interesting and illuminating take on it.
What that presages for the country’s future when a large fraction of supporters of one party are on the CT spectrum, if not on the CT extremes, boggles the mind.
There’s some interesting conversation about generalized CT thinking in this other current thread:
When CT-believerism becomes common enough, the inmates will take over the ayslum.
Yep. I spent a lot of time arguing with CTists in the past, and when some people asked why I bothered, I told them, “If CT thought becomes widespread, it will damage or destroy democracy”. Ten years on, and look where we are.
How can you have a functional democracy when half the voting public believes actual nonsense about the people running for office? How can you have a functional democracy when large numbers of people don’t bother to vote because “It’s all rigged!”? You can’t, is the answer.
The problem is, there’s a lot of people falling for the “It’s all rigged” narrative who aren’t MAGAs. Part of it is that the people doing a lot of the rigging are the Republicans, after all.
We’ve seen just in the last few months examples of Republicans elected with a minority of the vote, due to gerrymandering and voter suppression, blatantly ignoring (or at least trying to ignore) the wishes of a large majority of the population. At some point, even if you’re not a MAGAt, you’re probably going to fall into despair. Why bother voting for anyone if the Republicans are going to win, no matter how many people vote against them?
I’ve felt that kind of despair myself a lot these last few years, and I’m fully aware of why I’m feeling that way. I worry about others who feel like this, but haven’t spent as much time thinking about it as I have. Promoting MAGA is only one part of their plan; making non-MAGAts give up is another.
Isn’t MAGA just a continuation of The Tea Party? Angry old white people, but this time they have a leader, someone with no filter and no scruples, giving rise to followers in government with the same traits who are in awe of what he “accomplished”. Like the MAGA thing is “what if we were like the Tea Party, but worse?”
I think if this thread was “the future of white nationalism and victimhood” then this would be a different conversation.
For what it’s worth, though, I agree with you. Those things will live on until we evolve past them.
Humans will come up with something else awful to take its place. Like discriminating against (or for) genetically engineered people, or artificial intelligence, etc.
As long as Trump embraces QAnon, which is all about CTs, a large group of older primarily uneducated men will follow him. Whether he’s in jail or he’s the next president. It doesn’t matter.
Hopefully (but being hopeful isn’t always the brightest move) as older white people die off, the MAGA movement will lose steam. Younger people are not as racist or afraid of feminism, gays, secularism, brown people, etc as their grandparents.
MAGA is a white nationalist authoritarian movement. The US has dealt with those before anytime society becomes more just, fair and equitable. Sometimes the movement solidifies its authoritarian hold on power (like Jim Crow in the south). Sometimes it dies off. I’d like to think that in todays day and age with all the diversity and checks/balances, it’ll hopefully lose steam in the coming decades.