The anthropology of MAGA

Posted on June 25, 2025

The MAGA worldview isn’t just political—it’s emotional, symbolic, and tribal. If we want to defend democracy, we need to understand what we’re really up against.

That is a direct quote from “Understanding MAGA: A Worldview, Not a Wedge Issue,” by anthropologist James B. Greenberg. There is an excellent and somewhat overwhelming series of essays by Professor Greenberg on Substack here and on Facebook here.

He explains:

Many Americans today are struggling to make sense of the worldview that animates MAGA Republicans—not just their votes, but the lens through which they interpret nearly everything. What may look like a tangle of contradictions—demanding liberty while restricting rights, preaching patriotism while threatening democracy, claiming victimhood while wielding power—often forms a coherent narrative of betrayal, loss, and promised redemption. It names culprits, offers meaning, and vows to reverse decline.

At the heart of this worldview lies a potent story: America has been stolen. Not by a foreign enemy, but from within—by liberal elites, immigrants, globalists, and bureaucrats who, in this account, hijacked the nation from its rightful stewards. What’s being “taken” isn’t just institutional power, but a deeper sense of racial, cultural, and gendered entitlement—whiteness as default, masculinity as order, Christianity as moral compass. This is more than nostalgia for a mythic past. It’s a political theology of grievance that explains empty towns, shattered livelihoods, and the loss of social status—and then offers a redeemer.

What emerges isn’t an ideology in the traditional sense, but a political cosmology—a system of belief that organizes identity, resentment, and belonging. Institutions are reimagined as enemies. Schools become battlegrounds. Journalists are cast as propagandists. Even science is suspect—not for its method, but for its authority. Belief overrides evidence, and contradictions confirm, rather than disprove, the scale of the conspiracy. This isn’t just distrust—it’s epistemic secession, made possible by an ecosystem of media and messaging designed to replace inquiry with affirmation.

There’s a lot more that you can and should read for yourself.

In order to fight MAGA, we have to understand it. And yet, while this series of essays explains what individuals should do when talking to MAGA followers, it does not explain what to do politically.

We need to win the 2025 elections, especially Virginia, and we need to win back the U.S. House in 2026. We are not going to win back MAGA followers by then, but we can beat them at the margins by turning out our voters and swinging to our side a narrow band of low-information persuadables.

The best we can take from Professor Greenberg, in the short term, is some negative advice. We cannot persuade MAGA voters with facts and figures because they’re voting on identity, not policy. We can persuade MAGA voters with values, but it is a long, difficult and uncertain process. Our best chance in the short term is with people who don’t have a strong emotional connection with MAGA, the ones who were persuaded to vote for Trump or stay away from the polls based solely on disinformation. But that’s millions of Americans.

 

SHARE

Trump’s Razor—it’s always money and power

Posted on June 12, 2025

Like Occam’s Razor (the simplest explanation is usually best), we should recognize Trump’s Razor—that the truest motive for any of his actions is personal power and/or money. A corollary is that his actions are...

SHARE

Despite right-wing lies, crime is down

Posted on May 28, 2025

Trump and his allies rely on fear to advance their authoritarian agenda. A favorite tactic is to spread fear about crime, with the explicit or implicit message that they are talking about immigrants and...

SHARE

Will SCOTUS uphold the rule of law?

Posted on May 13, 2025

Right now, the federal judicial system is keeping our government from sliding into a dictatorship, but just barely. With six aggressively right-wing Justices, the Supreme Court will side with Trump as much as it...

SHARE

A blitzkrieg of lawlessness

Posted on May 1, 2025

We are missing the forest for the trees. Nearly everything Trump and his administration have done is illegal, and that is the whole point. It is an all-out attack on the rule of law...

SHARE

Push back on the media’s normalizing of Trump

Posted on April 16, 2025

The media has been normalizing Trump for the past decade. They do this, in part, by inventing semi-rational policy explanations for irrational proposals. We should push back. Here are three examples: Tariffs and other...

SHARE

MAGA’s Musk mistake

Posted on April 2, 2025

Tuesday’s elections brought good news. MAGA candidates ran at least 10 points behind 2024 Trump votes and, perhaps best of all, Elon Musk dragged them all down. How should you use this in messaging?...

SHARE

How to deal with a bully in the White House

Posted on March 18, 2025

Trump is doing horrible things. But, like any bully, much of his perceived power is based on threats that he doesn’t carry out. By reacting to every threat, no matter how absurd, Democrats are...

SHARE

Trump is pushing us toward a Republican recession

Posted on March 5, 2025

“It seems almost unavoidable that we are headed for a deep, deep recession,” says Jesse Rothstein, former Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor. Whether or not the situation is that bad, it’s time...

SHARE

To respond to Trump, simplify your messages

Posted on February 18, 2025

There is too much going on and people are overwhelmed by it. If you want to have any impact at all, don’t try to answer everything. Group issues together and respond broadly. Keep in...

SHARE