https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/08/who-goes-maga/
"
With apologies to Dorothy Thompson, whose 1941 essay in Harper’s, “Who Goes
Nazi?” remains a worthwhile read on the cultural archetypes of who is drawn to
fascism, and who would never go down such a path. It felt like it could use a
modern updating, however.
It is an interesting and somewhat macabre social media game to play while
scrolling through your feeds: to speculate who in your network would go full
MAGA. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many
times—watching the 2016 election, the pandemic, January 6th, and now Trump’s
return. I have come to know the types: the born MAGAs, the MAGAs whom social
media criticism has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also
know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would fall for the
grift.
It is preposterous to think that they are divided by any obvious
characteristics. Rural Americans may be more susceptible to MAGA than most
people, but I doubt it. College graduates are supposedly inoculated, but it is
an arbitrary assumption. I know lots of PhD holders who are born MAGAs and many
others who would don the red hat tomorrow morning in response to some perceived
slight. There are people who have repudiated their own principles in order to
become “Honorary Patriots”; there are lifelong Democrats who have
enthusiastically entered Trump’s orbit. MAGA has nothing inherently to do with
geography, education, or even stated political beliefs. It appeals to a certain
type of mind.
It is also, to an immense extent, the disease of a generation—the generation
that grew up online, that learned to mistake engagement for truth, that
confused being heard with being right. This is as true of suburban millennials
as it is of rural boomers. It is the disease of the algorithmically poisoned.
Sometimes I think there are direct digital factors at work—a type of media
consumption, a pattern of social validation, and a form of tribal identity that
has produced a new kind of citizen with an imbalance in their nature. They have
been fed rage and filled with grievances that are beyond their capacity to
process rationally. They have been subjected to forms of propaganda that have
released them from the constraints of empirical reality. Their emotions are
vigorous. Their reasoning is childish. Their civic education has been almost
completely neglected.
At any rate, let us look through the feeds."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
