This is great! I hope the DNC etc. get this. I think their problem is that they can’t believe all this is really happening. They’re normal, educated, non-extremists who just want to implement policies that make sense. They don’t have this kind of radical ideology. Hopefully it will sink in soon that this is not normal bipartisan wrangling but a fight to the death to save the country and democracy.
I think this is brilliant! In breaking down the components of the MAGA movement, it identifies the stark differences in their ideology. It is also the means of identification to strategically create cracks amongst the different MAGA factions!! Heather Cox Richardson in one of her podcasts also went into detail regarding these differences and the potential to use this information to implode MAGA. I agree 1000% in regards to the Democratic leaders and their “namby pamby milk toast” response to the current Fascist Regime. I wish there was a way to light a fire under their butts! I do believe the opposition movement currently (6/16) is gaining momentum and may ultimately lead to the demise of this regime. It just can’t come soon enough‼️
You nailed something that’s been at the heart of this whole project: if we want to take this machine apart, we have to understand how it’s built. Not just to expose it—but to break it. To drive wedges. To create cracks that can’t be sealed.
And I 1000% feel you on the frustration with the Democratic response. The threat is existential, but the response too often feels like it’s coming from people who still think this is just politics-as-usual. It’s not.
That said—I also think we’re at a turning point. The protests we’re seeing right now are awesome in the truest sense of the word. People are rising. Voices are getting louder. And the fear we’re up against is being met with something powerful: conviction.
But I also think we’re going to need more than just bodies in the streets to win the battle for America’s soul. Protests are crucial. But the deeper transformation—the kind that reshapes what people believe is possible—that’s going to take strategy, storytelling, and a whole lot of courage.
That’s exactly what the final chapter is about.
It’ll be out this Friday. I hope you’ll check it out—and come back to tell me what you think. I’d love to hear your thoughts once you’ve had a chance to read it.
P.S. Sorry for taking so long to get to comments. I was deep in the final chapter, trying to make sure I landed the plane right with an ending worthy of the series so far. I think I did—and I can't wait for everyone to let me know if they agree.
Thank you for responding! As you agree with me, it’s ditto in my response. I hope my restacking your Unmasking MAGA brought you additional visibility for this article and for your overall Substack. Personally, I believe that if the opposition could manage to pull off a General Strike for 3 to 5 days, it would demonstrate the true power of the people…
I started reading Heather Marsh's book Binding Chaos. She is the antithesis of Curtis Yarvin. We the people have to keep learning, growing, building and moving forward. Our very lives and the lives of the future generations depend on it. We have to rest, gear up, and keep moving and putting pressure on. We are in this for the long haul. We have to work to End Oligarchy, End Impunity and End AutoGenecide. #3E movement. Return the resources to the people, bring perpetrators to justice, protect our communities, our air, water, and land. Call your representatives, petition, boycott, protest, make sure your voter registration is valid, and help others do these things also.
This graphic is priceless. Yes, one of the factions was built on grievance politics. But now the tables have turned & some of the other MAGA factions are causing the grievances. It's nice to watch MAGA eating itself, but they're not going to go far or fast enough. We have to seize the opportunity & press it to our advantage.
Great question—and one I think about often. The best way I can explain how I view the influence of external forces is through an evolutionary lens. Just like organisms adapt to their environments, so too do political coalitions evolve in response to both internal pressures and external stimuli.
Take the Cold War, for example. The very existence of the Soviet Union created the conditions for Warhawks to rise to prominence. Without that external threat, their militaristic vision wouldn’t have been so dominant for so long. Similarly, our entry into WWII was triggered by Pearl Harbor—a foreign attack—but even that didn’t happen in a vacuum. Our internal decision to support the Allies helped provoke it. It’s a perfect example of how so-called “external events” are often inseparable from domestic choices.
The same is true of the 1970s oil shocks. On paper, the OPEC embargo was an external crisis. But the roots trace back to our internal foreign policy—specifically, our support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War and our meddling in Iran. So while it’s tempting to draw clean lines between internal and external, the truth is far more tangled.
And this entanglement is precisely the point of the series. What I’m trying to show is that MAGA didn’t just rise because of one man or one moment. It’s the product of decades of internal power struggles, opportunistic coalitions, and yes—external shocks that were often catalyzed by our own actions.
The Cold War empowered the Warhawks. 9/11 reactivated their playbook and gave the Corporatists and Fake Christians fresh purpose. The 2008 crash created the disillusionment that the Fascists and Red Pillers later exploited. And the foreign policy choices we made in the 1970s—supporting coups, backing dictators, provoking embargos—created the fertile ground for the rise of Libertarian ideology, with its rallying cry that “big government is the problem”—a belief that still shapes our lives today. Each of these events—while often at least partially global in nature—became fuel for internal realignment. MAGA isn’t just a reaction to foreign threats; it’s a mutation of our own domestic failures.
That’s why this isn’t just history—it’s strategy. If we want to defeat this movement, we need to understand the conditions that made it possible. Every crisis creates an environment. And in every environment, the factions within the right recalibrate their mix—struggling for dominance, leveraging the moment, and offering deliverables where the left too often offers delay.
Ultimately, my hope is that people stop asking, “How did Trump happen?”—as if he were an anomaly—and start asking:
→ How do we capture the opportunity of the "environment" at hand to build a force strong enough to take on the next mutation of this machine?
→ And what can we learn from the way the right has evolved—not to mirror its ideology, but to learn from its effectiveness—to inform how we too must evolve in order to build that force?
Because if we don’t, this monster will just keep evolving.
And it will keep winning.
Sorry if this was just a long-winded answer, but this was such a great question that I couldn't help but exploring how it connects with the series.
I would agree that the internal development of MAGA over time would be in response to external events and opportunity taking - planned or not. I also think it is largely the war hawks that exploited and benefited from the opportunities and initiatives.
However, I think the events of say the last 20 years or so (say since Putin took a firmer grasp of Russia) that meddling by Russia, China and others in internal American affairs, "buying" agency (or agents?) and social media influence have had a more direct affect on MAGA's development - an acceleration perhaps and in alignment with Putin's goals to destroy the West.
I agree that constitutional Americans should "know thy enemy". Your categorisation of powers does provide a meaningful structure against which to plan and launch a coordinated onslaught.
Unfortunately watching from Australia, the influencers and new age journalists on Substack and Youtube (I check the Guardian and Deutsche Welle from time to time) I think that forces to defeat MAGA have no critical mass yet and needs much more than what is happening right now.
- No one person or team of people is leading any strategy or coordination of attack and efforts.
- "Smackdown" reports on Youtube and now Substack are meaningless fluff. eg Court hands Trump a defeat. = Water off a ducks back. Next.
- I understand that the Democratic party is not a single united party - they need to be and they need to be more aggressive using the tools at their disposal - not throwing their hands up.
- The left is too nice and plays by the rules. MAGA is not playing by the rules. I am conflicted over this because I am not suggesting breaking the law.
- Many huge demonstrations in Feb/Mar created awareness - where is the energy that was created gone?
- What is the hold that MAGA has over the Republicans in congress. Find it and fight it.
- etc --- leaders please compile list.
This current instantiation of MAGA figure headed by Trump must be defeated soon, otherwise the road to a better future will be a long one for America with accompanying turmoil worldwide. I do think that the post WWII rules based order is in disarray and will be restructured and renovated For example in one area - what are the future roles of the UN, WHO, IMF, World Bank, ICJ etc. Especially while Russia will continue to prosecute private wars for resources in Africa, China will likely take Taiwan, Israel will continue its genocide, and many other issues from troubleshoots around the world.
Apologies for the lengthy response - I may have got a bit of track in the latter part.
But just to connect your point about Russian/Chinese meddling on US politics to my original answer:
It's no coincidence that Russia/Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election. It was precisely the rise of MAGA on the right as a destructive force against America from within that incentivized our adversary Russia/Putin to see MAGA as a worthwhile "investment." This is what I mean when I say that external forces are often a consequence of internal choices/events.
It's the same reason that it was not by coincidence that the Russians ended up funding right wing podcasts—and ONLY right-wing podcasts—to the tune of millions of dollars. When Tim Pool says that he didn't know and that the Russians didn't try to exert editorial power over his show I laugh at it. Of course they didn't! They picked Tim and the others precisely because their rhetoric was already perfectly aligned with Russian objectives. The best kind of asset is the one you don't need to coerce/cultivate, because they will already do your bidding out of their own free will.
And when you say that the left is too nice and plays by the rules, I also agree 100%, and that's part of what I mean when I say that we, the left, must learn from the right—not to mirror their ideology but to learn from their effectiveness. However, here's the thing, to a large degree, it's not so much that Trump and the right are "breaking" the rules. What they're really doing is reshaping the rules to their benefit, and part of that process involves bucking the existing rules around the edges, then taking it to court and winning cases. However, that whole endeavor becomes much easier when you've spent the last 50 years doing a pretty good job of filling the courts with partisan judges/justices, especially when the other side chooses to continue acting as though none of that is taking place or like they can continue winning while ignoring the shift among the referees.
The left suffers from this delusion that because they're doing the "right thing" that they can just let the chips fall where they may and everything will be ok. It's like in their minds they're living in a movie or a novel where the good guys win by the mere fact that they're the good guys. This is not how reality works. There's not an invisible hand, writing the script and ensuring that the good guys will win.
I also agree with your concern about all the people that came out to protest in February and March, and I was even writing about it back then. There are several issues related to it, but let me try to be as brief as possible:
- The left seems to be stuck in the 60s/70s, back when protests were much more powerful. For one, massive protests were relatively new, and more importantly, the exposure to them was very new (since TVs and news broadcasts were relatively new). Also, the Fairness Doctrine was still a thing, meaning that echo chambers were virtually non-existent, which meant that when the left protested, the right was exposed to it in a virtually unbiased manner. That kind of exposure leads to empathy, which leads to change. None of that exists today. Protests are. if nothing else, overused to the point of becoming ineffective. And worse yet, with all the echo chambers we have today, the other side either gets no exposure or a completely biased one that breeds disdain rather than empathy.
- On top of it all, when you get people to exert a ton of energy and effort to bring millions of people out on the streets, but you have no real plan beyond doing just precisely that, you will inevitably get no change whatsoever. Then what follows is disillusionment, because people look at all this energy being spent without any effect whatsoever.
Meanwhile, the right is turning America into a fascist state without ever having to really bring anyone to the streets like the left keeps doing aimlessly and pointlessly.
- As for what hold MAGA has on Republicans in congress?
Unlike many people, I don't think that MAGA has a "hold" on them, so much as MAGA/Trump is delivering precisely what Republicans in Congress have always wanted to the deliver. So, in essence, all they're doing is getting out of the way and letting MAGA/Trump do their thing, because they're perfectly aligned.
The ultimate issue is that the left acts as though it doesn't want Power but rather Justice. Like they're averse to the idea of exerting Power from some fear of being perceived as biased or unjust. So, half the time it doesn't even really seek Power, and when it inadvertently happens to have the Power to deliver Justice, it freezes in place and instead just delivers the status quo and, with it, disappointment and disillusionment. As a result, the left ends up doing little more than begging the right not to take away rights from minorities and other vulnerable people, always on the defense, never gaining any ground.
I definitely think the side of the people needs to have goals more than just stop fascism from cementing into society. We have to build something that the people are on board with and benefit from. Ideas whose time has come - Universal Healthcare. Universal Basic Income. Universal Education. Sustainable and clean energy and transportation, regenerative farming methods, a society where basic needs are not behind a paywall so high that everyday people have no hope of ever getting them without complete enslavement of themselves and their children with debt that is never paid.
But none of that is going to happen if we don't get on the offensive against fascism. They currently have the power to build (WH, Congress, Scotus). We've squandered that power when we had it, so now we have to take it back. But yes, part of doing that is showing the people we're done squandering their votes and selling out to the same Corpos that own the Republican party.
This is great! I hope the DNC etc. get this. I think their problem is that they can’t believe all this is really happening. They’re normal, educated, non-extremists who just want to implement policies that make sense. They don’t have this kind of radical ideology. Hopefully it will sink in soon that this is not normal bipartisan wrangling but a fight to the death to save the country and democracy.
Spot on.
I think this is brilliant! In breaking down the components of the MAGA movement, it identifies the stark differences in their ideology. It is also the means of identification to strategically create cracks amongst the different MAGA factions!! Heather Cox Richardson in one of her podcasts also went into detail regarding these differences and the potential to use this information to implode MAGA. I agree 1000% in regards to the Democratic leaders and their “namby pamby milk toast” response to the current Fascist Regime. I wish there was a way to light a fire under their butts! I do believe the opposition movement currently (6/16) is gaining momentum and may ultimately lead to the demise of this regime. It just can’t come soon enough‼️
Thank you so much. Truly. That means a lot.
You nailed something that’s been at the heart of this whole project: if we want to take this machine apart, we have to understand how it’s built. Not just to expose it—but to break it. To drive wedges. To create cracks that can’t be sealed.
And I 1000% feel you on the frustration with the Democratic response. The threat is existential, but the response too often feels like it’s coming from people who still think this is just politics-as-usual. It’s not.
That said—I also think we’re at a turning point. The protests we’re seeing right now are awesome in the truest sense of the word. People are rising. Voices are getting louder. And the fear we’re up against is being met with something powerful: conviction.
But I also think we’re going to need more than just bodies in the streets to win the battle for America’s soul. Protests are crucial. But the deeper transformation—the kind that reshapes what people believe is possible—that’s going to take strategy, storytelling, and a whole lot of courage.
That’s exactly what the final chapter is about.
It’ll be out this Friday. I hope you’ll check it out—and come back to tell me what you think. I’d love to hear your thoughts once you’ve had a chance to read it.
P.S. Sorry for taking so long to get to comments. I was deep in the final chapter, trying to make sure I landed the plane right with an ending worthy of the series so far. I think I did—and I can't wait for everyone to let me know if they agree.
Thank you for responding! As you agree with me, it’s ditto in my response. I hope my restacking your Unmasking MAGA brought you additional visibility for this article and for your overall Substack. Personally, I believe that if the opposition could manage to pull off a General Strike for 3 to 5 days, it would demonstrate the true power of the people…
And WOKE several of the MAGA factions!
I can dream… 😁
I started reading Heather Marsh's book Binding Chaos. She is the antithesis of Curtis Yarvin. We the people have to keep learning, growing, building and moving forward. Our very lives and the lives of the future generations depend on it. We have to rest, gear up, and keep moving and putting pressure on. We are in this for the long haul. We have to work to End Oligarchy, End Impunity and End AutoGenecide. #3E movement. Return the resources to the people, bring perpetrators to justice, protect our communities, our air, water, and land. Call your representatives, petition, boycott, protest, make sure your voter registration is valid, and help others do these things also.
This graphic is priceless. Yes, one of the factions was built on grievance politics. But now the tables have turned & some of the other MAGA factions are causing the grievances. It's nice to watch MAGA eating itself, but they're not going to go far or fast enough. We have to seize the opportunity & press it to our advantage.
Excelent exposition. I am working my way through the published articles for the second time.
I understand your premises and context for the rise of MAGA are basically centered on the internal forces (powers) in America over time.
How do you view the influence and relevance to MAGAs development of external forces such as 1930s Germany, cold war era, and more recently Russia.
Great question—and one I think about often. The best way I can explain how I view the influence of external forces is through an evolutionary lens. Just like organisms adapt to their environments, so too do political coalitions evolve in response to both internal pressures and external stimuli.
Take the Cold War, for example. The very existence of the Soviet Union created the conditions for Warhawks to rise to prominence. Without that external threat, their militaristic vision wouldn’t have been so dominant for so long. Similarly, our entry into WWII was triggered by Pearl Harbor—a foreign attack—but even that didn’t happen in a vacuum. Our internal decision to support the Allies helped provoke it. It’s a perfect example of how so-called “external events” are often inseparable from domestic choices.
The same is true of the 1970s oil shocks. On paper, the OPEC embargo was an external crisis. But the roots trace back to our internal foreign policy—specifically, our support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War and our meddling in Iran. So while it’s tempting to draw clean lines between internal and external, the truth is far more tangled.
And this entanglement is precisely the point of the series. What I’m trying to show is that MAGA didn’t just rise because of one man or one moment. It’s the product of decades of internal power struggles, opportunistic coalitions, and yes—external shocks that were often catalyzed by our own actions.
The Cold War empowered the Warhawks. 9/11 reactivated their playbook and gave the Corporatists and Fake Christians fresh purpose. The 2008 crash created the disillusionment that the Fascists and Red Pillers later exploited. And the foreign policy choices we made in the 1970s—supporting coups, backing dictators, provoking embargos—created the fertile ground for the rise of Libertarian ideology, with its rallying cry that “big government is the problem”—a belief that still shapes our lives today. Each of these events—while often at least partially global in nature—became fuel for internal realignment. MAGA isn’t just a reaction to foreign threats; it’s a mutation of our own domestic failures.
That’s why this isn’t just history—it’s strategy. If we want to defeat this movement, we need to understand the conditions that made it possible. Every crisis creates an environment. And in every environment, the factions within the right recalibrate their mix—struggling for dominance, leveraging the moment, and offering deliverables where the left too often offers delay.
Ultimately, my hope is that people stop asking, “How did Trump happen?”—as if he were an anomaly—and start asking:
→ How do we capture the opportunity of the "environment" at hand to build a force strong enough to take on the next mutation of this machine?
→ And what can we learn from the way the right has evolved—not to mirror its ideology, but to learn from its effectiveness—to inform how we too must evolve in order to build that force?
Because if we don’t, this monster will just keep evolving.
And it will keep winning.
Sorry if this was just a long-winded answer, but this was such a great question that I couldn't help but exploring how it connects with the series.
Thanks for your detailed response.
I would agree that the internal development of MAGA over time would be in response to external events and opportunity taking - planned or not. I also think it is largely the war hawks that exploited and benefited from the opportunities and initiatives.
However, I think the events of say the last 20 years or so (say since Putin took a firmer grasp of Russia) that meddling by Russia, China and others in internal American affairs, "buying" agency (or agents?) and social media influence have had a more direct affect on MAGA's development - an acceleration perhaps and in alignment with Putin's goals to destroy the West.
I agree that constitutional Americans should "know thy enemy". Your categorisation of powers does provide a meaningful structure against which to plan and launch a coordinated onslaught.
Unfortunately watching from Australia, the influencers and new age journalists on Substack and Youtube (I check the Guardian and Deutsche Welle from time to time) I think that forces to defeat MAGA have no critical mass yet and needs much more than what is happening right now.
- No one person or team of people is leading any strategy or coordination of attack and efforts.
- "Smackdown" reports on Youtube and now Substack are meaningless fluff. eg Court hands Trump a defeat. = Water off a ducks back. Next.
- I understand that the Democratic party is not a single united party - they need to be and they need to be more aggressive using the tools at their disposal - not throwing their hands up.
- The left is too nice and plays by the rules. MAGA is not playing by the rules. I am conflicted over this because I am not suggesting breaking the law.
- Many huge demonstrations in Feb/Mar created awareness - where is the energy that was created gone?
- What is the hold that MAGA has over the Republicans in congress. Find it and fight it.
- etc --- leaders please compile list.
This current instantiation of MAGA figure headed by Trump must be defeated soon, otherwise the road to a better future will be a long one for America with accompanying turmoil worldwide. I do think that the post WWII rules based order is in disarray and will be restructured and renovated For example in one area - what are the future roles of the UN, WHO, IMF, World Bank, ICJ etc. Especially while Russia will continue to prosecute private wars for resources in Africa, China will likely take Taiwan, Israel will continue its genocide, and many other issues from troubleshoots around the world.
Apologies for the lengthy response - I may have got a bit of track in the latter part.
I agree 100%.
But just to connect your point about Russian/Chinese meddling on US politics to my original answer:
It's no coincidence that Russia/Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election. It was precisely the rise of MAGA on the right as a destructive force against America from within that incentivized our adversary Russia/Putin to see MAGA as a worthwhile "investment." This is what I mean when I say that external forces are often a consequence of internal choices/events.
It's the same reason that it was not by coincidence that the Russians ended up funding right wing podcasts—and ONLY right-wing podcasts—to the tune of millions of dollars. When Tim Pool says that he didn't know and that the Russians didn't try to exert editorial power over his show I laugh at it. Of course they didn't! They picked Tim and the others precisely because their rhetoric was already perfectly aligned with Russian objectives. The best kind of asset is the one you don't need to coerce/cultivate, because they will already do your bidding out of their own free will.
And when you say that the left is too nice and plays by the rules, I also agree 100%, and that's part of what I mean when I say that we, the left, must learn from the right—not to mirror their ideology but to learn from their effectiveness. However, here's the thing, to a large degree, it's not so much that Trump and the right are "breaking" the rules. What they're really doing is reshaping the rules to their benefit, and part of that process involves bucking the existing rules around the edges, then taking it to court and winning cases. However, that whole endeavor becomes much easier when you've spent the last 50 years doing a pretty good job of filling the courts with partisan judges/justices, especially when the other side chooses to continue acting as though none of that is taking place or like they can continue winning while ignoring the shift among the referees.
The left suffers from this delusion that because they're doing the "right thing" that they can just let the chips fall where they may and everything will be ok. It's like in their minds they're living in a movie or a novel where the good guys win by the mere fact that they're the good guys. This is not how reality works. There's not an invisible hand, writing the script and ensuring that the good guys will win.
I also agree with your concern about all the people that came out to protest in February and March, and I was even writing about it back then. There are several issues related to it, but let me try to be as brief as possible:
- The left seems to be stuck in the 60s/70s, back when protests were much more powerful. For one, massive protests were relatively new, and more importantly, the exposure to them was very new (since TVs and news broadcasts were relatively new). Also, the Fairness Doctrine was still a thing, meaning that echo chambers were virtually non-existent, which meant that when the left protested, the right was exposed to it in a virtually unbiased manner. That kind of exposure leads to empathy, which leads to change. None of that exists today. Protests are. if nothing else, overused to the point of becoming ineffective. And worse yet, with all the echo chambers we have today, the other side either gets no exposure or a completely biased one that breeds disdain rather than empathy.
- On top of it all, when you get people to exert a ton of energy and effort to bring millions of people out on the streets, but you have no real plan beyond doing just precisely that, you will inevitably get no change whatsoever. Then what follows is disillusionment, because people look at all this energy being spent without any effect whatsoever.
Meanwhile, the right is turning America into a fascist state without ever having to really bring anyone to the streets like the left keeps doing aimlessly and pointlessly.
- As for what hold MAGA has on Republicans in congress?
Unlike many people, I don't think that MAGA has a "hold" on them, so much as MAGA/Trump is delivering precisely what Republicans in Congress have always wanted to the deliver. So, in essence, all they're doing is getting out of the way and letting MAGA/Trump do their thing, because they're perfectly aligned.
The ultimate issue is that the left acts as though it doesn't want Power but rather Justice. Like they're averse to the idea of exerting Power from some fear of being perceived as biased or unjust. So, half the time it doesn't even really seek Power, and when it inadvertently happens to have the Power to deliver Justice, it freezes in place and instead just delivers the status quo and, with it, disappointment and disillusionment. As a result, the left ends up doing little more than begging the right not to take away rights from minorities and other vulnerable people, always on the defense, never gaining any ground.
I definitely think the side of the people needs to have goals more than just stop fascism from cementing into society. We have to build something that the people are on board with and benefit from. Ideas whose time has come - Universal Healthcare. Universal Basic Income. Universal Education. Sustainable and clean energy and transportation, regenerative farming methods, a society where basic needs are not behind a paywall so high that everyday people have no hope of ever getting them without complete enslavement of themselves and their children with debt that is never paid.
Yeah I've been writing a lot about that as well.
Here's some of it
https://americanmanifesto.news/p/rebuilding-the-party-how-democrats-can-start-winning-again
https://americanmanifesto.news/p/united-people-of-america-compact
But none of that is going to happen if we don't get on the offensive against fascism. They currently have the power to build (WH, Congress, Scotus). We've squandered that power when we had it, so now we have to take it back. But yes, part of doing that is showing the people we're done squandering their votes and selling out to the same Corpos that own the Republican party.