The implications of MAGA normalizing White Identity Politics
Contrasting MAGA and Rightwing Multiculturalism
During a rally in New Hampshire, Trump proclaimed about migrants that, “They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.” Trump used similar rhetoric on Truth Social, where he posted, “Illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation.”
The Left are using this rhetoric to make the case that Trump is literally Hitler. This is because in “Mein Kampf,” Hitler wrote that, “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.” In another passage Hitler described Jews as disabling Germany through blood poisoning.
Trump’s statements come across as racist, even by conventional 20th Century standards. Though I am not a fan of the term racist, preferring the terms positive ethnocentrism (in-group cooperation) and negative ethnocentrism (out-group hostility). Regardless, Trump’s statements go beyond the Lee Atwater strategy of dog whistling to White grievances. Rather they come across as fairly blatant, and much more in line with old school eugenics, racialism, and anti-miscengation. Saying “poison the blood” and then referencing South America, Africa and Asia comes across as explicitly racial. JD Vance defended Trump, saying that the blood poisoning was a reference to the fentanyl overdose crisis, which is bullshit. While Trump is often a clunky, unsophisticated communicator, he picked up on something controversial and doubled down on it, much like he did with calling leftists vermin.
While it is obviously hyperbolic when shitlibs compare Trump to Hitler, Trump is certainly demagogic in decorum. For instance, Trump joked that he wanted to be dictator for a day. While Hitler was defined by antisemitism and investing in infrastructure, in contrast Trump was a hardcore philosemite who failed to deliver on infrastructure. It is just that Trump was too incompetent to be an effective autocrat and operated under the old system. Trump was all rhetoric and no action, and his main policy accomplishments were in line with conventional conservatism. However, a major reason for that was being stuck with the GOP establishment’s institutions and politicians, who held him back.
Now Trump has an army of loyalists who will back him unconditionally and the courts have shifted somewhat to the right. Though Trump still faces criminal prosecution and judicial obstructionism. There is an argument from both his supporters and adversaries that next time will be different, assuming there will be less guardrails and that he has learned from his mistakes. However, many dissidents and populists, who were disillusioned with Trump, still have justified cynicism about what he can deliver. At a fundraiser, Trump told wealthy donors that he is going to further cut their taxes. While MAGA shills can fantasize about Tucker Carlson as VP and Stephen Miller as attorney general, Trump expressed openness to Nikki Haley as VP.
Trump is fundamentally a civic nationalist rather than a White nationalist, who happens to exploit racial sentiment and uses racialized rhetoric. However, Trump also pandered to non-Whites, such as proposing specialized platinum plans for Blacks, and constantly boasted about record low unemployment for every demographic, accept White males. While Trump said that he wanted more immigrants from Norway and not from shithole countries, his proposed merit based immigration would likely mean more immigration from China and India, unless there are diversity quotas. Even if Trump were to pull off mass deportations, which is unlikely, it would only set back the date when Whites become a minority by another several years. Whites will become a minority unless there is a dramatic increase in White immigration or a major White baby boom. While the White population actually declined under Trump, there was a modest temporary rebound in the White population under Biden. This was due to immigration (eg. Biden welcoming about 250k Ukrainian refugees), plus a mini baby boom among upper middle class Whites, due to remote work.
Source: charliekirk11 Twitter
White identity politics is starting to be normalized amongst conservatives, especially among the young. For instance, Vivek Ramaswamy brought up the Great Replacement in a debate and Charlie Kirk tweeted Whiteness is great. Certainly Trump has contributed a lot to this shift. However, MAGA is ironically more diverse than the pre-Trump GOP, which was super White but also more politically correct. This is because the right has become much more prole, and proles are both less White but also less politically correct.
The conservative self-policing/gate keeping of William F Buckley’s National Review is no more. The Right now delegates cancel culture as the domain of the libs, except maybe on Israel. While a number of prominent Senate Republicans, tepidly chided Trump’s poisoning the blood remarks, a new poll shows that 42% of GOP Iowa caucus goers say the "poisoning the blood" remarks make them more likely to support Trump. This rhetoric helps Trump in the primary, though it’s hard to say if it will cost him in the general. Even if this rhetoric is crude and unintellectual, it is expanding the Overton window and normalizing biopolitics.
Tucker Carlson is much more intellectual and thoughtful than Trump, and I generally consider him to be a force for good. Tucker appeals to White racial sentiment, such as talking about the Great Replacement and anti-White discrimination. His recent interview with Stephen Miller about the war on Whiteness, almost sounds like something from Jared Taylor’s Amren. However, Tucker then turns around and calls for colorblind civic nationalism. Basically the Left are bad because they want to divide people along racial lines but White Americans must resist viewing themselves as a group with interests. Demographics matter, people are not interchangeable, and culture and economic policy can’t entirely fill that void.
Source: all_in_tok Twitter
While MAGA is a form of civic nationalism, it still relies upon an ingroup vs outgroup narrative. However, one that is based upon political loyalty rather than race. For instance, based Blacks and Latinos who worship Trump are put on a pedestal while migrants and woke liberals are a cancer. The GOP retaking power and then successfully turning around the economy and cracking down on crime could serve to further delay the inevitable post-American order and restore White Americans’ faith in the system. However, MAGA is too chaotic to pull off that scenario. Trump has this f-you, anarchist energy, and all that he is good for is being an agent of chaos.
The decline in gatekeeping on the Right means that White ethnocentrism is being normalized but also the normalization of kooky conspiracy theories and prole culture, that are holding back the Right. Regardless, wokeness increasing its hegemony over the establishment might more likely lead to enclavism and Whites acting as a diaspora than MAGA civic nationalism succeeding. There is a good chance that the neoliberal establishment/leftwing alliance will obliterate MAGA, though there are cracks in that alliance with Israel/Gaza and increasing income inequality.
Because healthy White identity is suppressed, White racial anxieties are increasingly showing up in bizarre ways. I see major downsides to a conservative nationalism that exploits negative ethnocentrism while discouraging any positive ethnocentrism and ingroup cooperation amongst Whites. The more healthy White identity and positive ethnocentrism are suppressed, the nastier race relations will get but also the more vulnerable position Whites could end up in, especially if Whites remain atomized. Whites are already being demonized and discriminated against and will likely get scapegoated for Trump, who has become the avatar for non-liberal Whites. Institutional capture and demographic trends favor the Left in the long term, even with the GOP making some inroads among non-Whites.
Source: JamesOKeefeIII Twitter
In some regards, MAGA is the opposite strategy from my articles about enclavism, where I used the rhetoric of the multicultural left to push some form of separate but equal. However, the perception of Trump as a fascist serves the purpose of “good cop bad cop.” The asymmetrical multiculturalists must fear the “fascism” of Trump so that they can be pressured into making concessions to a reciprocity-based, symmetrical multiculturalism. Trump called for specialized platinum plans, so why not specialized platinum plans for everyone, including Whites. Though having White versions of Al Sharpton and the NAACP, operating under the framework of multiculturalism, may seem less grandiose than dreaming of a God Empower or great Caesar to turn American around. Regardless, the Right needs to accept that they are not going to take back American, but instead must reclaim multiculturalism from the left.
The Great Replacement is real, and a large faction of the elites and establishment want to de-Whiten America. Record levels of migration, if continued, will permanently alter the Nation to something totally unrecognizable. America is already past the point of no return for there to be any kind of mass assimilation to maintain a unified culture and American civic values. If anything, Whites are better off under a multiculturalism that allows for enclaves and alternative institutions than a civic nationalism that expects everyone to assimilate to the Borg.
Not to be hyperbolic, but there are parallels between America of today and Weimer Germany. For instance, the economic crisis with dangers of inflation soaring, increasing income inequality, political polarization, and a corrupt establishment that gaslights people that everything is great (eg. Bidenomics). If the economy crashes hard, the masses will get radicalized, but there is no coherent framework to organize dissent. As much as I criticize Trump, the system legitimately considers him a threat to their power, which is why they are aggressively ramping up immigration. The transition to a post-American order is going to be messy.