Crowdsourced Propaganda and the MAGA Identity Machine
Déjà Vu With Better Optics
In March 1945, the U.S. Army warned its own soldiers that fascism in America wouldn’t come jackbooted and draped in swastikas. It would arrive wrapped in flags. “If fascism comes to America, it will be on a program of Americanism,” one orientation bulletin stated bluntly, quoting a sentiment attributed to Huey Long. It would speak the language of 'super-patriotism' and 'super-Americanism,’ not with foreign slogans, but with homegrown chants that 'sell' (Army Orientation Branch, 1945).
The Trumpist project only seems shocking if you've forgotten how many frightened electorates have applauded the arrival of strongmen. Mussolini didn’t begin with tanks, but with editorials. Substitute “America First” for Deutschland über alles and the script barely needs rewriting: national humiliation is repackaged as stolen glory, followed by a savior promising vengeance with a gold-plated pen.
Today, the branding is simply better. A red hat travels more politely than an armband. Tweets reach farther than grainy newsreels. Propaganda has gone from state mandated to crowd sourced. You no longer need to storm the radio tower, you just need a ring light and a grievance. The White House livestream is devotional, Fox & Friends a catechism. This is not a break with history; it is its digital upgrade.
Squint and you can hear the applause of Orbán’s Hungary (Király, 2024), the echoes of Perón’s Argentina, Duterte’s gunfire. MAGA is not innovative. It’s a revival tour.
Seize the Culture, Seize the Future
On March 27, 2025, Trump signed the executive order titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History." A title so clumsily overcompensating it practically confessed its own dishonesty. On the surface, patriotic rebranding. Underneath, an authoritarian hammer wrapped in bunting.
Museums are instructed to flatter the state. Grants are pulled from dissent. History must now arrive airbrushed and unblemished, suitable for the childproof minds of the faithful. Paulo Freire, who knew a thing or two about oppression, warned that the first instinct of the oppressor is to adjust the consciousness of the oppressed, not the conditions themselves (Freire, 1970).
The Smithsonian, formerly a mosaic of America’s contradictions, is reduced to a stained glass window of triumph. Redlining exhibits disappear. Stonewall becomes a footnote, if not a scandal. Pluralism isn’t debated, it’s defunded.
The goal is purity, not truth. You don’t nationalize history to preserve it. You do it to burn the parts that won’t kneel.
The Authoritarian Tripod: RWA, SDO, Collective Narcissism
If you want to know why MAGA voters cheer for policies that injure people they’ll never meet, you need psychology more than politics. Authoritarian followings rest on three legs:
Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA): Submission to strong leaders, hostility to outsiders, and reverence for tradition. Bob Altemeyer charted this decades ago (Altemeyer, 1981). The modern version wears red and screams "enemy of the people" at journalists while applauding pardons for violent border agents. This is not policy disagreement. It is punitive belonging.
Social Dominance Orientation (SDO): A belief that hierarchy is natural and desirable—so long as your group is on top. Hence the appetite for border walls, anti-trans legislation, and efforts to erase equity programs. This isn’t about order; it’s about who gets to be above whom (Pratto et al., 1994).
Collective Narcissism: A conviction that one’s group is not only great but unfairly maligned. When global trust in America dips, MAGA doesn’t flinch. They celebrate. It means, in their view, that America’s righteousness terrifies the weak (Golec de Zavala et al., 2009).
These traits don’t grow in a vacuum. They flourish in the soil of economic anxiety, perceived cultural decline, and status loss. MAGA voters don’t just want jobs; they want vindication wrapped in a uniform.
Motivated Reasoning: The Cognitive Kevlar
The human brain isn’t built for truth. It’s built for coherence, for making sure the story we tell ourselves doesn’t collapse under the weight of contradiction. Taber and Lodge called it "motivated skepticism" (Taber & Lodge, 2006). Dan Kahan calls it "identity-protective cognition" (Kahan, 2013).
Trump understood this intuitively. He didn’t just lie. He inoculated the lie with a catchphrase: "Fake news." Fact checks became betrayal. Truth was smothered in its crib.
And it gets worse with education. The more cognitively skilled the believer, the more elegant their rationalizations. Cambridge's Misinformation Susceptibility Test shows that high RWA and SDO individuals are not fooled by lack of intellect. They're fooled by loyalty (van der Linden et al., 2023).
A disputed tweet doesn’t spark doubt. It sparks devotion. The contradiction becomes the proof.
Why Misinformation Feels Like Morality
Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory helps explain why MAGA doesn’t just consume misinformation, they baptize it. Conservatives score higher on moral dimensions like loyalty, purity, and authority. So when Trump scrubs mention of systemic racism from federal training, it doesn’t feel like censorship. It feels like sanitization.
Journalists aren’t suppressed. They’re exorcised. The state is not overreaching. It is purifying. The drag queen becomes not just a target, but a totem, a focal point where identity and disgust fuse into activism.
This is not incidental. Notre Dame studies show that when democracy is perceived as weak, people crave moral absolutism (Notre Dame, 2025). MAGA doesn’t want a government. It wants a priesthood with nukes.
Cult, Adjacent and Proud of It
Ask a MAGA loyalist to square yesterday’s statement with today’s reversal and watch the miracle unfold. Contradiction becomes coherence.
Traditional cults hide their madness. MAGA performs it. Trump’s lies are not defects; they’re drills. Each new absurdity is an initiation rite. Defend it, and you prove you belong.
This is preference falsification collapse. Once you've twisted yourself into enough knots to defend the movement, abandoning it would unravel your very identity.
Is it Jonestown? Not quite. But the Kool Aid is still served, one grievance at a time, nightly on Fox.
Performance Policy: The Executive Order as Shibboleth
Trump’s executive orders aren’t designed to solve problems. They are liturgical.
"Restoring Biological Truth," for example, is vague enough to evade challenge, but potent enough to thrill. Its legal impact is nebulous, its emotional impact divine. Every EO is a shibboleth. Do you believe? Then say the words. If not, we know who you are.
James Bisbee found that Trump’s policy cues didn’t just influence Republican belief about COVID. They transformed it (Bisbee, 2024). The lie didn’t echo. It evolved.
Authoritarianism as Emotional Sedative
Freedom, properly understood, is messy. It asks you to tolerate discomfort, accept contradiction, and coexist with people you dislike.
Authoritarianism is a shortcut. A kind of psychic Advil. Drag queens become scapegoats. Immigrants become metaphors. The world simplifies. Order is restored, or at least the illusion of it.
PRRI data reveals that high authoritarian individuals are twice as likely to endorse political violence (PRRI, 2024). Not because they’re evil. Because fear has made violence feel like therapy.
Lessons From Older Playbooks
The Nazis called it Gleichschaltung, coordination. Culture, art, theater, news, all aligned to one ideology. America, to its credit, has checks. But Trump has learned to sidestep them with public pressure, loyalty tests, and funding threats.
Once the state dictates what art is allowed to say, the citizen becomes spectator, not participant. The republic becomes a rerun.
And Europe’s far right movements are watching (Wilson, 2019). MAGA is not a fluke. It’s a franchise.
Breaking the Spell
The MAGA voter doesn’t need more data. They need a story that doesn't ask them to hate half their neighbors.
Prebunking helps, exposing people to small doses of misinformation with context (van der Linden et al., 2023). But it must come with dignity. No one ever changed their mind while being mocked for having one.
So tell a better story. One with jobs, shared rituals, civic pride that doesn’t come at someone else’s expense. It won’t go viral. But it might inoculate.
Conclusion: Loyalty Is the Product
MAGA is not about belief. It's about belonging.
To walk away would mean admitting you were conned, that you cheered a man who would’ve sold you for a better poll number. That your fear was monetized. Your pride weaponized.
So the hat stays on. The lie is repeated. The monuments gleam, even as the republic crumbles beneath their weight.
Authoritarianism doesn’t storm the gates. It tiptoes in wearing nostalgia. And for many, that’s enough, so long as the reflection in the mirror still looks like them.
References
Altemeyer, B. (1981). Right-Wing Authoritarianism. University of Manitoba Press.
Pratto, F., Sidanius, J., Stallworth, L., & Malle, B. (1994). Social Dominance Orientation: A Personality Variable Predicting Social and Political Attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(4), 741–763.
Golec de Zavala, A. et al. (2009). Collective Narcissism and Its Social Consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Taber, C. S., & Lodge, M. (2006). Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs. American Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 755–769.
Kahan, D. (2013). Misconceptions, Misinformation, and the Logic of Identity-Protective Cognition. Yale Law School Public Law Research Paper.
van der Linden, S. et al. (2023). Misinformation Susceptibility Test. University of Cambridge.
Pew Research Center. (2021). Misinformation and Competing Views of Reality Abounded Throughout 2020. Pew Research Center.
Blanchar, J., & Norris, C. (2024). Trump, Twitter, and Truth Judgments: The Effects of “Disputed” Tags. HKS Misinformation Review.
PRRI. (2024). Authoritarian Susceptibility Survey. Public Religion Research Institute.
Notre Dame (2025). Diverging Views of Democracy Study. Keough School of Global Affairs.
Bisbee, J. (2024). Trump, Partisan Motivated Reasoning & COVID-19. Columbia University.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Király, G. (2024). Popular Autocrats: Why Do Voters Support Viktor Orbán’s Government? Public Choice, SpringerLink.
Wilson, J. (2019). How Nationalists Are Joining Together to Tear Europe Apart. Time Magazine.