The Left Isn’t the Cult: MAGA Just Needs It to Be

A deep dive into the psychology of projection, authoritarian loyalty, and why not all extremes are created equal.

The Comfort of False Equivalence

There’s a seductive kind of cowardice masquerading as wisdom in modern discourse: the insistence that all extremes are created equal. It’s what allows the centrist to shrug and say, “Well, both sides are dangerous,” as though morality and method exist on a balanced scale, and history is simply a record of shared mistakes. For MAGA, this rhetorical laziness isn’t just useful. It’s strategic.

Accuse them of authoritarianism and they’ll point to DEI programs. Mention Trump’s cult of personality, and you’ll be met with an eye-roll about “Obama’s celebrity.” Criticize January 6th and they’ll reach back for something, anything, to scream “BLM riots!”

This is not argumentation. It is epistemological misdirection, the magician waving one hand wildly to distract from what the other is quietly hiding. It’s a deflection from the authoritarian impulse they not only embody but require to maintain coherence. And as any good psychologist will tell you, projection is not merely a tactic. It is a survival mechanism.

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Psychological Real Estate: Where Authoritarianism Actually Lives

Let’s dispense with ambiguity. The psychological literature is clear: Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) are not equally distributed across political lines. They are disproportionately, and consistently, rooted in the ideological right.

Bob Altemeyer’s decades of research reveal that RWA, defined by submission to perceived authority, aggression toward out-groups, and rigid adherence to tradition, flourishes in conservative populations. Not coincidentally, these same populations are the ones most likely to demand “law and order,” to revere strongmen, and to perceive dissent as betrayal rather than discourse.

Social Dominance Orientation, pioneered by Felicia Pratto and Jim Sidanius, adds another layer: the belief that society should be hierarchically structured, that some groups are simply better, more deserving, than others. Combine RWA and SDO, and you don’t just get Trumpism. You get the psychological scaffold for fascism.

The left, by contrast, often suffers from the opposite affliction: too much fragmentation, too many dissenting voices, too much introspection. It is chaotic, yes. Authoritarian, no.

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Political Mistakes vs. Psychological Mandates

Let’s be honest. The left has stumbled, sometimes badly. From technocratic aloofness to cultural overcorrections, it has provided no shortage of ammunition to its critics. But these are political mistakes, not psychological mandates. They are misjudgments of tone, of policy, of scope — not efforts to enshrine obedience or dominate vulnerable groups.

A progressive mayor botching a police budget is not the same as a president encouraging a mob to attack the Capitol. A college overreaching on a speaker ban is not the same as threatening to imprison political enemies. Mistakes exist. Authoritarian instincts do not.

And for those clutching pearls over “cancel culture,” let’s be precise. Ostracizing someone online for bad behavior is not the same as denying their right to vote, marry, or exist. The left may be annoying. The right, increasingly, is dangerous.

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Violence: Not Just in the Margins, but in the Metrics

The claim that “both sides are equally extreme” collapses under the weight of body counts.

A 2022 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined over 1,500 incidents of ideological extremism. The results were unambiguous: left-wing radicals were 68 percent less likely to commit violence than their right-wing counterparts. Globally, left-wing attacks were 45 percent less likely to result in fatalities. In the United States, there was no measurable difference in lethality between right-wing extremists and radical Islamists.

This is not a fringe claim. It is data. It is peer-reviewed. It is the kind of thing that should make headlines, but too often gets buried beneath false equivalence.

Yes, some on the left threw rocks or set fires. But the right brought bombs to churches. They brought zip ties to the Senate floor. They trained in militias. They fantasized aloud about civil war. The difference is not just scale. It is structure. One side occasionally riots. The other prepares for revolution.

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Grievance Theater: The Tesla Fire and the BLM Diversion

The MAGA defense mechanism is a carnival of cherry-picking. The Tesla that burned. The protester with a Molotov. The Target with broken windows. These incidents become their rosary, each bead a grievance, fingered obsessively in place of honest introspection.

But what they omit tells the real story. They don’t mention the coordinated kidnapping plots against governors. The armed standoffs. The mass shootings targeting synagogues, Black churches, LGBTQ clubs. These are not anomalies. They are the byproduct of an ideology steeped in racial resentment, fear of change, and a mythologized past.

The left’s sins are episodic and reactive. The right’s violence is doctrinal, preemptive, idealized, and increasingly networked. There is a difference between chaos and crusade.

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Collective Narcissism and the Need to Be the Real Victim

Nowhere is the asymmetry clearer than in how each side sees itself.

Golec de Zavala’s work on collective narcissism explains this well: the belief that one's group is not only exceptional, but unjustly persecuted. This fragile self-concept undergirds MAGA identity, a movement that somehow believes it is both the most powerful and the most oppressed demographic in America.

That is how they reconcile flying the flag while storming the Capitol. That is how they chant “USA” while trying to overturn its institutions. In their minds, any threat to dominance is tyranny. Fairness feels like persecution. Diversity feels like erasure.

The left has its zealots, yes. But it does not demand loyalty oaths. It does not worship demagogues. And it does not collapse without its leader. When progressives protest, they say, “We deserve equality.” When MAGA rallies, they scream, “We want our country back.”

The former seeks inclusion. The latter seeks restoration , to a time when others knew their place.

The Logic Illusion: Who’s Really Thinking Critically?

One of the right’s favorite smears against the left is that progressives are emotional, irrational, and allergic to facts. They pride themselves on being “the logical ones,” often punctuating debate with tired declarations like, “Feelings aren’t facts.” But this is projection masquerading as principle, and the science says otherwise.

Decades of cognitive psychology show that conservatism is more closely tied to intuitive, affective reasoning, while liberalism tends to correlate with analytical, deliberate thinking. A landmark 2014 study by Thomas Talhelm and colleagues revealed that political conservatives are more likely to rely on intuition and gut feelings, while liberals score higher on measures of cognitive reflection, the ability to override initial impulses in favor of reasoned analysis. This dovetails with earlier work by Jost and others linking conservative ideology to a need for cognitive closure, aversion to ambiguity, and greater sensitivity to perceived threats.

Put more simply: being liberal isn’t a guarantee of being right, but it is statistically more associated with thinking before reacting. Conservatism, by contrast, leans into immediate, emotionally satisfying responses, not because its adherents are unintelligent, but because their worldview rewards stability, tradition, and instinct.

This helps explain why MAGA so often feels impervious to evidence. Logic isn’t the foundation of the worldview, identity is. And any fact that threatens that identity is rejected, not because it’s untrue, but because it’s unwelcome. The very structure of MAGA thinking is built to preserve the self, not challenge it.

So the next time someone says “the left runs on emotion,” ask them to cite a source. Then cite ten.

Conclusion: Not All Cults Wear Robes

Authoritarianism does not arrive in goose-step. It comes smiling, draped in flags and grievances. It says, “We’re just protecting our way of life.” It says, “They’re trying to silence us.” It says, “We’re just as moral as them.”

But the record, psychological, historical, statistical, says otherwise. The left is not a cult. It is flawed, fractious, often maddening. But it is not psychologically structured to demand submission, elevate violence, or sacralize obedience.

MAGA is.

And the more it accuses others of being what it already is, the more we should resist the urge to debate and instead, diagnose.

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References

• Altemeyer, B. (1998). The Authoritarian Specter. Harvard University Press.

• Duckitt, J., & Sibley, C. G. (2010). Personality, ideology, prejudice, and politics: A dual-process motivational model. Journal of Personality.

• Golec de Zavala, A. et al. (2020). Collective narcissism and intergroup attitudes. Journal of Personality.

• Jost, J. T. et al. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin.

• Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2010). When corrections fail: The persistence of political misperceptions. Political Behavior.

• Pratto, F., Sidanius, J., et al. (1994). Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

• Witmer, F. D. W., & Linke, A. M. (2022). Right‐wing extremism is more likely to turn violent than left‐wing extremism. PNAS, 119(30), e2202769119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2202769119