Context
A NYT Magazine article (not paywalled), What the Crackup of the Heritage Foundation Says About the Post-Trump Right, raises the issue of how and why the GOP radicalized over time. The article reports that after Trump took office in Jan. 2025, Heritage was pushed aside. Heritage was the source of Project 2025 and the still-secret 180-Day Playbook that was given to a few MAGA elites on how to implement Project 2025. After Trump was sworn in, Heritage tried to get back to the center of power, but it sank into a vicious, still ongoing in-house conflict. The old guard of establishment experts were swamped and attacked by a surge of radical younger MAGA authoritarian kleptocrats. Those MAGA operatives are hell-bent on remaking Heritage into their own version of a Trump-style organization. Their tyranny and kleptocracy tactics are (1) being online all the time, (2) being ruthless in fighting culture wars, and (3) vehement in rejecting the dogmas of postwar politics grounded in evidence-based pro-democracy, pro-rule of law conservatism. This new generation of MAGA elites isn't evidence or reason based. It is almost completely wealth and power ideology-based.
That is the tyrannical and corrupt moral rot now taking control of most of America's non-left political universe. As far as these young MAGA crusaders go, things need to get a lot better to attain their vision of what they want Heritage and the GOP to be. These young MAGA elites are waging war on democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. They want things to get a hell of a lot worse than they are now. MAGA's war isn't remotely close to being over.
The rise of extremist MAGA authoritarianism & kleptocracy
That's a complicated story. Multiple factors were and still are in play. Factors include elite and social polarization, deeply aggressive and corrupting donor politics, a corrupted rule of law for MAGA-aligned elites and corporations, wage stagnation and inflation with economic pressures, corrupted media ecosystems, and uncompromising GOP institutional hardball. But also among those major factors was and still is immigration. Just beneath the surface intense anger and fear about legal and illegal immigration are powerful emotional drivers of racism and race bigotry.
Racism and racial bigotry
MAGA demagoguery has played on and enormously amplified bigotry and racism among a minority of Americans, nearly all of whom are aligned with Trump and MAGA authoritarian politics and policy. Racism and racial bigotry are important components of MAGA's wealth and power movement, primarily for culture war extremists. Racial animus helps keeps fear and anger alive for a lot of the rank and file. Some of the elites have the same nasty feelings, mainly those in the Christian nationalist theocrat crowd. Absent religion, most oligarchs and dictators like Trump generally don't care much about immigration, with their focus on wealth and power, not culture war or race. When the autocrats and oligarchs do care about non-white immigration, it is used politically to emotionally mobilize voters, e.g., by fomenting irrational or baseless anger, fear, resentments, feelings of threat or victimhood, etc.
Trump and allied elites repeatedly use immigration as a political weapon. There is solid evidence that Christian nationalism overlaps with white supremacy and anti-immigrant sentiment. There is a significant Christian theocratic cadre among MAGA elites. Clearly, the issue cannot be reduced to religion alone. Sometimes the elites use immigration and race for public influence to serve their own labor, status, and control goals. Racial culture war goals can thus be secondary.
What appeared to be a significant crystallizing stimulant to racial animus in the MAGA movement was the election and re-election of Obama. That set millions of Americans on edge. To make matters a lot worse, MAGA demagoguery ruthlessly exaggerated racial resentments and fears with and fabricated white threat and victimhood narratives. Empirical evidence from research and reporting consistently link MAGA politics to white grievance, racism, and hostility to immigrants. That is particularly true for the movement’s rank and file.
The bottom line is that racial animus and Christian nationalist ideology are central to MAGA’s mass politics. Oligarchic and autocratic interests exploit those grievances to consolidate elite (and allied corporate) wealth and power. Thus, not every elite actor is motivated primarily by racism. Even without immigration politics would not vanish absent religion.
Regardless of when Trump exits from politics, the MAGA movement and its element of racial bigotry and racism are not going to go away.
Q: Is racism and racial bigotry a significant factor in the rise of MAGA authoritarianism, or is it trivial or completely non-existent?
Info sources:
Racial resentment fueled Jan. 6 rebellion and opposition to House probe, scholars find -- In their analysis, the resentment syncs with support for former President Donald Trump and a message at the core of his Make American Great Again (MAGA) movement: that white people are unfairly losing out to groups that are getting advantages that they haven’t earned and don’t deserve.
Barack Obama legacy: Did he improve US race relations? -- America's racial problems have not melted away merely because Obama has spent eight years in the White House. Far from it. Indeed, the insurmountable problem for Obama was that he reached the mountaintop on day one of his presidency.
Race and Politics in the Age of Obama -- Race has rarely mattered more in US politics than it does now. The election of President Obama has laid bare the racial divisions that continue to fracture the United States. ..... Many hoped that the election of the first black president of the United States would signal the end to what may rightfully be called the continuing significance of race.
Defining Oligarchy: The Fusion of Wealth and Power in American Democracy -- [Oligarchy] represents a form of governance focused on preserving the political and economic influence of the wealthy by securing the approval of the rest of the population.
How Christian Nationalism Promotes White Supremacy: An Examination of Racial Stereotypes -- Findings suggest Christian nationalism promotes White supremacy more by promoting a higher view of White Americans (the “prototypical Americans”) than promoting a lower view of racial minorities.
MAGA movement - American political movement -- The MAGA movement, often referred to simply as MAGA, or Make America Great Again, was founded on the belief that the United States was once a “great” country but has lost this status owing to foreign influence, both within its borders (via immigration and multiculturalism) and without (via globalization, or the increased integration of multiple national economies).
A systemic approach to the psychology of racial bias within individuals and society -- systemic factors operating across levels — from the interpersonal to the cultural — contribute to the production and reinforcement of racial biases in children and adults. We consider the effects of five systemic factors on racial biases in the USA: power and privilege disparities, cultural narratives and values, segregated communities, shared stereotypes and nonverbal messages.
Research States That Prejudice Comes From a Basic Human Need and Way of Thinking -- prejudice stems from a deeper psychological need, associated with a particular way of thinking. People who aren’t comfortable with ambiguity and want to make quick and firm decisions are also prone to making generalizations about others.
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