MAGA (Make America Great Again)

The MAGA (Make Amer­i­ca Great Again) move­ment, forged around Don­ald Trump’s polit­i­cal rise in 2016, is a dis­tinct­ly Amer­i­can expres­sion of Nation­al Con­ser­vatism. It cham­pi­ons nation­al sov­er­eign­ty over inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion, favors pro­tec­tion­ist trade mea­sures like tar­iffs and reshoring, and pro­motes a cul­tur­al­ly exclu­sion­ary vision root­ed in “West­ern civ­i­liza­tion” and tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly struc­tures. Cen­tral to the move­ment is a strin­gent anti-immi­gra­tion stance, with poli­cies that lim­it asy­lum, build phys­i­cal bar­ri­ers, and frame immi­grants as cul­tur­al threats. MAGA oppos­es pro­gres­sive reforms such as diver­si­ty and inclu­sion pro­grams, LGBTQ+ rights, and gen­der non­con­for­mi­ty, advo­cat­ing instead for a return to a 1950s-style moral order. It empha­sizes an “Amer­i­ca First” doc­trine in for­eign pol­i­cy, increas­ing defense spend­ing while crit­i­ciz­ing mul­ti­lat­er­al insti­tu­tions. The move­ment also seeks to dele­git­imize inde­pen­dent media by brand­ing crit­i­cal out­lets as “fake news” and pro­motes its nar­ra­tive through tight­ly con­trolled social media chan­nels. While pop­ulist in tone, MAGA con­sis­tent­ly advances poli­cies that favor cor­po­ra­tions, reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives, and mil­i­ta­rized nation­al iden­ti­ty. It mir­rors near­ly all ten prin­ci­ples of Nation­al Con­ser­vatism, as out­lined in the glob­al frame­work, and serves as its most promi­nent West­ern embodiment.

Ref­er­ences:

– The Rise of Nation­al Con­ser­vatism: A Glob­al Per­spec­tive (GIOR)

– Inside MAGA’s fight for “West­ern civ­i­liza­tion” (Axios)

– A new kind of Repub­li­can Par­ty is form­ing at the RNC (Politi­co)

– J.D. Vance poised to take Trump­ism into the future (Reuters)

– Make Amer­i­ca Great Again (Wikipedia)

– Trump­ism (Wikipedia)