Whence MAGA?

Fascism has many components, one of which is the promise of a return to some imagined past before a fall, before the metaphorical eviction from Eden. Inevitably, the loss of this past is blamed on some ethnic or religious bogeyman, some Other. For the Nazis this past was an Aryan nation that never really existed but was somehow "lost" in the post-World War I economic crash and the enemy was  firstly The Jew, but of course also included others such as homosexuals and communists. The Jew, though, was the key enemy, the mythical monster lurking under the bed and behind the curtains of every government agency in the delusional mind of the Nazi.  

This backward-looking fantasy is one of the parts of fascism that is mostly clearly reflected in the Trump regime and is represented in the slogan, "Make America Great Again." And so those who voted for him should not be surprised by his actions and should not be wondering when he will get around to "making America great again." In his efforts to return to a mythical past that is idealized in his mind (and in the minds of many of his more rabid supporters), he is doing as he promised you he would do, even if you didn't realize it. 

To be clear, of course America was never great. That's the point: the past to which the fascist wishes to return is an imagined one and is a time that never really existed and yet is longed for after its loss in some supposed catastrophe. For the Nazis, this was their capitulation after WWI leading to economic collapse. For Trumpists, I would argue that there are three potential moments at which this loss can be identified. Chronologically, they are: (1) September 11th when, for those ignorant of global politics and American imperialism, [white] America lost its innocence. (More accurately, 9/11 is when corporate neo-imperialism and colonialism came home to roost, shocking those who knew too little of American policy or Middle Eastern realities to understand what had just happened.) (2) The global economic recession of 2008 when American economic policy and corruption brought the global market to its knees. At this point many people, including working class white American conservatives, lost a great deal. Yes, they really did. They too lost their jobs, homes, pensions, savings, and more. Rightly, they were angry about this.  (3) Shortly thereafter, the election of Barrack Obama as a representation of not their economic loss but their cultural loss of place in the American hegemonic order. As America's first black President, those white folks who had just lost something in the recession and felt threatened by the relative lack of feelings of safety in a post-9/11 America finally had someone to blame: the Other represented by The Black Man in The White House. 

Of course the point is not that they wish to return to a point prior to these particular moments in time (say, the 1990s before 9/11 when the economy was strong and The Republicans had overtaken the house and senate during the second half of the Clinton years). The point is that the time they wish to return to never existed; it is a mythology of America that exists in the conservative imagination; a fantasy that never has been and yet is imaginatively blocked by the existence of the Other (for Trumpists, this Other may be Muslims primarily, but is also Mexicans, feminists, LGBTQIA+, and so on). 

So when people wonder, "When will Trump get around to making America great again?" they are asking precisely the wrong question. The America of their fantasies cannot be made again because it never was. The question to ask instead is, "What America does Trump claim to be creating and what America does he imagine?" The answer to that is quite clearly a white America, a patriarchal America, a misogynistic America, a straight and cisgender America, an America that benefits the rich to the detriment of 99% of the population, a homogenous America, and so on. It is an America of dystopian nightmares. To this end, he is absolutely keeping his promise to "make America great again" in that he is implementing policies that will bring about the fantasized and mythological America of the backward-facing fascist mind. Understood correctly, he is doing exactly what he said he would and is keeping his word; too many just weren't listening well enough to hear it  over the sound of their white rage. 

Thus, for the Trump supporter, if the America Trump is creating is not the America that the voter hoped for on election day, then one must ask oneself, "What America do I want?" because a key struggle right now is over differing definitions of America and Americans and the most important question may be, "Whose side are you on?"