How the MAGA movement is like a messianic religion

Here’s two messages that I found inspiring. Of course, if you love Donald Trump and hate Jimmy Kimmel, you might disagree.

(1) An essay by anthropologist James B. Greenberg that appeared on my Facebook feed today, having been shared by someone I follow. Greenberg makes some good points about how the MAGA — Make America Great Again — movement is akin to a messianic religion where belief is held onto so strongly, it is almost impervious to facts and reason, having become part of a follower’s identity.

(2) After Greenberg’s essay I’ve shared the monologue by Jimmy Kimmel last Tuesday after his late night show’s suspension was lifted by ABC and Disney, the owner of ABC. Kimmel both is funny, making some great jokes, and also inspiring in his strong defense of free speech after the Trump administration and Trump himself did what they could to kick Kimmel off the airwaves following some remarks Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk’s killing.

Enjoy.

Essay by James B. Greenberg

For a long time, I labored under the illusion that Republicans—once confronted with the true scope of Trump’s authoritarian ambitions and the depth of his betrayal—would come to their senses. I imagined a reckoning. I expected disillusionment. What I failed to grasp was that while I became disillusioned, they did not.

My mistake stemmed from a misplaced faith in rationality. I underestimated the degree to which the MAGA movement had metastasized into something more than politics: a cult, a brand, an identity. It is no longer about policy or governance. It is about who they are—and, more importantly, who they are not.

Like religions, these identities are not sustained only by belief, but by practice. Rallies, chants, merchandise, even memes function as rituals—repeated acts that anchor belonging. The community reinforces itself by marking who is inside and who is outside, who is pure and who is profane. Once politics takes on the rhythm of liturgy, it no longer depends on persuasion. It depends on repetition.

Christian Nationalism and the culture wars have become the scaffolding of this identity. These aren’t just positions; they are articles of faith. Religions rest on the acceptance of propositions that the faithful take to be unquestionably true—“God is One,” “Jesus Christ is our Savior.”

To paraphrase Mark Twain, once someone believes something to be true, they’ll spend the rest of their life defending it—patching it, propping it up, shielding it from collapse.

Trump captured this dynamic with unsettling clarity: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” That wasn’t a boast tossed off at a rally. It was recognition that once belief fuses with identity, loyalty is no longer conditional. It survives contradiction. It outlasts betrayal.

In this sense, loyalty to Trump mirrors the logic of domestic abuse. The victim internalizes blame, rationalizes harm, and defends the abuser. Even when the evidence is plain—Trump has not made America great again. He has re-engineered the economy to benefit the wealthy at the expense of his base—they persist in the belief that prosperity is just around the corner.

Anthropologists would recognize this as a revitalization movement: a promise of renewal offered to those who feel dispossessed, framed as a return to a lost golden age. At its center is a messianic figure, cast as uniquely chosen to redeem and restore. His failures become tests of faith, his betrayals reframed as sacrifices on the path to deliverance.

They are told that the undocumented stole their jobs, when in truth it was globalization, automation, and the erosion of labor protections. They are promised that tariffs will bring back manufacturing, despite decades of structural offshoring and corporate consolidation.

These are not policy errors—they are narrative strategies, and their power lies in how they redirect anger away from the architects of economic abandonment. Deindustrialization, union-busting, and deregulation hollowed out communities, yet instead of naming corporate power or state retreat, the story fixes blame on scapegoats who cannot fight back.

This is not just misdirection—it is a political economy of grievance, transforming material dispossession into cultural warfare.So why can’t the spell be broken?

Because belief, once weaponized, becomes a fortress. It resists contradiction, metabolizes betrayal, and punishes dissent. The MAGA movement is not simply a political coalition—it is a system of meaning. And systems like that do not collapse under the weight of facts, but when the stories that sustain them lose their grip.

Collapse rarely comes from external critique. It begins within, when the story starts to fray—through promises of prosperity that never arrive, scandals that cut too deep, or the slow realization that the narrative no longer explains the world, no longer offers dignity, coherence, or agency.

Belief systems tied to identity are especially resilient. They absorb failure by reframing it as persecution. They turn betrayal into proof of righteousness. They survive not because they are true, but because they are useful—psychologically, socially, politically. And when alternative narratives emerge—ones that offer a clearer sense of self, a more honest reckoning with reality—they are met not with curiosity but with hostility.

This is why appeals to reason fall flat. The MAGA movement is not a debate. It is a worldview. And worldviews do not yield to evidence; they yield to rupture.

If rupture is rare, then resilience must be cultivated. Not through fact-checking alone, but through narrative reformation—stories that offer coherence without conspiracy, dignity without domination, and agency without scapegoating.

We have glimpses of what this looks like. When labor movements organize around dignity on the job rather than resentment of the outsider, they create belonging through solidarity. When local communities reclaim public institutions—schools, libraries, clinics—they generate meaning that resists privatization and fear.

These efforts are fragile, but they remind us that counter-narratives are possible when they are lived as well as told.

That means confronting the architecture of belief not with contempt, but with clarity. It means recognizing that for many, MAGA is not a political position—it’s a survival strategy. And if we want to dislodge it, we must offer something more resilient than resentment. We must offer belonging.

The work ahead is not just political. It is anthropological, in how people make meaning together; ecological, in how survival depends on the world we share; and narrative, in how stories anchor belonging. And it begins with the courage to name what’s broken—and the imagination to build what comes next.

Here’s the Jimmy Kimmel video.