The Truth about MAGA: Plutocrats in Populist Clothing

Former US President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement brands itself as populist — championing the interests and values of the common folk against the “elites.” But this narrative is a ruse designed to conceal the true nature of the movement’s objectives. Look no further than Trump’s running mate J. D. Vance — populist in rhetoric but beholden to the billionaire elites of the world.
Trump and Vance are plutocrats, representatives of an authoritarian movement that is on the rise in the US. The billionaires who support plutocratic politicians focus on increasing their power and wealth rather than addressing the social responsibilities that come with governance. Over time, this small group accumulates power and wealth while undermining the individual rights of all citizens. This corrupts the moral fiber of society. A simple word describes the value that motivates plutocrats — “more.”
Plutocracy in the US has a long and infamous history. Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland documents this well in her 2012 book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. Plutocracy was most prominent in the 1920s, when economic and social guardrails to uncontained capitalism were minimal. It declined somewhat with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, reforms which created a social safety net and gave the lower classes some degree of economic autonomy. Today, a new plutocratic movement seeks to undo this work.
The current plutocratic movement stems from the theoretical tenets of neoliberalism. Economist Friedrich Hayek first introduced this ideology, which rejects most forms of government intervention or regulation. Later, economists like Milton Friedman and James M. Buchanan popularized neoliberalism, making it the orthodoxy among right-wing politicians by the 1980s. Political leaders such as US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher embraced neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism emphasizes individualism over social cohesion, prioritizes the private sector over government intervention, favors deregulation over social responsibility and advocates for unfettered access to capital markets instead of disciplined spending and tax policies. These principles have laid the foundation for the rise of “populism” within today’s Republican Party. In other words, the MAGA movement promotes a clearly plutocratic, neoliberal agenda under the guise of conservative, Christian populism.
This agenda is evident in Project 2025, a policy wish-list put together by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation and written by a number of current and former Trump acolytes. Agenda 47, the platform posted on Trump’s campaign website, reveals much of the same. Upon close examination, both exhibit three prominent, interdependent themes: (1) reversing cultural norms to those of the 1940s, (2) increasing corporate influence by centralizing power in the executive branch of government and (3) growing the wealth and power of the financial elite. Their interdependence evidences the devious bargain plutocrats made with evangelical leaders.
While billionaires’ wealth gives them a great deal of influence, by themselves, of course, they cannot swing elections. So, in order for a plutocratic platform to succeed in a democracy, it needs to make an unnatural alliance with some base of popular support. The MAGA movement has settled on white Evangelical Christians.
Given that upwards of 35% of the US population is evangelical, it is no wonder that politicians would aim to appeal to them. The exit polls for the 2016 US presidential elections showed that 81% of white Evangelical Christians voted for Trump.
Evangelicals are the heirs of the Great Awakenings, religious revivals that shaped the early US. Revivalist preachers toured the country, spreading a fiery message of conversion. They denounced vices like sexual immorality, alcoholism and, in some cases, slavery. These religious radicals formed the core of the abolitionist and Prohibition movements; their modern heirs, however, seem to be less concerned with social justice, although Evangelicals retain the populist, moralistic fervor. Today, they rail against gay marriage, abortion and the teaching of evolution in schools.
However, many leaders of the evangelicals within the Trump orbit are simply opportunists. Amplifying Trump’s vehemence against cultural change allows them to grow the size of their congregations and gain prominence in the secular world of politics — at the price of sacrificing their values. As journalist Tim Alberta notes in The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, many evangelical leaders took a political worldview and simply baptized it as Christian.
Republicans have parlayed the panic of evangelicals over secularization, along with the fears of working-class groups over job losses, housing and crime — all of which they blame on immigration — into political support. This has enabled the plutocrats and other ultra-conservative allies to surreptitiously establish policy and administrative agendas that will forestall any economic progress for lower- and middle-income Americans. Rather, over time the wealth accumulated by the 1% of wealthiest Americans will continue to grow, further enhancing their power within the governance system and eventually leading to the deterioration of democratic governance. The alignment of plutocrats’ avarice with evangelicals’ newfound political activism gave a popularity boost to “Prosperity Gospel” theology, which makes materialism a Christian virtue.
Project 2025 and Agenda 47 advocate for the privatization of government services and an oligarchical structure to the US economy. This would clearly result in greater accumulation of wealth to the billionaire class, achieving the long-held goals of the champions of neoliberalism.
According to these plans, policymakers will remove regulations that safeguard the environment, women’s reproductive rights and public health. “Drill, baby, drill” would be the ethos of our environmental policy. Foreign policy would focus on expanding use of fossil fuels in developing countries. Agencies responsible for ensuring our safety or well-being, like the EPA and the National Weather Service, would face severe limitations or privatization. Public funds would support private schools allowing them to teach their own version of science and history. Private insurance companies would gain greater control over healthcare decisions. Corporate taxes would decrease even further. These are but a few examples of the policies designed to shift money upward in the class hierarchy.
Policies designed to increase the wealth of the upper tiers of society are endless. None of these would be acceptable to most Americans, but the narratives of cultural wars and populism cloak their true meaning. This ensures that working class and middle-income Americans will vote against their long-term interests, if not their very survival. Look carefully, remove the populist clothing and recognize that MAGA is really about enriching the rich and realigning our government to ensure that the economic elites will continue to pull the levers of power.
[Will Sheriff edited this piece.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.