A lot of people are still arguing about MAGA as if it’s a permanent identity or a unified ideology. That framing misses what actually made it function.

MAGA, at its peak, wasn’t a coherent movement. It was a temporary populist coalition built on overlapping grievances, not shared values. People aligned not because they agreed with each other, but because they shared enemies: political elites, cultural institutions, economic gatekeepers, and a sense of exclusion from decision-making. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” isn’t philosophy; it’s coalition math.

That’s why fixating on red hats or the slogan “Make America Great Again” leads people astray. Those symbols represent a loud minority, not the full alignment that made MAGA electorally viable. The most important participants were often the least visible: disaffected labor voters, civil libertarians, anti-war voters, small business owners, institutional skeptics, and even left-leaning voters alienated by Democratic leadership. Many never identified as “MAGA” at all.

Populist coalitions are inherently fragile. They work only as long as the alliance remains flexible and grievance-focused. The moment they harden into a fixed identity, purity test, or ideological project, they start shedding members. That’s what we’re seeing now.

The right is actively redefining itself, and not subtly. America First is not a rebrand of MAGA; it’s a narrower, explicitly right-wing, reactionary ideology. Figures like Nick Fuentes don’t represent continuity, they represent capture. When populism collapses into ethnonationalism or rigid identity politics, it stops being a coalition and becomes a faction.

This is also why both parties keep misreading voters. Democrats fight symbols instead of addressing grievances. Republicans mistake the loudest faction for the whole base. Meanwhile, the large middle keeps drifting, defecting, or disengaging.

MAGA wasn’t a permanent movement. It was a temporary alignment of interests. Confusing coalition dynamics with identity fandom is how people misunderstand what happened, and why it won’t repeat in the same form.