Chris Abraham

Turned on WAMU/NPR this morning and every single segment is anti Trump. 100%. Amazing. One just came on now: “Trump sent Biden death penalty inmates to supermax.” NPR is Anti-Trump News. Makes sense but even bad press is good press as long as you spell his name right. I’ve listened to WAMU since 1993 and this is unprecedented (unpresidented).

°🥂⋆.ೃ🍾࿔*:･

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.

Antifa and similar emergent street forces are misunderstood because people keep asking the wrong question: “Is it an organization you can join?” That’s like asking whether Hollywood is a club with membership forms.

It isn’t.

These movements function like movie production. First comes a script. A narrative of moral urgency, crisis, or resistance. Then comes funding, whether direct or indirect, legal support, transport, bail funds, media amplification, or institutional tolerance. Once the project is fully financed and the conditions are right, the cast assembles.

No one fills out an application. No one gets a membership card. People self-select into roles once the production exists. Some are repeat actors. Some are day players. Some just show up for one shoot and disappear. That doesn’t make the production imaginary. It makes it episodic.

Leadership in this model is not a chairman or a general. It’s whoever greenlights the project, controls resources, absorbs risk, and signals when and where to show up. That’s how coherence emerges without hierarchy. That’s how everyone involved maintains plausible deniability afterward.

This is why arguments like “there is no organized Antifa” are technically true and practically evasive. There may be no standing army, but there are recurring productions with familiar crews, tactics, and narratives. Violence and disorder are not commanded. They are incentivized, enabled, and later disowned.

So no, Antifa isn’t a club you join. It’s closer to getting your SAG card. Once the movie is funded, the extras always find the set.