How MAGA Lost Its Way
British readers may have a tough time with this question, but could Keir Starmer represent the future of America? To be sure, the UK prime minister is a world-class political fool, managing to trash his impressive electoral mandate in short order. But his cacophony of income redistribution, mass migration, censorship and draconian climate policies could soon be playing at full blast on the Potomac.
As with the Tories at the last UK General Election, the MAGA GOP is losing the support of much of its electoral base. Even the pro-Trump New York Post suggests the president’s bombast cannot ‘solve his very real economic problems’.
Claiming that the cost-of-living crisis is ‘a scam’ and a ‘con job’, as Trump does, is not a good look – and terrible politics. This is particularly damaging for a president who was elected with working-class support, yet projects a clear preference for his fellow magnates – his is by far the most billionaire-dominated cabinet in US history. Worse still, some of his key backers, particularly in the tech world, embrace the neo-monarchist, top-down ideology promoted by the likes of Curtis Yarvin and other equally noxious eugenicists. Yarvin wants a king, which is perhaps an appealing idea for Trump.
Caught in their billionaire bubble, the Trumpistas, like the elite Democrats of recent years, seem unable to comprehend the cost-of-living crisis, the roots of which lie in the Biden administration. Democrats ignored inflation to their own peril in 2024, and now Republicans are doing much the same. The fact that Wall Street bonuses are soaring and the number of billionaires increasing to record levels will be of little comfort to rank-and-file MAGA supporters struggling to make ends meet.
Disillusionment with Trump is growing fastest among those who, according to a study from the Manhattan Institute, are generally younger, less conservative on economic issues, and more susceptible to conspiracy theories. It is among this group that far-right ideology – including the noxious anti-Semitism of Nick Fuentes – has gained adherents.
Many young people who gave Trump surprising support in 2024 are also turning against capitalism. They increasingly support expanded government and greater income redistribution. A majority of under-40s strongly favours limiting wealth, and a large portion wants to cap incomes at one million dollars per year. Even in the US, then, the majority of young people now embrace a vague state socialism as a better model for society.
Wealth taxes and income caps may be flawed policies, but young people’s disillusionment is very real. It’s based on diminishing economic prospects, declining earnings and a job market getting tougher even for college graduates – a trend that could be further exacerbated by the rise of artificial intelligence. Today, barely half of all people under 30, according to one survey, have full-time jobs.
Read the rest of this piece at Spiked.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Photo: by Gage Skidmore, via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.
