Between Stories: Understanding MAGA, Rebuilding Democracy

To counter authoritarianism, we need more than critique—we need a shared narrative and civic infrastructure grounded in belonging, dignity, and care.

MAGA is more than a political movement—it’s a symbolic system that answers dislocation with identity, confusion with clarity, and loss with belonging. If we want to push back, we need more than critique. We need a new story—and the civic infrastructure to support it.

When we talk about MAGA, the temptation is to simplify—reduce it to ignorance, racism, authoritarianism. And while those elements are undeniably present, that simplification blinds us to the layered reality of what we’re facing. MAGA is not a single ideology. It’s a fractured but potent worldview, stitched together out of fear, loss, and an offer of belonging.

There are openly authoritarian factions: white Christian nationalists, neo-Nazis, and political opportunists who see democracy as an obstacle to power. There are loyalists who have traded constitutional principle for partisan control. But beyond that are millions of Americans drawn in by something less clear-cut: a sense that the ground beneath them has shifted and that no one in power seems to notice. For many, MAGA isn’t about policy at all—it’s about feeling seen.

From an anthropological perspective, MAGA functions as a symbolic system. Its power lies not in legislative detail, but in ritual, narrative, and identity. Flags are flown not just in support of a candidate, but as declarations of meaning. Rallies become performances of grievance and imagined redemption. Slogans operate like shared prayers. It’s not politics in the traditional sense. It’s belonging in the face of dislocation.

This dislocation isn’t imaginary. It’s rooted in real structural shifts. The collapse of industrial jobs, the erosion of social mobility, the fragmentation of public education, the disappearance of local media—all contribute to a pervasive sense of loss. Add to that climate disasters, housing precarity, and the stripping of rural and working-class communities by extractive economics, and you get fertile ground for stories that promise a return to order—even if that order is cruel.

The “stolen America” narrative—amplified by cable news, talk radio, and algorithmic social media—offers a simple explanation: you are losing because others are taking what’s yours.It’s a lie, but a compelling one, because it replaces confusion with clarity. It locates blame. It gives identity to those who feel erased.

If we want to counter this narrative, we need more than facts. We need a coherent, grounded, and emotionally resonant alternative—one that offers a place to stand, not just something to reject.

That counter-narrative might begin like this:

You matter—not because of your income, education, or politics—but because you are part of a shared society whose future depends on all of us.

This country has been sold out by those who put profit before people—by corporations and political elites who abandoned communities while insulating themselves from the consequences.

The struggle isn’t between neighbors. It’s between those who extract and those left to carry the cost.

Democracy isn’t about shouting the loudest. It’s about showing up—for your neighbors, your community, and the shared spaces that hold us together.

Patriotism isn’t about who you exclude. It’s about what we build together, and who we refuse to leave behind.

But a story is only as strong as the infrastructure that supports it. And this is where we’ve fallen short. Over the past four decades, many of the institutions that once mediated American life—unions, local newspapers, public schools, even churches—have been defunded, privatized, or politically captured. Into the vacuum stepped commercial media, political spectacle, and ideological silos. The storytellers changed—and so did the story.

We can’t rebuild a democratic culture without restoring its civic infrastructure. That means supporting local organizations that build trust, not division: libraries, mutual aid groups, community centers, labor cooperatives. It means creating spaces where people participate in shared projects that don’t rely on political affiliation—repairing parks, planting gardens, running food banks.

Rebuilding democracy also means widening the circle of belonging. Authoritarian movements draw power by narrowing it—by telling us who counts and who doesn’t, who belongs and who must be cast out. But if we are serious about renewal, we need a deeper ethic. One that recognizes the interdependence of all people, communities, and even the living world we inhabit. A culture grounded in care—across lines of race, class, faith, geography, and species—isn’t idealistic; it’s necessary. We cannot meet this moment with sharper divisions. We need a broader sense of connection, one that makes solidarity feel not just moral, but natural.

It also means recognizing who carries informal authority in our communities. Teachers, nurses, veterans, clergy, small business owners—these are the people who can reach across narrative divides, not with slogans, but with lived credibility.

We must also shift what we reward. Our current information economy privileges outrage and spectacle. But social capital can be directed elsewhere. Let’s elevate those who mediate, who mentor, who build—those who quietly embody the kind of society we say we want.

Democracy doesn’t live solely in Washington. It lives—or dies—in every community. In school boards and union halls, neighborhood councils and library basements. It thrives when we practice it, and withers when we stop showing up. If we want to resist authoritarian narratives, we can’t wait for national leaders to save us. We have to rebuild the culture and practice of democracy from the ground up—not just as an ideal, but as a lived experience.

This doesn’t mean everyone can be reached. Some are too deeply invested in grievance, or too entangled in conspiratorial thinking, to engage in good faith. But many others are simply trying to make sense of a world that no longer feels coherent. For them, the challenge isn’t persuasion—it’s providing another path to belonging.

The story of America is contested, as it always has been. But the storytellers have changed, and the stage has fractured. What we’re witnessing is not just a political fight—it’s a cultural realignment. The real battle is over meaning: who belongs, who decides, and what kind of future is worth building.

If we want to meet this moment, we need more than policy proposals. We need a public narrative rooted in dignity, care, and shared responsibility—and we need the material conditions that make that story believable. The vision is already out there, scattered across movements, communities, and everyday acts of solidarity. The task now is to gather those pieces, name them clearly, and begin again.

Suggested Readings:

Biehl, João, and Peter Locke, eds. Unfinished: The Anthropology of Becoming. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017.

Brown, Wendy. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York: Zone Books, 2015.

Cramer, Katherine J. The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Hochschild, Arlie Russell. Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. New York: The New Press, 2016.

Klein, Naomi. Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.

Sassen, Saskia. Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014.

Sarkar, Prabhat Ranjan. The Liberation of Intellect: Neo-Humanism. Calcutta: Ananda Marga Publications, 1982.

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

Vélez-Ibáñez, Carlos G. The Rise of Necro/Narco-Citizenship: Belonging and Dying in the National Borderlands. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2025.