"Eating Their Own"
by Sheila Kennedy
"As the midterms approach, the media is increasingly focused on the Democratic infighting that I’ve referred to as the party’s “circular firing squad.” Those “purity” battles are especially unwelcome right now, when ousting members of the racist cult that controls the GOP is Job One – and critical to national survival. Because a lazy media is focused primarily on Democratic squabbles, it has largely missed the far more vicious MAGA infighting. A recent, really brilliant essay by Rick Wilson at LIncoln Square compared that infighting to the long history of revolutions that ate their own.
Wilson began by placing MAGA within that “entirely predictable pattern of revolutionary excess.” He relates some of that history: Robespierre and the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks, Pol Pot. And he argues that, while revolutions start with enemies outside the gates, they inevitably discover more enemies within them. MAGA is by no means revolutionary France, Bolshevik Russia, or Democratic Kampuchea; it is in fact more chaotic, more foolish, more devoted to carbohydrates, and less able to understand history. But the political psychology is recognizable.
Wilson enumerates the MAGA rifts that continue to expand, pointing out that, “as Trump grows weaker, MAGA constantly requires fresh proof of ideological purity.” There’s the battle between MAGA isolationists and hawks over Israel and Trump’s insane war in Iran – “the isolationists think Trump betrayed them by starting the war. The hawks think Trump betrayed them by trying to end it.” Then there’s the continuing coverup of the Epstein files, a coverup that “denied MAGA the apocalypse it had promised itself,” and led former Trump stalwarts (think Carlson, Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene) to abandon him.
There’s also the war within MAGA’s media ecosystem. For a decade, right-wing media and social media arms of the revolution had one organizing principle: Donald Trump. Now that the decaying emperor is visibly knocking on death’s door, the succession has begun, and the courtiers are discovering ideological differences they spent years pretending didn’t exist.
Tucker Carlson. Ben Shapiro. Megyn Kelly. Candace Owens. Laura Loomer. Mark Levin. The Fuentes faction. The Israel hawks. The Israel skeptics. The white nationalists. The anti-vax loons. The conspiracy entrepreneurs. The people denouncing the conspiracy entrepreneurs as grifters. The coalition that once spent its evenings hunting liberals now spends more of its time hunting one another for ideological imperfections.
As Wilson notes, an outrage economy requires outrage. With “Daddy Trump’s physical and mental declines joining his failures on every topic they cared about,” cannibalism offers more fury than the Democrats.
Then there’s the very definition of America First. What is the Revolution for, beyond the aggrandizement of the Dear Leader? That was enough for a long run, but no longer. Trump held these contradictions together because Trump never really had an ideology… He was a personality cult with a licensing agreement.
Wilson points out that taking just the House in November will “dramatically accelerate the MAGA crackup.” Trump, of course, will blame congressional Republicans. (Congressional Republicans will probably blame a “secret cabal of communists.”) A House loss means investigations. Hearings. Subpoenas. Legislative showdowns. Republican members scrambling to explain who lost the majority. They know who lost it: the gibbering orange lardsack currently besmirching 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with his white-trash decorating obsessions and monomania…
The isolationists will blame Iran. The hawks will blame Iran … after all, if only we’d just nuked Tehran, it would have all been solved. The immigration absolutists will blame insufficient deportations and not enough murders of American protestors. The populists will blame Wall Street. The donor class will blame the populists. Everyone will blame the GOP’s utterly venal consultant class, which is admittedly one revolutionary tradition I completely endorse.
Then comes 2028. Succession becomes real when the Dear Leader’s physical and political power starts to crack, and Trump’s is cracking like a Faberge egg on the floor of a biker bar. The revolutionary leader cannot rule forever until some AI dork can upload him to the cloud, which, thankfully, still seems a bit far off.
The knives are out. MAGA is a revolutionary effort, and Wilson reminds us that revolutions “cannot tolerate ordinary disagreement. Every policy failure must therefore have an explanation involving betrayal, sabotage, or insufficient faith in the Cause.”
MAGA spent ten years teaching its voters that losing is evidence of treason. They were told over and over that the Democrats weren’t opposition, but pure evil. They were told compromise is surrender, institutions are conspiracies, experts are corrupt, and insufficient loyalty to Donald Trump is the greatest political sin. Now those rules are being applied inside the movement. You really need to read the whole, bracing essay. MAGA’s civil war isn’t enough, obviously – but it’s a beginning: "Is The MAGA Fever Abating?"
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