"DeMAGAfication" is a term I've read a few times. I assume we should attribute to political analyst Paul Krugman. It's about seizing influence and power from MAGA.
This is something I think about a great deal...that Trump's demise will not end the MAGA white supremacist movement among Republicans and Independents. The U.S.A. has since its beginning been a nation that defends white Christian male supremacy and commits atrocities in defense of it. But MAGA must end. Right wing extremism -- like any other extreme beliefs among political and religious groups -- is anathema to democracy, liberty, justice, an empathetic society, and progress toward these ideals.
Is MAGA a mindset? How should each of us think about this? Is it our responsibility alone to end the fascist plague? Do we put our faith in the voting process or in a political party? Should we invest our personal resources in survival mode? What should happen to MAGA leaders and the oligarchs who funded both the movement and Project 2025? How should the U.S.A. disempower its extremist tendencies and groups?
First and most important – more vital than a strong military or business economy – is a thriving public education system. The principles on which this nation stood were in the minds and work of poets, playwrights, philosophers, authors, and religious leaders long before nations established powerful militaries and industries. Freedom, justice, welfare, philanthropy, democracy, representation, liberty, equality, opportunity, happiness – these ideas did not germinate and grow among established religious entities and military hierarchies who existed (and exist now) to protect the wealthy ruling classes. These ideas began in the minds of independent critical thinkers.
Today in 2026, who stands out among the resistance to MAGA and extremist policies? Poets, writers, analytical thinkers, philosophers, creators, artists, and social activists. Whose resistance is the slowest, weakest, and quietist? The organized power brokers in the Democratic party, wealthy white Americans, corporate journalists, wealthy religious leaders, and wealthy minority groups. If they are wealthy and powerful, they aren’t resisting in measurable, systematic, communicable, publicly noticeable ways. We feel alone because we are.
MAGA is a mindset like fascism and authoritarianism that germinates and grows in the fertile soil of oppressive religious practice, oligarchic power, an uneducated majority population, an elitist entitled wealthy population, widespread economic collapse, apathy, and isolationism. People embrace movements when they feel their power and hope disintegrating. People shun political and religious movements when they possess control over their own lives and futures.
We don’t give up what we don’t have. But we give up what we have when someone promises the sacrifice is an investment; we give up what we have when we want to see others falter worse than we have faltered; we give up what we have when we believe our neighbors are our enemies; and we willingly give up what we have when our core beliefs are magnified in a movement’s leaders. This is never about material possessions. This is about freedom, justice, empathy, integrity, dignity, and the pursuit of happiness.
Every day and across the U.S.A., people give up their possessions – abandon storage units, put mattresses at the curbs and dumpsters when they move, have yard sales, pawn jewelry and guns, disappear – but only under the direst of circumstances will people abandon their self-respect and hope. Extremist movements rely on it…as well as on the upper classes who want only to see their lessers suffer and white supremacy flourish.
When the end of this right-wing fascist revival experiences its downfall, we as community and nation must grapple with the fact that we let this happen. We allowed right wing policies to erode the strength of our public education system. A thriving public education system is our first obligation.
A strong democracy, including the strength of its ideals such as liberty and justice for all, relies on a majority of educated critical thinkers who trust poets, historians, social activists, and artists over political, business, and religious leaders.
A great public education teaches critical thinking and problem-solving skills, empathy, strength in diversity, equal opportunity, and community. Students learn how to challenge their own ideas and the ideas that society tolerates. Students learn cooperation and collaboration. Students learn from daily experiences that people different from themselves share similar talents and expectations.
We can build a strong democracy on a generation of educated critical thinkers and problem-solvers. We cannot build a strong democracy on a strong military industry or a minority class of oligarchs or a large population of religious True Believers. These groups are both shaped and strengthened by their exclusivity, selfishness, distrust of all others, self-serving ideologies. Authoritarianism is the foundation of their existence.
The first step of “deMAGAfication” is to rebuild our public education system…rebuild it on a foundation of inclusivity, empathy, critical thinking, humanity, fairness, the arts and humanities, mental wellness, and equality. Because “deMAGAfication” will rely on a new generation of Americans who despise what White Christian Male Supremacy brought us to.