Diving deep into MAGA

A virtual fistfight has broken out in the US between Elon Musk on the one side and Steve Bannon (Trump’s chief strategist in his first term and a leading light now of the Make America Great Again movement) over the H-1B visa programme which has benefitted many Indians.

Musk wants the H-1B to continue; Bannon wants to root it out. Bannon feels that the foreign workers allowed through the H-1B undercut American tech workers. This is the first challenge the MAGA people face in Trump’s second term: whose side will Trump take?

Trump used MAGA to defeat Hillary Clinton and win his first term. It could be argued that Clinton could have defied MAGA by campaigning in the Blue Wall states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin). With Kamala Harris there was no such excuse. MAGA crushed her.

Trump’s botched assassination where he took a bullet to his face yet responded with fight, fight, fight became a rallying cry for the MAGA movement. MAGA can also be described as America First. Trump took a few steps in his first term to implement America First.

He made NATO members pay their fair share to NATO to defend themselves. He avoided war and tried to make peace with North Korea (which India is doing now). MAGA has been compared to MAWA (Make America White Again).

This is somewhat true. If Trump cancels the H-1B programme and deports millions of Third World residents in the US, he would be making America a fair bit paler. But MAGA advocates like Vivek Ramaswamy insist that MAGA only wants to uphold the law of the land; that foreigners should be let in the US only legally.

There is no doubt that America First energizes the majority white community in the US. The Nation First ideology has been taken up by other nations as well. In India, we never really had India First. We jumped straight into Hindutva, simply put Hindu First. MAGA threatens to become majoritarian first. Hindutva is already majoritarian first.

It’s unclear if MAGA is a core belief for Trump or simply a ruse to get elected. He didn’t implement many America First programmes in his first term. His second term cabinet is choc a bloc with people who put Trump First, not America First.

In the fight over the H-1B, Trump first took the side of Musk. But when faced with a backlash from his MAGA voters, he has appeared to backtrack. MAGA voters are really sullen. They voted in Trump to power the first time and got pretty much nothing to show for it. It’s unclear how many Third World residents in the US Trump deported, but the number remains small.

This time the MAGA people don’t want to be had no more. They are convinced that they are the ones who have voted Trump to power and they plan to exact significant benefits from him.

Can MAGA be compared to the Nazi movement? Yes and no. It’s true that the majority of Germans felt defeated when Hitler came to power in 1933, and they blamed the Jewish minority for their plight. The law of the land was tossed aside in Germany to persecute Jews.

MAGA people feel they only want to uphold the law of the land, especially when it comes to immigration. White extinction anxiety has gripped them. They want to throw illegal aliens out of the country. The question is whether white extinction anxiety morphs into a witch-hunt against legally resident nonwhites in the US.

Trump is no Hitler. He has appointed many people of Indian origin to high places in his second administration. But taking the country back is the constant refrain of all Nation First movements. MAGA could prove to be no different. Until now, the US has served as a magnet for foreigners of all shades and stripes.

Will that continue, even if the foreigners come in legally? That is the question that the MAGA movement, and its chief, Donald Trump need to answer. MAGA people think that first and foremost, they are American patriots. Being a patriot for them means being born in the USA. Will they go overboard and discriminate against nonwhite people in the US who are not born in the US, who may not have the right accent or follow the majoritarian religion? The next four years shall tell.