Yes, Trumpism Is A Cult. So What Do We Do Now?

It's not hyperbole to say Trumpism is a cult, but how do we deprogram Trump supporters when there is no compound to rescue them from?

Trump supporters watch a video featuring their candidate inside the Erie Insurance Arena before a political rally for former President Donald Trump. Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images.

Trumpism has all the trappings of a classic cult of personality: a charismatic figure at the center who is worshiped as a modern messiah by his followers; a leader who seemingly can do no wrong, even while engaged in patterns of criminal behavior to grift money from them; a master manipulator who controls the behavior, thoughts, information and emotions of his flock. 

Sound about right?

It’s becoming more common and accepted these days to speak openly about the “Cult of Trumpism.” Trump himself disdains the negative connotations of the word, and he even sued CNN unsuccessfully after the network aired that he was “like a cult leader.” Others have warned that Trumpism is more about a neo-fascist, authoritarian movement with Christian Nationalism and white supremacy at its center, and that calling it a “cult” lets its followers off the hook too much for their adherence.

Still, it’s hard to observe the fanaticism around Trump and listen to the sheer ignorance of his followers, and conclude anything other than that Trumpism is a cult. We can see this in Trump’s poll numbers, at least among the party faithful: As the indictment walls close in on the ex-president, GOP voters are rallying more strongly to his side, and he now utterly dominates the field of Republican presidential contenders.

Recent polling shows that MAGA voters trust Trump even more than their own family, friends, and faith leaders, with 62 percent of likely primary voters supporting him. And a poll back in 2019 showed that nearly two-thirds of Trump’s supporters believed there was nothing Trump could possibly do that would cause them to reconsider their support. This confirmed his now infamous claim that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, and he still wouldn’t lose any voters. They’d support him nevertheless. In fact, they’d probably love him more.

So yeah, it’s a cult. But what do we, as a nation currently deeply afflicted by this cult, do now?

Specifically, if Trump is to be defeated, as other political cult leaders have been in the past, what can history teach us about how to best bring this about? 

And how should we treat Trump cultists who are clearly within his power and thrall? Some of those people are deep in the MAGA rushes and apparently not easily extricated. And a good number of them are our families, friends and neighbors. Is there hope that they will eventually be “deprogrammed” from their delusion?

Today’s piece examines what a number of experts in cults have studied and said about Trumpism. We’ll hear from former cult members turned social activists, as well as from historians and political scientists who can help contextualize this madness that has gripped a good portion of the American electorate. 

In the end we’ll sound a hopeful note for how we can, and why we ultimately will, rid ourselves of Trumpism and stop it from spreading further—provided we can stay focused on its causes and its eventual cure.

The meta MAGA compound

Peter Sagan recently penned a fascinating piece in The Atlantic optimistically titled “The End Will Come for the Cult of MAGA.” As a key part of it, he interviewed author Steve Hassan, who wrote The Cult of Trump back in 2019. There was this astute observation:

The danger is metastasizing, Hassan said, thanks primarily to digital and social media, which take the place of sermons and indoctrination sessions. “We’re on our phones 10 hours a day. People are up all night getting fed YouTube videos,” he said. “You don’t need a compound anymore.”

This was a keen insight. The “traditional” way cult leaders gained control of their followers was to literally lock them inside a compound, where the flow of information, their relationships to others, and their entire personal life was tightly controlled by the head of the cult and his high-ranking leaders. Hassan calls it the “BITE” model of cult mind control—standing for behavior, information, thought, and emotion.

But why build a physical compound when you’ve got something far more 21st century-insidious and successful? Trumpism today relies on a virtual compound, with walls made of social media algorithms, extremist cable “news” channels, and right-wing talk radio. Today’s MAGA cultists are siloed in information bubbles and fed a constant stream of hate and disinformation. Taken together, it’s far more effective at distorting reality than even a physical compound’s walls.

But the notion of a virtual compound with tens of millions locked inside, frightening as that may sound, also means that self-extraction is perhaps more easily achievable. In the old days, to leave a cult compound required a risky physical escape, usually self-initiated. (As Hassan notes, kidnapping cultists from their compounds only tended to reinforce the narrative that the “outside” world is evil and powerful and not to be trusted.)

Today, deprogramming could begin the very moment when Trumpist cult members wander outside their information bubbles and come to suspect that their leader is not who they believed him to be. But as with cultists behind physical walls, those behind informational walls need to find their own way out. 

We’ve seen this in extreme cases when it comes to some of the January 6 insurrectionists. Many of them, faced with the cold reality of prison sentences, wound up renouncing Trump and even condemning him for leading them astray. It isn’t 100 percent effective, but if the hardest of the hard-core Trumpers can turn on their leader after facing the consequences of their actions, the ultimate unmasking of Trump as a criminal and a charlatan through legal accountability similarly could break the spell with many other Americans. 

Trumpism is being enabled by powerful forces

Deprogramming millions is no simple task. In fact, getting Trump out of the spotlight may prove quite difficult. That’s because Trump doesn’t wield power through force of personality alone. In his excellent commentary, “If Trump Falls, Will MAGA Vanish? It Won’t Be That Easy,” Chauncey Devega of Salon points out that there are many other big forces at work. He writes,

One of the most important dimensions of Trump's position as a fascist cult leader—and one little discussed by the mainstream media and political class—is that he could not possibly hold such power and influence over his MAGA followers without assistance and support from many others.

Devega notes that there is infrastructure behind the MAGA cultist movement, from the Republican Party to White evangelical churches, to what amounts to state-run media on Fox. Throw in some billionaire right-wing donors, far-right think tanks, and a few purchased members of the Supreme Court, and it’s a solid red army to take into the 2024 election, all waving the Trumpist flag.

But how strong and long-lasting will the support of these groups and organizations be? In many ways, their allegiance is transactional in nature. Evangelicals and right-wing interest groups like the Federalist Society supported Trump because it got them a far-right majority on SCOTUS that led to the dismantling of 50 years of abortion rights. Now that they have their way, they have their hands full protecting that win from angry voters. 

Similarly, the Fox network was fully on the Trump train—until it was hit with huge defamation lawsuits with nearly a billion dollars in exposure, leading it to change its tune. Trump has now soured on the Murdoch empire. 

And the billionaire donor class? They got their huge tax cut, but they sure would love to see it extended. If Trump isn’t the one to deliver that, they may and will turn elsewhere.

To be sure, many of these groups are also hungry for a different kind of leader who doesn’t come with as much crazy baggage, including  91 federal and state criminal charges. Some had pinned their hopes on Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida to be the new standard bearer of MAGA-style authoritarianism, only to discover that he has all the nastiness but none of the natural showmanship of Trump. These groups are coming to fully understand that the base is loyal to Trump and unlikely to abandon him by next election, so the groups won’t be leaving his side any time soon either.

GOP leadership is in much the same bind. Within the party, and especially in the House, top Trump acolytes wield enormous leverage, with MAGA lieutenants like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene threatening to hold the country economically hostage unless Trump gets his revenge on Joe Biden with impeachment hearings. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who hangs on to power with a threadbare majority, has been forced to play along, or he could be ousted overnight from power. 

Bottom line? So long as Trump is the GOP’s frontrunner and holds most of its primary voters in his thrall, we shouldn’t expect any of the institutional support for him to slip. Trump remains the only viable path to their returning to power, even if it is a very fraught one. So the Republican Party, the churches, right-wing media, and the billionaires will continue to back him because it is indisputably in their self-interest to do so. And while they may not be true believers, they will surely act like it.

Political cults end when accountability begins

So how does a political cult of personality end? Particularly one where the center figure is a populist demagogue with considerable financial resources and the support of a major party and media networks?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and Italian studies at NYU, cites the example of Italy’s former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. It has some striking parallels and important lessons for us with Trump and the U.S. today.

Ben-Ghiat describes Berlusconi, who died this summer, as a “flamboyant billionaire owner of a business, media and sports empire” whose “ownership of commercial television networks gave him more influence over the formation of public opinion than any Italian leader since Benito Mussolini — and established his personality cult as well.”

Like Trump, he exerted control over his political party, Forza Italia, and brought far-right elements into government while maintaining a friendly rapport with Vladimir Putin of Russia. He targeted undocumented immigrants and spoke nostalgically of fascist rule. And he got into trouble with the law. A lot.

When he faced credible corruption charges, he claimed he was the target of a “witch hunt” and an “incredible judicial persecution.” Sound familiar? He also worked actively to protect himself from accountability for old misdeeds while using delaying tactics to run out the clock on new charges. Okay, definitely familiar.

When Berlusconi lost the 2011 Italian election over a crisis in the Eurozone, he adopted a mantle of victimhood, and his adoring supporters supported him even more fervently. Eventually, however, he was convicted of tax fraud, false accounting, and embezzlement. There were further charges of sex with a minor, wiretapping, and bribery. As part of that conviction, there was importantly a five-year ban on his running for office. 

And ultimately, writes Ben-Ghiat, it was those convictions and ban that deflated his personality cult.

With Trump, it isn’t clear that criminal convictions alone will shake loose any of his supporters. But a thumping in November of 2024, should he be the Republican nominee, could do the trick. The powerful forces that are cynically aligned with him will soon grow tired of losing elections. 

Indeed, some on the right, including conservative members of the Federalist Society and respected jurist J. Michael Luttig of the Fourth Circuit, are now calling for Trump to be declared by courts to be ineligible to hold federal office. In support of this, they cite the Fourteenth Amendment’s ban on former oath swearers who engage in insurrection or give aid and support to the nation’s enemies. 

If the Supreme Court were to agree—and that’s a big if—it would be a seismic event within the GOP, and Trump would lose most of his relevance for those profiting from the MAGA movement.

Newcomers may find it hard to emulate Trump

Another important question is this: Let’s say Trump fades away. Will a younger, scarier version of him take his place? After all, Berlusconi died, but a new Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has openly embraced the same fascist principles, thankfully so far minus the open embrace of Putin’s Russia.

Trumpism succeeds in large part because of Trump’s unique stage presence, honed for years as a television personality and stadium spectacle speaker. His chief challenger, Gov. Ron DeSantis, played to the right of him on policy but failed to gain steam from it.

He just wasn’t Trump.

The only candidate currently on the GOP mainstage who appears to lie as regularly and fluidly as Trump is another wealthy fraudster, Vivek Ramaswamy, who may prove to be a flash in the pan or might just be running for Vice President after all. The fact is, so long as Trump is alive and kicking, even if from prison, his cult followers are unlikely to shift their allegiance to another after so long a period of Trumpist programming.

Demographic trends will crush MAGA electorally

Trumpism’s greatest enemy is the inexorable march of time. Trump’s most ardent followers are older voters who lament the demographic changes they see happening in America today. America was “great” in their minds when it was populated and governed by white people such as themselves, and not people like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris.

But younger voters are far less likely to be part of the MAGA cult. Millennials and Gen Z, which will make up more than 50 percent of the electorate by 2028, are far more progressive and anti-Trump than their parents. They grew up in an age of information siloing and disinformation, and they are better equipped than older generations to recognize and avoid the effects.

Further, they tend to better understand the gaslighting by MAGA extremists for what it is. Younger generations, who have grown up with active shooter drills, want sensible gun laws but are being told by Republicans that 40,000+ deaths a year is simply the price of personal freedom. Meanwhile, while touting the right to own a firearm, this is the same party that wants to strip other personal freedoms away, including abortion rights and gender-affirming care. Add to that the GOP’s climate denialism while the world swelters, floods, and burns, and younger voters have pretty much had it with the MAGA cult—especially if their parents and grandparents are in it. 

Returning to Sagan’s piece, which optimistically predicts the end of Trumpism at the hands of younger voters, his interview of Daniella Mesyanek Young was illuminating. Young was born into the sex cult of the Children of God and later earned her master’s in group psychology from Harvard’s extension program. And she had this prediction of the end of the Trumpist cult:

Twenty years ago,” she told me, “when I walked away from a cult, it was much rarer to meet Americans like me, who are completely estranged from their families because they wouldn’t follow one leader, one guru, one specific ideology. And now it’s very common. The way that cults die without a final, Jonestown-like conflagration is when they can’t recruit the next generation, and we are seeing this in the alt-right. We’re going to see young children of MAGA Republicans voting for the left.”

Election data support her argument. According to recent demographic studies of the most recent midterm and general elections, younger voters have been turning out in numbers never before seen and are proving decisive in key battleground states, the very places where the 2024 election will be decided. And they are voting overwhelmingly for Democrats—by some 63 percent in the most recent midterm elections.

Trumpism—and Republicanism generally—has no plan to win over this generation, just as they have no solid plan to woo large numbers of minority voters or suburban women. To the contrary, their policies, actions, and laws seem only to further alienate these groups. MAGA is caught up in its own extremist cult trap, and it is bringing the rest of the GOP down with it.

And what about Trump’s base? How are those millions of disaffected, rural, white evangelical voters feeling compared to before? One sign is already flashing that should be a warning for Trump and Trumpism: While polls show still broad support for the ex-president within his party, the outward manifestations of that support are waning. His rallies have failed to muster the numbers of the past, and there just doesn’t seem to be the same passion around him as before. And anecdotally, many more middle-of-the-road Trump voters are starting to feel exhausted by it all. It’s a slow but painful decoupling, according to Young:

They stop posting Facebook memes, put away the MAGA hat, get back into cooking or sports or whatever it was that interested them before Trump. As said, it’s tough to admit you’ve been conned, so they don’t publicly denounce their former beliefs—unless, of course, they’re trying to get a lighter sentence. Consider the ragged smattering of followers who’ve appeared at Trump’s various arraignments, the desultory showings at his recent rallies, the smaller and sadder group of loyalists who attend him at Mar-a-Lago.

It can sound like too much wolf-crying to say that the 2024 election is the most consequential one for the future of our nation. But the facts are these: It is almost certainly Trump’s last real chance to return to power, and if we defeat him now, either through the legal system or at the ballot box, he is highly unlikely to later grow in strength. 

If history is any guide, it’s only then that Trumpism as a political cult will fade, just as its namesake shall. And while something else certainly could rise to replace it, we will meet it with inoculating shots already in our civic arms.