'Mass delusion': Expert points out 4 major traits that make MAGA a 'cult'

In an article for the New Republic published Monday, analyst Poulomi Saha analyzed why several political observers insist that President Donald Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement is a cult.

"It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the word cult affixed itself to Donald Trump and his movement. It may have been as early as 2016, when, weeks before the Iowa caucus, Trump declared with god-man-like aplomb that he could shoot someone in Times Square and not lose a vote," wrote Saha, who serves as the co-director of the Program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley.

"It may have been mid-2018, when Bob Corker, a Republican senator from Tennessee, fretted as he left office about the 'cultish' turn in the party. Or maybe it can be traced to a New York Timeseditorial board op-ed, published a few days before Corker’s comments made the news, which nervously noted the rapid transformation of the Republican Party into a machine for devotion to a single mortal. Certainly, by January 6, 2021, and the mouth-frothing fervor of Stop the Steal, cult had gone from being a political jab to a term of art, widely employed to describe the apparently invincible thrall in which Trumpism holds millions of Americans," she noted.

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Saha argued that MAGA supporters suffer from "a mass delusion fueled by charisma, shared grievance, aspiration, and a stubborn rejection of inherited truths," adding, "Trumpism bears no small resemblance to these insular, shadowy communities of faith and heterodoxy that have enthralled and entertained us."

The author observed that the tendency to interpret MAGA through this lens is partly driven by the explosion of cult-themed narratives in popular culture. From Wild Wild Country, which chronicles the rise and collapse of Rajneesh and his free-love movement amid Reagan-era materialism, to The Vow, detailing how NXIVM evolved from a self-help program into a human trafficking operation, fascination with cult dynamics is everywhere.

According to the author, documentaries like Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey on Warren Jeffs’s fundamentalist Mormon sect and The Deep End on spiritual influencer Teal Swan highlight the public's ongoing obsession with charismatic leaders and scandalous revelations.

Across major streaming services — Netflix, Hulu, Max, Disney+, and Prime—over sixty cult documentaries are available, spanning themes from sex and UFOs to apocalyptic prophecy and spiritual enlightenment, she wrote.

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"A standard assumption about groups that share unconventional beliefs and rituals is that, by declaring them a cult and pushing them outside the bounds of acceptable society, we can curtail their influence. Indeed, that is precisely what these documentaries aim to do; to show and then contain the dangers that cults pose to the social compact," Saha asserted.

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