I’m writing today for The Big Picture substack. Since I’m still in the thick of it, here’s how my team teased the piece yesterday:
___
People often say of Donald Trump’s presidency and his MAGA movement, “The cruelty is the point.”
But this statement, while true, can feel pretty circular. What is the actual goal of a regime that is being as cruel and vicious as it can, not just to immigrants, women and sexual minorities, but even to its own voters whom it is actively harming through its policies?
How can that be a sustainable practice politically?
Jay Kuo explores this phenomenon of the modern right, what authoritarian expert Timothy Snyder calls “sadopopulism.” That a strongman like Trump could win democratic elections on a platform of cruelty and pain may seem counterintuitive, but it is in fact part of a time-tested playbook. We need to first identify it for what it is, why it’s working, and how it’s driving the modern fascist MAGA ethos.
___
If you’re already subscribed to The Big Picture, my piece will land in your inboxes later this afternoon. If you’re not yet subscribed, this is a great time to do so. If I may so say, I think this is one of the more important pieces I’ve written!
It’s free to subscribe, but we of course deeply appreciate all who join with a supporting paid subscription.
See you later this afternoon, and then back here tomorrow for my regular piece.
Jay
Heather Cox Richardson summed up today's GOP and tRumpism by likening it to the ante-bellum Confederacy, a wealthy, white-male dominated form of government that in practice was essentially a state-by-state autocracy, or known today as electoral authoritarianism. No women's rights, no minority rights, poor whites exploited by landowners, "law-and-order" and the courts tools for the ruling classes to suppress those below them. And this is what Project 2025 and tRumpism are bringing, a savage Hobbesian Leviathan that takes pleasure in violently oppressing those who oppose it.
We have been warned.
I recommend Tim Snyder’s book, “The Road to Unfreedom.” It’s been the Russian playbook since Stalin and now Trump is fitfully using it.