McKelvey, Charles. The MAGA Phenomenon: A Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist Analysis. Columbia, South Carolina: Vanguard Press, 2025.
A political analysis that defends MAGA’s economic and cultural nationalism, while calling upon the MAGA movement to move beyond opposition to endless wars toward consistent anti-imperialism. A thoughtful outside-the-box book. Reasonably priced. Available as Ebook and paperback through Amazon. Ideal supplementary text for college courses in political science and sociology.
Book Description
A collection of twenty-six commentaries on the Trump phenomenon and the MAGA movement, written during the period stretching from the Republican National Convention of 2024 to the closing of the first 100 days of the second Trump administration. The essays analyze the MAGA project from a Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist perspective. They take notice of the support of the movement among workers and small-town and rural America; the gradually increasing support by respectable conservative think tanks and colleges; the ethnic and gender diversity of the movement’s leadership in practice; and the irrational opposition of the mainstream media and establishment institutions. They maintain that the themes of Trump and MAGA are reasonable reactions to US economic, political, and cultural decadence, stressing in this regard MAGA’s emphasis on improving the productivity of the national economy; its desire to rectify various forms of lawlessness; its appreciation of the democratic tradition of the nation and the West, even as past social sins are recognized; and its desire to formulate a coherent and credible national narrative and to renovate national culture. These characteristics are like the dynamics of the people’s revolutions of the Global South, except for the MAGA movement’s lack of consistent anti-imperialist consciousness, which reflects its emergence on the colonizer side of the colonial divide. The commentaries emphasize that the MAGA movement rose to political power on the basis of an anti-establishment platform that included rejection of the neoliberal economic policies and the neoconservative militarism of recent decades. It seeks in essence not the resurrection of the fallen American Empire but the renewal of the American Republic, based in its historic principles of economic and political liberty. Its anti-globalism potentially places it against the economic structures and cultural assumptions of the neocolonial world-system.
Table of Contents
Preface
JD Vance and the future of MAGA: An emerging partial ideological reconceptualization
Kamala, candidate of the establishment: Trump, Vance, and RFK form anti-establishment coalition
Factors driving the Trump phenomenon: The MAGA movement now looks to the future with hope
What Trump should do now: Toward the consolidation of the MAGA revolution
A critique of MAGA from real socialism: Economic nationalism as cooperation with the world
MAGA and the working class: The MAGA movement confirms the formulation of Marx
Trump proclaims a golden age for America: An open-minded take on Trump’s Inaugural Address
Trump’s economic plan for America: A non-imperialist proposal for bolstering the economy
Unregulated & uncontrolled immigration: Trump rectifies the crime of the political establishment
The national turn against DEI: Renewing the progressive idea of equal opportunity for all
Rubio betrays MAGA on Cuba: Let the people say, “Up with MAGA! Down with Rubio!”
Renewing American identity and values: The people are rising to save the American republic
The causes of illegal immigration: Toward North-South cooperation and greater productivity
Ethnocentric and practical geopolitics: Trump’s outside-the-box approach to foreign affairs
Trump seeks peace in Ukraine: A new paradigm of win-win cooperation is announced
The people reclaim the republic: A true-Marxist analysis of the MAGA movement
The proposed US-Ukraine minerals deal: When “America First” becomes win-win cooperation
The problem of bureaucracy: We can restore American national dignity and honor
The right of nations to impose tariffs: A principle established from the Global South
Equality of opportunity versus DEI: The black demand for equality of opportunity for all
The need for a Black-MAGA alliance: Toward the consolidation of the MAGA movement
Restoring truth to American history: True understanding in world-historical context
Trump imposes global economic reset: Toward mutually beneficial trade among nations
Trump pauses economic reset to negotiate: The quest for new trade arrangements ought to proceed
A critique of Atilio Borón: A perfect illustration of misreading Trump and MAGA
Trump’s 100 days interview with TIME: The road to consistent anti-imperialism