 In March, Batya Ungar-Sargon — deputy opinion editor of Newsweek — went on Real Time with Bill Maher. During the show’s panel discussion, Ungar-Sargon described herself as “a MAGA leftist.” She then launched into a lengthy pitch for why Donald Trump is the true progressive in American politics. Ungar-Sargon touted his supposedly “socially moderate, anti-war, and… protectionist… leftist agenda.” In reality, Trump’s agenda is nothing of the sort. He is not socially moderate. During his first term, Trump appointed the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade (and might come for contraception next). He also opposes gay marriage and weed legalization, and made demonizing transgender people a focal point of his 2024 campaign. While Trump — a twice divorcee — hardly embodies traditionalist values himself, his political impact squarely pushes in that direction. The Republican policy blueprint Project 2025 even suggests banning pornography despite Trump appearing in the softcore film Video Centerfold. On foreign policy, there is little daylight between Trump and the neoconservative old guard he claims to have buried. In his first term, Trump increased drone strikes and shredded the Iran nuclear deal. He radically expanded American troop presence in Afghanistan. Rather than end the most unpopular war in American history, he intensified it. Following October 7th, Trump has consistently been among the biggest cheerleaders of Israel’s war of elimination in Gaza. On the campaign trail, Trump made clear his biggest problem with the genocide is that it hasn’t been bloody enough. When Trump issued his 90-day foreign aid pause, he took care to exempt the Zionist entity. As for trade, Trump’s protectionism is neither here nor there. Barriers to trade are not inherently leftist. Joe Biden erected, maintained, and heightened plenty of them. So did George W. Bush, whose infamous steel tariffs destroyed nearly 200,000 jobs. This blunder did not make Bush, the posterboy of neoconservative rot, economically progressive. For that, look to the Communist Party of China. Its open trade policies spurred unprecedented development that lifted over 850 million people from poverty in just 50 years. Meanwhile, unambiguously rightist governments throughout history like fascist Italy and Nazi Germany collapsed living standards via autarky. Despite what Ungar-Sargon suggests, trade openness does not neatly map onto a left-right political spectrum. What truly determines the political orientation of a trade regime is whose interests it serves. A progressive one must primarily serve the working class, which Trump’s does not. His indiscriminate and unnecessarily high blanket tariffs will only exacerbate the inflation crisis already squeezing American wallets. The pretext for this policy was helping domestic businesses by making foreign producers uncompetitive. But countries have predictably responded by imposing their own tariffs, constricting the market for American goods. To make matters worse, this economic battle crashed the stock market — spelling doom for workers with investment retirement plans. In short, MAGA leftism is not a thing. Even Maher, in a rare moment of lucidity, recognized this. When Ungar-Sargon identified herself as “a MAGA leftist,” he immediately replied with, “That makes no sense.” For those familiar with Midwestern Marx’s work, MAGA leftism will probably remind them of MAGA communism. While the wording is strikingly similar, the two phrases have totally different definitions. Unlike MAGA leftism, MAGA communism does not claim that Trump’s agenda is progressive. Indeed, MAGA communism’s biggest proponents — like Jackson Hinkle of the American Communist Party — regularly criticize Trump’s conservative policies. Rather, MAGA communism is simply a mode of outreach to the disaffected and irreverent workers in Trump’s base. It is about harnessing conservative aesthetics to successfully sell them leftist ideas like ending “globalist” imperialism and nationalizing Big Tech. MAGA communism does not presume that Trump himself is a communist. It merely acknowledges that his working-class base can and should be part of the transition to a socialist future. To that end, MAGA communists like Hinkle meet American workers where they are, using patriotic imagery/rhetoric to pitch communism. It is a good strategy, and an authentically Marxist one. Karl Marx famously called upon all workers of the world to unite. He did not divide the working class along partisan or even cultural lines. Rather, Marx recognized that — whatever differences exist between workers — their material interests align. Every worker has an interest in overthrowing capitalism: the corporatist labyrinth that keeps their wages low and lives brutish. American politics, in recent years, has experienced massive class dealignment. Earnings no longer predict voting patterns. The evidence is staggering. Cornell University separated voters in the 2024 election into three income brackets: <$50,000, $50,000-$99,999, and ≥$100,000. All of them split roughly 50-50 between Trump and Kamala Harris. This suggests American workers on the whole do not see their class interests as clearly aligning with either major party. And that means there is an opening for communists to make their case. The American Communist Party is seizing this opportunity by entering working-class communities and showing them who has their back. Party members conduct food drives and neighborhood cleanups to meet people’s immediate needs — regardless of their partisan affiliation. They also politically educate communities, fitting the case for communism to the American context and cultural mores. In other words, members of the American Communist Party practice MAGA communism. The strategy is alive and well. And it should remain so, as long as we believe in the working class’s ability to change its conditions. Author Youhanna Haddad is a North American Marxist of the Arab diaspora. Through his writing, he seeks to combat the Western liberal dogmas that uphold racial capitalism. You can contact him at [email protected]. Archives May 2025
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