Nikki Haley, MAGA and the Confederacy: Time to purge these myths

Nikki Haley is not a racist. She showed formidable leadership as South Carolina governor, in the aftermath of the 2015 mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in her state. But as a former MAGA activist now working to persuade people to leave the MAGA movement, I see Haley’s recent comments on the Civil War and slavery in a particular light. They reflect the intense white fright pervasive in MAGA supporters as a result of continuous demographic change, and they affirm that a demythologization of historical nostalgia is necessary. 

There is more at work here than just “MAGA voters are racist.” Most with whom I once congregated and broke bread were not. I won’t label white racial hysteria on the right as “complicated,” but those suffering from white panic are often unaware that the conclusions they’ve drawn are largely molded by those deliberately sowing racial discord. This sowing has occurred since Day One of our nation.

Our species is change-adverse, generally speaking. Anxiety about America’s dwindling white population does not necessarily mean those who are anxious are racists or white supremacists. Furthermore, our species also tends to perceive change as happening more rapidly than it actually occurs in reality.

MAGA and far-right mythologies exploit these natural fears in apocalyptic terms. I’m not defending ignorance, but MAGA-friendly politicians and pundits traumatize their voters and audiences, seeking to make them desperate and panicked that the visible changes around them are occurring too quickly. Such mythologies do not merely change one’s identity; the effects go much further than that. These mythologies change something inside people — the unseen parts, like our souls. Some pernicious alteration occurs. I am living proof, however, that such alterations need not be permanent; those defending Haley’s comments have likely been transformed in such a way by MAGA messaging and right-wing ideology.  

More than any other nation in world history, America’s identity and ethos are rooted in mythologies. Many will say that those with the most influence are those who control the information flow; I don’t entirely disagree, but I’d argue that those who control the shaping and inculcation of history may wield the most influence. And let’s remember that influence can be for better or worse. 

MAGA politicians and pundits are shameless, and while competing with shamelessness is a Herculean task, it is not always a Sisyphian or impossible one. When I was myself a devoted MAGA member, I allowed myself to view the world wholly through perceptions, not reality. Those who process the world around them that way are far more susceptible to falling prey to traumatic right-wing mythologies. 

It is easier to succumb to right-wing desperation and panic-inducing rhetoric than most realize. I maintain that the singular biggest mistake the Democratic Party has made over the last generation has been it’s complete buy-in on the premise that demographics is destiny. Broadly speaking, the center-left was convinced that this political manifest destiny would push right-wing mythologies to the fringes or extinguish them completely. This was a grave error, which only helped keep such mythologies at the forefront of the GOP’s political offering. 

MAGA voters are overwhelmingly white, and are well aware that America will become a majority-minority nation within the next few decades, if not sooner, given our historically low birth rates and decreasing life expectancy, the latter virtually unique among developed nations. Politicians and pundits whom the MAGA community follow have traumatized their followers to conclude that the imminent minority status of white people also means they will become a marginalized group. 

Though I cannot know what is in the hearts of the MAGA movement’s political trauma merchants and elected leaders, including Nikki Haley, I doubt they actually believe most (if any) of what they say. As if on autopilot, Haley regurgitated the revisionist-history talking points of the cult of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. It is often said that history is written by the victors, but this is not quite accurate when it comes to American teachings about the Civil War. That war’s losers, and its Lost Cause mythologizers, continue to influence our perception 160 years later, as evidenced by Haley’s answers. 

Predictably, Haley entered into her sunk-cost fallacy phase overnight; rather than attempt to clarify her whitewashing, she accused Joe Biden and the Democrats of planting, as a mole or stooge, the gentleman who asked her about the Civil War. (For a guy the right wing claims is suffering from dementia, Biden appears agile at rigging elections and infiltrating Republican town halls). 

I dislike “gotcha” questions, but the Civil War question posed to Haley was no such thing. But the trauma, desperation and white panic inflicted on MAGA voters (including me, formerly) render them easily convinced of the existence of myriad “Big Plot” conspiracies concocted by Democrats, RINOs, globalists and other malignant actors. If Haley thinks that was a “gotcha,” she’s egregiously unprepared to manage conflicts with Russia, Iran or North Korea. 

Although Haley acted correctly in working to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse in 2015, after the mass shooting perpetrated by a Lost Cause supporter at the oldest Black church in the American South, she has never been entirely comfortable with that decision. Her unfortunate but unsurprising whiff on the Civil War question offers a valuable lesson: America needs not a Great Awakening but a Great Demythologization — on white fright, on the Second Amendment, on “we’re a republic, not a democracy” (spoiler alert: we’re both), on unbridled, unregulated, free-market “bootstrap” capitalism as a miracle elixir. Economic anxiety, I will remind everyone, was one of the primary reasons Trump won in 2016.

---

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

---

Because they have been traumatized, and made desperate and panicky, many MAGA voters — who are mostly good people, and had some valid reasons for supporting Trump — don’t see the contradiction about race that is directly in front of them. In my conversations with fellow MAGA members, I don’t recall any that dismissed the abhorrence of slavery. There was, however, considerable apprehension about the increase in national conversations about anti-Black racism begotten by the election of Barack Obama and then by George Floyd’s murder. 

The MAGA creed proclaims that Black people have long since achieved equal rights, but rationalizes that America’s “culture” and “values” — code phrases for a system in which white heterosexual Christians hold virtually all positions of power and influence, political or otherwise — are irreversibly disappearing. This is the contradiction MAGA members can’t see, because they are emotionally, morally, spiritually and financially invested in a mythological America of yesteryear — the supposed apogee of our greatness — and it is immensely difficult for them to see that they have been manipulated into racial desperation and panic. 

It doesn’t help that much of our national press may never recover from the shock of missing the grassroots support for Trump in 2016, and so we get endless apologias for Trump, along with a delusional, obsessive media yearning to save the GOP from Trump. (The right wing’s “liberal media” myth has provided an enormous return on investment.)  

As I said earlier, America’s identity is defined by mythologies. Some are aspirational, like the continued perfection of our Union. Some are traumatic, like extolling the Confederacy as a noble Lost Cause, and omitting slavery as the Civil War’s principal cause for a revisionist narrative about states’ rights. Fewer Americans today revere the Confederacy than did in prior generations, but to better understand why these traumatic mythologies still hold power, we must gain a more complete understanding of the past. 

For those with friends or family still in the MAGA movement, I’d say this: To some extent they’ve been made this way; racial desperation and panic are almost certainly factored into their support. Please do not give up on them; when I left MAGA, I was able to repair relationships with those I had regarded as enemies. I’m living proof that those in MAGA can leave it behind. It’s not painless, but it’s liberating. Self-forgiveness and inner peace are possible. 

If you’re a MAGA supporter reading this right now, know that I do not consider you racist, stupid, uncouth, evil or lacking in integrity. You do not deserve ostracism, but you have been led astray. Only you can save yourself; it is never too late.