Many more are ready to leave MAGA — and I know how hard that is

When I was a MAGA believer, I told myself I was fighting for freedom. I was certain we needed a revolution to tear down our established political order. 

It took me years to realize what I was really after: a sense of belonging.

Just like their liberal and moderate compatriots, most people inside the MAGA community sense that something in the country is amiss. Once you’ve built your identity around a cause, however, it’s painful to admit that identity may be based on falsehoods. Leaving doesn’t just mean changing your mind — it means losing your community, your purpose and the feeling that you matter.

I know this because I lived it. For years, I was so deep in MAGA that it strained my relationships with my wife and longtime friends. I even became a MAGA pundit, writing op-eds and hosting a podcast in the hopes of getting Trump’s attention.

My journey out of MAGA began when Ron DeSantis, the governor of my state, began to platform anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists. That led me to go back and learn what really happened at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. I felt shock. Grief. Guilt. Rage at myself. Shame.

For a full year, I vacillated between being in and out of MAGA. On one hand, I couldn’t come to terms with the casual acceptance of avoidable deaths and needless suffering, the lies, and the justification of violence. But on the other, MAGA’s gravitational pull remained formidable.

Then came the final straw: the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas. Shortly after that, I quietly left the movement. Three months later, I went public on Salon with my renunciation of MAGA and my opposition to Donald Trump.

Given my experience, I think I understand MAGA Americans pretty well, and my gut feeling is that most of them would agree that Trump is not an honest man. But after all these years, MAGA is bigger than one man, even if he remains its central figure. It’s a culture that offers recognition and validation to those who feel unseen and unheard. Aggrievement and isolation, perversely enough, became the glue that holds the community together. For many people, aligning with MAGA and Trump is almost literally a cry for help. Some of Salon’s readers will no doubt disagree with this, but I believe most in MAGA are good people who have been led astray, exploited and manipulated.

I can also tell you that there is a line of demarcation for many inside MAGA — a moment when the cruelty and chaos become too much. Many are facing their own versions of that moment right now, nearly a year into Trump’s catastrophic second term. There are moments of clarity, and although they usually have nothing to do with issues of policy or ideology to us, such moments do arrive. Don’t give up on your friends or family who are still loyal to MAGA. I understand the importance of this, because the people closest to me didn’t give up on me.

Some people still affiliated with MAGA are going through an existential crisis right now, as they gradually come to realize that they have believed years’ worth of lies. There are also the tariffs, the inhumane immigration policies, the blatant abridgement of constitutional rights and the story that won’t go away: the files pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex trafficker. We still don’t know exactly how close Trump was to Epstein’s crimes, but probably closer than he has let on.

We can be there for these when they have doubts, with empathy. Or we can shame and ostracize them. To leave MAGA, a person must accept responsibility for their past actions and rhetoric. For those who are ready for that kind of accountability, are you ready to welcome them?

Is online judgment really worth it?

One of the biggest reasons people don’t leave MAGA is fear — not just the fear of losing their community, but the fear of being rejected and ostracized by the rest of society for having participated in the movement. The judgment of others, whether real or imagined, keeps many people stuck. I was afraid of losing my de facto family of MAGA believers, including many people I’d grown close to.

Liberals aren’t wrong about the dangers of MAGA, but they don’t make it easy for people to leave. Ridicule and moral superiority can too easily close the door to honest dialogue, while empathy and understanding, difficult as they may be, open the path to genuine transformation.

I’m confident that many liberals would welcome those who walk away from MAGA. But the loudest voices offering only contempt and scorn are found — where else? — online.

I spend a lot of time online, like so many of us. I see how distorted that world is. Outrage is its currency. Misinformation, conspiracy theory and disinformation spread like mold in a flooded house, permeating so many discussions.

The explosion of social media around the time of Barack Obama’s election permanently changed our national political discourse. Political identity became a public performance. We saw the Tea Party rise and the explosion of anti-Obama animus fueled by new technology that capitalized on outrage and community-as-conflict.

How MAGA took root

Many people are drawn to MAGA because they feel left behind — economically, culturally and politically. When people experience loss or humiliation, they become vulnerable to movements that offer simple villains and a sense of community.

Liberals and anti-Trump Republicans have helped fuel the resentment among MAGA Americans. Terms such as “uneducated” and “flyover country” may seem casual, but they are received as hurtful insults that betray a deep contempt. Many people in MAGA already felt wounded — by political betrayal, economic instability and the feeling they had been forgotten. That pain made them more susceptible to Trump’s propaganda, and the right-wing influencers who magnified it many times over, recasting legitimate disaffection as proof of a grand “elite” conspiracy against true, patriotic Americans.

Inside MAGA, education is not encouraged; hostility to science, higher learning and expertise or intellectualism of any kind is pervasive. This doesn’t mean MAGA supporters lack intelligence or integrity — it means that the movement punishes any form of curiosity that might threaten its mythologies. I know this because I lived it. MAGA isn’t the only group trapped in an information silo, but none are sealed as tightly. MAGA is a closed, entirely conformist community, where open dissent and discussion are forbidden.

When I was immersed in MAGA, I didn’t realize how much I was manipulated by outrage. There was hardly a second when I wasn’t enraged at someone or something. I lived in a state of near-constant desperation, panic and fear — convinced that liberalism had failed, that everything was collapsing, and that only “we” could save the nation. What I couldn’t see was that the outrage was the control mechanism.

The work ahead won’t be easy

I truly believe that America’s divides are not permanent. But healing can only begin when we stop treating each other as enemies and start seeing the human need beneath the anger — the need to belong, to feel safe.

That’s what drives my organization, Leaving MAGA. We host weekly support groups that provide a compassionate space for people who are grappling with what MAGA has done to those close to them. We grieve the losses and explore time-tested ways to open the door for a loved one’s possible return. (The next step, we hope, will be to host similar groups for those beginning to question their own involvement in MAGA.)

Our project has less to do with changing people’s minds than coming together to combat the desolation and fear that nurture and feed the MAGA movement.

We use proven communication strategies for navigating relationships with MAGA-identified friends and family. These were developed by Julianna Forlano, a therapist, transformational coach and facilitator who has been teaching compassion-based approaches to conflict and healing for decades.

---

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only by Amanda Marcotte, also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

---

Forlano understands the difficulty level involved for many people whose friends or family members have embraced MAGA ideas they find hateful.

“When people you love are voting to take away your bodily autonomy and your dignity, showing compassion can feel impossible,” she says. “During our groups we hold space for those feelings, reminding the afflicted that nonviolence doesn’t mean passivity or self-erasure. It means refusing to let cruelty determine who you become. Setting boundaries, speaking truth and protecting yourself are acts of compassion — both for you and for the world you’re trying to mend.”

Although there are no easy solutions, Forlano offers the following practical reminders for practicing nonviolent communication.

Remember to breathe. Take space before you respond. Breathing isn’t just a pause — it’s a boundary. It lets you step out of the tornado of reactivity and remember who you are. Then you can consider not responding at all. The question during the breath is not, “What do I say?” but rather, “Who am I in this moment?”

Remember to let go. MAGA is like an addiction. Your loved one is exhibiting symptoms of outrage illness — they are hooked on anger, constantly seeking the next dopamine hit of indignation. What’s coming at you isn’t really them; it’s the sickness. Don’t take it personally. You didn’t cause it, and you can’t cure it.

Remember to stay active. Stop trying to control what you can’t change — including your loved one’s perceptions or ideology. You can’t be a prophet in your own land. Instead, harness the energy spent trying to convince your loved one of their mistakes and put it where it can bear fruit. Be active elsewhere — in your community, your art, your organizing. Build the kind of world you want to see. Don’t allow yourself to become trapped by grief; live in the world you’re trying to heal and leave room for your relationships to take the path they need to take.

Remember to grieve. We have to grieve what’s been lost — relationships, trust, the illusion of safety — in order to understand what we still have and begin to rebuild anew. Grief creates fertile ground for something new to grow. As we have found in these support groups, you are not alone.