Donald Trump has alienated a good number of his MAGA supporters by seeking to suppress the full disclosure of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Are his supporters angry because they think he is guilty of having sex with underaged girls, or because he is using his office to control information and limit what the public can know?
Many of the most fervent Trump supporters subscribe to conspiracy theories, believing that a ‘deep state’ runs their lives and that Democrats either built that state or protected its clandestine operations. For Trump to conceal the disclosure of a file that might contain details about powerful people implicated in a sex trafficking network is to act like one of those politicians who profit from lying and keep ordinary people in the dark. Alex Jones, the far-right radio host, told Trump: “You’re not the pope, bro!” Steve Bannon predicts that 10 per cent of Trump’s loyalists will turn away (they will still be Trumpists, but against Trump).
It would be a better world if the Trump supporters currently angry with him were outraged about child sex trafficking, grooming, and the coercion of young women by the Epstein network, but their focus seems to be elsewhere. The reprehensible treatment of these women is not at the centre of the right-wing outrage, though the feminist left is foregrounding their voices
Trump insists that the whole Epstein affair is a “hoax” and that his own followers are “stupid” and “weaklings.” Their reaction has been intense and swift, since Trump now sounds like the elitists who disparage them. Trump scoffs at their complaints, noting that his supporters have nowhere else to go. They feel not only deceived by their hero but demeaned, insulted, and outraged.
Those in the MAGA movement are used to seeing Trump lie in public. They were thrilled by his willingness to stand up against the elitists. He said whatever he wanted, displayed his willingness to strip people of rights, to reverse the legal accomplishments of the feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements, to mock the history of racism and ban books from schools.
They loved to see the left shocked by every authoritarian move, every act that erodes constitutional democracy and human rights frameworks. Elitist moralists were made to suffer as MAGA enthusiasts felt a resurgence of white masculinist authority, a thrill at identifying with someone amassing more power than they will ever have, a chance to forget the increasing precarity of their everyday lives.
But now Trump has returned them to a sense not only of their powerlessness but of their dispensability, and their rage is escalating. They never imagined that they would be in the position of those they enjoyed ridiculing. They never imagined that their hero would be laughing at them, mocking and discarding them, lying to their faces. They find themselves returned to an intolerable sense of powerlessness, duped by the man who was supposed to convert their sense of marginalisation into a shameless display of cruelty and destruction
Trump has always made clear that he seeks profit and power for himself alone. There is no loyalty that cannot be forfeited when there is a better deal. The shameless cruelty that his supporters applauded is now directed against them. Trump tells them they have been duped by the Epstein conspiracy, but some now know that they have been duped and dismissed by him.
From an Indian perspective, this is more than just American theatre. India too has seen political figures being worshipped by their bases, often to the point where logic and accountability get suspended. The blind loyalty, the use of power to control narratives, the public spectacle of betrayal are not foreign to Indian political life. Just as in the United States, where Trumpism survives beyond Trump, we in India have seen ideologies outlive their icons, even when those icons contradict their own people. What matters, then, is whether democratic consciousness can outlast cults of personality, and whether the people here or there will eventually care more about justice than loyalty.
From where we sit in India, it seems unlikely. The global hunger for strongmen and spectacles often overpowers the quieter, more difficult path of justice.
An independent editorial by Vaibhav Upadhyay
BASTON HERALD POST.
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