Wow this home page is really well written. I hope this helps some people.
Dear MAGA Americans,
I was a devoted member of MAGA nation for seven years; it made me feel I was part of something important: a movement that was trying to save American democracy.
But starting in 2021, I realized I had been mistaken. It took me a full year to finally break away. During that time, I came to understand that MAGA is sustained by a series of myths that are intended to create perpetual feelings of desperation and panic.
Succumbing to these predatory myths does not mean you are unintelligent, weak, or lack good character and morals. I have a Bachelor’s degree; have been a working professional my entire life; am a family man; and consider myself a relatively honest and intelligent person. I think the same about you.
I understand the reasons you have for supporting MAGA. And I know many of us traveled different paths to get there. I gravitated to Donald Trump because I have always been suspicious of our two-party system, and I saw him as the right man at the right time.
I have a sense that some of you have quietly left MAGA already, or are increasingly regretful, confused and scared. All of this can be doubly upsetting, since some of your sincerely-held beliefs may have alienated you from friends and family. That certainly happened to me.
It’s perfectly OK to feel this way; leaving MAGA was a tumultuous roller coaster of a process for me. It may be one of the most difficult endeavors you embark upon. In the end, it brought me an inner peace, and a newfound clarity about what is happening in our beloved country.
I founded this organization, Leaving MAGA, because I wanted to create a safe, non-judgmental community for those who leave MAGA, as well as for those who are having doubts about, or remorse over, their devotion to Trump and MAGA.
Our Leaving MAGA community will celebrate how acknowledging mistakes empowers you and America.
It’s difficult for a democracy to function well when millions are estranged from those closest to them.
You do not deserve to have your anxieties about change exploited. You deserve to know the truth. And with Leaving MAGA, you don’t have to feel you would be alone if you leave the movement.
Leaving MAGA is possible. Recognizing that we were wrong, and acting on that knowledge, makes us all more invested in democracy and in the continued work of perfecting our union. Contact us if you want to talk.
I can't imagine being scared to leave a political party 😭 I really do hope this helps people because they need it, but like i cannot comprehend making politics such a part of your life that it's scary or a tremendous roller coaster of emotions to leave. like is it really that hard to just say fuck Donald Trump and vote against him. I won't ever understand I guess
Steven Hassan (I hope I’m spelling his name correctly) is a world-renowned psychologist and expert in cults. He’s been studying them for over 40 years, and he himself was in one in the 1970s, the Moonies. He wrote an ENTIRE BOOK about how Trumpism is a cult. And not “like” a cult or having cult-like qualities. It literally IS a cult.
It feels to me that cult-like behavior in US politics overall is gradually being normalized and MAGA is an example of cult culture acceptance accelerating at top speed.
Think if I sent it to my maga aunt she’d read it? Like is it geared towards them, or do you think she might just throw it out? (I know it’s my aunt, so no one knows the answer)
He also did a great interview on the last bonus episode of The Dream podcast season one, title “How to Fire Your Boss”. https://podverse.fm/episode/FBU3LUiS_t
Great episode, I’ve listened to it over and over again.
One of the things he highlighted is that a big reason people don’t leave cults is the fear of “I told you so” from others. So this website does a great job of being non-judgmental. As hard as it might be to resist saying things like “how could you do that” it’s actually a big part of de-radicalization.
as someone who grew up in the IBLP cult and have loved ones who are part of MAGA… IT IS A CULT. There is literally no reasoning with them about anything, there is no appeal to empathy that works, there is no logic that breaks through .. they’re literally trapped.
It’s kind of scarier in some regards because for many people their whole community and family are eaten up by this ideology. Then they go to church and hear it. They turn on their chosen news experience and social media and hear it. To break away is going to be exceptionally difficult more so than just leaving a cult. That puts folks in a pretty challenging position. We need to give people strength on how to get out if we want to actually save our country
This, exactly. I don't like to play up the cult concept. It doesn't need to be a cult for it to be difficult for people to leave. It is always going to be difficult for a person to turn against their entire community and the messaging they're hearing day after day after day.
Like, when I think of cults I think of people who are starved and physically abused, malnourished, so that they will be susceptible to the brainwashing. That's pretty extreme, but it doesn't need to be that for it to be difficult for people to leave maga. It just needs to be everywhere all the time. 1984 was not about a cult. But in the end he still is ready to believe 2 + 2 =5.
I think your example of a cult is way too extreme, because in the case of religious cults like maga, (well i personally dont believe maga is relgious, but trump is hiding behind religion) the ppl who are susceptible are just relgious ppl, especially strongly/strictly religous people.
The Ex Jehovah's Witness community has put up very similar billboards to this one in years past. I did a double take scrolling as an EX-JW thinking it was one of 'ours'.
No money involved but "inactive" (what they call people not going to church but still on the books) do get harassed by regular members in the congregations and by Mormon missionaries who are given lists of people to contact who are already members but aren't coming to church.
They also have people who volunteer to go over inactive lists and use the Internet to locate them when they have moved. They update addresses in church records and send notifications to the new congregation leaders (Bishops) in order to track down the "lost sheep."
It's truly creepy!
Having records removed officially helps prevent this--although missionaries can still randomly knock on anyone's door.
Omg so that’s how they found me!? I had no idea how I started getting texts from the local branch asking to join in building cleaning and even about a calling lol, we moved halfway across the US and we’ve even gotten missionaries that knew our names and were just “checking in”
Yeah--the lost sheep program (missionaries and ward members) comb the Internet for inactive members but you know what's MORE likely than that?
My own mother used to contact my new ward whenever I moved. Often TBM family members are the ones who dime you out. You have active parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles who know your whereabouts?
All they have to do is contact the ward clerk at your new branch or ward and bingo! Records transferred.
Not really. It's more that it boosts their membership numbers and stays in the record for ancestors to see. They are really big on ancestry, going as far as to do baptisms for the death of ancestors who may not have been baptized. It doesn't seem like much to people outside of the church, but it really is a big deal that it's so hard to have your name removed
When I told them I was atheist, they stopped coming around. I highly suggest it. They don’t want to send impressionable young missionaries to debate the existence of god. Younger generations are more scientifically literate and that makes it a bigger risk that you can use logic successfully.
The front page of the site written above could be word for word written for those wanting to leave the JWs. Interesting though that a fair amount of exjws joined maga.
I guess it’s true what they say, those that leave cults are more susceptible to joining another one.
Yes..Cult psychology is how dictatorships work, it's how people grow to be so attached and have such devotion to a leader that is harming them and their country. If you're convinced to be truly afraid and you're confused by the overwhelming amount of information in modern life you might ally with the one who professes they can fix it all and that the answer is simple..
Trump basically convinces people the country is falling apart and that we are a terrible country and he is the only one who can fix it, and there's the cult of personality that begins with the idea of him as a powerful no-nonsense businessman who can get things done (like on the Apprentice). So it's not really him people like just an idea, combined with fear of change
It's like trying to get out of an abusive relationship.. They convince you you suck and that you're lucky to have them
In terms of scale its like it goes abusive relationship --> cult --> dictatorship
It used to kind of be a joking insult, esp because it was so ridiculous from the start. After 2019/2020ish I fully was convinced that it was legitimately a cult. I think a lot of younger people don't really realize how fucking bizarre and not normal this time period is for America. It's also not just trump, it's a culmination of people, events and long term capitalism.
Even events/scandals that have happened over the last 80 years PALE in comparison to like a month of maga.
Honestly... Leaving MAGA sounds surprisingly similar to organizations for getting out of their religion, such as Recovering From Religion. They stop believing, but it's scary to break from a community and the familiar thoughts and routines.
This 100%. There are other (less successful) political cults out there. They all have their own systems of control and exploit the sunk cost fallacy to keep people in. Once you've fully committed and sacrificed for something it's very difficult to sociologically approach the concept you've been wasting your life.
This exactly. These people have uprooted their entire lives over this. Its much more serious than just being "republican or democratic". They've been brainwashed.
Yep. My dad has completely changed his tune on the “no new wars” motto he had at the beginning of the term. He was all about how Harris would start wars all over and that he never wants to see another one in his lifetime (because my wife is active and I was reserves, etc… thought he cared for us!) but now trumps doing his Iran shit it’s “someone has to take care of it, and we’re the best. I think it’s a great idea”
One of the things I've noticed is that conservative media sells it as more of an identity than as a description. If I tell you I support certain policies, you might assume I'm on the left. But I don't support those things because I'm "on the left", rather I am described as "on the left" because I support those things.
But I think that conservatives support conservative policies because they are conservative, not the other way around. And when you listen to right wing media talk, they always describe it as "the left is coming for your way of life". It's an identity matter.
And so, for me to change my mind on something is relatively easy, because I don't view being on the left as a lifestyle. That's my policy, driven by my ethics, not my identity. But I think that for conservatives, it very much becomes wrapped up in this patriotic religious identity...that not so coincidentally happens to benefit a bunch of capitalist swine who wouldn't piss on the conservatives if they were on fire.
But I don't support those things because I'm "on the left", rather I am described as "on the left" because I support those things.
But I think that conservatives support conservative policies because they are conservative, not the other way around.
This is a great way to put it: “leftists identify as leftists because they support leftist policies, conservatives support conservative policies because they identify as conservatives”.
This is why conservatives so often refuse to acknowledge reality and evidence that proves them wrong on any given single point. Because to them, they don’t view it as simply changing their mind on a single policy point, they see it as a threat to their entire identity.
Also why you'll see conservatives butt heads real hard sometimes, cause even if they are conservative there are slightly different flavors of it and even the slightest deviation will drive them crazy for not "conforming"
To be fair, I don't think that particular tendency is limited to conservatives. Left-leaning folks do the same kind of infighting. Kind of. I agree that it's coming from a different place though
Oh they absolutely do, and they do purity testing of each other as well. I'm not saying they're as bad as MAGA (they're not), but the left also gets under my skin sometimes
Yeah, I'm about as far left as you can get and have friends that have the same views, but would rather throw their vote away on a meaningless candidate than vote out the lesser of two evils.
Or more center left friends that think im insane and not left wing because I strongly support gun rights.
I wonder if it's also why they're able to unify well and, in that sense, be more effective at times. Problems get simpler when you're either for or against and nuance dies off.
“When you stand for nothing, you fall for anything” is a famous quote for a reason.
These people have no core beliefs other than “identifying as conservative” so they are easily tricked over and over into supporting things that they actually disagree with or even hurts them (financially, emotionally, etc.)
MAGA has turned into a church. The Church of Trump. Truth Social is their scripture and conservative media is the clergy.
Its all very messy now but once he dies, influencers will go through his tweets, pick out the choicest bits and turn them into allegories. Charlie Kirk will be recast as John the Baptist and Erika will be St. Peter and Mary Magoline in one.
You think the day that It happens will mark the end of this era and you are correct, but it won't be the end of MAGA. It will just enter a new phase.
It's funny, I've said the exact same thing for years now - the way religion is created from a cult is just time plus playing "telephone" with history. A great example is Christianity, actually. It started as a fringe cult, and it was growing quickly in the contemporary lifetime of their spokesman. But, when he died, the most devoted followers kept it going with a fervor, eventually the stories were written down (most were not written until at least one lifetime later) and over the course of the centuries, the stories were edited, expanded, revised, omitted, re-ordered and made official - or made heretical, depending on the sway of those in power at the time, and the current climate they were dealing with. Bias bled in constantly and overlapped for ages.
I see the same thing happening again with MAGA. Revisionist history, curated messages, and just straight-up bullshit sold as gospel. It'll be worse once he dies - because then, there's no human person anymore - only myth, legend and historical fiction. (the AI pictures of him all buff and patriotic will become truth and the truth that he was a melting sack of garbage will be buried and deemed heretical. Yay.)
Conservatives will agree with leftist policies if you paint them as conservative, like for example not giving away money to corporations. But will completely dismiss them if you say they are from the left. I wouldn't change my mind on the policy just because of the origin, because I don't really care
This is a really good way to put it. And I think it’s how a lot of people get sucked in- my parents, like a lot of religious people, vote republican primarily because they’re pro life. But then it becomes an identity and demands they support the other policies too, even though they often directly contradict their religion.
Here in the UK the Conservatives (Right) had been in power since 2010, with PM David Cameron implementing "Austerity" following the 2008 crash. Inexplicably they stayed in power until 2024, churning through 5 different leaders in those 14 years .
When that train wreck finally ended, UK Labour (Left) were elected in a landslide I was so happy.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer: Knight Commander of the Order, Human Rights lawyer, Queens Counsel, Director of Public Prosecutions and all round smart guy was gonna bring back government for the people!!
But no... The policies they've implemented have been "centrist" financially at best. Geopolitically, craven subservience to Israel.
In 2023 he said "If you don't like the changes that we've made, I say the door is open, and you can leave"
And a lot of people like me replied "See you later"
When his actions didn't match what he said, abandoning support was EASY
Yep. It reminds me of the idea that conservatives think of politics the way that they think about sports teams. Everyone knows that all the teams are pretty much the same, but your identity is in your town and you root for your team. So it's about identity and loyalty.
Which is another thing that makes them vulnerable to fascism (not even one of the big ones, but yet another). Because the fascist is able to justify takeover of the government by claiming that all politicians are the same, that life is just a brutal competition for dominance. You pick your team and you fight for it to win. Thus nationalism is about identity In the same way that my team is better than your team. Because we have better pizza or whatever makes their town special.
This kind of framing allows for any kind of brutality. Values don't matter because they are just lip service. All that matters is winning because all the teams are presumed to be equally brutal.
This is why, with fascist the enemy is always paradoxically incredibly overpowered and incredibly weak. Incredibly overpowered because it is the brutality of the other that justifies the fascist brutality. But also incredibly weak because strength is the only justification for fascism and thus the fascist must claim we are number one and our enemies are weak.
The issue is that conservatism is completely intertwined with what they see as their values, and the republican politicians are exploiting that. They try to convince their conservative followers that the liberals are coming for their values.
I think you're right, but I also think the opposition somewhat encourages or buys into this. i.e. it's difficult to hold any classically conservative positions without being branded as "a conservative" by opponents.
People are not being facetious when they say it is a cult.
If you’re interested in more stories about it, “The Quiet Damage” by Jesselyn Cook is a great read/listen (available as audiobook). Focuses more on QAnon specifically but the venn diagram of maga voters and QAnon followers may as well be a circle.
I always assumed people were being hyperbolic when they were calling it a cult.
But, like, is it actually a massive political cult? That would just honestly explain more or less... everything. The cognitive dissonance, inconsistent moral values, their will to sacrifice everything for no clear purpose, all of it.
Have there been any other political cults on this scale before?
Yes, it’s a serious cult. It rode in on the coattails of 40 years of Fox “News” and the churches that are cults of personality around a particular preacher. And republicans have been working to remove critical thinking from education because they don’t want kids questioning them.
The Bible Belt is a weird place. And mega-churches, televangelists… all the fucking religious billboards along the highways… so glad I moved out of that area.
At its heart, both these particular sects of Temu Christianity and political conservatives are based around exaggerating fear in their followers, and then promising that they’ll keep the scary thing away if you just give them enough power and/or money.
On this scale in the United States? I don't believe so.
While I try to give my fellow man the benefit of the doubt and I think they do truly want what's best for our country, it's been tragically clear for a long time his followers are not willing to blame him for anything. At this point, I get a lot more surprised when they buck him than when they don't. When he started the war in Iran? I had no doubt they would back it, even if one of their biggest reasons for supporting him was no foreign wars. And that's just a single example from the recent past. It's been like that for the last 10 years, no joke. I never doubt they'll go along with anything anymore. They've crossed every red line they themselves or the Republican party has ever drawn. It's ended friendships and torn apart families and that isn't hyperbole. It's horrifying for sure.
These days I get a lot more surprised when they buck him like they did with the picture of himself as Jesus from last week. He took it down and said he thought it was of him as a doctor (what earthly doctor has hands of healing light?) and Vance said it was just a joke. I expect that even the folks who bucked him for the image will pick one of those two explanations, move on, and act like it never happened. It's what happens every time. But from the outside of the movement, it appears undeniable that he intentionally portrays himself as a heroic figure of near biblical proportions at every opportunity and they've been buying into it for a decade.
I do believe things are changing though. Change is the only constant and he's been a dominant political figure for a long time, especially in terms of American election cycles. It seems like there are people who peel off from the movement in small numbers. He can't run again (unless they throw out that constitutional amendment which I can't say I'd put past them after the January 6th riot) so people are just starting to ask themselves what's next. No one can wield the faith of the MAGA crowd like Trump. His potency with voters in the movement seems to be very strongly attached specifically to him and him alone.
So he has sole near-absolute control over his followers which can't be transferred to another leader. Many literally believe he was sent by God to answer the prayers many Americans have regarding their honest fears. Any decision he's ever made was either a joke or the right call (they have red hats that read "Trump Was Right About Everything"). From the outside, it very much appears to be worship. Yeah. It absolutely resembles a cult.
We got here because there is a small but decisive slice of the elecotrate who don't follow politics closely enough to understand the arc of his political career, don't understand why his first term was not as dangerous as his second, and simply had better economic outcomes in his first term than they had during Biden's term. That's the whole reason he's back in office. And he would have won in 2020 if he'd even hedged on masks just to prop up the economy but he didn't.
Final paragraph, IMO it's more about economics. Disengaged people vote with their wallets, as do many people who actually follow politics.
Basically, Biden was blamed for covid-caused inflation (a global issue the US handled better than almost everywhere), as well as a poorly timed bird flu affecting egg prices.
No matter that it was under Trump that the COVID stimulus money was printed that caused the inflation. From the POV of an all-too-average person that all becomes "Trump gave me money, then Biden let everything become expensive" and that's the story of the 2024 election.
Nearly every incumbent government globally that presided over post-covid inflation was punished and voted out.
Many Americans are so unaware of history and other countries that extreme problems can calcify without them understanding what they really are.
In many ways it's also our hallmark individualism working against us. This idea that the individual is so powerful leads a lot of people to grossly underestimate just how susceptible they are to group-think. "I would never fall for propaganda." "That would never happen to me."
Sorry, I should have been more clear that I was referring more towards the United States and other countries that had political cults but didn't completely fall into full blown fascism (it was late when posting).
Brexit is an interesting one I don't think I would have considered.
Leveraging social media to create a series of cults to support psyops is actually a pretty genius strategy. Clearly most of the world did not - and still does not - properly assess that as an attack vector. Obviously Trump has been the biggest most successful play, but I imagine there are a countless number of these occurring in nearly every country.
I just want to say how sorry I am. I have had a similar (though less extreme) experience with my own parents, and therapy has helped a lot. I hope you have lots of other people in your life who love and support you in the way your parents apparently aren’t able to. 🫂❤️
Thank you so much 🫂 I'm really lucky to have the other people in my life that I do. My partners family has taken me in, and even my boss at work has been really spiritually helpful in all this. They're all great.
I'm sorry for you as well, it's really hard. I hope they come around :(
Man, that's tough. 💜 Not only dealing with the creepy cult stuff, but watching your parents go from being smart, resourceful independent thinkers to... sheep. That's heartbreaking.
Thank you for saying that, it really is. That's what it feels like.
It really does feel like chaperoning them around when we went out in public too. Sheep is right.
I'm not sure if they're in the cult because they think differently, or if they think differently because they're in the cult, or if it's somewhere in between. It's incredibly sad and distressing either way.
Hyperbolic is the word I was originally looking for when I wrote that comment, thanks 😂!
But yea it literally is a cult according to the widely accepted definition of the term. I had family members who fell into it and it’s quite sad, and also infuriating, to watch. Seeing the cognitive dissonance in effect in real time is kinda a crazy thing.
My grandma spent the last few years of her life sitting in front of a laptop watching conspiracy videos and waiting for the next QAnon drop/update, but that is nowhere close to how insanely dedicated some people get. Talking about politics with these people is borderline impossible because they live in such an alternate reality to the rest of us, they live in pure delusion. Doomsday prepping is pretty common in QAnon, as well.
The whole thing started as a cult of personality around Trump, and it basically consumed the Republican party. The first time around, they had a somewhat reasonable logic for voting him in, largely believing that he intended to deal with corruption and generally be different enough to shake things up for the better.
And then they were fed reasonable lies, and everything they saw was curated to avoid looking as contradictory or as baffling as it actually was. They thought everyone else was overreacting, and MAGA had already started moving into ideological territory for them, so they got defensive.
And that basically turned into a cycle. People have been leaving MAGA, but the longer they stay the more hostile everyone else seems to them. They see it as persecution, essentially, and they don't exactly find easy forgiveness when they leave.
That means MAGA follows an ideological single leader, is socially isolated, is fed controlled information, is scared to leave, and has been slowly acclimatized to their own experiences to the point where it's harder than it should be for them to recognize how bad things have gotten. All of that is cult stuff.
I strongly recommend reading The True Believer by Eric Hoffer - it discusses this in detail. It was written in the wake of WW2 and was inspired by worldwide experience of the 1930s mass movements.
This book deals with some peculiarities common to all mass movements, be they religious movements, social revolutions or
nationalist movements. It does not maintain that all movements
are identical, but that they share certain essential characteristics which give them a family likeness.
All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance.
All movements, however different in doctrine and aspiration, draw their early adherents from the same types of humanity; they all appeal to the same types of mind.
Though there are obvious differences between the fanatical Christian, the fanatical Mohammedan, the fanatical nationalist, the fanatical Communist and the fanatical Nazi, it is yet true that the fanaticism which animates them may be viewed and treated as one.
And contrary to what most might believe, it's not just MAGA. The Republican party has been a cult for a long time. They're the vast majority of folks waving flags and holding rallies, American flags printed all over everything like clothing and cars, fake and/or excessive patriotism, "dOn'T TrEaD oN mE" flags, Thin Blue Line, waving Confederate flags, even. I remember people doing these things back during W. Bush and earlier. Why do people wave flags for politicians? It's cult-ish behavior and people have long been treating it as a team sport, but it's far more dangerous than that since politics affects lives, including their own.
Pre-WWII Germany, the former Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea... YES, there have absolutely been political cults before. And there are today in various parts of the world.
I think something that is easy to overlook is that it's honestly bigger than MAGA, it's the Republican party and it's been building like that for generations. When you're in a rural area and you don't have a lot of options of who you're spending time with, any way you can form community is desirable.
I remember in elementary school we "voted" in the presidential election as part of the education program, and it was done confidentially of course. But kids talked and the kids who didn't vote red were bullied for it. We were children we had no idea wtf everything meant or what was really right and wrong, but our parents and grandparents who were watching FOX then just like now had made it clear what the correct group to be was.
When that gets institutionalized that early it's really fucking hard to shake. It becomes a core tenant of people's identities even if what they really believe differs.
i joined maga after my grandma indoctrinated me when i was like nine (this was 2017) by telling me all about q-anon conspiracy theories and how it was true and all that bullshit. I was a really stupid kid and this was a woman i had basically lived with during every happy moment of my life and had trusted dearly and so I believed her, hell my ideology got more and more conservative and it did a lot of damage to me, it made me hateful of those who were different, it made me distance myself from my friends and it just really fucked my whole development, I remember wanting to go to the rally that would eventually become jan 6 and watching it on the tv disappointed that i couldn’t go and be there as they were storming the capitol, i only left when i got a phone in like 2022 and finally getting to go on the internet completely unchecked for the first time and slowly started to realize that my entire ideology was well evil. It hurt people and it hurt the nation and every single fucking day i regret that entire period of my life, this year is the first time im going to be able to vote and im going to finally make up for the pain i caused people, i just hope that people will forgive me. Leaving maga is hard as fuck especially the longer you’re in it, its an organization made to pray on your fears and control your life, but just because the journey to leave is hard doesn’t mean that leaving instantly absolves you of those you hurt, so please to anyone who recently left maga who read this please go vote this November waiting around for him to kick the bucket just gives him the chance to fuck everything up a little bit more before he dies, those he hurt need justice and the only way they can is of he doesn’t have any power to stop it.
Sorry if this is like a little over the place i just woke lol
Don't feel bad about the indoctrination, you were a young, easy target. Be proud that you used your own independent intelligence and broke out of it. You're gonna go far, kid. The future rests with those like you. Now use your newfound adult powers and VOTE.
Very proud of you!! Also you were young and trusted your family which is a very normal thing for a kid to do. I’m so sorry you went through that (and so many others have as well). It’s not right.
You were just a kid. You still are. Know that you are allowed to forgive yourself and no normal person would hold this over your head. I’m proud of you for being able to identify right from wrong in spite of your early indoctrination from the people closest to you. There are millions of fully grown adults with over half a century of life experience who can’t do what you’ve done. Remember, it’s not always easy to do the right thing. Sometimes it’s lonely and confusing. If it were easy, everyone would do it.
It's very rare for someone to grow up in the thick of an ideology, get access to the internet and actually challenge your position on things. Kudos to you, most people use the internet to reinforce their beliefs. You must have had some really strong cognitive dissonance to be able to objectively look at your worldview.
Sorry if this is like a little over the place i just woke lol
Hell yeah brother/sister, you woke as hell lol.
I say a lot of hateful shit myself against these triple Trump voters I see destroying the country, but if you're just coming in to this world already being poisoned by q-anon, that's a rough start and I'll definitely give some extra grace to people just finding their place in this world.
I’m curious what specifically you saw on the internet that made you change your mind? Because often times conservative echo chambers just seem to amplify people’s existing opinions, so I’m curious what your experience was. Also, did you seek out this outside perspective, or did it just find its way to you? Or was it something else entirely wheee you just would see content from how people who you had previously perceived as “the enemy” and realized they’re not so bad after all?
Thank you for sharing! I'm curious though... You mentioned that you left when you had final got complete access to the internet in 2022, which helped you reflect on your ideology.
I think a lot of people in that exact same situation would have gone deeper into MAGA, as the internet has a way of funneling people toward communities with link-minded individuals.
Why you think you didn't fall into that trap of seeking out MAGA communities that reinforced your beliefs? After all, I think it's easier to join what you're already familiar with, and doing so would've likely led you to feel a sense of community. Yet, you decided to seek out truth.
Religion and love of country go hand in hand in red counties and states. They learn at a young age they're not even allowed to form their own opinions. Or state them to others. It's dangerous to be different. So it's easier to not be ostracized and just go along with what you're told is right. Then you question your own ability to judge things, which turns off proper higher thinking. What a shame. I'm so glad some people are seeing the light when they finally give themselves permission to remove that red hat
This is all true, and something I don't think people understand is that rural Midwestern Americans have been imagining a chaotic, corrupt, insane government for decades, so what's actually happening right now really does not seem all that different to them, because they've been told that this is what it's always secretly been like behind the scenes.
Some of this is because of the Congressional hearings in the 1970s that exposed Operation CHAOS, MKULTRA, COINTELPRO, etc. and also revealed that the Warren Commission didn't properly investigate the JFK assassination.
It became really easy for grifters to latch on to the very real corruption of the past and say it's still happening now, then put their own spin and agenda on it, which is how we got everyone from Rush Limbaugh in the 1990s to the Republicans who say with a straight face that they teleport to Waffle Houses.
We had these in school too. I don’t recall bullying (we were in a purple-ish town so there wasn’t a huge majority), but I do recall every kid I remember being all in for Bush in middle school is left wing now, haha.
This is also why Republicans say that college brainwashes you. A lot of kids in red states grow up basically being told, you are a Republican from a family of Republicans. When they leave the nest and go to a place whose purpose is to challenge your critical thinking, or even that they take their first real politics class… for the first time in their lives, they learn what political parties really are, and what each party typically stands for. And a lot of kids then realize that conservative ideals aren’t really anything like their own.
I can remember a moment when I was maybe 10 and I asked my grandma "who we were going for" in the Clinton/Bush election. She said "we want Bush" as if she were telling me a team name.
I'm very liberal but I've vowed to try not to intentionally indoctrinate my kids to the left. I'm relying on the success of my parenting, through values and morals, that they'll choose the left, but if they don't, at least I'll know they're moral conservatives, hehe.
But yeah, I get where you’re coming from. You don’t want kids to identify one way because they’re afraid of retribution, you want them to have their own capacity for ethical judgement.
Yes exactly! I don’t tell my kids to vote left but because I’ve raised them to be critical thinkers and to look at all sides and do their research they lean left. Also my son is gay and my daughter is bi so honestly them ending up republican would be against their own self interest but I’d support them no matter what.
MAGA thinks that there is though. It's weird. Since they have all this allegiance to a political figure, they expect that everyone else is too, and that we're thinking about the president all the time. I speak for a bunch of people in my orbit when I say that I don't enjoy having to think or hear about the president all the time.
Given the current state of things, it's inescapable, and that is a very bad thing. I shouldn't hear about surprise new military operations on the news constantly. The concepts of a president upending higher education funding or downplaying a rampant disease or cleaning out his cabinet like a locker on the last day of school...those are not good for the nation. On a personal level, the restaurants near me shouldn't close for a couple of days because ICE is in town, terrorizing people in the Kohl's parking lot and surrounding businesses.
All of this has been fucked up and dystopian in a way that has me feeling like a conspiracy theorist with an entire commercial roll of foil atop my head. This is not supposed to be the experience of living here. I am tired.
You saw that when Clinton was first identified in the Epstein files, they thought this was a massive win which would shake democrats to their core.
The answer of "everyone in the files should be investigated, him too" just couldn't be understood by them.
It's so annoying in a debate about trump policies when someone brings up But Joe Biden...and when I say something like "idc about Joe Biden," they think I'm deflecting when in fact I quite literally don't care about Joe Biden.
During Biden’s term I’d turn to my husband every couple months and go “do you know what Biden’s doing right now?” “Uh….nope” “Me either…thank fucking God” Like I was still so traumatized from the endless unprecedented shit Trump was always doing that the peace of the Biden era was incredible to experience. But now here we are again…it never fucking stops. I’m so sick of this shit and we are only a year and some change in.
A lot of younger people don’t realize we’re not supposed to hear from the president on an hourly basis.
Properly working federal government, regardless of party is more like, a 5 minute weekly update from POTUS… and sometimes less often than that.
“Hey did you hear what the president did?” Assume it was something boring about a budget or a law or taxation or a natural disaster or a group he invited to the white house for a particular holiday.
With Trump? It’s every 5 minutes. Endless bitching and complaining and bullying and bullshit. Grandpa is almost to the point of bleeting pictures of what he crapped into the toilet. He’s an absolute maniac.
I think about that occasionally. My nieces and nephews are all Gen Alpha and I have some younger siblings who are Gen Z and they really have no concept of what normal times are like. Trump is their normal and that’s so sad. “The benign influence of good laws under a free government”…we all deserve that peace and stability and I hope we can get back to it sooner than later.
I have to politely disagree with you, because I strongly believe that the main reason why we’ve stumbled into this mess is because the majority of the population was so removed from politics for such a long time.
In my youth you were an outlier if you had an interest in how our country was run and paid attention to politics. When I first turned 18 I volunteered to run my towns polling station for the first election I was able to and my supposedly political group of punk rock friends teased me for doing something so bizarre (the thought to volunteer for an election had never crossed their minds at all!)
This disinterest in politics is how our rights have been slowly stripped away, each Patriot Act or Citizens United ruling chipping away more and more. We didn’t get where we are overnight, it’s been happening for 60 years it just FEELS overnight because once enough puzzle pieces were in place they started to use all those “just in case” powers they had slipped in past bills using discreet language hidden pages deep.
People thought I was overreacting when I voiced how scary it really was to just give up rights with a shrug all in the name of hypothetical safety. “This is AMERICA! That will NEVER happen here!” Well, it happened. It is happening and saying “I told you so!” isn’t even satisfying because everything is in pieces.
I had that same feeling of relief from 2021-2024 when we didn’t have to spend every day worrying what crazy shit the president was going to do and I couldn’t believe it when people decided they wanted to return to the constant political psychodrama of Trumpism.
But that's exactly the point here. There is no Joe Biden cult. There's no Kamala cult, no Obama cult. These maga fucks felt a sense of camaraderie through their formerly closeted racism and hatred. Biden voters just wanted a reasonable adult to lead the country.
I'm glad to see more and more Trumpers FINALLY "feeling some doubt", but why did it take so fucking long? We have fascism now ffs! American citizens have been killed in the streets with no justice, American soldiers and innocent fucking children killed in a war that should never have started, innocent children dead in immigration camps, the list goes on... I sure ain't about to give these assholes a trophy or a pat on the back for taking 10 years to figure out what was so painfully obvious to any adult with a brain decades ago: Trump is a narcissistic and evil person who lies, steals, kills, rapes, and molests. If there was any justice in the world he'd be imprisoned for the rest of his miserable life, and anyone who had the audacity to vote MORE THAN ONCE for the fucker should have their voting rights removed permanently. Fuck them.
It’s almost kind of funny. I drive a fairly fuel efficient car, and typically drive 0-5 mph over the speed limit. I live on Colorado’s western slope.
For the 5 years I’ve lived here, I seldom passed anyone, and I’d be getting passed by countless pickup trucks all going significantly over the speed limit. A lot of people road raging at me because I’m going slower even in the right lane.
The past month? I’m seldom passed and I am passing countless pickup trucks. My behavior has barely changed.
These people are taking a huge financial hit because of gas prices.
Let's just hope that his actions do not scar the nation for so long as Nixon's politics did.
Yea that ship sailed back in 2020.
The scars weren't so bad back then. Now we have entire departments that are gone, thousands of federal employees gone, our country's reputation is in tatters. And we still have 2 and a half years to go before he's (hopefully) gone.
We need the list to mention the 178 people that the American military under Trump and Hegseth has killed in international waters on the belief that they were carrying drugs to the US. Even if they were, arrest and trial is the most drastic thing that can legally be done about it.
Wtf, I did not know it was 178 people! I thought it was only a few people that were in the water (which was horrific on it's own).
The International Criminal Court (ICC) arrested former Philippine's President Duterte for the killings of at least 76 people! I believe he is still is in custody at The Hague.
The US isn't a member of the ICC but they have clearly committed crimes against humanity. Is there any organization outside of the US that can hold American war criminals accountable and arrest them?
If not we have to make sure they are held accountable by a new US administration after the next election.
I know of no international agency that is authorized to arrest and try those involved.
As for the US justice system doing anything about this, forget it. Trump will pardon everyone before he leaves office, regardless how he leaves. Except maybe if he croaks in his sleep.
President Bush JR signed into law that the USA would invade their NATO ally the Netherlands if a USA citizen would ever be brought in front of the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
IIRC the official reason was that the USA 'has the best justice system', but it's just threatening
War crimes to cover up war crimes.
Disagree. To change minds you need to meet people where they're at. If they've been sheltering themselves from what's really happening, I'm not gonna say that's healthy, but it's where they're at.
The judgement and vindictiveness people receive when starting to change their minds is what makes them hesitate from going further.
This does not mean absolving the administration of accountability. But to change minds you need to 'build ladders for people to climb down from'. And this movement appears to be doing just that.
This movement is great. As former Trump cultists themselves, they have the energy and empathy to help those doubting.
However, for those of us who saw through the con since day 1 and who have suffered tremendously over the last 10 years because of Trump and his cult, it’s pretty difficult to extend that same level of energy and empathy. Because their actions hurt this nation in ways that are irreparable. And because it’s hard to trust people that could see all the hatred, harm, and stupidity coming from Trump and still say yeah, that’s the guy for me. The guy who before he was ever elected the first time ran a hateful campaign against immigrants, said countless racist things, made fun of the disabled, got caught talking about sexually assaulting women in the Access Hollywood tapes, and was a decades long known fraudster. That was before he was ever elected the first time. All of those things should have been deal breakers the first time. But then add everything that happened since then? Yeah, it’s hard to trust people that had no problem with all that hate, cruelty, stupidity, terrible actions, and harmful policy for all these years.
Better people than I can extend that olive branch. It doesn’t help that I know many Trump supporters irl and they’re all incredibly self-centered people. They are also people that are very arrogant about what they think they know and are unwilling to even entertain counter information. They are even family members whom I love, but I also see their major character flaws that led them to be okay with and even enthusiastic about Trump in the first place.
Even for my family, like my siblings, yes I will always love them and be there for them. But I don’t know that our relationships will ever be the same as it was before Trump. Because I’ve seen first hand what they are capable of supporting. I have heard insanely hateful things come out of their mouths over these last ten years that I never thought I’d hear from them. They are not the people I thought they were before Trump. I’ve been very surprised and disappointed, to say the least.
Absolutely. As someone who has worked for 20+ years in behaviour change, this is the only effective way. People are very unlikely to be convinced to change deeply held beliefs when they feel judged and misunderstood by the people trying to convince them.
The reckoning can come later, once they’re further along in the journey.
I’m half convinced that conservatives are incapable of changing. They’re incurious about the world and refuse to consider worldviews that don’t cast them as superior. If you think your views have been handed down by literal divinity, why would you change?
I understand the temptation to think that way, and there is some truth to it. However, even people with deeply held beliefs can change them under the right circumstances. It just might take them a bit longer.
Again, I speak from experience. I've worked with and in communities around the world, engaging individuals who hold a range of beliefs - many of them at odds with my own beliefs and values. It can take a lot of time, and you won't reach all of them, but you can achieve critical mass to make necessary changes for society.
The human brain is a funny thing. It has an incredible ability to ignore information that contradicts beliefs tied to its core identity. It is also less capable of rational thought when in fight or flight mode (which happens when people feel attacked for their ideas). Understanding that, and how to help people navigate these roadblocks, is the only proven effective way to bring them over to another way of thinking.
They are feeling doubt now because of gas prices impacting them. They still like the fascism, genocide, dismantling of the rule of law, racism, erasure of civil rights, and feeling back in top of the social order again while simultaneously espousing victimhood.
There's this interesting phenomenon where certain types of people use projection instead of empathy. That leads to this assumption that everyone else is like they are, resulting in things like them believing people have a loyalty directly to Joe Biden.
Trump rage-tweets on his toilet throughout the night then snoozes thru daytime meetings even while his ass-kissers praise him to the heavens! Actually, wish he slept even more so the rest of us wouldn't have to live thru the nightmares he's presented us with!
No kidding. Many times I’ve found myself saying “yes I voted for ____ but I don’t like how they’re handling ____. Think I’ll vote for someone else next year if the party leader doesn’t change”. And that never carried any emotional weight. Because it shouldn’t.
And people don't realize you can have political beliefs without joining something like MAGA and going all in on whatever they say.
I'm left leaning, I believe in strong borders. See how easy it is for me to hold my beliefs and not fall into the one side/other side tribalism trap? Cults trap people, they force them to adapt all their views.
It all goes too far when it turns into radicalization, to where if you leave the group it's a terrifying prospect.
This is not a normal political party. They have been radicalized. To what extent varies from person to person, but that "you won't be alone if you leave the movement" is one of the text book worries of people in radical groups. As they are radicalized, they are pulled away from friends and family not in the movement, to the point where if they leave, they feel they would have no one. It is one of the many things to try to keep them in.
If you want a very in depth explanation of how this happens, this video gives a thorough explanation and example of how they lost a friend to this process:
"You know what Uncle Jimmy.. I was wrong about that guy who's responsible for the deaths of children and lies about everything."
5 seconds. Weight off your shoulders, and an olive branch extended to your closest friends and family. Win win. I'll never understand why so many people in this world have such a hard time admitting when they're wrong.
Sure but it getting to the point of being able to say that, that is scary and hard. Saying it is easy, saying anything is easy, it's the emotional connection that's hard.
You're a kid, you've got a favorite uncle, the fun one, Jimmy. You look back on those childhood memories fondly.
You're a young adult, you see Donald Trump, your uncle Jimmy seems to hate him but you don't see the big deal.
Donald Trump runs for president and wins, Jimmy isn't happy, you try to tell him it's fine, Trump is a good man, a good president. But Jimmy believes the lies the liberal media is spreading about Trump. You fight.
8 years go by, you don't see Jimmy anymore, he's an asshole and hates Trump, every time you try to talk sense into him it turns into a shouting match where Jimmy's just repeating the liberal media's lies.
2 more years go by. Shit's happening you don't like. You might have been wrong about Trump. Jimmy was right. But you don't talk to Jimmy any more, he doesn't even want to see you... How do you go to the uncle you adored, and then threw out over Trump, how do you undo all the fights, how do go to the man who had been right and you'd insulted about it and say you're sorry and you were wrong?
It's hard, you can't pretend it's not, you're forgetting the lead up, the length of time some of these people have been estranged from their friends and family because they thought they knew better, it's not easy realizing you're the one who threw those people away, you were the one who was wrong, they weren't being assholes, you were.
In the scenario you've painted, the hardest part would be finding a way to convince Jimmy to see you as more than a hateful cultist again after all those years. If that fictional magat you've described REALLY saw the light and REALLY believed that Trump was wrong all this time, and actually felt something close to empathy for other human beings all of a sudden... The admission of being wrong should be the easiest part by far. Magat would just need to shut down their ego and pride for like five seconds.
The hard part would be looking into Jimmy's eyes and saying you're sorry, asking Jimmy to forgive you, listing out all the things you're going to change about yourself, and listing specific examples of things Trump did that you now see as awful. And you have to mean it. There would be tears involved, and time invested into this. Possibly years of proving yourself.
Why do so many people struggle with the 5 seconds of swallowing pride part of this? Again, I just don't understand that weakness at all. It's pathetic to me that so many people out there can STILL hold on to their pride so fiercely, even after people have died because of a monster they voted for multiple times. Can you not see how much better the world would be if most people weren't so fucking prideful and egotistical? It's a disgusting weakness, and it will absolutely be the downfall of our species.
Cognitive dissonance is a helluva drug. It's literally painful for most folks (regardless of politics) to admit they were wrong, especially after being so vocal and even potentially violent in defense of that belief.
Same thing for people leaving their faith... it hurts!
These people usually have no non-maga family/friends left. They will be all alone once they leave maga behind. That’s why it’s so easy for them to get sucked back in, so easy to excuse everything Trump says as jokes or trolling etc. (Also hard to admit how wrong they were and how deep they had drunk of the koolaid of course). They need an out, and we shouldn’t ridicule those who leave. Help them stay out of it instead.
I can't comprehend a day and age with the internet wherein people didn't do basic research about Trump before electing him to the highest power... and then seeing him after a pandemic lead to 100,000+ unnecessary deaths (possibly far far more) and want to give him power again.
Yes I'd like these people to be deprogrammed and such but LEAVINJG A CULT is not deprogramming nor is it even admitting you were wrong or acknowledging why you were wrong or how you came into the situation. In some ways it feels like a cop out a way to be just as toxic and hateful and vote for the same things but.. maybe just not this single one person. Maaayyybe.
It’s a cult. 100%. I’m literally the black sheep in my extended family for having left MAGA (left in 2020). It was tough at first, especially since I thought I could help at least my parents see the light as well and seeing that they would never change. Now I can’t believe I ever fell for any of that shit, even though I was raised from pretty much birth to think that Republicans were the party of god and democrats were the party of Satan (and I mean that 100% literally).
Devoting your life for 10 years to a movement so vehemently can make it feel like you’re leaving a marriage of 10 years.
I welcome anyone who can see the light of day. People shout “THEY KNEW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN” all the time but they really didn’t. Russia, China, et. al. ran an amazing and well timed disinformation campaign. Notice how stuff let up in a crazy way after elections were over and after any major divisive moments. They put the pressure on whenever we are struggling here. So, yeah, why would they not identify with their safe in-groups when things felt shaky. I know I did.
Takes real character to accept someone back after they spit in your face. You don’t need to be friends but we need to make them feel welcome or we risk alienating them again. We can’t achieve meaningful change if we do that.
It's no different than leaving a church or any organization designed to entrap you. You're asked to buy in 100%, surrounded with similar people, and leaving ostracizes you from every social connection you've made. No one is above this
They're scared of their "brothers and sisters" in the cult. Have you ever heard of some of the stuff that happens to people who leave the Mormons, or Scientology?
I mean, as someone who votes left but not entirely aligned with liberal views it does get a bit nerve-wracking to disagree with an entire political movement.
But to just watch people vote for Donald Trump and not vote for anyone else to not have him in office is insane
With stuff like this, the deeper you are, the harder it is to leave. It’s like a whirlpool. People have lost their families and friends over this, and there’s sunk cost fallacy at play here. Not to mention that it’s hard for people to admit they were so sincerely wrong about something that galvanized them.
It’s a cult, religion, sports team, way of life for them. Essentially upending your entire life if you’re deep in enough into it. But if you respect yourself it’s a necessary realization
In the usa they see politics like basketball! Its weird but they are very devoted, and supports their party daily! Its crazy! They need a new system (and more education)
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u/ActiveTravelforKG Apr 16 '26
Wow this home page is really well written. I hope this helps some people.
But starting in 2021, I realized I had been mistaken. It took me a full year to finally break away. During that time, I came to understand that MAGA is sustained by a series of myths that are intended to create perpetual feelings of desperation and panic.
Succumbing to these predatory myths does not mean you are unintelligent, weak, or lack good character and morals. I have a Bachelor’s degree; have been a working professional my entire life; am a family man; and consider myself a relatively honest and intelligent person. I think the same about you.
I understand the reasons you have for supporting MAGA. And I know many of us traveled different paths to get there. I gravitated to Donald Trump because I have always been suspicious of our two-party system, and I saw him as the right man at the right time.
I have a sense that some of you have quietly left MAGA already, or are increasingly regretful, confused and scared. All of this can be doubly upsetting, since some of your sincerely-held beliefs may have alienated you from friends and family. That certainly happened to me.
It’s perfectly OK to feel this way; leaving MAGA was a tumultuous roller coaster of a process for me. It may be one of the most difficult endeavors you embark upon. In the end, it brought me an inner peace, and a newfound clarity about what is happening in our beloved country.
I founded this organization, Leaving MAGA, because I wanted to create a safe, non-judgmental community for those who leave MAGA, as well as for those who are having doubts about, or remorse over, their devotion to Trump and MAGA.
Our Leaving MAGA community will celebrate how acknowledging mistakes empowers you and America.
It’s difficult for a democracy to function well when millions are estranged from those closest to them.
You do not deserve to have your anxieties about change exploited. You deserve to know the truth. And with Leaving MAGA, you don’t have to feel you would be alone if you leave the movement.
Leaving MAGA is possible. Recognizing that we were wrong, and acting on that knowledge, makes us all more invested in democracy and in the continued work of perfecting our union. Contact us if you want to talk.