N°020_Vol.2_04

Introduction:  Donald J. Trump’s journey to the White House in 2016 was a surprising and revolutionary experience in the history of the United States (U.S.). His campaign’s slogan “Make American Great Again” (MAGA) was the key elements which leads to this historic victory. MAGA more than a campaign slogan, becomes an influential political label and an ideological movement that is accepted by many Americans. It is considered as an assertion of a specific way of viewing the world and a deep lament against the actual order. Though borrowed from American former President, Ronald Reagan’s 1980 political campaign, Trump’s version has a specific 21^st century tone. He uses MAGA has the central glue of his political mobilization which fact succeeded in catching the votes of a lot of American people. The work underlines that MAGA is a strategic well-crafted and politicized rhetorical maneuver that is consciously made to incorporate populism, nostalgia, and nationalism with the intent to re-motivate American citizens disillusioned with the current economic and cultural transformation and also with the political elites. To understand MAGA’s popularity and success, an analysis through established theoretical lenses is required.

Firstly, MAGA has a populist tone. Populism is defined by Cas Mudde (2004, p. 543) as “a thin-centered ideology to account for a moral struggle opposing a homogenized ‘people’ and an immoral ‘elite’”. Trump’s version of MAGA perfectly incarnates this Manichean struggle. He repeatedly depicts Washington elites, international financiers, and the establishment media as enemies. These groups were baptized as the “swamp” which were opposed to the “real”, forgotten American citizens (Müller, 2016). By depicting himself as the “Moses” that means the authentic savior, Trump created a powerful discourse in which we witnessed the existence of two camps the “swamp” and the “real”.

Secondly, MAGA’s effectiveness is in its politics of nostalgia. The promise to make of the U.S. a great nation again is a way to remember American people of a lost golden age and convince them that it is still possible to return to that period. Seen from Svetlana Boym’s (2001, p. 41) perspective this a common “restorative nostalgia”, a desire to restore a lost home and eradicate the complexity of the present days. For Trump’s supporters, the use of “again” is an idealized post Second World War (WWII) era. This was a period when American industries’ dominance was unchallengeable with aged socio-cultural values. The use of this retro message leads to think that MAGA aims at addressing anxieties raised by deindustrialization and globalization. It responds to rapid demographic social transformation (Hochschild, 2016). From this, it can be understood that MAGA offered a simple solution to complex problems.

 Finally, MAGA is used as a powerful tool of nationalist framing. It focused on a precise conception of American national identity. To trust Rogers Brubaker (1992) “it was as much concerned to define non-members as members”. MAGA’s appeal to national renewal was backed up by promises of strict immigration controls. It lays emphasis on protectionist trade pacts and an “America First” foreign policy which means that America’s interests will always be put first. This favored an exclusionary form of nationalism that mobilized native Americans’ sentiment (Bonikowski, 2017). MAGA then established great America as a culturally and economically independent nation. This achievement was possible through the politics of raising against external and internal threats. In this sense, then, MAGA reinforces Benedict Anderson’s (1983) concept of the imagined community, a community whose frontiers were being actively rewritten and guarded. In this regard, how does Trump’s political slogan MAGA work as a multifaceted rhetorical device to reach precise political goals, and what are the key components of its persuasive power? To address this issue, this paper argues that Trump’s MAGA functions as a multidimensional rhetorical device that fuses populism, restorative nostalgia, and exclusionary nationalism to mobilize disaffected voters and reshape American political identity. To achieve that aim, it is first necessary to make a brief historical recall of MAGA and outline its ideological roots. Second, it is essential to underline the populist rhetoric of MAGA. Third, it is of paramount importance to underscore the nostalgic appeal of “Again”. Finally, it is crucial to show how MAGA frames the American identity from an exclusionary nationalist perspective.