We Already Know Who’s Winning the MAGA Civil War
Hint: It's the worst people on the internet.
It has been five years since those pictures of American “patriots” storming the Halls of Congress to stop the peaceful transfer of power first made their way into our social media feeds. Since then, January 6 has become a peculiar anniversary of infamy, and a constant fixture in editorial calendars.
In the first years after 2021, that anniversary coverage had a celebratory undercurrent: somber though the occasion was, there was an assumption that it marked the end of a scary chapter in American history. Now, that assumption is—like so many others we have been too slow to discard over the past decade—starting to look hopelessly naive.
Those who stormed the Capitol five years ago are now free thanks to a presidential pardon. And the most extreme voices on the right are in the ascendant, with a civil war about its future direction brewing between the radical and the even more radical wings of the MAGA movement. So to mark the fifth anniversary of January 6, we are honored to publish Damon Linker, a frequent contributor to our pages who has written a masterful, and frightening, essay on the future trajectory of the American right.
Thanks for reading, today and always,
—Yascha
2025 was a hell of a year for American politics.
It began with liberals and progressives feeling stunned and stupefied by the scope of Donald Trump’s victory the previous November, as well as by the subsequent “vibe shift” in the culture that seemed to portend reversals on multiple fronts for the hopes and aspirations of everyone found even a millimeter to the left of Trump. His second administration hit the ground sprinting, moving to assert presidential power over both the executive branch and the other two branches of the federal government with an eye to pursuing a range of unorthodox (hard right) policies on immigration, trade, regulations, foreign affairs, and public health.
The year ended with Trump’s political opposition feeling rejuvenated. Democrats did quite well in special elections, and they ran the tables in November’s off-year vote, giving them a head of steam as they head toward this year’s midterms. Trump’s approval ratings, meanwhile, have softened to the 30s. The result is a more upbeat mood on the center left than what prevailed a year ago. Ezra Klein of The New York Times gave voice to this change in conventional wisdom, as he so often does, by pronouncing in a recent column, “The Trump Vibe Shift Is Dead.”
I’m allergic to this kind of happy talk. My judgment tells me nothing fundamental has changed for the better over the course of a year. On the contrary, I think our political culture is trending downward into a deepening pit of populist demagoguery shot through with new (if ominously familiar) forms of ugliness.
Here is where I think we are, a little less than a quarter into the second Trump administration: We are firmly into a reflexively anti-establishment era of politics in which whichever party wins power in any given election will be relatively easily defeated in the following election. Democrats today can take comfort in this, because it implies they should be able to win the midterms and possibly also the presidency in 2028. But that is short-sighted, because it means that even if they do win in 2028, Republicans will be in a strong position to defeat them in the 2030 midterms and the 2032 presidential election.
In other words, Republicans are highly likely to keep winning elections, no matter how radical they become.
That points to the second dimension of where we are: The Republican Party is continuing to radicalize. This is probably the most disturbing political development of last year. For much of the past decade, people have been assuming Trump is some kind of pathological anomaly in our politics. Yes, many finally came around, after the 2024 election, to grudgingly acknowledge his talent for mobilizing otherwise disengaged voters. But the comforting conclusion most unwisely draw is that the political passions Trump has ignited will vanish as soon as he departs the scene, which, as a 79-year-old man, he inevitably will before long.
This tendency to trace everything that’s happened in the GOP back to the distinctive charismatic appeal of Trump himself implies that his opponents, within both parties, can just wait him out. For many of the analysts who stake out this view, the fact that the MAGA right has increasingly succumbed to internecine squabbling in recent months confirms it.
I think this is quite wrong. For one thing, it ignores the broader context in which right-populist personalities and parties continue to gain in electoral appeal around the democratic world. By 2029, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany could be led by such personalities and parties.
Then there’s the fact that, within the American context, the cheery view attributes too much power to Trump. Yes, he has distinctive talents that Vice President JD Vance and others lack, but he gained traction with those talents because he was better at doing something others on the right had been attempting for years and even decades. From Pat Buchanan’s surprisingly potent challenge to George H.W. Bush in the Republican primaries of 1992, to Sarah Palin’s ability to whip up the right-wing crowds in 2008, to the grassroots Tea Party movement, to the succession of fire-breathing populist candidates who temporarily surged into the lead during the 2012 primaries, the Republican electorate lacked someone capable of fully breaking the hold of the non-populist leadership of the party. Trump accomplished this in waves, first in 2016, then again in the aftermath of January 6, 2021—five years ago today—and finally with his decisive victory in 2024.
Which means that the destruction of the old order is behind us. It has been accomplished. Trump’s unique skills will no longer be as needed as they have been up to now.
What we’re seeing with the recent surge of infighting among MAGA “influencers” is a battle for leadership within the post-Trump right. Will the winner be the old-guard “true conservative” faction? Or will it be harder-edged figures who combine an embrace of nativism and protectionism with a commitment to spreading extreme and often delusional conspiracy theories?
The old, pre-Trump model of electoral politics on the right, from William F. Buckley’s National Review on down through the Reagan and Bush administrations, and then through the McCain and Romney campaigns, involved the first, more institutionalist group mobilizing the more populist second group for the sake of winning elections, after which the first group would run the show, throwing occasional policy scraps in the direction of the second group to keep its members minimally on side. When a prominent member of the second group got too rowdy, too demanding, too racist, too bigoted, or too conspiratorial, the first group would play the role of gatekeepers, policing the boundaries of acceptable speech and excommunicating key figures.
But that model of coalition management doesn’t work anymore, because social media has created vast mobilized networks of the radicalized. This has shown that these right-wing dissenters vastly outnumber those who support responsible governance from the center right.
If you want to understand this new reality, pay attention to the feud between online media personalities such as Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin—along with politicians such as Texas Senator Ted Cruz—on one side, and more extreme personalities and podcasters such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and the ethno-nationalist Nick Fuentes on the other. Shapiro, in particular, has made headlines lately with his broadsides against the unhinged anti-Semitism of the populist rabblerousers. This has convinced some people that the right is descending into a civil war. But if it is, it’s a terribly lopsided one. For one thing, Shapiro originally hired Owens at The Daily Wire, thereby helping to launch her career into the stratosphere.
But does Shapiro have the power even to attempt the kill? His podcast currently sits in the mid 40s in Spotify’s rankings. His ideological allies Levin and Cruz, meanwhile, don’t even crack the top 100. And Owens and Carlson? Both are regularly found in the middle of the top 10. And that doesn’t even count Fuentes’ fulminations, which take place off the grid of official rankings. His Twitter/X account is followed by 1.2 million people and his video podcast episodes are regularly viewed more than a million times each on Rumble.
Some older figures on the right have placed their faith in JD Vance as a bulwark against the anti-Semitic throngs. As Trump’s heir apparent to lead the Republican Party into 2028, Vance will have to decide whether and how to draw lines between views that will be accepted and promoted within the GOP and those that will be expunged. Many on the right long for Vance to take a firm stand against Fuentes and his followers. But will he?
So far, there’s no sign of it. And yes, that includes in the recent UnHerd interview, in which Vance told Fuentes (in the debased public rhetoric favored by populists) to “eat shit.” The vice president made clear that his rightward volley was provoked, not by any of Fuentes’ political views, but by him insulting Vance’s (South Asian) wife. “Anyone who attacks my wife,” Vance declared, will be attacked in turn, “whether their name is Jen Psaki or Nick Fuentes.”
That’s right: the sitting vice president of the United States made clear he was equally inclined to rise up in defensive anger against a former White House press secretary from the mainstream opposition party and a man who regularly proclaims his admiration for Adolf Hitler and loathing for Jews.
I’m afraid anyone placing their hopes in Vance serving in the role of gatekeeper or force for moderation is going to be sorely disappointed. He’s much more likely to serve as an enabler for the radical right. That’s because Vance understands the truth of the Republican Party’s electoral situation. It needs Fuentes’ rabid fanbase as part of its coalition. This doesn’t mean the GOP is on the cusp of becoming an outright Nazi party. But it does mean that it is going to welcome and accommodate Nazis as one important faction within itself—and Vance is going to oversee and encourage that ongoing ideological evolution.
Sounds pretty gloomy!
I know it does. But keep in mind that my analysis includes a prediction about a radicalizing Republican Party remaining not only politically viable but also politically vulnerable. Democrats will still sometimes win control of Congress and the presidency—and every time they do, they will get a chance to win back squandered trust and thereby prove themselves worthy of winning again.
That’s a path that just might put us on a different trajectory as a country, away from recurring cycles of recrimination toward a more stable governing consensus. In the best of circumstances, such a consensus could even begin to serve as a firmer foundation for a new ideological equilibrium in which the extremes once again find themselves excluded from influence and power.
I’m not sure it will happen, let alone when. But this is what would need to happen for the turbulence of the political present to fade, giving way to a new era of stability and effective, humane self-governance.
Damon Linker writes the Substack newsletter “Notes from the Middleground.” He is a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow in the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center.
A version of this article was originally published at Notes from the Middleground.
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Damon Linker, have you ever met a MAGA person? Since over 50% of Americans voted for Trump, and all of them might be called MAGA ( you never define the term) - that's a lot of people and they are very diverse. Yet liberals focus on the worst, most extreme MAGA people ( like Fuentes) and ignore the violent vicious left wing voices. Prominent democrats have actually called for Trump to be assassinated! Others celebrated Charlie Kirk's murder. But its not fair to hold these up as indicative of all democrats.
The same goes for MAGA. Most MAGA voters are simply: 1. Fed up with open borders, money for illegals, encouraging law breaking by migrants . 2. fed up. with foreign wars ( and yes! disappointed with Trump and dubious about Venezuala). 3. Fed up with government over reach as we experienced during covid craziness. 4. Fed up with DEI and transgender excesses . 5. Not racist, not homophobic, not transphobic.
You criticize JD Vance for saying Fuentes should eat shit. I agree that such language is vulgar. But didn't your own VP candidate, the awesome Tim Walz, use the F**k world frequently? Why is it okay for a democrat to be vulgar and not for a republican.
Inane article from a weak writer and weaker thinker.
I live in a California liberal college town and have a business in a smaller farming community down the road. I have relatives in red states where I grew up as a child. I have a very large population of friends and acquaintance on both sides of the aisle. I know all the Trump supporters in my circle and all the Biden and Harris supporters. I know not one Trump supporter that even knew who Nick Fuentes is until the left media started attempt to pin him as the brand of Republicanism.
However, most of the people I know that are Democrats vote Democrat support and defend all the radical woke bullshit. They do it almost as a reflex supporting their media gaslit Trump Derangement Syndrome sickness. They no longer critical think... they are robots of emotional turmoil that are, frankly, a hazard and a good reason to question the continued benefits of representative democracy... and it has always assumed clear thinking people will dominate the vote.