🔒 Civil War MAGA: Why They're Fighting

Well, the most predictable thing ever has begun happening—the self-driven implosion of the Trump administration. Everyone knew it, I knew it, the only question was how many months it would be into Trump’s second term before the cracks started showing.

 The answer, beating everyone’s most pessimistic estimates, is negative one.

 Also utterly predictable is that the collapse revolves around Elon Musk, but what is surprising is that the rift isn’t between Musk and Trump himself. It’s between Musk and his sycophants, and Trump’s crew from back in 2016—Steve Bannon, Laura Loomer, Nick Fuentes, and the Very Fine People who made their voices heard in Charlottesville and January 6.

 It’s basically that scene in Anchorman where the crew throw down with the Evening News team.

What does tend to stir confusion is why these people are fighting at all. If we accept that these groups of people are all Nazi-adjacent—and there’s plenty of that going around—then what could they possibly have beef about? It’s not as easy as  saying that they’re just all vying for power. That’s part of it, but not the whole story. Donald Trump is not King Lear, despite the exhaustive comparisons.

If these people are all Nazis, why are they fighting?

To understand the feud you have to try to come to terms with the idea that there are multiple different ideologies on the far right that are not fully compatible with each other. They can get along for as long as it takes to defeat the liberals in an election, but as soon as they try to run the government together all the gears just lock up while they try to turn different directions.

 And while I say this I need to make clear that, yes, everyone I’m talking about is a type of white nationalist. Yes, they are all bad. You certainly don’t need to root for any of them and trying to rank either side as worse than the other is the wrong question. The ranking is irrelevant if it’s even coherent. But I see way too many—nearly all—of the progressive writers I respect dropping all of these people into the exact same “they are Nazis” bucket, and getting upset if you raise any objection or draw any distinction.

 I understand the reasoning. A Nazi is the worst type of person you can imagine and the measure against which all ideologies are ranked. If’s like Einstein’s constant C in a theory of asshole relativity. To suggest someone isn’t a Nazi, even while insisting they are very, very bad, you’re still saying they are different from a Nazi, which means they are not as bad as a Nazi, which means they are better than a Nazi, which means they are preferable to a Nazi, which means you agree with them to some extent, which means you think they are good actually.

 This, to me, is like saying if you venture out into the wild and encounter a predator it doesn’t really make a difference whether it’s a hungry bear or an angry leopard. Sure, they both want you equally dead, but your survival depends on knowing their specific motives and behaviours.

All that said, there are Nazis in this story. Actual ones. Nick Fuentes and his so-called “groyper” army are probably the most predominant modern American neo-Nazi group active on social media, and they’re a visible force on the anti-Musk side of this conflict—it’s the resurgence, in effect, of the Alt-Right alliance, as opposed to what I’m going to call the Tech-Right for lack of a better term.

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