The Inner Monologue

It sounds absurd at first: comparing Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement to Mao Zedong’s radical communism. One wraps itself in stars and stripes, the other waved red flags and little red books. One claims to defend capitalism, the other sought to abolish it. But strip away the rhetoric, and you find two movements cut from the same cloth: both distrustful of science, hostile to expertise, addicted to grievance, and enthralled to the whims of a single man.

Science Be Damned

Mao sent peasants to run backyard steel furnaces and dictated farming methods by ideology rather than biology, plunging millions into famine. MAGA rallies reject vaccines, sneer at climate science, and cling to coal like it’s sacred scripture. Both movements replace knowledge with dogma—and the people pay the price.

Worship of the “Real People”

Mao exalted the peasantry as the pure soul of China, set against the “capitalist roaders.” MAGA elevates “real Americans” while casting immigrants, urbanites, academics, and bureaucrats as enemies. Both thrive on dividing society into the righteous masses versus corrupt elites.

Mobilizing Resentment

The Red Guards terrorized intellectuals under Mao, whipped into frenzy by the leader’s call to purge. MAGA mobs stormed the U.S. Capitol, told that democracy itself had betrayed them. The tactics are eerily familiar: stir anger, unleash chaos, then claim loyalty as the only cure.

The Leader Above All

For Mao, politics became a personality cult: portraits, slogans, endless rituals of devotion. For MAGA, Trump is the movement. His word reshapes policy overnight. His image fills stadiums. Disagree with him and you are cast out.

The Backward March

Both Mao and MAGA dress regression as revolution. Mao tried to leap into modernity with feudal tools, collapsing agriculture. MAGA promises to restore greatness by resurrecting coal and smokestack industries long overtaken by the future. In both cases, the world moves forward while the movement insists on marching backward.

Two ideologies, worlds apart in rhetoric, yet bound together in practice. Both reject truth when it conflicts with loyalty. Both glorify a mythical past while punishing those who dare to question. And both remind us that extremism—red or red-hatted—leads not to progress but to ruin.