Investigative Journalism

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pelespirit@sh.itjust.works

Opinion: It's not just hopium: People really are leaving MAGA (www.salon.com)

submitted 1 week ago by pelespirit@sh.itjust.works to c/investigativejournalism@sh.itjust.works

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But I stuck with MAGA. The fear of losing my community terrified me. For the better part of a year, I spent myriad sleepless nights wrestling with my conscience.

The final straw came for me on May 24, 2022, when a gunman massacred 19 kids and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. MAGA’s response was that we needed more guns. My research had shown me that was egregiously mistaken. Overwhelmed by guilt for having contributed to this madness, I quit MAGA.

Three months later, I published a mea culpa, in which I renounced my support for Trump and apologized for my hurtful deeds and rhetoric. I never imagined that anyone would care. But the opposite was true: I was deluged with requests for help from people hoping to save their relationships with their friends and loved ones in MAGA.

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[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

There’s no ideological purity test at Leaving MAGA. People of various political stripes have renounced Trump and joined us. Their testimonials on our websitedemonstrate that they are real, complex human beings, not caricatures.

Consider the story of Stephania Messina. She had a rough childhood: Her father was a heroin addict, and she had undiagnosed ADHD. Later, she became a born-again evangelical and was sucked into Christian nationalist beliefs, which led her to MAGA. She believed Trump was “the persecuted white savior” who was implementing the Christian nationalist agenda.

But Stephania lived in turmoil, because she was a feminist at heart. She worked as a respiratory therapist, and recoiled from MAGA’s backlash against the COVID vaccine and masking. Then she fell down the QAnon rabbit hole for several months, finally realizing in early 2021 it was an elaborate scam.

Around that time, the father of Stephania’s oldest son died. Her church responded by telling her son he was better off without his dad, because his dad hadn’t been a Christian. Stephania left her church, finally got her ADHD diagnosed, and began the deconstruction of her religion.

She stopped watching Newsmax and OAN, and started listening to NPR. She did her own research, as we say on the internet — but for real. “I started to think critically again,” Stephania says. She speaks of the hard work she undertook to unlearn “the internalized misogyny reinforced by Trump and the church.”

Today Stephania is a left-leaning Democrat, but she hasn’t abandoned her faith. In fact, she says she feels “more spiritually fulfilled than ever. Looking at Jesus through sober eyes, free from the intoxication of the church, has led me to be a more authentic Christian, as I seek to love and support others without the bigotry and hate that fundamentalists in MAGA falsely believe is God’s way, and that they use to justify their support of Trump.”

If you had met Stephania during her Trump-loving MAGA days, you would probably have written her off as a hopeless case. But she found her way out, and many others are doing that, too. We have gathered more than 30 stories of people who have left MAGA on our website, each of them as unique and compelling as hers.

On the eve of America’s 250th birthday, our democracy is in crisis. I firmly believe the key to resolving it lies partly in forming unlikely but necessary alliances. Those who leave MAGA are worthy of our grace, and can become stewards of our democracy. We cannot afford to shun them. If anything, we should welcome them; our future depends on it.