Whitney Phillips

Project Title: Popular Demonology and the Trump Era

Project Description: Typically, when critics discuss the chaos and uncertainty of the present political moment, Donald Trump is framed as an asteroid that became the sun. He–and MAGA more broadly–is what the entire US political system revolves around, with vast gravitational consequences for the entire globe. Although this model seems intuitive, it misses something important. Namely what Trump revolves around, along with the rest of MAGA: the figure of the liberal devil, mapped loosely onto the left and the Democratic Party (and, increasingly, ideological conservatives and former Republicans who criticize Trump). Rather than being the sole creation of MAGA, the liberal devil is a product of popular myth, popular storytelling, and popular ritual, described collectively as popular demonology. All are central to understanding where we are, why things are this way, and what might be coming next.