Written by Ethan Sell
The ideology of Trumpism has dominated American political discourse for the past decade. Closely adjacent to MAGA and America First, it represents an economically conservative, anti-globalist, and populist political framework. It promises to reduce wasteful government spending, to restore America’s industrial greatness, and to liberate the working class American from the ‘liberal elites’. Despite these promises, Trump’s policies prove again and again to harm those who support him the most. The Americans that form substantive parts of Trump’s voter base – those in de-industrialised cities, rural areas, and manufacturing sectors – are the same Americans that form substantive parts of those that suffer from his policies. Such a tension, I propose, is irreconcilable with the common Marxist-inspired approach to Trumpism that is frequently heard in modern political discourse: the idea that ideology is false consciousness and that Trump supporters are merely deceived about their interests and need correcting with facts. Instead, Žižek’s view of ideology as not masking reality, but structuring reality itself, is much more apt to explain Trumpism’s continued success. Consequently, we must rethink the way we conduct political discourse.
I mentioned that Trump’s policies harm those who support him the most. Let’s investigate this through the lens of two much-discussed policies of his second term: tariffs and healthcare cuts. Trump’s April tariffs caused an immediate loss of 14,000 manufacturing jobs, which could increase factory costs anywhere from 2% to 4.5%, and are on track to cost the typical American household an average of $2,400 per year. Trump’s Medicaid cuts impacted Republicans and rural Americans the most: 23% of rural Americans are insured by Medicaid, higher than the average 19%, and more than two-thirds of the nearly 300 US counties with the biggest growth in Medicaid and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) since 2008 voted for Trump in 2024. Further, Medicaid funding cuts for rural hospitals would exceed 20% in more than half of states, with the American Nurses Association estimating the cuts could lead to half a million job losses.
I say that MAGA persists in popularity despite this tension. While it is true that Trump’s approval ratings have declined from when he took office, they are still high enough to raise eyebrows, given the harm he has done to his voters. As of August 2025, 85% of Trump’s 2024 voters continue to approve of his job performance. Though this is a decline from 95% at the beginning of his term, it is still a substantive majority. Further, Trump sustains an 81% approval rating on his tariffs amongst his 2024 voters, and while rural support has indeed declined (59% in February 2025 to 46% in May 2025), it is still of a sizable amount.
Now, we have a paradox. According to the common, Marxist-inspired conception of ideology, the coexistence of support and contradictions within the ideology of Trumpism should not stand, unless it was the case that the supporters were unaware of the facts. But supporters are not unaware of the facts. 68% of Americans believe that tariffs increase prices, and 44% of Republicans acknowledge that they will hurt the economy in the short term. Further, contradictions within Trump’s policy have been widely reported by mainstream news outlets such as MSNBC, NBC News, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
This is where Žižek’s concept of ideological fantasy becomes useful. For Žižek, ideology is not what we believe, rather, it is what makes reality itself understandable. Ideology serves as a fantasy which structures reality itself. That is, it conceals the deep antagonism at the basis of social reality – the trauma of the impossibility of an ordered, harmonious society. Ideology is not a set of mental states, it is a set of actions; belief comes after to support the system established by the ideology. To fully understand this, it is important to recognise the Lacanian aspect of Žižek’s philosophy. Underpinning ideology is the ‘Real’, which can be understood as the traumatic, impossible kernel that resists symbolisation. Ideology is what imposes order upon the world, meaning that we are still able to navigate the world, just via an imposed symbolic reality. Ideology is not a veil over the top of a structured world, it is what makes our experience of the world ordered in the first place.
Žižek’s explanation of fantasy explains why, even in the face of persistent contradictions, Trumpism enjoys continued support. The ideology is not defined by beliefs such as ‘Tariffs will restore American manufacturing’, or even more general ones such as ‘Trump will make my life better’. Instead, the ideology is characterised by deeper narrative structures that, amongst other things, appeals to an idea of the lost greatness of America that was stolen by the liberal elites. According to this reading, ideology takes on a quasi-mythical character (hence Žižek’s use of the word ‘fantasy’) – in the case of Trumpism, it is deeply nostalgic. Other ideologies share this quasi-mythical character but are not always necessarily nostalgic. Liberalism, for example, appeals to ideas of the autonomous individual and forward progress toward enlightenment, rather than to a lost past. Such a narrative structure is pre-theoretical – it is what is assumed in order to begin any political reasoning in the first place. As such, contradictions in Trump’s policies lose the majority of their weight. While they might challenge specific beliefs, these beliefs are not what constitute the ideology, rather beliefs are constructed as consequences of the ideological fantasy. The fantasy itself is safe from contradictions; immanent critique (contradictions and antagonisms in Trump’s policy) cannot rebut the fantasy as the fantasy structures reality itself, so all these arguments operate within the fantasy’s framework rather than challenging the framework itself. Fantasy is deeply motivational – someone may comprehend the criticism being levelled but the power of the fantasy undermines its psychological sway. I contend that this can be seen in how Trump supporters defend Trumpism against various criticisms: they often claim that continued economic hardship is a result of the deep state working against Trump, or an initial phase in a wider plan. Since the fantasy is pre-theoretical, it is also unfalsifiable, meaning that there is nothing that can be said to challenge it.
Therefore, the approach to criticising Trumpism that favours fact-motivated observation of the antagonisms and contradictions in his policy is ineffectual, because there is an asymmetry in the mechanism of critique and the mechanism of defence. It is like trying to harm a ghost by punching it: there is a difference in the level on which each thing operates. And, we can clearly see that this approach does not work. The consistent failure of mainstream Democrats to defeat Trump with this strategy, as well as a wider failure of the political centre to defeat Trumpism-adjacent ideologies (Reform UK and AfD, for example), is clear evidence to this. I propose that we shift this strategy. According to Žižek, ideology is needed for all political reasoning. Therefore, the solution is not to deconstruct ideologies, it is to replace them. Obviously, there are some ideologies that carry more harm with their implications than others – compare Nazism to Liberalism or Stalinism to New Labour. Thus, the goal is to establish ideologies which promote the general good. There are already hints that such an approach is effective against right-wing populism. Zohran Mamdani winning the Democratic primary for the New York City mayoral election and the buzz of excitement around Zack Polanski, the new leader of the Green Party, reflects that what works is not an immanent critique of the opposing ideology. What works is constructing a rival ideology that makes people feel as though they are being listened to in the same way that Trumpism does, but that is ultimately more beneficial for all.
