This Intervention is published as part of the b2o Review’s “Stop the Right” dossier.
Modernity, Lebensreform, and MAGA’s Grassroots: On Some Economic Contradictions of Trumpism
Matti Leprêtre
The MAGA movement presents a paradox: it rails against globalization and modernity, yet it is led by billionaire capitalists who thrive on both. This contradiction echoes the coalition that brought Hitler to power—a mix of industrial elites and working- to middle-class Germans drawn to the reactionary, anti-modern rhetoric of the Lebensreform. The same fractures that ultimately weakened that coalition could be exploited today to challenge MAGA’s hold on power. But if left unchecked, its path is just as clear: when economic promises fail, all that remains is the persecution of minorities.
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There is something deeply amiss in the way the memory of Nazi Germany is invoked in contemporary debates about American politics. Trump’s bid for a second term has inspired countless comparisons between him and Hitler—comparisons that, aside from their historical dubiousness, merely stimulate MAGA supporters’ libidinous drive to trigger woke liberals. Instead, there is value in fixating not on the Nazi era from 1933 onward, but on the more fluid, transformative period of 1920s Germany.
In that turbulent decade, a wounded cultural pride lingered after the 1918 defeat, and deep anxieties about losing world-power status permeated society. Gender-based challenges to the patriarchal order, the growing assertion of gay rights, and other emancipation movements met with fierce resistance from traditional authorities and conservative reactionaries. Most importantly, the profound crisis of modernity caused widespread anti-modern sentiments—all of which eventually coalesced into the conditions that allowed the Nazi Party to seize power.
There is little doubt that dealing with the first element—hurt cultural pride—is the chasse gardée of the Republican Party, while the struggle for emancipation remains the preserve of the Democrats. As an outsider, I have long been struck by how readily the U.S. left has allowed anti-modern sentiments to be co-opted by Republicans, with figures like Steve Bannon at the helm.
The caution is understandable. Anti-modern sentiments have long been associated with the rise of fascism in Europe and Nazism in particular. Yet before these ideas became the exclusive domain of the Nazis, they circulated freely across the political spectrum for more than half a century. They not only fueled nationalist and anti-Semitic currents but also underpinned a proto-environmentalist critique of modernity as part of a popular movement that came to be known as the Lebensreform.
Emerging in the latter half of the 19th century in a rapidly industrializing Germany, the Lebensreform (or reform of life) movement chiefly championed the “return to nature,” in a country where factories mushroomed across the landscape. For some, this “return” meant rejecting modern medicine in favor of natural remedies; for others, it meant embracing long hikes in the mountains; and for still others, it meant seeking an alternative to a worldview that treated nature and humanity as mere cogs in the economic machine.
Though largely driven by the bourgeoisie, the movement mounted a sharp critique of globalization, the dehumanization of factory labor, and the environmental devastation wrought by capitalist accumulation—even giving birth to Germany’s first utopian communities. For all these reasons, the Lebensreform has been described as the matrix not only for Nazism but also for future environmentalist and anti-globalization movements.
As a historian of Germany, I have always been struck by the parallels between the Lebensreform critique of globalization and the rhetoric of the grassroots of the MAGA movement. The far-right’s critique of “globalists” finds a clear parallel in the Lebensreform’s disdain for the emerging globalized world; and Bannon’s scathing attacks on technological progress, Elon Musk, and the “broligarchs” are reminiscent of earlier Lebensreform-ist critiques of technological advancement. Likewise, the widespread rejection of academic medicine and science—exemplified by the nomination of Robert Kennedy Jr. as Health Secretary—bears an uncanny resemblance to the alternative medical views championed in Germany a century ago. Yet, because of their common historical root in the Lebensreform, these elements also appear in leftist anti-globalization movements.[i]
I am not equating anti-globalization leftist movements with MAGA, nor suggesting that an alliance between the two is possible or desirable at this point. MAGA’s anti-modernity departs sharply from the traditional leftist critique—with its crude racism, nationalism, Christian fundamentalism, and mysticism. Yet these tensions were already present in 1920s Germany, and largely because the German left failed to harness these popular energies, a significant portion of the movement fell into Nazi hands. This historical precedent suggests that if a new left is to succeed where the old faltered against the far right, it should develop a critique of globalized capitalism able to prevent the growing number of those left behind by globalization from joining MAGA, or even capture the grassroots energies now under the MAGA banner.
For that, the left has a rich political repertory to draw upon. The critique of globalization and capitalist modernity has never been primarily a far-right one. From the first utopian communities to the “small is beautiful” movement of the 1970s, from Ivan Illich’s critique of biomedicine to the Our Bodies, Ourselves of the Boston Women’s Health Group Collective, from the anti-G8 protests of the 2000s to post- and decolonial propositions for finding an alternative to—or even an exit from—modernity, a range of options exists, more or less appealing, more or less viable today, but all worth considering for the emergence of a New Left. What is certain is that discarding the slightest critique of academic medicine as a conspiracy theory, scorning even the smallest enthusiasm for a life lived closer to nature as reactionary, and claiming to be “progressive” at all costs in a world so deeply embedded in a crisis of modernity will only seem repulsive to the growing number of people who see techno-industrial progress and globalized capitalism as the main cause of their torment.
It is only a question of time before MAGA’s disparate coalition begins to disappoint its working- and middle-class members. A coalition built around an omnipotent, transhumanist tech billionaire and a cadre of like-minded oligarchs will most likely do very little to address the real impacts of globalization and technological change on millions of American workers. Trump’s wavering stance on tariffs reflects this very contradiction: every time he tries to deliver on the aspirations of his working-class base, he is reined in by the cast of oligarchs he ultimately serves. To conceal this, the oligarchs have to double down on the one fight in which they can seem to stand with “the people” against “the regime”—cultural war. In effect, the only arena in which the Trump administration can thrive is in the persecution of minorities.
This, too, was the case in 1920s Germany. The coalition that eventually propelled Hitler to power brought together Lebensreform-inspired anti-modern peasants, factory workers, and middle-class employees, alongside wealthy industrialists terrified of the rising tide of communism and emancipatory movements.[ii] This uneasy alliance forced the Nazis to adopt a vehement anti-modern rhetoric to placate their grassroots supporters, while simultaneously embracing cutting-edge techno-industrial policies and deepening the logics of global capitalism. Even the Nazis’ de-globalizing measures emerged only when war loomed and autarky became a national security imperative. Their only ideological common ground was the cultural war they waged against emancipatory movements and, most notoriously, against ethnic and religious minorities—a war that would ultimately pave the way for the Shoah.
So far, Democrats have largely fallen into the trap of fighting Republicans on the terrain of cultural war, the only domain in which MAGA’s coalition remains united. While there is indeed an urgency in responding to the Trump administration’s “flood the zone” strategy and its constant targeting of minority rights, history suggests that a more promising strategy would be to stop fighting solely on the terrain of values and start exposing the internal fractures within MAGA’s vision—particularly its conflicting ideas about globalization, technology, and the meaning of life and work. At the same time, they must put forward viable alternatives; ones that embrace more localized, low-tech ways of living.
Engaging in a dialogue with people currently attracted by MAGA’s anti-modern rhetoric might feel uncomfortable at first. In France, the left faced a similar unease in 2018 when the Yellow Vest movement erupted. Initially a reaction against an oil tax, the movement soon broadened to encompass grievances common to MAGA’s grassroots—demands for a decent life in one’s village, resistance to the concentration of services in big cities, a rejection of unrestrained globalization, and a critique of the ultra-connected, ultra-mobile elite’s way of life. In retrospect, it became clear that the movement had emerged from those left behind by globalization.[iii] The French left, initially repulsed by the protests—deeming them the product of politically illiterate people with no clear views on immigration, gender politics, and ecology—gradually joined the movement, imposing leftist slogans and even sidelining its more overtly far-right, violent elements.
The convergence was by no means easy. A sensible component of the Yellow Vests eventually turned back to the far right as the movement faded—partly due to quasi-military repression and partly because some of its most basic revendications were fulfilled. Yet this turn toward Marine Le Pen also occurred because the institutional left was unable to articulate a critique of modernity compelling enough to keep the Yellow Vests from falling into the open hands of France’s MAGA equivalent. As uncomfortable as this dialogue might feel, it is a necessary one.
Debates after the election have focused on whether the Democrats should have leaned further to the left or more toward the center to win the votes they needed to secure victory. This assumes that political positions can be summed up along a single line from far right to far left. Yet, depending on the issues considered, there is sometimes less distance between an anti-globalization leftist activist and a MAGA grassroots supporter than between that same activist and a centrist Democrat. MAGA supporters may soon come to see that the strongest “regime” of all is the one that binds together the guardians of globalized capitalism—a regime spanning large swathes of both the Democratic and Republican parties, with Trump and Musk as its most zealous artisans.
One can only hope that the American left will have made its aggiornamento by the time this day comes, to welcome the disillusioned adherents of Trumpism. The Democratic Party’s current stance—as the last firewall between Trump’s erratic populism and Wall Street, and as the staunch defender of free trade and the post-1945 global economic order—raises serious doubts about the American left’s ability—or willingness—to reclaim a critique of globalization that should always have remained central to any party still dreaming of itself as the voice of the working class[iv].
Matti Leprêtre is a Teaching and Research Fellow at Sciences Po Paris and a PhD candidate at the EHESS. His dissertation examines the history of medicinal plants in the German Empire from the 1880s to 1945. He trained in postcolonial studies as an undergraduate and earned a dual degree from Sciences Po and Columbia University in 2017. He has been invited to present his research at a wide host of institutions across France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, including Oxford and Harvard. His work has appeared in several edited volumes and journals such as the Journal of the History of Ideas. He is currently co-editing an edited volume and a journal special issue on the relationship between health, nature, and the pharmaceutical industry.
[i] Detlef Siegfried and David Templin, eds., Lebensreform Um 1900 Und Alternativmilieu Um 1980: Kontinuitäten Und Brüche in Milieus Der Gesellschaftlichen Selbstreflexion Im Frühen Und Späten 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019).
[ii] Johann Chapoutot, Les irresponsables. Qui a porté Hitler au pouvoir ?, NRF essais (Paris: Gallimard, 2025).
[iii] Thomas Porcher, Les délaissés: Comment transformer un bloc divisé en force majoritaire (Paris: Fayard, 2020).
[iv] For a recent example of what a leftist criticism of globalization could be, see Stathis Gourgouris, Nothing Sacred (New York: Columbia University Press, 2024).