In a previous post, I discussed the concept of a schematic narrative template coined by psychologist and social anthropologist James V. Wertsch. In this post, I employ this concept to analyze President Donald Trump’s political rhetoric, which relies on the slogan “Make America Great Again”. I claim that when this slogan is embedded in the context of Trump’s political speeches and social media posts, it often includes a narrative for political mobilization (a recent example is his inaugural speech). I also argue that different MAGA narratives that Trump tells different audiences are based on the same schematic narrative template, which I will call “The MAGA template”.
Here is my analysis of the MAGA template:
- There was a time when America was great.
- America is not great anymore because of P.
- If we get rid of P, then America will become great again.
- Let’s make America great again by getting rid of P.
The MAGA template can be understood as a flexible and forward-looking narrative schema that Trump and his supporters apply in different contexts to address different audiences. This is because the variable “P” can be anything that the intended audience dislikes, including illegal immigrants, the Biden-Harris administration, the Washington elite, the “deep state”, “woke ideology”, “foreign terrorist organizations”, “Marxist maniacs and lunatics”, DEI programs, the rights of LGTB+ people, non-binary gender categories, environmental legislation, U.S. memberships in international organizations, scientifically-established facts concerning climate change and biodiversity loss, etc. Some of these items (e.g., the “deep state”) are purely fictional constructs, while others include groups of people, institutions, ideas, and facts.
“We,” in turn, is a fiction that includes both “ordinary Americans” and “the Great MAGA Leader”, who allegedly is on their side. “Us” is typically contrasted with “Them”, which can encompass different groups and social categories depending on the situation in which the story is told and the intended audience.
The time when America supposedly was great can refer to a mythical past that never existed, or it can be specified differently for various audiences and purposes. For example, depending on the audience and the issue addressed, the period of America’s greatness might alternatively be the 1950s, the 1800s, the period of colonization of America, or Trump’s previous presidency.
What is interesting is that the MAGA narrative template is similar to the “Expulsion of Alien Enemies” template (or “the triumph-over-alien-forces” template as it was called in Wertsch’s early work) which, according to Wertsch (2008; 2021), has underlie the official historical narratives in Russia for many decades.
As I show in my previous post, it was also employed by President Vladimir Putin to legitimize Russia’s illegal and brutal invasion of Ukraine. Narratives that are based on these two templates have turned out to be immune to critiques that identify falsehoods and factual inaccuracies in them. Nevertheless, when compared to the “Expulsion of Alien Enemies” template, the MAGA narrative template is less militaristic. This is not to say that it cannot be employed for military purposes, as the variable “P” may take the value of the “ownership of a particular area” that currently belongs to a sovereign country. We have already seen this happen.
In my recently published article “Schematic Narrative Templates in National Remembering”, I propose that, for the purposes of cognitive sociological analysis, it is useful to decompose Wertsch’s notion of a schematic narrative template into three interrelated parts: (1) plot structures, (2) narrative schemata, and (3) the practices of narrative production, dissemination, and consumption. One reason for this suggestion is that these three are different entities that need to be analyzed using different types of methods. I suggested that plot structures can be understood as shared patterns of semiotic affordances and constraints for meaning-making in many narrative texts. In contrast, a narrative schema is a dynamic cognitive structure culturally learned by individuals from many written and oral narratives with a similar plot structure.
For example, the above analysis of the MAGA template can be seen as a representation of the plot structure that is shared by many MAGA narratives that, we may hypothesize, are more or less congruent with Trump’s supporters’ narrative schemas they have developed from the repeated MAGA narratives Trump has told in his campaign rallies and in his social media posts. The practices of narrative production, dissemination, and consumption, in turn, are institutionally embedded social processes through which both narrative texts and narrative schemata spread within a specific population. In the case of national historical narratives that serve traditional authoritarian leaders, they may include, for example, state-controlled formal schooling and the production of history textbooks about the nation’s past. Techno-oligarchies may include social media platforms owned and controlled by billionaires whose interests are served by the state administration.
References
Kaidesoja, Tuukka. 2025. Schematic Narrative Templates in National Remembering. Memory Studies.18(1): 44-58 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17506980241247264
Wertsch, James V. 2002. Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wertsch, James V. 2008. The Narrative Organization of Collective Memory. Ethos, 36(1): 120–135. https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1548-1352.2008.00007.x
Wertsch, James V. 2021. How Nations Remember: A Narrative Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.