[This is the first in a two-part series comparing the two populist antagonists MAGA and the DSA.]

At first blush, it may appear the nation’s two preeminent populist movements, the Right’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) and the Left’s Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)*, have nothing in common.

And it is true, of course, there exist numerous differences in the political views and aims of these movements. These will be looked at in depth in Part Two of this series.

Yet, while rarely if ever recognized, let alone mentioned, by each movement’s members, there exist similarities between MAGA and the DSA.

Naturally, the fundamental basis of any populist movement has spurred the creation of both organizations: namely, the members believe a powerful, unaccountable entity or entities are unfairly exploiting them and obstructing their personal pursuit of happiness.

Further, they believe their exploitation is facilitated and exacerbated by collusion between the powerful entities and similarly powerful organizations. Worse, such collusion often involves an organization ostensibly charged with protecting the individual from exploitation, not facilitating and exacerbating it.

Consequently, the individual who believes himself to be oppressed and exploited by a powerful, unaccountable entity or entities will band together with like-minded others to demand an end to their subjugation by these puissant forces. Further, the aggrieved individual demands the reform or abolition of those puissant enabling entities that were supposed to protect the individual in the first place but have, instead, abnegated their duties and betrayed him.

For MAGA, the powerful, obstructing entity is government, primarily the federal government, though there has been increasing animus toward multinational corporations, especially Big Tech. The result has been MAGA members’ demands for an end to the collusion between “big business” and “big government.”

For the DSA, the powerful, obstructing entities are international corporations. However, to use as a cudgel against both the Democrat Party establishment and the Trump administration, the DSA has taken to decrying government collusion with these multinational corporations—i.e., their own call for an end to the collusion between “big business” and “big government.”

Hence, between the respective movements, this creates a narrow window of opportunity for a public policy convergence, most notably in enacting and implementing aggressive antitrust legislation, eliminating corporate subsidies, and imposing protective tariffs to stop outsourcing and promote domestic production.

For MAGA, such a public policy convergence would require a delicate calibration between giving the government enough tools to bring multinational corporations to heel and simultaneously reducing the overall power of government. In the end, MAGA’s distrust of big government remains deeper and more abiding than its disdain for big business.

For the DSA, however, there are no such qualms. Expanding the power of government is their stated objective, be it over multinational corporations or not. As such, the DSA possesses a far simpler calculus for reconciling “big government” and “big business”—bluntly, ratcheting up the power of government and ratcheting down the power of big business. No other calibration is considered necessary or appropriate.

Thus, it is possible, if not probable, for MAGA and the DSA to concur on an approach to diminishing the cozy “business-government” model of collusion both populist movements consider to be exploiting them. Granted, given the differing ultimate aims of MAGA and the DSA regarding the appropriate size and scope of government, such a combining of forces on a legislative goal would be a way station on the road to different destinations.

Nonetheless, both populist movements are avowedly engaged in civil wars to control the two major parties—MAGA versus the GOP establishment and the DSA versus the Democrat establishment. A victory by one or both of these populist movements, let alone by both, and/or a convergence of them on key issues is the stuff of nightmares for the entrenched moneyed interests and their political lackeys across the political spectrum who have benefited from such collusion within this skewed model of governing. It explains why so much time, money, and messaging are expended in amplifying the differences between the two populist movements, lest they ever combine forces to accomplish a shared end—i.e., the end of their own exploitative gravy train.

It is to these differences that I will now turn.

[Historical footnote: Communist organizers have long advised members to give their organizations and movements patriotic names to obscure their destructive, alien ideology from an unsuspecting public.]