Why MAGA is Filled With Really Lonely People
In February 2025, researchers at the University of Amsterdam published a study in Social Science & Medicine that should have rewritten every conversation about why people join the far right. They tracked over 40,000 people across nine countries, with data spanning fifteen years. They controlled for income, education, immigration attitudes, and political ideology. They wanted to know what actually predicts whether someone will support the populist radical right.
The answer wasn’t immigration. It wasn’t economics. It wasn’t religion.
It was loneliness.
Lonelier individuals were consistently…
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