Matt Agorist

They promised to “Drain the Swamp” and end the “Forever Wars,” but from cabinet picks to new military interventions, the MAGA movement has been successfully co-opted by the neoconservative uniparty, with the help of a spineless influencer class that convinced the base to love the boot simply because it was painted red.

The official narrative spoon-fed to the masses is that the MAGA movement is a grassroots, anti-establishment rebellion aimed at dismantling the uniparty, ending forever wars, and draining the swamp. We are told day in and day out that the system is terrified of this populist uprising, but when we strip away the partisan cheerleading, we are witnessing one of the most successful psychological operations in modern political history. The establishment didn’t defeat the populist uprising; they bought it, rebranded it with a red hat, and used it to manufacture consent for the exact neoconservative, state-expanding policies the movement initially swore to destroy.

If a Democrat had expanded the surveillance state, spiked the national debt, unilaterally banned firearms accessories, and filled their cabinet with Wall Street mega-donors and war hawks, the right would have revolted in the streets. Because there is an “R” next to the name, however, they cheer and beg for more. The state is not shrinking in the slightest. It is merely under new management, and the boot on your neck has simply been painted a different color.

If you want to understand how a purportedly anti-war movement was so easily hijacked by the establishment, look no further than the grifter class of MAGA influencers who actively manufactured consent for the pivot. Social media personalities like Catturd and Gunther Eagleman—alongside prominent digital operatives like Benny Johnson and Jack Posobiec—spent the entirety of the campaign posturing as staunch non-interventionists. They loudly decried the military-industrial complex and the endless funding of foreign proxy wars. Yet, the moment the administration changed hands and the military crosshairs shifted toward sovereign nations like Iran, these same influencers entirely abandoned their supposed principles. They are now openly salivating over the prospect of flattening a sovereign nation, cheering on the exact same neoconservative warmongering they built their alternative-media brands opposing. It raises a glaring, uncomfortable question: are these digital operatives simply spineless sycophants, or are they quietly being paid to parrot the uniparty’s new, blood-soaked marching orders?

The sheer hypocrisy of this digital vanguard is especially sickening when contrasted with those who actually held the line. Before his brutal assassination, Charlie Kirk was one of the most outspoken voices against the neoconservative push for a war with Iran. Regardless of where one stood on his broader politics, Kirk used his massive platform to fiercely oppose the very foreign entanglements the current administration is now aggressively pursuing. Had he not been killed, there is little doubt he would be standing firmly against this blatant betrayal of the anti-war platform today. Instead, the influencers who rushed to fill the void have chosen the path of least resistance. They now operate as state-sanctioned PR firms for an aggressive military agenda simply because the bombs are authorized by a president wearing a red tie. By transforming genuine anti-interventionist sentiment into rabid partisan cheerleading, these grifters provided the ideological cover necessary for the state to march the country right back into the endless wars the base initially voted to escape.

Consider the campaign promise to end the forever wars, pull out of foreign entanglements, and put “America First.” The empirical reality of the administration’s foreign policy is a direct continuation of the military-industrial complex’s most aggressive ambitions. The administration has stacked its ranks with hawkish neoconservatives and previous “never-Trumpers,” such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and even Lindsey Graham, all of whom prioritize regime change and unyielding military support for Israel over domestic liberty.

Dropping bombs and violently coercing the US taxpayer to fund a global military empire in the name of a foreign country is a blatant violation of human freedom and constitutional limits. The state continues to extort the working class to fund foreign militaries and interventions, regardless of the populist rhetoric spilling from Trump’s podium. This is not America First; it is the empire first, Israel first, Lockheed Martin first, and it is funded by the silent theft of the American citizen.

Then there is the great financial illusion sold to the public: the promise of prying the country back from the donor class, creating a “Department of Government Efficiency,” and reversing the debt crisis. The donor class hasn’t been ousted; they are literally running the administration. The appointment of Wall Street insiders like hedge fund CEO Scott Bessent as Secretary of the Treasury and Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick as Commerce Secretary proves the system is functioning exactly as intended for the corporate elite.

You cannot reverse a debt crisis while simultaneously increasing defense budgets and proposing massive federal subsidy programs. The national debt has now surged past $38.9 trillion, increasing by trillions in just the last year, while the supposed fiscally conservative administration holds the reins. Bureaucratic theater like government efficiency commissions completely ignores the root cause of the financial rot, which is the Federal Reserve’s fiat currency printing press and the unabated spending of the uniparty.

Domestically, the promises of prosecuting corrupt intelligence officials and restoring the rule of law have morphed into the construction of a domestic panopticon. The “Deep State” isn’t being arrested; they are being given new directives and increased funding to operate under a different partisan banner. You cannot execute the promised mass deportations without constructing a massive, militarized domestic police state that operates with zero regard for constitutional due process.

Giving the executive branch the unconstitutional authority to mobilize militarized forces domestically violates the basic tenets of liberty. It fundamentally bolsters the very federal law enforcement agencies that spy on, harass, and coerce American citizens daily. The intelligence apparatus isn’t being dismantled; its crosshairs are simply being shifted to target the administration’s new political enemies while the surveillance state grows stronger.

This regulatory theater extends into the administration’s domestic policies, like the push to “Make America Healthy Again” while leaving the FDA, CDC, and EPA completely intact. Merely changing the vanguard of regulatory capture does nothing to end the state’s monopoly on health directives or protect medical freedom. Bemoaning a rigged voting system while actively participating in a rigged, two-party theater only serves to validate the state’s illegitimate authority over peaceful individuals.

The ultimate empirical proof of this grand betrayal is the systematic purge of actual liberty advocates from within the movement. When Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie—one of the only consistently anti-establishment, constitutionally-minded politicians in Washington—stood up for the movement’s supposed principles, the MAGA machine collaborated with the swamp to crush him. Massie was targeted explicitly by the administration and defeated in the May 2026 primary by Ed Gallrein, a loyalist foot soldier handpicked and heavily funded by the establishment.

Massie spearheaded the effort to release the Epstein files, voted against deficit-exploding fiscal legislation, and fiercely opposed aggressive war footing and blank-check foreign aid. For strictly adhering to the constitution and the principles of liberty, he was branded an enemy of the state and purged by the very people claiming to drain the swamp. The millions used to unseat Massie didn’t come from grassroots populists; it came from Wall Street hedge fund managers, Zionist megadonors, and dark money heavily aligned with AIPAC, proving the MAGA apparatus actively weaponized the establishment to eliminate the only man trying to stop the state’s aggression.

Massie’s defeat is the glaring, unavoidable proof that the system cannot be reformed from within, and the political savior complex is nothing but a deadly pacifier. The ones who remain in this corpse of a movement have been tricked into loving the boot simply because it was painted red, abandoning all pretense of liberty for partisan cheerleading. True anti-war action, financial sovereignty, and domestic freedom require abandoning the illusion of political saviors. We must stop trusting the state to fix the state and instead focus on building parallel, voluntary systems of trade and mutual aid. Real solutions mean exiting the central bank’s control grid by utilizing untraceable privacy coins like Monero or Zano, engaging in agorist counter-economics, physically holding your own precious metals, and using encrypted communications to organize locally. Freedom is built by peaceful individuals taking action, not voted for in a rigged system.

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Via https://thefreethoughtproject.com/solutions/the-great-red-hat-psyop-how-the-establishment-co-opted-maga