Surburban Politics: The Growth of Extremism in the U.S.

The rise of the MAGA movement in the United States has been accompanied by enormous attention to Donald Trump's "base" of support, particularly those who are comparatively less educated, more rural, and poorer than the general population. There has been comparatively less focus on how the movement has mobilized activists in middle- and upper-middle class suburbs. In this paper, I review the existing evidence of the MAGA movement's deep roots in America's suburbs and argue that this element of the movement is larger and more politically relevant than what has heretofore been referred to as the movement's "base." I then identify the erosion of institutional trust in the United States and other democracies as a central factor in the growth of suburban populism. In particular, I show how the decline in institutional trust has allowed political entrepreneurs to introduce and quickly spread extremist and conspiratorial ideas into mainstream political culture. The result is a collapse in distinctions between conventional and fringe political ideas and political organizations that has enabled the rise of the MAGA movement as well as the transformation of other conservative movements such as those opposing abortion and advocating for greater gun rights.