Make America Great Again

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Donald Trump's election campaign emblem with the slogan (2016)

Make America Great Again ( German  power America great again ), short MAGA is a slogan that in presidential election campaigns of the United States has been used several times. First used by Ronald Reagan in his 1980 campaign , Donald Trump made it the main motto in his 2015/2016 campaign . It was picked up and adapted in politics, art and pop culture.

Used by Ronald Reagan

Reagan Campaign Button (1980)

Ronald Reagan used the slogan Let's make America great again for his presidential election campaign in 1980, when he appealed to the patriotism of voters during the ideal and economic crisis ( stagflation ) of that time and invoked an earlier time that gave simple answers to complex problems and left no doubt American supremacy. In his speech at the 1980 Republican National Convention , Reagan promised those who had become hopeless to let them participate in the “great national crusade ” to make America “great again” (“For those who've abandoned hope, we ' ll restore hope and we'll welcome them into a great national crusade to make America great again "), which was related to the loss of reputation of the USA, especially during the reign of Jimmy Carter .

Use by Donald Trump

Donald Trump with one of the red caps with the slogan (2016)

Donald Trump used the slogan even before the start of his presidential campaign, which he launched in June 2015, and claimed in March 2015 that he came up with the slogan himself. After the 2016 election, Trump said he was looking for a slogan for a possible campaign the day after Mitt Romney was defeated in 2012 and after a few attempts he came to Make America Great Again on November 7, 2012 . He ignored the fact that his advisor Roger Stone had already tweeted in September 2012: "Make America Great Again - TRUMP HUCKABEE 2012 #nomormons". He himself had justified his refusal to moderate a television debate of the Republican primary candidates in December 2011 by saying that he might run as an independent in the 2012 presidential election to make America great again, and repeated this choice of words several times over the next few months, as a group of Trump supporters in Texas announced the formation of the Make America Great Again Party . On November 12, 2012, Trump registered the slogan with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for political purposes. After several of his rivals within the Republican primary had taken up the slogan in their events, he had Scott Walker and Ted Cruz warned. In August 2015, Trump published his 2011 book Time to Get Tough in paperback and changed the subtitle from Make America # 1 Again to Make America Great Again . Trump's slogan was so successful that it marginalized that of his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton , "Stronger together." The website for Trump's presidential transition from November 2016 to January 2017 was at the URL GreatAgain.gov .

The content is so vague that the slogan is suitable for a large projection surface, but at the same time always points in the direction of something reactionary . Trump himself referred the motto to jobs, entrepreneurship and military strength ("to me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant military strength. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much"). When asked about when Trump wanted to bring America back, he mentioned the turn of the century , when American entrepreneurship drove economic prosperity, and the late 1940s and 1950s , when America "had no one pushed around" and "we were all respected" - an idea that Stephan Bierling described as illusory. Some anthropologists have related the slogan's appeal to the make rather than the great : the imperative turns the spirit of tackling into a concrete mission, to create something real and to become a self- made man. At the same time, the slogan served to distinguish it from Barack Obama's presidency (as was the case with Reagan versus Carter) and to support Trump's political tenor “ America First ” - a nationalist trade, immigration and security policy for the discontented in society.

In the 2016 election campaign, Bill Clinton said that Trump's slogan was based on racist ideas - a white man from the southern states involuntarily understood the phrase to mean that his former privileged position in society should be restored. Nobel laureate in literature Toni Morrison also interpreted the slogan as follows: “'Make America Great Again' means 'Make America White Again.'” The publicist Mugambi Jouet saw the slogan as a further development of American exceptionalism , which was based on an academic concept during the Obama presidency had become a standard element of conservative rhetoric and was used to imply and thus delegitimize Obama (and other members of minorities) in a hidden nativist way "un-American" behavior and supposedly socialist or jihadist sympathies.

The simply designed red peaked cap that was used by Trump's merchandising campaign and which shows the slogan in Times New Roman on the front made for a special identification . Trump himself described it as the "greatest symbol" of his campaign, which had sold millions of copies, and pointed out with pride that it had been recommended by the style section of the New York Times . The time indicated that such a cheaply produced, only available in one size trucker cap with a wide front - unlike the baseball cap of the middle class - is considered a hat of the anti- establishment . Its widespread use has been linked to the auratic effect of Donald Trump's hairstyle, which has become famous, and to the re-appropriation of the aesthetic culture of white trash by the hipsters , who made hats an - ironic - fashion trend in the summer of 2015. In January 2019, Politico declared the hat to be a cultural marker and a symbol of the Trump era, wearing it in public for public disputes and polarization. The manufacture and sale of the hat has been questioned for its credibility with regard to Donald Trump's motto of Buy American ("Buy American"). It was reported that the hats sold by Trump's election campaign himself in a factory south of Los Angeles were mainly made by Latinos , that some of their textiles were not American-made and that online sales were organized by a Canadian company. In addition, many imitations were not made in the United States, while rumors were not confirmed that the hats that Trump's election campaign had sold were made in China.

The acronym #MAGA became popular as a hashtag through Trump's Twitter messages. After Trump signaled his readiness as part of his presidency in September 2017 not to deport illegal immigrants to the USA as children, contrary to his campaign promise (see Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ), the hashtag #burnmyMAGAhat came up on social networks and there were right-wing conservatives of his constituency shared videos of MAGA hats being burned.

For the upcoming 2020 presidential election , Trump has already registered the slogan “Keep America Great!”.

Adaptations and reception

In politics

One of many political adaptations: Make America Think Again at the Women's March on the day after Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2017 in San Francisco

The right-wing populist former Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell , who was close to the Tea Party movement , subtitled her memoir "Troublemaker" in 2011, "Let's Do What It Takes to Make America Great Again"; her election campaign was therefore parallelized with the Trump a few years later. Before the mid-term election in November 2018 , many Republican candidates related positively to Trump and his slogan. A Republican primary candidate for the United States Senate in Indiana , Todd Rokita, showed his solidarity with the president in an April 2018 campaign spot titled MAGA by wearing a red Make America Great Again hat. Ron DeSantis , who ran for gubernatorial candidate in Florida , was shown teaching his young daughter to speak using a MAGA- Poster Trump in a primary commercial.

The slogan has been repeatedly adapted and alienated from 2015. In early June 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron concluded his speech in response to Trump's announcement that he would leave the Paris Agreement on climate protection with the request: "Make Our Planet Great Again". Macron's associated short message on Twitter was retweeted over 230,000 times, more than any other French politician up to that point, and Macron had a website set up under this name to advertise that climate-concerned people emigrate to France. Republican Senator Ben Sasse criticized Trump's protectionist policy in May 2018 with the words, Make America Great Again not my make America 1929 Again (the beginning of the Great Depression ).

In pop culture

The slogan was picked up and processed many times in pop culture . The artist Illma Gore caused a sensation with a colored pencil drawing with this title in April 2016, which shows a nude Trump with a micropenis and is exhibited in a London gallery. The band Pussy Riot recorded a protest song against Trump under this title, which was released in October 2016 shortly before the presidential election and - in particular in the music video created by Jonas Åkerlund - depicts a dystopian world after Trump's election victory. John Oliver stated in a segment of his late-night show Last Week Tonight in March 2016 that Trump should be named "Drumpf" after his ancestors, and ended with the prompt "Make Donald Drumpf Again". Oliver sold 35,000 of the peaked caps with this slogan. In May 2016, a mural in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius became world famous , showing Trump and Vladimir Putin kissing, which is based on Dmitri Wrubel's brother kiss painting and is entitled "Make Everything Great Again". The remix album by the band Fall Out Boy for their studio album American Beauty / American Psycho , released in October 2015, is entitled Make America Psycho Again . The rapper Snoop Dogg released the EP Make America Crip Again in autumn 2017 , which alludes to the artist's origins from the Crip gang and as a cover on the one hand a blue cap with the album title corresponding to the red MAGA caps, on the other hand one with a shows corpse covered with an American flag, at the foot of which a sign with Trump is attached. On the occasion of Greta Thunberg's visit to the USA, the slogan was changed to Make America Greta Again .

Web links

Commons : Make America Great Again  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Presidential Politics, 20th Century Style: Reagan-Carter. ( Memento from August 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: The Selling of American Politics , McGraw-Hill (English).
  2. ↑ a b c d Luke Kinsella: The little-known history of 'Make America Great Again'. In: News.com.au , December 2, 2017.
  3. ^ Matt Taibi: Donald Trump Claims Authorship of Legendary Reagan Slogan; Has Never Heard of Google. In: Rolling Stone , March 25, 2015 (English).
  4. ↑ Jess Joho: Sorry, Trump: 'The Handmaid's Tale' was saying MAGA before you. In: Mashable , January 15, 2018.
  5. ↑ Andrew Kaczynski: Trump was saying 'Make America Great Again' long before he claims he thought it up. In: CNN.com , January 18, 2017. See Jonathon M. Seidl: Exclusive: Trump Supporters File Papers Paving Way for 3rd -Party Candidacy in TX - Trump Acknowledges. In: The Blaze , January 1, 2012; Jason Cohen: Will Donald Trump Be a Third-Party Candidate in Texas? In: Texas Monthly , January 21, 2013 (recte: 2012).
  6. ^ A b c Karen Tumulty: How Donald Trump came up with 'Make America Great Again'. In: The Washington Post , January 18, 2017.
  7. ↑ Carlos Lozada: Donald Trump's 'Time to Get Tough' is out in paperback. You'll never guess the new subtitle. In: The Washington Post , August 31, 2015.
  8. ↑ Allan Smith: 'Great again': Donald Trump's .gov website is now live. In: Business Insider , November 10, 2016.
  9. ^ Conor Lynch: Decoding Trump's meaningless mantra: Making America great again for the sour, mean and delusional. In: Salon.com , January 21, 2017 (English).
  10. ↑ Fabian Hock: "Make America great again" - the spirit and possibilities of Donald Trump. In: Aargauer Zeitung , December 9, 2016.
  11. ↑ Chloe Ahmann, Vincent Ialenti: Trump's Slogan: More About the “Make” Than the “Great”. In: Sapiens.org , April 25, 2017 (English).
  12. ↑ Tim Hains: Bill Clinton: "If You're A White Southerner," You Know What 'Make America Great Again' Really Means. In: RealClearPolitics , September 7, 2016 (English).
  13. ^ Mario Kaiser, Sarah Ladipo Manyika: Toni Morrison In Conversation. In: Granta , June 29, 2017 (English).
  14. ^ Mugambi Jouet: Trump Didn't Invent "Make America Great Again". In: Mother Jones , January / February 2017 (English).
  15. ^ Ruben Donsbach: "Make America Great Again": One for all. In: Die Zeit , March 3, 2017; Ashley Parker: Trump's Campaign Hat Becomes an Ironic Summer Accessory. In: The New York Times , September 11, 2015.
  16. ↑ Rich Lowry: In Defense of the MAGA Hat. In: Politico , January 24, 2019.
  17. ^ Christine Mai-Duc: Inside the Southern California factory that makes the Donald Trump hats. In: The Los Angeles Times , November 24, 2015.
  18. ↑ Jeff Horwitz: Are Trump's 'Made in USA' hats really made in USA? In: PBS.org , July 8, 2016 (English).
  19. ↑ Mythili Sampathkumar: Donald Trump's 'Make America Great Again' hats sold through a Canadian company. In: The Independent , July 25, 2017 (English).
  20. ↑ Melissa Fares, Dustin Volz: 'It's made in Vietnam!' At inauguration, origin of red Trump hats shocks many. In: Reuters , January 21, 2017 (English).
  21. ↑ Katie Sanders: Tweets say Donald Trump's 'Make America Great Again' hats are made in China. In: Politifact , October 7, 2015 (English).
  22. ↑ Trump does involuntary Mallorca advertising with #MAGA. Süddeutsche Zeitung ( DPA report), January 26, 2017, accessed on August 27, 2020 . .
  23. ↑ Thorsten Denkler: Donald Trump: Why burn "Make America Great Again" caps on Twitter. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 16, 2017.
  24. ^ Reid J. Epstein: Christine O'Donnell promotes memoir. In: Politico , June 21, 2011 (English); Rob Tornoe: The eerie similarities between Donald Trump and Christine O'Donnell. In: WHYY.org , March 11, 2016.
  25. ^ Aaron Blake: The all-consuming tribalism of Trump's Republican Party, in one 30-second ad. In: The Washington Post , April 3, 2018.
  26. ↑ Ryan Bort: This May Be the Most Bizarre 2018 Campaign Ad Yet. In: Rolling Stone , July 30, 2018.
  27. ↑ Nicholas Vinocur: Macron trolls Trump with 'Make our Planet Great Again' website. In: Politico , June 8, 2017 (English).
  28. ^ Edward Luce: Make America 1929 again. In: Financial Times , May 31, 2018 (English).
  29. ↑ James Nicholls: Naked Donald Trump artwork by Illma Gore is contemporary art's way of helping to make America great again. In: Maddox Gallery Mayfair , April 12, 2016 (English).
  30. ↑ Elias Leight: Pussy Riot Slam Donald Trump in 'Make America Great Again' Video. In: Rolling Stone , October 27, 2016 (English).
  31. ↑ John Koblin: John Oliver Sells Out of 'Make Donald Drumpf Again' Caps. In: The New York Times , March 8, 2016.
  32. ^ Rain Embuscado: Lithuanian Street Artist Creates Colorful Mural Depicting Putin-Trump Kiss. In: Artnet , May 13, 2016.
  33. ↑ Althea Legaspi: Snoop Dogg Previews New EP With 'Make America Crip Again' Song. In: Rolling Stone , October 19, 2017; Desire Thompson: Snoop Dogg Explains Meaning Behind 'Make America Crip Again' Project Title. In: Vibe , October 19, 2017.