Unlocked | NM Reads: Gideon Jacobs, "MAGA as Fan Fiction," LA Review of Books (2026)

About this episode

Gideon Jacobs discusses his essay 'MAGA as Fan Fiction' and the intersection of politics and storytelling.

This is an unlocked episode of New Models (originally released 01/31/2026) — to access all our content & to join the NM Discord, subscribe: patreon.com/newmodels newmodels.substack.com -- Gideon Jacobs returns to NM with his third essay in a trilogy for the LA Review of Books that tracks, in real-time, the American Political machine’s delamination from everyday life through runaway story-drive. In “MAGA as Fan Fiction,” Gideon shows US politics both left and right as having become a read-write medium for collective creative expression more than material governance—a kind of kayfabe where ‘democracy’ takes the form of citizens co-creating storyline with their elected officials and everyone in office has an IMDB profile. Carly & Lil Internet intro this ep with a short conversation drawing out themes across this trilogy that feel particularly NM Canon. “Of course, long before any advanced communication technologies, humans had been drawn not just to stories but also to the possibility of living as characters within them. Story’s appeal had always been precisely that it’s not like reality. […] a dream of existing free from the pesky flaws intrinsic to reality: uncontrollability…

People in this episode

Hosts: Carly, Lil Internet

Guest: Gideon Jacobs

Topics covered

• American politics
• storytelling
• collective expression
• democracy
• fan fiction
• cultural commentary

Keywords

• MAGA
• fan fiction
• politics
• storytelling
• democracy
• collective creativity
• cultural commentary

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: LA Review of Books

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