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A couple days ago, I hopped off a train in New York City and sat down with former MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair for a candid conversation about political identity, radicalization, and what it takes to walk away from a movement that once defined your entire life.
Watch the full interview here:
For years, Ashley St. Clair was part of the MAGA influencer ecosystem. Today, she’s publicly distancing herself from that world, and describing it less as a political movement than an apparatus designed to reward loyalty, punish dissent, and keep participants dependent on the validation it provides.
Her story is just one example of a larger issue in America:
When politics stops being something you believe and becomes who you are?
In our conversation, St. Clair described entering conservative activism as a lonely, insecure college student searching for belonging. What followed was a decade inside a culture where status, proximity to power, and internet fame often mattered more than ideology.
“You cannot simultaneously say that these people are dangerous, murderous tyrants and then ask why people don’t leave sooner,” she told me. “Because they are scary individuals.”
After a childhood in a town of just over 200 people and adolescence homeschooled, St. Clair went to college. Leading up to her freshman year, President Trump spoke at an on-campus rally. And a community formed, welcoming her with open arms.
Young political organizations offered friendship, validation a sense of purpose, and a reminder that humans rarely join movements because of white papers and policy proposals.
They join because they belong.
One of the most striking moments came when St. Clair described social media platforms as systems designed to “extract” users’ attention and emotions for profit.
“It’s extraction of your thoughts and your soul that they are just taking to profit.”
Whether you agree with her politics or not, it’s difficult to ignore how modern platforms financially benefit from keeping users emotionally activated.
Before Ashley St. Clair ever contemplated leaving MAGA, she says she learned a lesson that would shape the next decade of her life: when she spoke up about a sexual assault in college, she lost her community. Years later, as doubts about the movement mounted, she found herself confronting the same terror all over again. Of being alone.
St. Clair described legal threats, social ostracization, reputational attacks, and strained personal relationships after speaking out, arguing that many insiders remain silent because the consequences of dissent are severe.
I got to thinking: we spend so much time asking why people stay.
But a the question we should be asking is why some systems become so costly to leave.
“Nobody joins a cult. Nobody joins something they think's gonna hurt them. You join a religious organization, you join a political movement, and you join with people that you really like."
Cults begin with loneliness, pray on insecurity and use authoritarian control, victimizing a desire to matter and giving members a reason to.
That’s what makes these systems so effective, and what makes understanding them so important.
Because if radicalization is fundamentally a human story, then recovery has to be one too.
