For ten years, opponents of President Donald Trump have struggled to adequately deal with his myriad abuses and scandals. When you run through the litany of crimes, lies, Constitutional violations, and cover-ups, you can’t help but sound like a complainer. Many Americans simply tire of hearing about it all, while MAGA supporters retreat to their own impenetrable infotainment ecosystem.

Maybe, then, the answer isn’t to give more persuasive arguments, but to simply show the Trump Administration for what it is, using the most grotesque, over-the-top caricatures possible.

That’s exactly what South Park has been doing in its new season. The second episode, “Got a Nut,” goes straight for the jugular with numerous high-ranking MAGA officials. It includes depictions of:

• Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem as a puppy-shooting ghoul with a melting face.
• ICE as a masked, bumbling goon squad violently rounding up innocent people for explicitly racial reasons.
• MAGA propagandist Charlie Kirk as an obnoxious racist obsessed with “master-debating” college girls.
• Vice President JD Vance as the James Bond villain Nick Nack, a completely servile troll.
• President Donald Trump as the crime boss behind it all, hiding out in his Florida palace with underage masseuses and his lover, Satan himself.

South Park doesn’t call these people names or point out their crimes in an articulately worded essay. It shows them in action doing despicable things, providing a window for MAGA, if they care to look, into how everyone who’s not inside the cult views these monsters.

Showing, not telling

The South Park approach is far more potent than the fact-based appeals journalists have made. As multiple scholars and thinkers have observed, such facts are ineffective against fascists like Trump for the simple reason that the fascist appeal is not to truth or logic in the first place, but to base emotion. This is why MAGA is primarily a coalition built around vague fears and anxiety over the loss of some intangible cultural quality (read: “traditional values,” typically a stand-in for whiteness, straightness, or some other perceived “normal” thing). Information doesn’t change their mind, because their beliefs aren’t rooted in truth.

For instance, it wouldn’t matter to a fascist that the vast majority of immigrants, documented or otherwise, are law-abiding, contributing members of society. The MAGA base simply does not want them here, and they aren’t interested in anybody’s circumstances or story or what the evidence says. So Trump is building a massive, secret army to round up dark-skinned immigrants in brutal ways, terrorizing communities by dragging people from their homes and public spaces in front of children and others, sending them off to foreign concentration camps in places like El Salvador. 

Words can’t adequately express the horror of this. It’s more poignant to convey the horror by showing it. And right now, only South Park is showing it in the truly ghastly way it needs to be shown. 

In the latest episode, a squad of untrained ICE goons raids a Dora the Explorer Live show, and even Heaven itself, to remove every last brown person. When new ICE recruit Mr. Mackey insists his job isn’t to “round up Mexicans” but rather to “detain foreigners who might be illegal,” the man he’s talking to sarcastically says, “OK!” – as in, “Sure, whatever you say, pal!” Kristi Noem’s face constantly melts off, only to be repaired by a makeup team in time for a photo op, underscoring MAGA’s obsession with superficial aesthetics. She also shoots every puppy she sees. Cartman and Clyde act as stand-ins for Charlie Kirk, abrasive, dimwitted pricks who win debates through nonstop verbal diarrhea. And poor Dora winds up massaging a creepy old billionaire at Mar-a-Lago, a decadent den of sin and corruption staffed mostly by teenage girls.

Without pulling a single punch, South Park executes the most cutting satire of MAGA yet, with plenty of humor and a good story throughout. It’s not even showing these people at their worst, it’s showing them for what they are. People inside the cult can’t see it. Even if they could, many wouldn’t care, and would support even more explicitly racist and violent policies. But for the few who can be reached, this is a visceral way to do it.

The call from inside the house

South Park has another advantage that makes it the perfect vehicle for this satire. The show has long been viewed, rightly or wrongly, as right wing-coded. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone aren’t wishy-washy, whiny, bleeding-heart liberals. They’ve always been politically incorrect, which has made South Park a rare common ground for both thoughtful social critics and boorish right-wing assholes alike.

Of course, Trump is also politically incorrect. It is surely politically incorrect to racially target human beings for extraordinary rendition, grab unwilling women “by the pussy,” be best friends with Jeffrey Epstein, and attempt an insurrection at the Capitol when you lose an election. But does that make these things good? Parker and Stone, perhaps unlike MAGA, realize that the answer is no.

Until now, MAGA may have thought Parker and Stone were on their side. This new season shows, definitively, that they’re not. They clearly see the Trump Administration as a rank, criminal cabal that has gone so far off the rails that they have no idea where the rails even are anymore. This is what MAGA supports: psychopaths who shoot puppies, racist goons eager to abuse anyone with darker skin than Ed Sheeran, and a reckless authoritarian running the nation from a decadent compound in Florida.

The show probably won’t get through to anyone in MAGA or change any minds, simply because minds in America don’t change easily. Some will laugh it off and ignore the meaning behind the jokes. Others will just say South Park has gone woke. But it’s inspiring to see creators tackle the Trump era in this way. It may sometimes be petty, and it may sometimes be juvenile, but let’s not forget who we’re dealing with here. They deserve no better.

I’ve been writing about politics since before the Trump era, and I’ve tried to give a balanced assessment from the beginning. And the balanced assessment is: He’s an absolute monster. Sometimes I get tired of researching and writing articles, of presenting facts that MAGA is programmed to ignore anyway, and I just want to scream: “This is a sleazy, corrupt toad of a man surrounded by lying, shameless sycophants and stupid, violent bigots, and I am rapidly losing patience and respect for anyone who can’t see it.” What I struggle to express in a journalistic essay, South Park makes plain as day with their utterly savage satire. They have truly captured the essence of this administration, revealing it for the depraved, demented carnival it is.

Satire and ridicule are far more effective weapons against fascism than reasoned arguments. We need far more of it. Since these people do not engage ethically or honestly, the best way to deal with them is with mockery and contempt. Forget trying to reach MAGA with kindness or understanding. Hold the mirror up to them instead. If there’s any humanity left, they won’t like what they see.