Dr. Kurt Taroff is Head of the School of Arts, English and Languages at Queen's University Belfast. His wide-ranging work has explored areas such as the European Avant-Garde, adaptation in theatre and film, community theatre and the legacies of the First World War, and the effect of the COVID-19 epidemic on relations between freelancers and professional theatre institutions. His central interest is in Nikolai Evreinov's concept of Monodrama and its manifestations in theatre, film and music over the last 250 years.

For the last 10 years, Donald Trump’s rallies have stood as a unique political event. Referred to by many observers as ‘Carnival’ or ‘Carnivalesque’, they feature Trump’s ‘weaving’ speeches, eschewing focus on ideas and issues for red-meat rhetoric designed to appease the masses who attend. These audiences have frequently been seen as having limited interest in politics prior to Trump’s arrival on the scene, and their attendance at the rallies often seems to relate more to the raucous atmosphere, the show and camaraderie of the event than to the desire to learn anything new from the candidate (or indeed President). These rallies appear to demonstrate the tension between his supporters' seeming desire to see radical change while at the same time calling for that change in response to a perceived threat to a status quo which attaches privilege to the category of whiteness in America, and Americanness in the world at large.  

While seemingly a relatively novel phenomenon, these political circuses are in many ways strikingly redolent of activities around the Twelfth of July in Northern Ireland. These events, like the MAGA rallies, feature an insistence that participation in the event is a joyful celebration of community, and both are inflected by a heavy emphasis on symbology expressed through flags and clothing. And both, ultimately, are the expression of a majority population who perceive themselves as under threat demanding the restoration of their birthright of dominion. This paper will explore the MAGA rallies and the annual events of the 11^th and 12^th of July in Northern Ireland as both the celebrations of community spirit heralded by their participants and as assertions of dominance, weighted with a (barely) veiled threat of violence against those who are not (and do not want to be) part of that community.