If you want to understand modern politics, you have to understand modern fandom

It’s a common observation that modern-day politics increasingly resembles fandom: Both feature communities created around and united by passion, and both are often heavily fixated on a single public figure. Many pundits are now calling right-wing voters “the Trump fandom,” as though there’s little difference between a Trumpist who flocks to a political rally and a member of the Beyhive snapping up seats to Coachella.

Drawing general parallels between the two movements can seem easy, even simplistic, but when we look closer, what we find are mutually thorny, mutually complex ideological...