Project 2025 was supposed to boost Donald Trump's campaign — but now it may be backfiring
The over 900-page document, commissioned by the people expected to run another Trump White House, is a laundry list of the far-right's most politically toxic ideas, from banning abortion nationwide to mass firing federal officials who believe in protecting public health and safety. One would think that Trump and his allies would try to keep their sinister plans out of public view. Instead, Team Trump published their fascistic blueprint on a website for anyone to read,. They even proudly display the menacing "Project 2025" label on the front page.
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On Sunday, actress Taraji P. Henson took a break during the BET Awards, which she was hosting, to speak out about Project 2025. "The Project 2025 plan is not a game. Look it up!" she told viewers. "I’m talking to all the mad people that don’t want to vote. You’re going to be mad about a lot of things if you don’t vote."
The clip went viral, amplified by other celebrities like Mark Ruffalo. So the MAGA forces swung into action on social media, accusing Henson and Ruffalo and other progressives of making it all up. "Is Project 2025 in the room with you?" a blue-checked user sneered under Ruffalo's tweet. These efforts at gaslighting people run against a real problem, however: The drafters of Project 2025 seek to promote their authoritarian playbook. Thus, a simple Google search generates a slew of explainers from various news organizations, with even more coming out rapidly, as a response to the rising number of people asking, "What's Project 2025?"
"We received a flood of reader inquiries asking if Project 2025 was a real effort," the fact-checking team at Snopes wrote in their lengthy explainer published Tuesday. Google Trends confirms that the number of searches for "project 2025" has grown dramatically in recent days.
The backfiring isn't because Republicans are upset about it. It's because other people are finding out about it and are rightly horrified. It may (hopefully) convince more people to vote that might have stayed home otherwise.
Exactly. It's all of the quiet parts, but out loud, typed out, indexed, and easily accessible.
I'm not getting my hopes up.
Republicans are openly planning for genocide, sure, but the Democrats are actively aiding and abetting genocide right now.
They will not suddenly find their principles and start treating the Reublican party like the existential threat they are. They will not take any action which might ensure Trump loses the election. They are more afraid of losing their campaign financiers than the campaign.
Yeah Dems are cancelling abortion, planning massive deportations, taking away tans kids healthcare. Shut the fuck up Russian.
Biden could issue an executive order requiring hospitals in red states to perform abortions or else lose their medicare funding, but won't.
Biden could reverse his position on deportations, instead he issued an executive order to reject all asylum requests by undocumented immigrants.
Biden's attempt to apply Title IX to trans folks like myself has been nice, but it's not nearly enough to make me forget what he's spending my tax dollars on.
Biden could start doing good and incredibly popular things like ending our support for genocide, but that would piss off AIPAC and those lobbyists opinions' mean more than those of voters.
You can tell yourself that I'm a russian bot if that makes you feel better. I hope the comfort of dismissing all criticism as foreign influence is worth the consequences of repeating all the mistakes made in 2016.
I interpreted "Dems are aiding and abetting genocide" as Gaza. If not, my point is irrelevant and I misunderstood you in the first place.
My response was that they aren't actively bringing active domestic genocide like Trump and P25 have proposed.
If I understand your point correctly, neither have anything to do with your response about Dems doing nothing proactive to be progressive. That's a separate problem with which I agree with you.
That's only the most egregious example, I have to be nonspecific because of how many ethnic groups the Democrats are helping wipe out. Between letting the Navy poison Hawaii's water supply and supporting the ongoing economic blockade of Puerto Rico, you're spoiled for domestic options.
Right on cue!
Yeah, non-conservatives (mainly liberals) really need to get it into their heads that every single conservative either actively wants an authoritarian state that murders "woke" people and minorities, or if they're not outright for it they think that surely the leopards won't eat their face because they're on the right side.
Ultimately even a "moderate" conservative has fewer disagreements with literal neo-Nazis (oh wait, except the Nazis are leftists according to reich-wingers) than they do with anybody left of the fucking Strasserites. Even if a conservative is not calling for the extermination of
{CURRENT_HATED_MINORITY}, they're still more than happy to support parties that either have fascist members or collaborate with fascists.This is on clear display here in Europe; the "moderate" conservatives are lining up to kiss Meloni's ass, and they don't mind at all that FdI (Meloni's party) is a literal offshoot of the original Fascist Party and a huge percentage of their MPs and "lay members" have voiced their love of Mussolini.
The whole "Nazis are leftists" thing really blows my mind but I've seen people saying it unironically.
It's because in their mind Nazi = bad guy.
They cannot see themselves as "bad guys," so the association is immediately dismissed without further consideration. The leftists are the bad guys, so obviously Nazi maps onto those people.
But it's not really about truth, it's about "winning" the argument.
Also National Socialism means they were socialists, much like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a democratic republic.
It just shows a total lack of understanding of what the NSDAP platform was. Nazi Germany was a corporatist (in the political science sense) and authoritarian capitalist country, and they eg. specifically privatized a lot of functions that had been public before, absolutely loathed the idea of welfare or supporting "unworthy" people in any way, and were quite enthusiastically supported by business interests starting from their early years. Socialism, ie. social ownership of the means of production and strong public services, is about as opposite as can be to what the economics of fascism are, not to mention the social side. Fascists literally murdered sick or infirm people rather than support them, because weakness has to be weeded out of society.
Like this contemporary caricature puts it, the NSDAP – the National Socialist German Workers' Party – presented itself as the "Socialist Workers' Party" when appealing to workers, and as the "National German Party" when appealing to "financially solvent circles".
All of this is just completely beyond many conservatives' capability to internalize – understanding any of that would mean they'd have to think some very uncomfortable thoughts about their own ideology, and the vast majority of them are fundamentally incapable of that sort of self-reflection.
It doesn't help that Nazi is a truncation of National Socialist. Anybody with a lick of sense would know that they weren't socialists in any way, shape or form, but a lot of people don't have a lick of sense.
If you go far enough right, you buffer overflow around to the left.
If you go far enough left, you buffer underflow around to the right
Authoritarian leftists have a lot more in common with fascists than liberal leftists, that's for sure.
I really think The Reactionary Mind should be required reading by leftists. It really helps to understand why conservatism is actively opposed to individual liberty and how they sell these regressive ideas to a population primed for them:
As stated in another comment, the vote is not what is foreboding about this. Enough crazy, radically charged, people believe and want Project 2025 and have been hearing calls to violence for years now, if the vote doesn’t go their way, not to sure they will be peaceful about it.
Oh I have no doubt there will be violence if Biden wins, but they've already said there will be violence against opponents if Trump wins, so I think all anyone can do is be prepared.
Irrelevant fearmongering. Seriously, what's your purpose in making that comment? To discourage opposing them? To capitulate without a fight?
Fuck that! I say, "let them come," and then they can get what they deserve just like the Confederates and NAZIs did.
More to get people riled up and ready for the fight that will most likely be coming. These stories about how the right is losing steam are puff pieces meant to make non voters complacent. People need to be angry and ready, not being placated and lazy.
Okay, I'll trust that you're being sincere. In that case, though, I think your tone/messaging could use some tweaking because (as you could probably tell) I did not read it that way initially.
Yes, it was a bit over the top. It was early in the morning and I hadn’t had my coffee yet. Brain wasn’t working lol
Hey at least your brain starts working eventually, some of us aren't that lucky 😅