Project 2025 was supposed to boost Donald Trump's campaign — but now it may be backfiring

politics @lemmy.world – 511 points – 4 months ago

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.

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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.

Authoritarian leftists have a lot more in common with fascists than liberal leftists, that's for sure.

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

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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:

Conservatism, then, is not a commitment to limited government and liberty- or a wariness of change, a belief in evolutionary reform, or a politics of virtue. These may be the byproducts of conservatism, one or more of its historically specific and ever-changing modes of expression. But they are not its animating purpose. Neither is conservatism a makeshift fusion of capitalists, Christians, and warriors, for that fusion is impelled by a more elemental force- the opposition to the liberation of men and women from the fetters of their superiors, particularly in the private sphere. Such a view might seem miles away from the libertarian defense of the free market, with its celebration of the atomistic and autonomous individual. But it is not. When the libertarian looks out upon society, he does not see isolated individuals; he sees private, often hierarchical, groups, where a father governs his family and an owner his employees.

No simple defense of one's own place and privileges- the conservative, as I've said, may or may not be directly involved in or benefit from the practices of rule he defends; many, as we'll see, are not. The conservative position stems from a genuine conviction that a world thus emancipated will be ugly, brutish, base, and dull. It will lack the excellence of a world where the better man commands the worse. When Burke adds, in the letter quoted above, that the "great object" of the Revolution is “to root out that thing called an Aristocrat or Nobleman and Gentleman," he is not simply referring to the power of the nobility; he is also referring to the distinction that power brings to the world, If the power goes, the distinction goes with it. This vision of the connection between excellence and rule is what brings together in postwar America that unlikely alliance of the libertarian, with his vision of the employer's untrammeled power in the workplace; the traditionalist, with his vision of the father's rule at home; and the statist, with his vision of a heroic leader pressing his hand upon the face of the earth. Each in his way subscribes to this typical statement, fromn the nineteenth century, of the conservative Creed: “To obey a real superior.. is one of the most important of all virtues- a virtue absolutely essential to the attainment of anything great and lasting."

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