By Lambert Strether of Corrente
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. –Sun Tzu
Project 2025, a project organized by the so-called “scholars” at the Heritage Foundation, is in essence an aggregation of contemporary Conservative Thought, if I may so denote it, along with strategies and policies for carrying putting it into practice in a second Trump Administration. Project 2025 has been much in the news lately; see “Inside the Next Republican Revolution” (Politico), and “Project 2025’s Guide to Subverting Democracy” (The Nation). The House Democrats have set up a task force to be a “central hub” of opposition to it; here is the Heritage Foundation’s response. We can expect Project 2025 to be an issue in the 2024 campaign (no doubt, for Democrats, under the heading of “our democracy”).
The entire document (“Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise”) can be found here. (I will refer to the document as “Mandate”[1], so as to avoid confusing the project with the deliverable. From Mandate’s opening chapter:
We want you! The 2025 Presidential Transition Project is the conservative movement’s unified effort to be ready for the next conservative Administration to govern at 12:00 noon, January 20, 2025. Welcome to the mission. By opening this book, you are now a part of it. Indeed, one set of eyes reading these passages will be those of the 47th President of the United States, and we hope every other reader will join in making the incoming Administration a success. History teaches that a President’s power to implement an agenda is at its apex during the Administration’s opening days. To execute requires a well-conceived, coordinated, unified plan and a trained and committed cadre of personnel to implement it. In recent election cycles, presidential candidates normally began transition planning in the late spring of election year or even after the party’s nomination was secured. That is too late. The federal government’s complexity and growth advance at a seemingly logarithmic rate every four years. For conservatives to have a fighting chance to take on the Administrative State and reform our federal government, the work must start now. The entirety of this effort is to support the next conservative President, whoever he or she may be.
Sounds great. Makes you wonder why the Democrats can’t get it together to do something similar; they’re supposed to be the smart ones, after all.
Mandate is 920 pages long. That’s a lot of pages. In the time available I can’t analyze any of the policy proposals, although I hope to look at some of them in a later post (conservative thought on public health and the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is especially horrid). My question is this: How can we be sure that Mandate is serious, and not some sort of diversionary tactic, like Biden’s much-ballyhooed “Unity Task Force” during the election 2020 transition? To that end, I propose two simple litmus tests: One for the spooks, and one for the Censorship Industrial Complex. If conservatives in power fail either litmus test, than Mandate is not what it purports to be (“a well-conceived, coordinated, unified plan”). In addition, following the epigraph from Sun Tzu, I will do a close reading of Mandate’s prose. Does Conservative Thought have a define its enemy? If not, then Mandate in particular, and Conservative Thought in general, is indeed reducible to a series of “irritable mental gestures.”[2]
Spook Litmus Test
On the spooks (or, as we say, the “intelligence community, or “IC”), from page 212:
I have helpfully outlined the litmus test in red: Firings. Hearings compelling testimony from Clapper, Brennan, and the 50 former (really?) intelligence officials on RussiaGate and the Hunter Biden laptop debacle would also be nice. If there are no firings, then Mandate is not a serious document. (Note that “firings” makes election 2024 existential for the intelligence community, but then you knew that.)
Censorship Industrial Complex Litmus Test
I am sure there are more components and institutions involved in the Censorship Industrial Complex (see Matt Taibbi) than CISA (the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency), but CISA will do to go on with:
I have helpfully outlined the litmus test in red: Firings. The test and the existential stakes are exactly the same.
Does Conservative Thought Know Its Enemy?
Let me once again quote fascist legal theorist Carl Schmitt from The Concept of the Political:
[T]he specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.
Taking Schmitt’s view, for the purposes of this post, as read, does Conservative Thought make this distinction successfully? As a vibe, yes. As a coherent doctrine, no. I present the Table 1, which I hope shows these conclusions.
I apologize for making you squint — you can skip over the table to the close reading, here — but I felt that the columns needed to be adjacent. For a designer, the table also exemplifies Tufte’s “small multiples”; it’s no accident that the “left” and “liberal” columns are almost the same length, and Marxist by far the smallest (For a full-size/full-resolution image of any example, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the tables thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”)
To construct Table 1, I searched Mandate for the following terms: Left, Liberal, Marxist, and Radical. I collected 35 examples, which I believe are representative. If you will examine the examples, the incoherence — the “irritable mental gestures” — of Conservative Thought seem to me inescapable. I will refer to each cell by Column Heading and Number: For example, “Left #1” is the topmost lefthand cell.
TABLE 1: The “Other Side” in Conservative Thought
| #0 | Left | Liberal | Radical | Marxist | #1 |  |
 |
 |
 |
#2 |  |
 |
 |
 |
#3 |  |
 |
 |
 |
#4 |  |
 |
 |
#5 |  |
 |
 |
#6 |  |
 |
 |
#7 |  |
 |
#8 |  |
 |
#8 |  |
 |
#10 |  |
 |
#11 |  |
 |
#12 |  |
#13 |  |
#14 |  |
Left #1 mentions “the other side” (that is, a Schmittian enemy). Does Mandate describe “the other side” coherently? Let’s find out, going column by column: Left, Liberal, Radical, and (dread word) Marxist.
Left is the enemy, but what is the Left? Left #2 tells us there is a “far” left, apparently different from special interests, and radicals (whoever they are, but presumably not the Left), in government. Left #3 gives us an example, Antifa, but surely Antifa is not a special interest (nor in government; they’re anarchists). Left #4 tells us swathes of the State Department’s workforce are left, but presumably not far left? Left #5 introduces “left-of-center,” but what is this center of which they speak? Not far, presumably, but what? Left #6 tells us that the left directs federal policy and elite institutions, but surely Antifa doesn’t do that? Left #7 identifies the Google and Ford Foundation “organizations” as working to advance “leftist agendas,” the former surely coming as a surprise to Silicon Valley libertarians. Left #8 identifies the left with “wokeness.” Left #9 reinforces “left-of-center,” but are there any centrists who are “woke”? Why or why not? Left #10 introduces “radical leftist organizations.” so presumably there are left organiztionas that are not radical, but who are they? Antifa? The Ford Foundation? The State Department workforce? Left #11 identifies the left as thinking “they are special.” I thought all God’s children were special. Now in Left #12 we have left “activists” (antifa?) and investors (!!) “who ignore the China threat,” so presumably a portion of the left is motivated by profit. Does that make them special, or not? Left #13 identifies a “bureacratic managerial class” (presumably not, however. a “workforce”). Finally, Left #14 identifies the left as insane. Surely insanity is not limited to them? These categories are by no means mutually exclusive and exhaustive!
Liberals are the enemy too, except when they’re not. In Liberal #1, “liberal democracy” is A Good Thing (only when carried out by Conservatives, I suppose). Liberal #2 identifies liberals as opposing conservative policies, but the left does that too, so why do we have two words for the same thing? In any case, are conservative who oppose conservative policies liberals? Liberal #3 identifies “liberal non-profits” and “radical Acorn-style pressure groups,” so is the Rockefeller Foundation liberal or left? And is the Green Revolution like Acorn? Liberal #4 seems to propose that the more liberals there are in a population, the more left it is, so NPR is to the left of PBS. There are radical liberals in Liberal #5; are they NPR listeners? Liberal #6 introduces an “illiberal chill,” so apparently it is again A Good Thing to be a liberal. Or are radical liberals from Acorn to be chilled? Liberal #7 proposes that liberals in the 1970s were socialists. I suppose that’s no longer true because the socialists were replaced by anarchists? Liberal #8 proposes “bold liberalization,” A Good Thing. Liberal #9 again frames the United States as a Liberal country, which is A Good Thing, but therefore the country would oppose conservative policies, which is The Bad Thing. Liberal #10 proposes that the identifying characteristic of liberals is the pursuit of absolute power, which is ahistorical to say the least. Perhaps the difference between Left and Liberal is that the Left is insane, but Liberals seek absolute power? Which one is Bernie Sanders, the socialist? Liberal #11 again claims the mantle of liberal democracy, A Good Thing.
Radicals are also the enemy. Radical #1 proposes radicals are woke, but so are liberals and the left, so now we have three words for the same thing. Radical #2 proposes “radical equality” as A Good Thing. However, Radical #4 distinguishes between the “far left” (PBS listeners?) and “radicals in government”, so presumbly we do not have three words for the same thing. Radical #4 identifies a “radical left” so presumbly the entire left (NPR listeners?) is not radical. Radical #5 proposes that there is a “woke faction” in the country: Madison would ask what property interest drives the faction. Radical #6 identifies “radical liberals” so I suppose the radical liberals are the Bad Liberals and the liberal liberals the Good Liberals?
Marxists, Lord help us. In Marxist #1, we learn that Marxists have infiltrated the military academies; this seems unlikely to me. Marxist #2 implies that China is weak and poor (that not what they meant, but it is what they wrote). Marxist #3 says, in essence, that critical race theory would turn over control of the means of production to the working class. That’s not the mainline interpretation, to say the least. Do the reading, for pity’s sake.
Conclusion
Summarizing: Table 1 shows pervasive irritable mental gesturing on Conservative Thought.
There remains the question of whether Mandate is a blueprint for fascism. I would need to understand Project 2025’s intentions for reorganizing the executive branch, especially the civil service, to answer confidently. However, there are two reasons to think that the answer will be in the negative.
First, I’ve referred to fascism is a smorgasbord from which both parties are freely partaking. The Democrats alliance with the intelligence commmunity, whether for election interference, or, together with the Censorship Industrial Complex, for creating an information bubble for which Joseph Goebbels would be proud, strike me as being as fascist as anything today’s Republican Party has proposed or done. So neither party owns the blueprint, if blueprint there is.
Second, when I, putting on my amateur’s political hat, try to recall two parties that very rapidly and very successfully took power with “a well-conceived, coordinated, unified plan and a trained and committed cadre of personnel” I come up with two: The Republican Party of the 1860s, and the Nazis. Both parties defined their enemies very clearly: The enemy of Lincoln’s party was the the Slave Power; the enemy of Hitler’s party was the Jews.[3] I think that Table 1 and a subsequent close reading show that today’s Republican Party has not defined its enemy clearly at all (supposing, with Schmitt, that to be the purpose of a political party)[4]. We can therefore conclude that Trump’s Republican party will not have the impact that Lincoln’s party did (or, for that matter, Hitler’s). A comforting thought!
NOTES
[1] Back in 2004, Bush the Younger, having been re-elected, claimed a mandate (“I have political capital. I intend to spend it“), and the press and the opinion havers began referring to “the Bush mandate.” Google bombing was still possible then, and I Google-bombed “Bush Mandate” to the website for Mandate Magazine; the front cover, as I recall, featured a jaunty young man wearing a sailor’s cap. Happy, innocent days!
[2] The full quote from liberal critic Lionel Trilling (1950): “[T]he conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.”
[3] Clearly the Bolsheviks and the CCP were successful and defined their enemies clearly, but the process by which they took power was protracted.
[4] It has occurred to me that Mandate, being an aggregation, aggregates the work product of various Republican factions and groupuscles, and so we have a rich sediment of verbiage laid down by different sets of policy entrepreneurs over decades; hence liberals here, the left there, Marxists over there, “woke,” the newest, sprinkled on top, and so forth. It may be that Project 2025 will be the vehicle to unify all this, Bolshevik-style; I doubt that very much. All Republicans would then be RINOs, just as all Democrats are DINOs.
53 comments
Comments are closed.
Why does it have to be a “blueprint for fascism”?
Why can’t it just be a “blueprint for retro-Confederate oligarchy?” With some Gilead Christian and Paleo-Catholic ( Opus Dei and etc.) Federalist Society wish-list items mixed in?
Somewhere between the “blueprint for fascism” and the “irritable mental gestures” lies the “serious grab-bag wish-list”. I personally will take Project 2025 as a grab-bag of serious listed wishes and goals together with a bunch of irritable mental gestures.
Is the desire to remove Federal Civil Service protection from 50,000 ( or whatever the number is) Senior Federal Civil Servants just an irritable mental gesture? Or a wish on the list to be carried out if Trump wins office?
Or for example, if the Koch Brothers-ALEC Libertarian Constitution project an irritable mental gesture? Or something the Koch Brothers- ALECers really want to get if they can? And if they really want to achieve it if they can, what does it matter if it is a “blueprint for fascism” or not? ” Fascism” is not the only bad outcome.
> Fascism” is not the only bad outcome
Did I say it was?
> Why does it have to be a “blueprint for fascism”?
I think that’s a fair summary of the Democrat framing.
> Is the desire to remove Federal Civil Service protection from 50,000 ( or whatever the number is) Senior Federal Civil Servants just an irritable mental gesture? Or a wish on the list to be carried out if Trump wins office?
Not in scope for the post. What is in scope: if politics is warfare, and you don’t know your enemy, then the goals of the project are less lkely to be achieved than they otherwise would. That’s a higher level concern.
I think one of the best qualities of an irritable mental gesture is that it’s not mutually exclusive. In other words it can also be on a wish list, because I think it is very true wish lists, underpants gnome-like, are often filled with irritable mental gestures (which it seems to me Lambert makes synonymous with “incoherence” above).
> very true wish lists, underpants gnome-like, are often filled with irritable mental gestures
Mandate may well be a wish list; I’ll have to study it further to be sure. However, that’s not how Democrats present it. More to the point that’s not how Project 2025 presents itself. From the post, quoting Mandate:
I don’t think the Unity is there; if I had to guess, I’d say that Mandate is sintered together from the deliverables of a myriad Conservative think tanks, projects, NGOs, and so forth, accumulated over time. Hence the incoherence at the most basic conceptual level. That doesn’t bode well for a “unified effort.” Note also that Trump is not a charismatic figure in charge of Mandate, wielding it as a weapon. A charismatic figure would be a unifying force, but I don’t see that happening. (Trump would not say “You guys do whatever Heritage says” and Heritage would not say “You are our leader!”)
Hooray for Hollywood? That silly Handmaid’s Tail show seems to be lodged deep in the Dem fever brain.
Our town has a lady who belongs to a Dem yard sign of the month club and a recent one said Project 2025–Look It Up. In the war of the bumper stickers they have adopted the Paranoid Style that used to be reserved for things like fluoridation. And of course the Repubs never stopped flogging paranoia with China hate a remnant of the Commie behind every bush obsession that some of us grew up with.
The reality is that both American parties are out of ideas and seem to have little real purpose other than bickering with each other. Putin has ideas. We have slogans.
During Russiagate (and still residing in their brains) McResistance liberals not only set their hair on fire over Russki infiltration of our precious bodily fluids, but the NYT gave itself a Pulitzer Prize for a long series claiming they had entered our cells.
These people are too far gone for rationality, let alone political strategy and tactics… unless it involves punching Left.
I’d be asking why does it have to be 920 pages. Who’s going to read that? Sounds legislation ready!
Yes. No Venn diagram intersection?
Too much of a tangled mess!
It’s sort of amazing that these folks get paid for writing stuff like this.
“ The federal government’s complexity and growth advance at a seemingly logarithmic rate every four years.”
I made it this far in the document’s introduction. I’ve been around long enough to be no longer shocked by the level of innumeracy among the supposedly well educated. But this shows an indifference to the actual meaning of words. Not sure if I should be less concerned or more about these people’s ability to screw thing up once they are in power.
The Mandate:
Such a weird sentence the first thing I did was to look up logarithmic:
Obviously they picked the inverse of the word they actually intended, unless what they intended is that every four years these qualities approach an asymptotic level…
The Mandate
Anyway, back to growth advancing, is that like urban sprawl? Otherwise I’m just not sure what those two words mean together…
jm:Not sure if I should be less concerned or more about these people’s ability to screw thing up once they are in power.
Fascism is always and everywhere present. Since the settling of the US in 1600s.
It has little informational meaning in the US: instead it is used to denigrate or insult. (B Kuklick 2022)
So no, no Blueprint for Fascism. Just a tool to engage the masses. Mind control maybe.
Will it divert the D’s? Yes to an extent. Already assigned to the Phds.
So high level sport not expected to produce miracles.
Firings as existential markers? Agree. DT wasn’t ready last time with candidates or for subversive activities.
Loyalty oaths required? Yes. Implied threats? Yes.
Control is reserved for those who know they are controllers. Don’t know? you are the fodder.
If you cross a RINO with a DINO, do you get a DRANO?
“If you cross a RINO with a DINO, do you get a DRANO?”
Er, my guess is that you get a RIND. All surface, bitter as H—, and void of centre.
As an analogy from the gastronomic world; a RIND is what you have left after you have extracted all the useful material from the fruit. Something to throw away.
But one can still get a useful bit of ‘zest’ from the rind before discarding it.
Zesty!
I was reading one of my subscribed blogs today. The writer quoted George Orwell who said somewhere ( and I remember it)
“Fascism has largely lost its original meaning. Now it means something that is undesirable”
Now, I think I’ll know what Fascism is when I see it. It is emerging for sure.
But I do agree with George there.
I remember Rick Mayall in The Young Ones in the 80s calling everyone facsists all the time and wondering if that wouldn’t soften the idea – which was probably part of the satire I suppose.
> Fascism is always and everywhere present
So, facism exists outside of history? As some sort of natural force? I don’t think so.
Isn’t facism the handmaiden of capitalism? Or the end stage? And either case, it’s not a natural force but a side effect of capitalism.
I’d say that fascism is more like the Consiglieri to Capitalism’s Godfather. Capitalism is definitely driving the train, but depending on how much you really listen to the fascists, then you begin nudging the train further away from one destination towards another. Fascism is always a part of Capitalism, giving advice that points Capitalism in the direction of monopoly and the capture of a political wing to advance it’s agenda. Fascism is the purest form of Capitalism. It’s the goal that’s always striven towards and only ‘regulations’ and ‘laws’ can prevent it from total control.
An excellent analysis.
And Assange is out of jail!
Now, 2:55 AM EDT, he is in Bangkok, Thailand.
Is anywhere in the West safe for him?
Assange is in Bangkok for refueling, then on the US Commonwealth Saipan for his plea, thence to Australia. I hope he’s got world-class security.
> An excellent analysis.
[lambert blushes modestly]
I’m thinking about President Garfield, shot by a disgruntled office seeker under the
spoils system. The idea of turning Federal jobs (AKA the Deep State) into a paradise
of partisan employment evokes another century, when graft was King. True,
the Republicans (under President [ahem] Cheney in Iraq tried a similar scheme,
resulting in chaos, as deeply inexperienced office seekers reaped the spoils of
would-be conquest, an era sponsored by Republicans which seemingly does not
fall under the category of ‘lessons learned’. However similar the circumstances,
it fell into the oubliette of History. Shorn of the dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq became
just another semi-lawless anarchistic Middle Eastern state. Couldn’t happen here!
> The idea of turning Federal jobs (AKA the Deep State)
An interesting simplification; if the agenda of the term “deep state” is in fact abolishing the civil service, that makes me like the term even less.
> deeply inexperienced office seekers
Indeed. IIRC, part of Project 2025 is training cadres of conservatives for jobs in government. I think that will work about as well as Liberty University law school worked for the Bush Administration. Surprisingly it takes actual knowledge and experience to govern, and governemnt is not like a business. At least not a functional government.
Seems to me that the goal of the 920 pages is a less functional government and it will take 50 000 new federal employees to get there.
If the government is made less-functional enough, then big businesses ( private, corporate or other) and very rich people and families will beCOME the government . . . a purely private government of, by and for themselves only; and against all the rest of us.
But if the goal of injecting cadres of conservatives into these government jobs is to make government non-functional, then they don’t have to know how to govern. If they know how to sabotage and obstruct, then they can make government non-function even more effectively.
Didn’t the Reagan Admin try doing some of that, for example by putting Mother Gorsuch in charge of EPA, for example?
Isn’t that why Trump’s conservative advisers found Pruitt for Trump to put in charge of EPA more recently, for example?
I bet Thomas Franks could write a book about this. Maybe he could call it The Wrecking Crew Returns to Finish The Job.
Very interesting analysis, thank you!
“It may be that Project 2025 will be the vehicle to unify all this, Bolshevik-style”
As in, Bolsheviks around the time of the October Revolution, when they were joined by a number of other, generally less coherent and clear-sighted leftist factions? If so, that imply that there is still one “vanguard party” driving the process and forging the necessary compromises. I’m not sure what it might be, so I also think that is very unlikely. Although it would fit the Democratic narrative nicely: “ignore all seeming incoherence, there is a real fascist core beneath it all”.
> Although it would fit the Democratic narrative nicely: “ignore all seeming incoherence, there is a real fascist core beneath it all”.
That is the Democrat narrative. Thinking back to the 1860s Republicans and the 1930s Nazis, their respective cores were totally visible from the beginning. So we are in the realm of “evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1), aren’t we?
Since the aghast of the Capital/Power class since FDR, divine rule/natural leadership class have worked endlessly to end anything that threatens their power to shape the social narrative and by it reality.
We now see this in Russia/China even though they don’t ascribe to the old notions of socialism/communism, now its all about being a compliant member of the new world order as dictated by free market/globalist sorts. Give us your poor/tired and allow us to loot your nations resources so the … cough … market can price [lol] correctly or humanity will expire.
On that note there are some interesting notes about where the fighting is occurring in the Ukraine and some geology stuff … some of the oldest on the planet and interesting features. That said Russia commands 90%+ more but …. Western eyes …
Skippy, would you care to enlarge on the “,geology atuff’ or.suvgedt some sources? I find the repetition of conflicts at the sites of ancient upheavals fascinating.
Thanks
Conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas Region: The Geology Behind the Headlines – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvxzEa9Rkpg
I also think the amount of fighting that is located around it, its infrastructure, and its non militarily origins is curious. So much of the fighting is dictated by it, yet between it all is all the Ag land cut by road and tree lines.
Perhaps this is some sort of political maskirovka as this doorstopper looks amateurish. Maybe I will download and read it, but I have had college teachers who would unhappy with it, and it would not be the subject matter. Perhaps, the Republicans are using the Democratic Party’s maskirovka of going through the motions of “fighting” for the little people, saying that they want change, but nothing will change and the looting will continue.
I am just trying to think this through, but it doesn’t seem like a serious, or at least competent, attempt. But the intellectual heft of the political intelligentsia of now is a joke compared to the past. Perhaps, like much else in the United States, they have lost the ability of thinking deeply and being cogent? Or is their understanding of the world is so politicized (propagandized) that have trouble doing so, like the Professional Managerial Class and the Elites or should I say the Ruling Party(s), nomenklatura, and apparatchiks along with the intelligentsia? Or the American military fighting so many of the wrong kinds of war that cannot fight a peer country’s military?
Right. Shorter Heritage: “made you look.”
Meanwhile away from the shadow play it’s the money party that is really running things whether it’s in banking or war profiteering. Perhaps we can at least get rid of Biden who is some kind of low point when it comes to figureheads.
‘Leftism’ in the US – there are practically NO ‘leftists in the US nowadays . Maybe 0.001% of the population. What US commentators call ‘leftists’ are in fact what the rest of the world calls ‘Liberals’ The ‘Left’ in the US was basically almost wiped out by successful US government and big-money action, which led to the destruction of the IWW union
Liberalism is a pernicious and usually hypocritical political and moral philosophy based on the ‘rights of the individual’, ‘consent of the governed’, ‘political equality’ and ‘equality before the law’ (in practice, rights honoured more in the breach than the observance). Liberals espouse various views depending on their understanding of the ways of exploiting these principles. However, they almost universally support the capitalist system, private property and inherited wealth, ‘free’ market economies, unfettered capitalist markets and social and economic inequality. So Liberals are NOT in any shape or form ‘Leftists’.
Conservatism is also a pro-capitalist movement, but tends not to emphasise such Liberal fetishes as individual freedom, preferring patriarchal, religious and hierarchical control, the consolidation of inherited wealth and privilege, and the perpetuation of inherited social and religious customs above all else, but including support for the capitalist system.
Both Liberals and Conservatives are united in trying to keep themselves at the top of the heap through support for the Military Industrial Complex, the FIRE and other similar share income and money producing parts of the economy – i.e. Capitalism, and limiting power and wealth to themselves and denying both to anyone else. The equation of ‘leftists’ and ‘Liberals’ – aka Democrats is just part of the 100 year old ongoing smear of the left by US rightists and the US establishment to discourage the population from investigating the ideas of sociallism and communism.
US Conservatives and Liberals differ mainly in their approach to cultural matters which are basically irrelevant to the foundations of any economy, but which are perceived by both as being culturally ’significant’ and important. Thus Democrats and Republicans may argue fanatically as to whether women should have ‘abortion on demand’ or not, but will heartily agree that ‘China must not become more powerful than the USA’. What are often described as ‘woke’ topics, such as gay rights, are within the left generally thought to be subordinate to, and often caused by, the main issue of social and economic inequality. However, such issues are often leveraged by Liberals merely as weapons against their supposed enemies, in a short-sighted way which has no insight into or curiosity as to why these discriminations exist. Most of those pushing a ‘woke’ agenda are Liberals – not ‘leftists’.
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social and economic fairness, equality and egalitarianism for all races, peoples and countries, in opposition to social division, hierarchy and rule by the rich and privileged through their entrenchment at the top of the capitalist system. Leftist movements wish to remove the capitalist system, and replace it with one which is broadly economically fair to all and as non-hierarchical as possible. (“From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”). Therefore leftism is opposed to both Liberalism and Conservatism. Leftism includes the labour movement, socialism, communism, Marxism, anarchism and syndicalism and generally, strengthening individual workers power through collective action. These are not Liberal causes. The left does NOT include Liberalism which has always been first and foremost an extremely pro-Capitalist movement. Leftists are not Liberals, Liberals are not leftists. (There is very little significant ‘left’ politics in the US, and certainly not at the level of the ‘party-political’ system for voters).
So a very rough and basic diagram of political thought would be a triangle with each of the movements described above opposed to each other at each vertex. This is how these terms are generally understood throughout the ‘civilised’ world, with the exception of the US (which along with the rest of the ‘west’ may arguably not be part of the civilised world). It may be convenient for US conservatives to conflate those (Liberal and Left) different (and basically opposed) movements so as to be able to attack both their supposed enemies at once, but it ultimately won’t help anyone to rely on such a confused and inaccurate analysis.
The definitions of political terms are fluid, now it seems like the term ‘leftist’ often refers to what we fondly remember as Eisenhower Republicans.
The terms leftist, liberal, socialist, communist, Marxist, and radical are used interchangeably by Republicans to refer to “people we don’t like”. That’s the strict meaning of those terms as far as their pundits are concerned. Basically, these people wouldn’t know a real communist if they tripped over one.
And using the shambolic Antifa as an example of anything is ridiculous, it either doesn’t exist (except in the minds of right-wingers) or is a few dozen people (half of whom are police agents). And “woke” is an elite fashion obsession that has nothing to do with real leftism, other than weakening it by association.
There are many people with genuinely leftist beliefs in this country, but they are not organized and not represented by any of the recognized political parties or independent candidates. Most would be in favor of the type of mild socialism of the New Deal era with a few updates, while a few would be more radical. Liberal used to mean a government big spender, but now the right wing has gotten the hang of using government to spend big on its priorities, so really it means big spender on programs that benefit most of the population. Neither party is in favor of that. They just have (some) different private interests that they want the money spent on, which always involve corporations and different factions of the 1%.
The IWW is very much alive. Sections throughout the world as well as the US. Objectively it has more members now than at any time in history.
For the most part, Project 2025 looks mostly like a plan to fire a lot of people. And most of them probably should be fired, especially CISA. Given that fascism is labor-intensive, this does not look like fascism. To the contrary, getting rid of things like CISA is the opposite of fascism. Time will tell, I guess.
> An excellent analysis. I second.
It seems to me the water we swim in is corporate.
Project 2025 seems to me to be an effort to provide Trump with people who will not ignore his disorganized impulses. For example, John Bolton who undermined his every effort to lessen tensions with N. Korea, for example.
I particularly liked description in the second conclusion: recall two parties that very rapidly and very successfully took power with “a well-conceived, coordinated, unified plan and a trained and committed cadre of personnel”
The corporate sea has successfully accomplished their counter revolution over the past 60 years. The two parties are just fighting for the upper hand. The two parties remind me more of “office politics” than politics for governing a society.
I think I’m more taken aback by how most of the policy ideas you posted boil down to “settling scores and getting rid of people who caused headaches for us after 2016.” Well, fair enough, I can’t say I’m shocked or that this is unusually terrible, but they slather it up in all this rhetoric about political principles, independence and objectivity, censorship, etc. In actuality it’s all just old fashioned revenge.
Both political parties are basically just sleazy used car salesmen trying to roll back the odometer on a decaying status quo. They just have to adjust the sales pitch based on which voters they’re trying to get into the driver seat.
I threw a dinner party over the weekend and one of my guests earnestly lost her mind over this so-called “Project 2025” nonsense. We already have a “fascist” government — it is the system of Inverted Totalitarianism invented by the Clintons, refined by Shrub (the little Bush) and Kenyan Jesus, and practiced by the current murderous administration.
This so-called “Mandate” is simply the blueprint for hoarding power and resources by the .5-percenter Billionaire-Overlord caste, who feel threatened by their 10-percenter PMC totalitarian servants. Hoarding has always been the goal of self-styled libertarians. As George Monbiot penned, “A transparently self-serving vision, it seeks to justify the greedy and selfish behaviour of those with wealth and power.”
A footnote: the drafters are as sloppy as they are stupid. The ”51-Spooks” letter said that the Hunter laptop had “all the earmarks of a Russian information campaign,” not disinformation. It’s an important distinction. Crack-addled Hunter probably still has no idea whether he dropped those laptops off in New Jersey; his computer was just as likely mirrored while he was passed-out by some “Ukrainian” hooker partying in his Kiev hotel room and later dropped-off by someone posing as Hunter…
Just a note on Schmitt’s concept of the political.
Traditionally modern politics has been understood in connection with a notion of the state. Schmitt’s concept of the political is no longer determined by the state but is instead defined by the autonomy of the friend-enemy distinction. This distinction focuses on what Schmitt believes is the deeper conflictual reality of human life focused on the intensity of that conflict.
Why the friend-enemy distinction has been attractive to some elements of the Left (see writings of Chantal Moufee) is its critique of liberalism, which Schmitt argued was an attempt at neutralization and depolitization (a supposed space for reaching consensus) that Schmitt saw as a denial/repression of the conflictual essence of the political. Schmitt’s concept of the political was, in part, an attempt at lifting what he called liberal repression.
There was a third party of trained cadre that was clear in its aims and methods and who took power quickly when the time came: the Bolsheviks.
It is wrong to assert that the enemy of the Nazis was simply, or solely, the jews. The Nazis’ other main enemies were the organised working class and the left, which they smashed as the necessary condition for fascism to assume and retain power, and of course Marxists, gypsies, Roma and all the other designated ‘degenerates’ whom they also rounded up systematically for enslavement and extermination.
One of my favorite genres of dumb is the conservative vision of “the left.” I especially like the “they think they’re better than you and want to force you to wear a potato sack and have everybody make 45K a year and love transgenderism and DEI and CRT and ahhhhhh.”
Literally have never met anybody like that, or really anybody on “the left” that gives a shit what conservatives do, save for not try and cram their bs down everyone’s throats.
It’s been said that people are communist with their family, socialist with their friends, and capitalist with everyone else. The left leaning types would like to extend the socialism part into society at large, the right wing likes things as they are, and the fascists want to erase communism and socialism from people’s minds.
It’s hard to say that Project 25 will be the midwife to fascism. Yet, the German and Italian examples both arrived via the electoral process.
Fascism is little more than aristocracy in the modern and industrial era. That is, some people, disciplined and energetic, believe they deserve to be an elite that rules the state while the rest have a duty to serve the state rather than themselves. That is, fascists despise democracy no less than the notion of equal rights. For them, all men are created equal is patently absurd.
Then we can ask, do both parties have anything in common with fascists? If you check the msm, for example, they speak of nationalism, ultranationalism, extreme nationalism, or hard right nationalism. Nationalism is a smear that applies to others outside the mainstream and never Biden and the elite Dems.
Whereas, romanticism valued emotion as part of rational thinking, the mainstream perversion of it provides an opportunity for manipulation. The Biden crew are romantic nationalists and so are fascists, though nobody since Hitler was a more powerful and charismatic speaker. The idea was to ignore the tangible reality of how the masses lived and make them feel good about the powerful country they’re living in.
I think I’m correct to say, the first time universal health care appeared as policy was in the 1948 Democratic platform which stated, “We favor the enactment of a national health program, far expanded medical research, medical education, and hospitals and clinics.” After 75 years we are not even close to M4A.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1948-democratic-party-platform
Yet, backed up by military flyovers during football games and a hundred other feel good devices, Biden and the elites want you to ignore reality and know the world depends on US leadership, you live in a great country, we are an exceptional people, and we are protecting freedom and democracy in Ukraine, everywhere, and at home.
I was thinking about an appropriate analogy to apply here, and not merely in the terms of the political sphere. Yesterday there was some commentary on films and the making of fables to be more viewer friendly or family friendly as it were.
This past weekend I watched for a 2nd or a 3rd time, the movie Snowpiercer featuring Chris Evans and Ed Harris, plus a few other noted actors. It’s a futuristic tale woven from a climate crisis catastrophe and combines a very caste like structure in each car of this train. Spoiler alert, as that includes themes of Animal Farm or Brave New World. The citizens in the front cars of the train are advanced and better and superior in every way; they are afforded the finest points of life and live well and comfortable. Those citizens at the back cars of the train are the dreck, or the D and E levels if you will from Huxley. Hilarity and fun ensues ( not so much ) when those at the bottom, or the caboose of the train if you will, push forward in open revolt against these conditions. They are not greeted warmly.
Back to politics…this is a heads they win or tails they don’t lose, life is continuing and comfortable for those at institutes, policy wonks or think tanks who dream up this high minded crap. They really believe in their vision of right or wrong, a morally compromised individual leading this “movement” notwithstanding.
Snowpiercer is an underrated film IMO, even considering that it was critically well-received and did ok box office. I’ve only seen it once but it has stuck with me and resonated more over time, as so many of the best films (or the ones I love best) do. It vibes with so much that I read on NC, and often in such a sharp, perceptive way.