I mean I do care about it in the sense that I care about not wanting the US to become even more of a white supremacist Christian fascist imperialist genocidal autocracy than it already is. But I don’t see anything I can do about it that would be even remotely effective. And more than that I just don’t see anyone else who actually cares about it enough to even try to do something about it so what good is me “caring” even supposed to do?

Now I do see a lot of white liberals (and “progressives”, and even some white people who consider themselves leftists) panicking about it. But then when pressed about what is to be done to stop it, their solution is always, always, ALWAYS just “vote for (Genocide) Joe”, which tells me they don’t actually care about Project 2025, they just want to use it as a cudgel to get me to vote for the same ghouls who are blowing up Palestinians and who have let the spooky scary Republican Party get this powerful. But when I point out to them that they obviously don’t really care because they aren’t interested in addressing the roots of fascism or doing anything real to stop fascism, they get all indignant and upset at me, call my takes “disturbing”, “monstrous”, “privileged”, “psychotic”, and after getting that a bunch I do have to wonder if maybe I just have some massive blind spot and am getting this wrong. But they won’t tell me what is actually factually wrong about what I say.

Besides, what do they want me to do about it? They can’t seriously expect me to back a party that loves genocide, but they won’t suggest anything else.

Idk I just feel like the majority of people I see raising a fuss about Project 2025 and the threat of a “Trump dictatorship” are comfortable, privileged white liberals, usually white queer liberals, who have never had to worry about the government targeting their demographics until the last few years. I and every other queer poc I know is like, “oh, they’re going to go after me for another thing? Sure whatever, put it on the pile of other shit they throw at us, what’s one more? Now let’s get back to trying to stop the fascist Democratic Party from stealing money from our paychecks to bankroll a genocide against some of the actual most vulnerable and oppressed people in the world. If Project 2025 actually lands here we’ll fight that too, but we will NEVER throw away our solidarity with the wretched of the earth to preserve what comfort we do have.”

Please Hexbearians, tell it to me straight: Is Project 2025 something we actually need to pay attention to and if so what can we actually do about it? Or is the furor over it just a bunch of fragile white people panicking because they might finally be lumped in with the rest of us and finally get targeted for oppression too?

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    Nah, you’ve pretty much got it. Dems are losing their shit but due to their ideological indoctrination they cannot see their own teams actions as crimes against humanity nor can they imagine any effective political action to resist or oppose the gop. The only political action that exists in their world is i-voted vote i-voted. When Dobbs was on the line not one of the tens of millions of them even tried to kill the scotus. Tens of millions of dems, none of them raised a single finger to protect their most beloved issue.

    2025 is the same thing. They’re losing their shit, but the only solution they can conceive of is re-electing Brandon’s corpse then scolding the left when he continues to make everything worse for another four years. They cannot recognize that they lost this fight a decade or more ago when Obama refused to seat a scotus justice, rbg refused to resign, and the Dems allowed McConnell to seize total control of the federal judiciary.

    They’re adherents of the American Civic Religion and all of their views and beliefs come through that lens. Their blind faith prevents them from recognizing the material and political realities of the situation. Which is to say, they’re worse than useless and are a defacto enemy as they crush any seed of effective resistance while diverting all resources to the collaborationist DNC.

    Not much we can do now but try to survive and protect what and who we can. If you can get out of the us get out now. Get a passport, get residency, get a work visa, get a tourist visa, or just stow away somewhere and gtfo. Things are just going to keep getting worse here. If you can’t get out do what you can to strengthen your community.

    • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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      They’re adherents of the American Civic Religion and all of their views and beliefs come through that lens. Their blind faith prevents them from recognizing the material and political realities of the situation. Which is to say, they’re worse than useless and are a defacto enemy as they crush any seed of effective resistance while diverting all resources to the collaborationist DNC.

      Not much we can do now but try to survive and protect what and who we can.

      Well said, thank you comrade.

      What was that liberal tweet about how people would riot if Roe was overturned? It got so many retweets and shares. Riots should have happened, but when it came time to do it none of the liberals rioted.

      I remember the milquetoast “progressive” Nathan J Robinson arguing that if Biden won he should stack the Supreme Court to fix it, since everyone could see the Republicans had cheated to capture the SC anyway. Even that was too extremist. The Democratic Party straight up does not want to win. What’s the point of voting them into power when they just turn around and hand all that power to the Republicans anyway for the sake of “bipartisanship” and “being the bigger people”?

      I’m not leaving the USA though, shithole though it is it’s my home and my family have all moved here. I don’t want to go somewhere else. Fascism is on the rise all across the West and I don’t do well with extreme heat so the Global South is out.

      • emizeko [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        What was that liberal tweet about how people would riot if Roe was overturned? It got so many retweets and shares. Riots should have happened, but when it came time to do it none of the liberals rioted.

        someone please find this

    • Greenleaf [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      When Dobbs was on the line not one of the tens of millions of them even tried to kill the scotus.

      I also like to point out how afraid libs were when Trump was threatening to nuke the DPRK and possibly start WW3. Not a single lib thought to say “maybe we should strip the power away from a president to be able to do this sort of thing”. But libs would rather die in a nuclear winter than consider fundamentally altering power relationships in government.

    • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      When Dobbs was on the line not one of the tens of millions of them even tried to kill the scotus. Tens of millions of dems, none of them raised a single finger to protect their most beloved issue.

      Biden could literally have them all assassinated now and solve that 100% legally. They do not want to help anyone

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    the one concerning aspect about it is that they can use it’s framework to come after sites like this one and queer discords – discord/reddit/twitter will probably ban queer content. I think the main thing to do is make sure they can’t actually target the site.

    but like… it’s framework is so similar to the fugitive slave act that I just take it as one more indicator that a civil war is coming. real test for liberals is whether their party’s attorneys general cave to demands to extradite queer people. if they don’t grow a spine at that point, a lot of people are going to get hurt.

  • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
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    I care about it in the sense that it is real and it is happening, and am doing things in my life and in my community to protect myself and my comrades as best I can.

    I don’t care about it in the sense that it has been happening for like 70 years now in a slow and measured way, and that voting for a genocidal octogenarian with dementia will not do even one tiny thing to slow it down.

    • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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      I care about it in the sense that it is real and it is happening, and am doing things in my life and in my community to protect myself and my comrades as best I can.

      Yeah that’s the only thing I can think of to do, try to protect as many of us as possible locally and hope that everyone else everywhere else is trying to do the same. There’s no stopping this legally without Democratic support and the Democrats really act like they want it to happen.

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      I don’t care about it in the sense that it has been happening for like 70 years now in a slow and measured way

      Yeah when libs bring up their Project 2025 boogeyman its always like it came out of nowhere. There’s never been a time in living memory where they haven’t been working toward this agenda - and the dems have never done anything real to stop this - but I’m sure if we vote hard this time, and we “go high,” or whatever bs libs are saying these days then dark brandon will save us

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    This has been my read. It’s the invisible minorities in my friend group, the bisexual white cis people in straight monogamous relationships, who seem most panicked over this possibility.

    And like yeah, it’s awful, but do you really think you’re the one in danger now?

    • ghost_of_faso2@lemmygrad.ml
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      Dont undermine your friends concerns, educate them.

      Yes, bisexual men would still be at risk, even if they arent it could easily just be an expression of solidarity and empathy for people who arent them.

  • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    The way I see it is:

    1. Project 2025 isn’t contingent on the year 2025 and can be implemented in 2025+4n where n is a positive integer. Therefore, Project 2025 should be understood as Project 2025+4n where n = 0.

    2. In modern US electoral politics, a party doesn’t control the presidency for more than 3 terms (and even considering US electoral politics in general, anything longer than 3 terms is rare. It’s basically founding fathers shit, FDR + Truman hogging the presidency for 5 consecutive terms, and post-Civil War 19th century Republicans controlling the White House). Since Democrats control the White House in 2021, we can expect the GOP to be in power by 2021+12=2033 at the latest.

    3. Democrats won’t do shit to actually stop a Project 2025+4n for any n from coming to fruition.

    4. Since the GOP is almost certainly guaranteed to control the White House by 2033 per (2) and since Democrats won’t do shit to stop Project 2025+4n per (3), Project 2025+4n is an inevitability and will come to pass.

    5. Therefore, orgs should understand that Project 2025+4n will come to pass and act accordingly and understand that people who speak of Project 2025+4n as if it weren’t an inevitability are opps trying to sheepdog them back to the Democrats.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    For me the worst thing is the GOP SCOTUS justices. The justices are toxic and their power must be curbed and that pro-Trump immunity thing overturn. Plus - the only way to restore reproductive rights is radical action on the court - packing it or whatever. Of course - if Biden somehow manages to get a second term and by some miracle stays in office the whole time - there’s a zero percent chance he’ll do anything at all.

    As others have said in this thread the worship of American civic religion and voting means libs will keep lecturing the public to vote and keep ignoring the fact that the only way the GOP justices can be stopped is by DC dems doing something. If Biden gets a second term and he is forced to give the presidency to Kamala (or he dies and she gets it anyway) - I guess there’s a tiny percent chance she might do something.

    In fact - weird as it is - if Biden has one or two “bad days” like at the debate - libs might actually argue that voting for Biden is also voting for Kamala just in case, erm, Biden can’t finish his term. And, look, maybe she’ll do something about the court.

    She won’t and they know it but they’ll lie to the public and perhaps even themselves too. Worship of American civic religion and voting is a hell of drug.

  • Sulvor [he/him, undecided]@hexbear.net
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    I mean, just like the supreme court ruling on total presidential immunity to commit crimes as official acts, Project 2025 is already happening.

    Nobody batted an eye the countless times our presidents ordered, condoned, or turned a blind eye to the murder of civilians.

    In my opinion, I’m glad when the fascists take their masks off.

    • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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      Right??? I don’t see what’s “new” about any of this shit. It’s almost like the libs don’t know America has been fascist all along. They are OK with the fascist levels of yesterday but not tomorrow, and in 2 days they’ll be OK with the fascist levels of tomorrow but not the day after the day after tomorrow

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        Eh, I think it will help more people realize the true nature of the American government, which is a good thing. People really are waking up, you can tell by how hard the media tries to portray anti-genocide as radicalism.

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    I’m convinced that the Republic is over. We’ve arrived at a place where fascism is likely inevitable at the federal level. I’ve been thinking, it might be important to start organizing a resistance focused on protecting people that the fascists want to hurt. It’s a little bit of a hairy thing because the Internet is so de-anonymized these days that doing so is likely a watchlist speedrun, and let’s not pretend that fascists will leave the folks on that list alone. Probably the only safe way to do it is to start organizing locally with folks in your own community(ies).

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      people have been working on this for a long time, but by organizing locally, not online. join any leftist org in your city, even Food not Bombs, or hell, DSA, and you’ll meet them eventually.

    • jack [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      There are organizations planning for America’s deepening (but not fundamentally new or different) fascism. Every city of modest size will have some kind of mutual aid organizations, but they are also going to be way too small to systematically address the task at hand. Then there are more political organizations, parties and the like, building revolutionary movements to destroy this entire rotten system.

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    I haven’t exactly read the thing cover to cover, but my understanding is it’s the Heritage Foundation going “What if someone competent had won in 2020?” and lays out the plan to replace even more people who do the functions of government - including people with actual jobs - with handpicked toadies. This would be pretty bad and hard to reverse and is likely to have major and unpleasant consequences if it goes through, but, as with all wishlists, they need someone in charge to actually carry it out, and it really just promises an acceleration of existing trends.

    Theoretically - because it requires someone to actually go through the motions of doing this under the color of law - the Democrats could take steps to prevent or at least slow its implementation, but the fact that they intend to drop their opposition after putting up the typical token show of resistance is evident in the fact that no one has outlined a plan beyond “get Biden’s desiccated husk fused to the chair of the Resolute Desk.”

    • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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      They should release their own project 2025 if they want to convince us they have any plan at all. As is it is clear the Democrats have no plan beyond, as BlueMagaChud said, fundraising off it. They love to lose.

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        I think there’s a think tank in the democrats’ orbit that would be willing to put one together (or is currently trying to), but we’ll probably never hear about it because there’s no appetite at the top for admitting the system needs to be changed. The day prominent national democrats go up on stage and admit there needs to be more action than preventing a single high-profile bad actor from getting a job and passing tax credits for electric cars is the day most of their donors head for the exits. So they’re stuck in a state of existing solely in opposition to the Bad Thing Du Jour.

  • Greenleaf [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    As someone familiar with government bureaucracy, both personally and from a historical perspective, I don’t think Project 2025 is all that feasible, at least in the short/medium term.

    These government bureaucracies are massive. There is no way you can hire some wine mom from Palm Beach be an environmental scientist at the EPA just because she loves Trump. Government jobs usually require things like interview panels to score people. These jobs have minimum requirements, etc that you can’t actually just bypass. And there so many layers of management. Sure, Trump can staff these agencies with his people at the very top, but that’s something GOP presidents have always done (and Democrats put industry-friendly people in there anyway).

    But more importantly, these bureaucracies have their own “immune systems” that prevent attempts to subvert their power. Put it this way: let’s say we got a commie elected to president. The first thing we would want to do is “project 2025” the CIA, right? Just imagine how hard that would actually be, and how effective the CIA would be in largely thwarting this attempt.

    • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      I agree with you but the CIA is a bad example. I hate how the term has been coopted, but the deep state is real. The CIA is immune to being reformed from the outside because it has no responsibilities to the public, it functions as a state within the state, with none of the oversight nor accountability. This has been the case since Kennedy’s assassination.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      The way liberals are talking you’d think they’re 2009 era conservatives who think they’ll all be thrown into FEMA camps. They grossly overestimate the ability or desire of the feds to coordinate anything of that scale domestically. America is a lazy oaf. We’re drone strikes and bombing runs, we’re not coordinated crackdowns. Local police departments are full of murderous pinheads and the feds aren’t much better.

      America will probably keep doing oppression like it always has unless something sincerely threatening happens, and white suburban liberals are not the threat they believe they are.

  • they get all indignant and upset at me, call my takes “disturbing”, “monstrous”, “privileged”, “psychotic”

    this monstrous genocidal machine is what’s disturbing, and their privilege is to still internalize the ideological psychosis of believing liberalism is not materially aligned with fascism. the actual current and happening genocide is worse and deserves immediate resistance more than the theoretical genocide that will probably never but possibly interrupt their cozy brunch.

    ultimately i think it is an existential fear that plagues these people, and they find our takes abhorent because we are the ones saying that the enemy is already inside the house and cannot be excised by the ballot box.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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      Word. 2025 fears seem very quaint when McConnell completed his conquest of the federal judiciary almost a decade ago. The libs are fearmongering about what the gop might do while the scotus has been ruling the country by decree since Dobbs and the DNC has bone nothing about it. The GOP can rule the country by sending lawsuits up to the scotus and writing law via “judicial review”. If they take the presidency it’ll go faster, but without resistance or opposition it will happen regardless. Dems can’t accept that they lost during the Obummer admin and they’re too ignorant, indoctrinated, and idealistic to recognize it.

      • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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        This is something I find so frustrating about the libs. They basically handed their supposed enemies victory over and over again and are now saying that it’s up to us to save the country from the disaster they enabled, but they will also only accept salvation if it’s done by doing exactly what led to this point.

        For all that Copmala talks about how we didn’t fall out of the coconut tree and need to envision a future unburdened by what has been, when I actually envision a future free of their bullshit they clutch their pearls and say it’ll never work.

    • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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      Mao: Political power grows out of the barrel of a ballot

      their privilege is to still internalize the ideological psychosis of believing liberalism is not materially aligned with fascism

      This is probably why it gets so frustrating dealing with them, because they are just in denial about how decades of doing things their way has resulted in fascism.

      the actual current and happening genocide is worse and deserves immediate resistance more than the theoretical genocide that will probably never but possibly interrupt their cozy brunch.

      beautifully said, 100%

  • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    Joe Brandon pretty much gave up the game with that ABC interview when he spit out that “…as long as I know I did my best I’m happy” line

    Libs are now pretending they didn’t hear that, but in reality it snapped them right out of their delusional rem sleep and now they’re all peeking at us with one eye open hoping no one else noticed

    I don’t care about project 2025 because the libs obviously don’t care about it

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      Exactly. If libs were truly terrified of Project 2025 as some kind of real existential threat to democracyTM like it’s claimed to be, they would surely be doing more to prevent it than asking for campaign donations and a vote for genocide.