Thomas Piketty - Project 2025: From Nightmare To Reality

[Celerity]

https://www.socialeurope.eu/project-2025-from-nightmare-to-reality



The year 2025 was marked by the Trump shock: an unprecedented wave of extreme brutality, unapologetic nationalism, and unrestrained extractivism that shook the world as never before since 1945. To better understand what made it all possible, and how to confront it in the future, we must turn to its roots. Namely, to Project 2025, the 920-page report published by the Heritage Foundation, Washington’s most influential conservative think tank, in 2023. From one state department to another (security, immigration, education, energy, trade, etc.), the report outlines the strategy to follow after taking office, targeted for January 2025. It even specifies the content and timetable for executive orders, the presidential decrees signed publicly and in rapid succession by Donald Trump since his inauguration.

The report drew on the work of hundreds of conservative experts – as they call themselves – brought together by the foundation, which is lavishly funded by corporations and billionaires. What stands out most when reading the report today is the degree of technical, political and ideological preparation behind the Trump administration. Over the past year, Trump has followed the plans laid out by Project 2025 almost to the letter. The new National Security Strategy published by the White House on December 5 reads almost like a copy-and-paste of the project.

Revealingly, Project 2025 identifies several political and ideological enemies. First, there are the globalist liberals, staunch advocates of absolute free trade and unfettered globalization, who are portrayed as useful idiots. Easy to defeat and despise, these liberal elites care little for deindustrialization, job losses and the destruction of local communities and family ties. In contrast, the proud conservatives behind Project 2025 claim to protect these communities. They do so first by asserting US power in the world, relying heavily on tariffs and all-out extractivism: outright asset seizures (Ukraine, Panama, Greenland), imposing military tribute on Europe, and doubling down on fossil fuels. Next, they champion hard work, family values, and respect for natural and cultural hierarchies.

The scourge of « fatherlessness » (growing up without a father, a situation that particularly affects ethnic minorities) is repeatedly condemned and blamed on liberal narratives that deny traditional gender roles and undermine the traditional family. But Project 2025 is mainly concerned with an enemy it deems much more dangerous: internationalist socialists and their plans for a global superstate. The fear may seem laughable, as Trumpists sometimes tend to conflate mild-mannered European social democrats with fearsome Marxist revolutionaries. Yet it must be taken seriously. First, because supporters of democratic socialism such as Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani have become very popular among young Americans over the past decade.

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