Ruth Ben-Ghiat

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MERRI OK

target pending

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AN 1 26

During the first few weeks of 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump has generated plenty of headlines — from capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to sending even more U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Minneapolis, Minnesota following the fatal shooting of unarmed 37-year-old U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good in that city.

Trump's actions have plenty of defenders in MAGA media outlets. But MS NOW's Vaughn Hillyard, in an article published on January 13, stresses that Trump's "increasingly brazen assertions of executive power" are "running into an unexpected problem: They risk undermining the very goals they were meant to achieve."

"His threats to seize Greenland from NATO ally Denmark are accelerating European discussions about looking for alliances beyond the United States," Hillyard observes. "His public verdict in a fatal shooting by an immigration agent — delivered before a Justice Department investigation — risks further politicizing law enforcement. His administration's attempts to pressure Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to reduce interest rates — culminating in the DOJ's investigating Powell for criminal charges — threatens to make it harder for Trump to appoint Powell's successor. And a week after the mission to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power, the chief executive of ExxonMobil called the country 'uninvestable,' undercutting the economic rationale for the military intervention."

According to historian/author Ruth Ben-Ghiat — a New York University professor known for her expertise on the history of authoritarianism — authoritarians can become increasingly volatile when they are feeling desperate.

Ben-Ghiat told MS NOW: "Trump was recently on a downward path in terms of popularity with his base, and that is when autocrats do unpredictable things to assert their power."

A Pentagon official, interviewed on condition of anonymity, warned that Trump's belligerent foreign policy risks destroying alliances that have served the U.S. well for many years.

The official told MS NOW: "If Greenland goes, so goes the allies in Europe. The one refrain I've been hearing is we don't realize how many equities the U.S. has in Europe and how valuable Australia is, too, and they'll all pull the bridge out from over the moat."

After Good's death, Trump and his allies — including Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — defended the ICE agent who killed her. And according to MS NOW legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance, attacking Good can only hurt law enforcement in Minneapolis.

"If people don't have confidence in DOJ excessive force investigations, communities will spiral down without closure after events like the shooting of Renee Good," Joyce Vance said. "If the president fully breaks it, the consequences will be dire — we could become a country of endless protests with escalating violence from law enforcement on American streets."

*Read Vaughn Hillyard 's full article for MS NOW at this link.

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//? GGL AI 11 25

It is a core tactic of fascist and authoritarian movements to portray the dominant group as the true victims of an "enemy" or minority out-group. This narrative of false victimhood is a key component of fascist propaganda, designed to generate anger and resentment and justify the group's actions against others.

Key aspects of this dynamic include:

Manufacturing a crisis: Fascists often flourish in times of anxiety and perceived decline, which they link to a narrative of "fake loss" allegedly caused by a specific enemy (e.g., immigrants, liberals, specific racial or religious minorities).

Scapegoating: The "victim" claim is used to direct anger and blame toward a scapegoat group, allowing the aggressors to position themselves as the self-sacrificing heroes fighting against impossible odds.

Reversal of roles: In this dynamic, those promoting fascist ideology present themselves as the persecuted, while labeling anyone who opposes them as the "real fascist" or persecutor.

Strongman/victim duality: Authoritarian leaders often oscillate between presenting themselves as both superior (a "strongman") and as a victim of oppression, thereby gathering support from those who feel similarly disenfranchised.

Undermining truth: This tactic is part of a broader strategy of pushing "Big Lies" and conspiracy theories to create a fraudulent reality that makes it difficult to have an honest discussion about the actual victims of violence and oppression.

Historically, this has been a feature of various fascist regimes, such as the "victim theory" in post-WWII Austria, which allowed former Nazis back into society by denying their past actions, and the Nazi's own claims of being victims of censorship while engaging in widespread censorship themselves. The goal is to manipulate narratives to fit their ends, pushing the real victims out of the spotlight.

[### Why do fascists always see themselves as the victims?

Substack · Refuse Dystopia

50+ likes · 1 year ago](https://charlesmcbryde.substack.com/p/why-do-fascists-always-see-themselves)

Fascism is boisterous and projects strength, decisiveness, and emotional resolve, but its dirty little secret is that it relies on the fascist ...

[### Why Fascists Never Think They're Fascists — But Victims ...

Medium · umair haque

1.6K+ likes · 2 years ago](https://medium.com/eudaimonia-co/why-fascists-never-think-theyre-fascists-but-victims-and-heroes-2eb95c19097e)

Why Fascists Never Think They're Fascists — But Victims and Heroes The Psychology of the New Global Wave of Fascism “I'm not a fascist!

[### What is the reasoning behind fascists believing they are ...

Quora

4 answers · 1 year ago](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-reasoning-behind-fascists-believing-they-are-victims-of-oppression)

How do self-proclaimed modern fascists justify their beliefs given the horrors committed in the name of fascism historically? I'm not a fascist, ...

[### A micro-history of Fascist violence. Squadristi, victims and ...

Taylor & Francis Online

https://www.tandfonline.com › ... › Volume 27, Issue 4](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1354571X.2022.2045454)

by J Foot · 2022 · Cited by 9 — Fascists aimed to provoke real bodily harm, but also shame ... claimed many non-fascist victims of 'socialist violence' as their own.

[### Can aggressors be 'victims'? Ideologues on the right think so.

The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com › outlook › 2021/11/01](https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/11/01/ashli-babbitt-stars-david-anti-vaxxers-martyrs/)

Nov 1, 2021 — Increasingly, some on the right openly embrace fascist symbols and rhetoric while portraying themselves as fascism's historical victims. In ...

Missing: REL ‎| Show results with: REL

[### False Victimhood Is Driving Young White Men To Murder

BuzzFeed News

https://www.buzzfeednews.com › article › aaronfreedman](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/aaronfreedman/false-victimhood-kills)

Apr 5, 2019 — The interwar period was fertile ground for proto-fascist pseudo-intellectuals, as Pankaj Mishra wrote, and they trafficked in visions of ...

[### Privileged Victims: How America's Culture Fascists ...

Amazon.com

https://www.amazon.com › Privileged-Victims-America...](https://www.amazon.com/Privileged-Victims-Americas-Fascists-Hijacked/dp/1642931454)

Privileged Victims: How America's Culture Fascists Hijacked the Country and Elevated Its Worst People [Scarry, Eddie] on Amazon.com.

Missing: TRUE ‎| Show results with: TRUE

[### The fascist swindle: When 'victims' become tyrants

Independent Australia

https://independentaustralia.net › politics-display › the-f...](https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-fascist-swindle-when-victims-become-tyrants,20143)

Sep 10, 2025 — 'I'm not a fascist! They're the real fascists!! The students, the leftists, the woke mob, the anti-fascists, the teachers, the LGBTQ! They ...

[### Allegations of Fascism Distract From the Real Danger

The Nation

https://www.thenation.com › Article](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trump-fascism/)

Jan 18, 2021 — I am more sympathetic to the claim that fascist elements in civil society became emboldened with Trump in charge. ... victims of fascism, while ...

Missing: REL ‎| Show results with: REL

[### This is fascism

De Correspondent

https://decorrespondent.nl › this-is-fascism](https://decorrespondent.nl/16177/this-is-fascism/0d604cd4-7b7f-0f8b-3d68-9540540803d3)

Jun 13, 2025 — If emotion is the fuel for fascism, then a fascist draws on a people's mythic past to spark that emotion. Adolf Hitler dreamed of a Third Reich ...

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an 2024?

The Heritage Foundation — a well-funded, influential far-right group in Washington, DC — has been quietly vetting tens of thousands of arch-conservative acolytes to staff up the federal government under the next Republican administration as part of its "Project 2025" presidential transition plan. One scholar of authoritarian movements around the globe is sounding the alarm over what that would mean should former President Donald Trump win a second term in the White House.

, New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat told host Ali Velshi that Project 2025 would effectively transform American government from a meritocratic democracy to a regime resembling Vladimir Putin's Russia. She pointed to Heritage's calls to eliminate numerous government agencies that serve as checks on the executive branch as merely one example.

"The essence of authoritarianism is removing restraints on the leader and making him immune from prosecution by domesticating government," Ben-Ghiat said. "And so some of what Project 2025 proposes, like abolishing the DOJ and the FBI is designed for that end, to make it impossible to prosecute Trump and allow him to commit crimes with impunity."

"The scale of this leads me to think about the way that authoritarian regimes actually operate," she continued. "If you get rid of a lot of government and you've got your smaller army of loyalists... they are the ones, the small number of people who actually run government, and they take away the rights of millions. And it's like a band of cronies."

Ben-Ghiat further elaborated that when entire agencies are abolished, cabinet secretaries — who have to be confirmed by the US Senate — are also abolished, which would leave a vacuum to be filled by loyalists. She said such a plan would result in entire departments coming under the control of "a band of criminals supported by oligarchs."

"You need corrupt people to come into power to sustain an autocracy," Ben-Ghiat said.

Should Trump win a second term, it's likely he would re-institute the "Schedule F" executive order governing the staffing of federal agencies he put in place toward the end of his term — which was almost immediately repealed by President Joe Biden once he took the oath of office in 2021. Under Schedule F, numerous employment protections for federal employees would be removed, allowing for Trump to replace approximately 50,000 government employees who make policy decisions with presidential appointees loyal to him. Many of those appointees would likely come from the list of pre-vetted personnel compiled as part of Project 2025.

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an 10 24

The U.S. Naval Academy is under fire after it invited — then uninvited — a distinguished expert on authoritarianism and fascism to give a lecture.

Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a professor of history and Italian Studies at New York University, where her bio says she “writes about fascism, authoritarianism, propaganda, and the threats these present to democracies around the world.” She is the author of books on fascism and serves as an advisor to the nonpartisan nonprofit organization Protect Democracy. She is also an MSNBC opinion columnist, where she appears as a commentator, as she does on other news networks.

For weeks, since early October, right-wing media has been criticizing the U.S. Naval Academy for inviting her to speak.

The Daily Caller, founded by Tucker Carlson, described Dr. Ben-Ghiat as “an outspoken anti-Trump guest” who was invited to “give the keynote speech at a high-level lecture this month.”

“Ben-Ghiat announced that she’d be speaking at the event in an op-ed last month and further claimed that former President Donald Trump was an ‘authoritarian ‘and drew comparisons between him and world dictators,” The Daily Caller’s Jake Smith wrote in an opinion piece.

For weeks, since early October, right-wing media has been criticizing the U.S. Naval Academy for inviting her to speak.

The Daily Caller, founded by Tucker Carlson, described Dr. Ben-Ghiat as “an outspoken anti-Trump guest” who was invited to “give the keynote speech at a high-level lecture this month.”

“Anti-Trump historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat is scheduled to lecture midshipmen on ‘authoritarianism,'” two Heritage Foundation officials, Mathew Lee and Wilson Beaver, wrote at The Daily Signal in a piece marked commentary. They called for the Naval Academy to retract the invitation to Dr. Ben-Ghiat.

The Heritage Foundation is the headquarters of Project 2025. The ACLU calls Project 2025, “a federal policy agenda and blueprint for a radical restructuring of the executive branch authored and published by former Trump administration officials in partnership with The Heritage Foundation, a longstanding conservative think tank that opposes abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and racial equity. Project 2025’s largest publication, ‘Mandate For Leadership,’ is a 900-page manual for reorganizing the entire federal government agency by agency to serve a conservative agenda.”

Dr. Ben-Ghiat in her Substack piece also wrote about Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery, where a cemetery official was “pushed,” allegedly by Trump campaign staffers, according to an Army report. A judge on Tuesday ordered the Pentagon to release its records related to Trump’s visit there in August, by the end of this week.

“The conduct of Trump and his campaign on those hallowed grounds violated federal prohibitions against election-linked activities at military cemeteries,” Ben-Ghiat wrote. “The photos and videos they took there also showed graves of U.S. service members whose families had not given permission. Additionally, a Trump aide shoved an Arlington employee who was trying to enforce the rules, and Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung claimed she initiated the aggression and was having a ‘mental health episode.'”

“It seems counter-intuitive when you are running for president and commander-in-chief to insult the U.S. military,” she added. “But that hasn’t stopped Trump: insulting and mocking the military are among his most consistent habits.”

On Tuesday, in an opinion piece in the Baltimore Banner, Rick Hutzell slammed the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 for getting Dr. Ben-Ghiat’s lecture canceled. (The U.S. Naval Academy is based in Annapolis, Maryland.)

“If Trump wins, the right-wing thought police will come for the Naval Academy,” Hutzell wrote in a scorching editorial.

“You could hear the spittle fly as the Heritage Foundation shouted out its latest intellectual assault on the Naval Academy,” he wrote. “All over Ruth Ben-Ghiat and a lecture the midshipmen likely will never hear.”

“Her politics were the problem, not her lecture.”

“As controversies go, it was easy to miss this one. It all took place within the conservative media ecosystem. But it could foreshadow what might happen to the U.S. service academies if Trump is elected next month,” he added. “Deep within Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 925-page roadmap for the next Republican president, its authors say they want the service academies scrubbed of anything and anyone deemed insufficiently pure of thought — exactly what they did to Ben-Ghiat.”

Ben-Ghiat in an email told Hutzell: “The lecture had nothing to do with contemporary America and I was not going to mention Mr. Trump at all in this strictly nonpartisan event at an institution, the U.S. Naval Academy, which I greatly admire.”

Hutzell wrote that Heritage “Foundation ‘researchers’ Matthew Lee andWilson Beaver made the connection a month after Ben-Ghiat’s announcement and simply made up the rest, assuming she planned to attack Trump.” He also pointed to another piece at The Daily Signal by “Heritage Foundation mouthpieces Hans von Spakovsky and Cully Stimson,” and n0ted that “U.S. Rep. Keith Self — a West Point graduate who represents a district north and northeast of Dallas — wrote Vice Adm. Yvette M. Davids, the academy superintendent, and demanded that she cancel the lecture.”

He also reports The Daily Signal’s managing editor called for an apology from the Naval Academy, and Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee “called for an explanation.”

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“The harrumph over Ben-Ghirat smacks of hamfisted stagecraft. It’s not about protecting young minds from learning what tools authoritarians use, it’s about preparing the case for an intellectual bloodletting,” Hutzell concluded.

Others lashed out at the Naval Academy.

“This is a shameful move by @NavalAcademy. If our armed services are truly training people to be loyal to the Constitution, not to an individual, this is one lecture they need to hear. Very disappointing,” declared attorney and former FBI Special Agent Asha Rangappa, a legal and national security expert.

She also blasted the “members of Congress who do not want students at service academies to learn what happens when you turn into Hitler’s generals,” likely a response to news of Trump allegedly praising Hitler and saying he had wanted “Hitler’s generals.”

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a professor of law and MSNBC/NBC News legal analyst, pointing to Ben-Ghiat being disinvited, warned: “This is exactly what she’s been warning about—caving in to the demands of authoritarian leaders, even before they’re in place. Dangerous & shameful.”

Historian and professor of strategic studies Phillips P. O’Brien, author of several books including, “How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II,” called Hutzell’s editorial a “terribly worrying story about how MAGA pressure is already leading to censorship in the US military. The US Naval Academy disinvited the distinguished historian @ruthbenghiat from delivering a major lecture because of Heritage-MAGA pressure.”

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AN 10 24

Donald Trump over the weekend repeatedly said he wants to use the U.S. military against Americans who oppose him, called his critics “the enemy from within,” and declared they are more dangerous than America’s greatest foreign adversaries, including Russia, China, and North Korea.

“I always say we have the outside enemy, so you can say China, you can say Russia, you can say, Kim Jung-Un,” Trump told supporters at an Aurora, Colorado rally on Friday (video below). But, he added: “It’s the enemy from within, all the scum that we have to deal with. that hate our country. That’s a bigger enemy than China and Russia,” he said as the audience cheered.

On Sunday, Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo of his desire to use armed forces against Americans on Election Day.

“I think the bigger problem are the people from within, we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary by the military.”

Pointing to those remarks, constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe says, “Just think what this means for the 2028 election if Trump & Vance are in control as of January 20, 2025.”

In both events Trump had been talking about undocumented immigrants before switching his target to American citizens.

AFP called his remarks against U.S. citizens a “sinister election-related threat.” Rolling Stone called it a “a fascist plan to deploy military forces against U.S. citizens who oppose him on election day.” HuffPost described his remarks as “echoing similar language used by Nazis,” and HuffPost legal/justice reporter Brandi Buchman warned the “level of danger that people face if he is ever allowed near office again cannot be understated.” The New Republic declared Trump went “Full Dictator.”

“Trump as President and Commander in Chief would seek to wage war on the American people,” warned historian and professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on fascism and authoritarianism. She adds, “our armed forces could have a new authoritarian role: domestic repression. ‘Handling’ the Leader’s enemies=violence.”

Attorney and former federal and state prosecutor Eric Lisann responded, writing: “Trump has already requested military equipment and protection for him now, as a mere candidate. He will gut the military of its finest leaders, many of whom have identified the historic threat he poses to the country, and turn it into his personal guard.”

The popular historian and professor Heather Cox Richardson called Trump’s attack on his political opponents, “the full leap to authoritarianism.”

“Trump’s full-throated embrace of Nazi ‘race science’ and fascism is deadly dangerous,” she added, noting his “campaign seems to be deliberately pushing the comparisons to historic American fascism by announcing that Trump will hold a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on October 27, an echo of a February 1939 rally held there by American Nazis in honor of President George Washington’s birthday.”

And historian Steven A. Woodbridge wrote: “Pointing to the ‘enemy within’ is a classic strategy used by those with authoritarian tendencies many times in the past & it would appear nothing has changed. This man is a clear threat to democracy.”

Journalist Ahmed Baba warned, “Trump’s rhetoric is growing more violently authoritarian. His migrant fear-mongering is increasingly racist and now he’s once again saying he’ll deploy the military against people he disagrees with. Trump’s insane authoritarianism is the most important story of this election.”

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an 8 24

When Vice President Kamala Harris held a large campaign rally with her running mate, Tim Walz, at Philadelphia late Tuesday afternoon, August 6, the Minnesota governor was more than happy take credit for an insult that numerous Democrats are using to attack former President Donald Trump, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and other MAGA Republicans: "weird."

The "weird" insult originated with Walz. And Harris' running mate drew loud applause when he told the Philly crowd, "You know it, you feel it: These guys are creepy and, yes, just weird as hell."

In an op-ed published by MSNBC the following day, historian/author Ruth Ben-Ghiat lays out some reasons why the "weird" insult infuriates MAGA Republicans.

"For scholars of authoritarianism," Ben-Ghiat explains, "the success of 'weird' is no surprise. That's because humor has long been one of the most effective weapons of anti-authoritarian politics. Behind the facade of their omnipotence, most strongmen are brittle and insecure personalities. They don't mind being called evil, but being ridiculed is a different matter."

During its 49-year history, "Saturday Night Live" has lampooned one U.S. president after another. Most of them, from Gerald R. Ford to George H.W. Bush to Joe Biden, had a sense of humor about it. But Trump was seriously offended by Alec Baldwin's portrayal of him.

Ben-Ghiat, author of the book "Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present Reprint Edition," emphasizes that one thing authoritarians really can't stand is being mocked.

"Strongmen have their own sadistic sense of humor, which is amply displayed in the awful authoritarian spectacles staged by their governments," according to Ben-Ghiat. "The Nazis enjoyed making communists who entered Dachau concentration camp in 1933, like Hans Beimler, wear signs that said 'A hearty welcome!' But they cannot take a joke when they are the targets."

Ben-Ghiat continues, "That's why they have to surround themselves with sycophants and lackeys, and their enablers know their prestige must be policed. When a man brought his pet rabbit named Mussolini to a bar in fascist Italy, thinking others would enjoy seeing him order it around, he was quickly arrested and served a year in confinement."

*Ruth Ben-Ghiat's full op-ed for MSNBC is available at this link.

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an 6 24

Trump's fundraising emails have long been viewed as over-the-top. But recently, they have, according to Rolling Stone and The New Republic, taken an especially dark turn.

On Wednesday morning, June 12, Trump's campaign sent out an e-mail that read, in all caps, "HAUL OUT THE GUILLOTINE!"

Rolling Stone's Nikki McCann Ramirez notes that "thankfully," the e-mail "was not a declaration of intent by Trump, but a melodramatic fundraising pitch accusing his political opponents of wanting to behead him."

The e-mail read, "Remember when that Sicko Kathy Griffin made the rounds parading my BEHEADED head when I was President?! The radical-left CHEERED! Obama and Biden were SILENT! And the Fake News BLASTED it everywhere! The SAD and HORRIFIC TRUTH is that this is STILL the Sick Dream of every Trump-Deranged lunatic out there! And it's not just me they want gone, THEY'RE REALLY COMING AFTER YOU."

In an article published by The New Republic the same day, reporter Talia Jane cites the "guillotine" pitch as an example of how paranoid Trump's fundraising pitches are sounding.

"The e-mails, written by Trump's campaign but styled to sound like they're coming directly from Trump, intend to provoke supporters into donating," Jane observes. "A fundraising e-mail sent last week falsely claimed Biden directed the FBI to assassinate Trump, saying, 'He tried to publicly torture and humiliate me.… but he failed. He tried to raid my home and take me out with deadly force.… but he failed."

When CNN's Jim Acosta noted the "guillotine" e-mail on X, formerly Twitter, historian/author Ruth Ben-Ghiat — known for her expertise on fascism and authoritarianism — gave her take on Trump's email with a tweet.

"From Fascism onward, authoritarians have prepared people to accept and commit violence by conjuring existential threats," she wrote. "Those threats must be not only to the beloved leader, but also to his followers. Jan. 6 was another [example]: it was a rescue operation of a cult leader in distress. Now a desperate convicted felon, Trump conjures a guillotine meant for them too. #Strongmen."

*Read Rolling Stone's full article at this link (subscription required) and The New Republic's reporting here.

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no lnx

an 7 23

far right Heritage Foundation created a platform for Trump that plots an authoritarian take-over of the country.

Donald Trump nearly destroyed American democracy in his first term in office. If he is reelected, he plans to try to finish the job. This isn’t a matter of speculation; it’s a virtual certainty.

In campaign speeches, TV interviews, posts on Truth Social, and a head-spinning list of promises posted on his official campaign website, Trump has vowed to pressure Congress to pass legislation imposing the death penalty on drug smugglers and human traffickers; purge “Marxists” from the Department of Education; remove civil service protections for federal employees; and “obliterate the deep state [and] rout the fake news media.” He has also pledged to fire Special Counsel Jack Smith, whom he has labeled “a deranged lunatic, [a] psycho, and a “crackhead,” and appoint “a real special prosecutor” to target President Biden and his family, along with a litany of other real and imagined enemies.

It would be bad enough if such threats were simply the ravings of a wannabe dictator desperate to stay out of jail, but they are much more dangerous than that. Trump’s 2024 election bid and his vows of revenge and retribution are backed by a sophisticated and multi-faceted movement that seeks to expand presidential power to unprecedented heights should he or another like-minded GOP extremist win back the Oval Office.

The intellectual heart of the movement is the Heritage Foundation, the well-known and influential Washington-D.C.-based think tank, founded in 1973, that played an integral role in shaping the policies of President Ronald Reagan. From its early days as a pivotal player in the mainstream of the Republican Party, the Heritage Foundation went full MAGA during Trump’s first term. Last year, it launched a new initiative—dubbed the “2025 Presidential Transition Project,” or “Project 2025” for short—to ensure that the next GOP President’s authority will be unchecked.

The project’s webpage describes its vision in ambitious and unambiguous terms:

The actions of liberal politicians in Washington have created a desperate need and unique opportunity for conservatives to start undoing the damage the Left has wrought and build a better country for all Americans in 2025.

It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration.

The specific goals of the project are discussed in great detail in the ninth edition of the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership. First published in 1981, the Mandate is designed to serve as a guide for conservative governance, and is updated periodically, usually at the outset of each presidential administration. The current version totals some 920 pages.

If you lack the stomach to plow through the entire tome, you can turn to a two-page preface written by Paul Dans, Project 2025’s director who served as the Trump Administration’s Chief of Staff for the Office of Personnel Management.Dans outlines the project’s four basic objectives, which he calls its “four pillars.” These are: the development of a broad “policy agenda” for the next rightwing President to implement; the construction of a “personnel database” to assist the President in making staffing decisions; the creation of a “Presidential Academy” to train the next set of high-level government appointees; and a “Playbook” for the first 180 days of the next administration.

One of the project’s more disturbing aims is to bring all federal agencies under direct presidential control,ending the operational independence not only of the Department of Justice and the FBI, but also the Federal Reserve, which oversees the banking industry and regulates interest rates; the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which oversees television, radio, and the Internet; and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which enforces antitrust and consumer protection laws.

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” Russell Vought told The New York Times in an interview for a lengthy article published earlier this month on Trump’s plans for a second term. Vought ran the Office of Management and Budget for the Trump White House, and currently serves as the president of the Center for Renewing America, one of sixty-five ultra-right organizations that have come together to form Project 2025’s advisory board. (Others include the American Family Project, Hillsdale College, Liberty University, Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America, America First Legal, the Claremont Institute, Moms for Liberty, Freedom Works, the James Madison Institute, and ALEC.)

“The President’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal,” John McEntee, another former Trump White House staffer, also told the Times. “Our current executive branch,” McEntee continued, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.” McEntee joined Project 2025 in May as a senior advisor, working on the initiative’s “personnel” pillar.

Dismantling the New Deal-era regulatory framework of the administrative state, as McEntee advocates, has long been a goal of the radical right. The right has also long advocated a bloated view of presidential power known as the “unitary executive theory.” The doctrine was popularized in the early 1980s by Ed Meese, who served as counselor to the President in Reagan’s first term, and as attorney general in his second term, before assuming a full-time post with the Heritage Foundation in 1988. Bill Barr, Trump’s last Senate-confirmed Attorney General, is another prominent proponent of the theory.

In an oft-quoted 2006 essay, professors Karl Manheim and Allan Ides of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, California, described the theory as inimical to the core tenets of democracy, writing:

[T]he theory of the unitary executive is anything but an innocuous or unremarkable description of the presidency. In its stronger versions, it embraces and promotes a notion of consolidated presidential power that essentially isolates the Executive Branch from any type of Congressional or judicial oversight… Its proponents seek the cover of the Constitution, but in truth their theory wreaks havoc on the most fundamental principles of our constitutional traditions.

In a recent column published online by MSNBC,New York University Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an internationally renowned expert on fascism, compared the programmatic goals of the Trump campaign and Project 2025 to the crippling anti-democratic reforms implemented by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

The question for the rest of us, who see democracy teetering on the brink, is how to stop Trump and Project 2025. It is possible, but unlikely, that Special Counsel Jack Smith could derail Trump’s campaign through the multiple prosecutions he is pursuing. It is also possible, but by no means certain, that the Supreme Court, currently stacked with three Trump appointees, could overturn or weaken some aspects of a second-term Trump agenda if Smith fails.

The most effective way to stop Trump and the new movement behind him, however, is to defeat him at the polls, making sure that he never accedes to power again. Sadly, that, too, remains decidedly uncertain.

GOP senator blocking 265 military promotions falsely promoted his father’s WWII service: report

Smith Jan. 6 prosecution

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/trump-cult-of-personality/

no lnx

Fascism expert says Trump’s cult of personality is growing

Amy Goodman and Democracy Now January 09, 2022

President Joe Biden warned about the looming threat of autocracy during his speech marking the first anniversary of the January 6 Capitol attack on Thursday and denounced his predecessor Donald Trump for inciting the rioters. In a statement responding to Biden’s speech, Trump continued to falsely claim the 2020 election was rigged. To discuss further, we are joined byhistorian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on the psychology of authoritarianism,who says Trump has grown his “personality cult” since his election loss and converted the GOP into “a far-right authoritarian party which has enshrined violence as part of the practice of power.” She also discusses Trump’s recent endorsement of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán,who has been recognized by European Union leadership as a threat to democracy, and calls Florida Governor Ron DeSantis a “mini-Trump” who is planning for “an authoritarian system at the state level.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: President Biden marked the first anniversary of the January 6 Capitol insurrection by denouncing Donald Trump for inciting his supporters to attack the Capitol in an effort to overturn the 2020 election. In a speech from Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol, Biden accused Trump of spreading a “web of lies” and claimed the former president — who he did not name — is placing a “dagger at the throat of American democracy.” This is part of Biden’s address.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Here is the God’s truth about January 6, 2021. Close your eyes. Go back to that day. What do you see? Rioters rampaging, waving for the first time inside this Capitol a Confederate flag that symbolized the cause to destroy America, to rip us apart. Even during the Civil War, that never, ever happened. But it happened here in 2021.

What else do you see? A mob breaking windows, kicking in doors, breaching the Capitol; American flags on poles being used as weapons, as spears; fire extinguishers being thrown at the heads of police officers. A crowd that professes their love for law enforcement assaulted those police officers, dragged them, sprayed them, stomped on them. Over 140 police officers were injured.

We’ve all heard the police officers who were there that day testify to what happened. One officer called it, quote, a “medieval” battle, and that he was more afraid that day than he was fighting the War in Iraq. They’ve repeatedly asked since that day: How dare anyone — anyone — diminish, belittle or deny the hell they were put through?

We saw it with our own eyes. Rioters menaced these halls, threatening the life of the speaker of the House, literally erecting gallows to hang the vice president of the United States of America.

But what did we not see? We didn’t see a former president, who had just rallied the mob to attack, sitting in the private dining room off the Oval Office in the White House, watching it all on television and doing nothing for hours as police were assaulted, lives at risk, the nation’s Capitol under siege.

This wasn’t a group of tourists; this was an armed insurrection. They weren’t looking to uphold the will of the people; they were looking to deny the will of the people. They were looking to uphold — they weren’t looking to uphold a free and fair election; they were looking to overturn one. They weren’t looking to save the cause of America; they were looking to subvert the Constitution.

This isn’t about being bogged down in the past; this is about making sure the past isn’t buried. That’s the only way forward. That’s what great nations do. They don’t bury the truth; they face up to it. Sounds like hyperbole, but that’s the truth: They face up to it. We are a great nation.

My fellow Americans, in life, there’s truth and, tragically, there are lies, lies conceived and spread for profit and power. We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie.

And here is the truth: The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. He’s done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interests as more important than his country’s interests and America’s interests, and because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution.

He can’t accept he lost, even though that’s what 93 United States senators, his own attorney general, his own vice president, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said: He lost. That’s what 81 million of you did as you voted for a new way forward. He has done what no president in American history, the history of this country, has ever, ever done: He refused to accept the results of an election and the will of the American people.

While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principles of that party, too many others are transforming that party into something else. They seem no longer to want to be the party — the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes. But whatever my other disagreements are with Republicans who support the rule of law and not the rule of a single man, I will always seek to work together with them to find shared solutions where possible, because if we have a shared belief in democracy, then anything is possible — anything.

And so, at this moment, we must decide: What kind of nation are we going to be? Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm? Are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people? Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but in the shadow of lies? We cannot allow ourselves to be that kind of nation. …

Those who stormed this Capitol and those who instigated and incited and those who called on them to do so held a dagger at the throat of America, at American democracy. They didn’t come here out of patriotism or principle. They came here in rage, not in service of America, but rather in service of one man. Those who incited the mob, the real plotters, who were desperate to deny the certification of this election and defy the will of the voters.

AMY GOODMAN: President Biden, speaking Thursday at the Capitol to mark the first anniversary of the deadly January 6 insurrection.

Delaware Congressmember Lisa Blunt Rochester spoke later as part of a day of commemoration on Capitol Hill.

REP. LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER: On the day that I was sworn in to Congress, as many of my colleagues know, I was the first African American and the first woman from the state of Delaware elected to Congress. And I carried this scarf with me. It marked an X that my great-great-great-grandfather used to sign this returns of qualified voter registration of 1867 in Georgia. I also carried it on the day of the insurrection, because it is my proof of what we have overcome, and it is my inspiration for what is yet to be done as we work towards a more perfect union.

I continue to have hope, even when I feel hopeless, because my ancestors would have it no other way, and because Scripture tells us that weeping may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning. And while I remember a great deal that day, what I remember most is walking back onto the House floor into the chamber that morning to complete our work, the morning when democracy prevailed. Remember, reflect, recommit.

AMY GOODMAN: Delaware Congressmember Lisa Blunt Rochester, speaking Thursday.

We’re joined now by New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat. She’s an expert on the psychology of authoritarianism and the author of Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall. She also publishes Lucid, a newsletter on threats to democracy.

Can you put what happened yesterday in the context of your study of fascism, the anniversary of what happened a year ago, Professor?

RUTH BEN-GHIAT: Yes. So, Trump was never going to be — he was never a president who resembled either a Republican or Democrat head of state. He ruled as an autocrat. His priorities were autocratic ones: making money off the presidency, spreading hatred and creating a personality cult.

And so, when he lost the election, it was easy to predict, as I did in Strongmen, that he wouldn’t leave quietly, because democratic — with a small D — presidents, they respect the transfer of power, and they think about their legacy, but for somebody like Trump, who needs immunity from prosecution and needs the adulation, it’s like a kind of existential threat to have to leave. And so he tried everything. He tried martial law. He tried electoral manipulation. And then he went with his bespoke, custom army of thugs.

And what’s really so disturbing, that the GOP, which he remade into an authoritarian party, his personality cult one year later is stronger than ever. And very quickly, in the last year, the GOP has come into its own as a far-right authoritarian party, which has enshrined violence as part of the practice of power. That is part of its menu of how you do politics now.

AMY GOODMAN: During his speech, President Biden addressed what he called the president’s three big lies: Number one, Election Day itself was an insurrection; number two, the election results cannot be trusted; and number three big lie, the mob were the true patriots. Put that in the context of the strongmen you have studied.

RUTH BEN-GHIAT: So, a third of my book is on military coups, and which I thought wouldn’t be so relevant for the American reader, and, of course, I was wrong. And every single coup or authoritarian takeover is always justified as a patriotic act against tyranny, against corruption.

And so, Trump had set this up very well, because these big lies only had traction with his followers because he told 30,000 lies before that. And many of those lies, for years, were trying to take away the legitimacy of the electoral system in people’s minds. He started this in 2016, but he won, so he didn’t have to use this. So, we have to think about how what we saw, and what has been going on after January 6 for the last year, is the product of this very successful propaganda strategy.

And so, turning — what you also do is you turn it — I call authoritarianism as the upside-down world. So, Biden’s victory becomes the insurrection, and then January 6 becomes the righting of the wrong. And Trump knows how to tell a story. He’s a reality TV president. And he was very compelling, this idea that he was the hero, the savior of the nation, who had something taken away from him. And that way, January 6 becomes a kind of morally righteous action.

AMY GOODMAN:Just days before the January 6th anniversary, Trump endorsed Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.He released a statement saying, “He has done a powerful and wonderful job in protecting Hungary, stopping illegal immigration, creating jobs,” etc. Talk about the significance of President Trump in the world and what 2024 could mean if he were to run again.

RUTH BEN-GHIAT: So, I’ve always seen Trump — of course, we focus on how he came to power to destroy American democracy. That was his goal. But his other agenda was detaching America from the democratic world order and inserting it into what I’ve been calling since 2017 “Axis 2.0,” this kind of far-right autocratic order. A lot of it’s funded by Putin.And Orbán has made Budapest a kind of hub of these far-right networks, which remind me of what I initially studied, was these fascist networks of this fascist internationalism in the 1930s.

Now, Trump really identifies with Orbán, because Orbán is somebody who was a centrist, and then he was voted out, and he spent some years getting back to power. And then he arranged things. He has this electoral autocracy, where you hold elections and then you fix them, so that he doesn’t have to leave, you know, in his mind.

And the GOP has embraced Hungary, and they really see Hungary’s present as America’s future. And so, Tucker Carlson, you know, had whole week of broadcasting there. And even Mike Pence, who’s not the most worldly person, trotted over to Budapest and talked about how he hoped that abortion rights would be taken away soon. So, Hungary is this model of white Christian supremacy, anti-trans, homophobic. It checks all the boxes of what the GOP is actually today.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, we talk about him as a model and him modeling himself on autocrats around the world. But what about him as a model at home for people like Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor? You lay out, in a very chilling piece, this image of DeSantis surrounded by the people he wants to basically deputize as what his opponent in running for governor has talked about as his “secret police.”

RUTH BEN-GHIAT: Yeah, Ron DeSantis is an example — so, when you have somebody like Trump who imposes this kind of authoritarian party discipline, the system populates with mini-Trumps. They used to be called mini-Duces and mini-Hitlers, and now we have these mini-Trumps. And so, what we’ve seen is, in places like Texas and Florida, states are becoming laboratories of autocracy.

And DeSantis is particularly disturbing, because, you know, he wants to have his own civilian National Guard. And many states have those, but I discovered, doing research, that he’s also establishing an office for, quote, “election integrity,” which is code speak for election fraud, where it’s going to have its own prosecutors and investigators. So, anybody who — if there’s like an election result in the state that DeSantis doesn’t like, he can have his goons go after them and accuse them of violating election law. And they’ve made what used to be misdemeanors into felonies, so these people could be put in jail. So this is an example of the kind of authoritarian system at the state level that DeSantis has planned.

AMY GOODMAN: Ruth Ben-Ghiat, I want to thank you for being with us, expert on the psychology of authoritarianism and fascism. She is the author of Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall, a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University, and she publishes Lucid, a newsletter on threats to democracy.

Coming up, the CDC is predicting 84,000 people will die in the United States of COVID over the next four weeks. We’ll speak with emergency room doctor Craig Spencer. Stay with us.

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