Thomas Zimmer: Trump’s rise and Project 2025 are both manifestations of the same underlying radicalization of long-stranding anti-democratic tendencies on the Right. More here - please consider subscribing:

Weekend Reading: I wrote about Trump’s relationship to Project 2025 and why these radical plans represent the self-mobilization of a “conservative” establishment that is fundamentally in agreement with the extremist Right. Allies Against Democracy: 🧵1/

Allies Against Democracy: Trump and Project 2025thomaszimmer.substack.com Trump is not the mastermind behind Project 2025. It’s worse: The rightwing establishment has radicalized to the point where their plans are entirely in line with his vengeful desires

There has been a ton of attention lately for Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-led planning operation for a more efficient, more ruthless rightwing regime - peaking in reaction to Trump pretending he doesn’t know anything about it, which is an obvious, brazen lie. 2/

Public attention is necessary: In a very real sense, these plans are on the ballot in November. However, it’s also turned “Project 2025” into a bit of a catchall term - when we should be precise about what it tells us about Trump’s role and about the Right more broadly. 3/

As a messaging strategy, presenting Project 2025 as Trump’s operation - and the people behind these plans and Trump as one and the same - might be effective. Not sure how much this actually impacts voting. But the specific proposals outlined in Project 2025 are broadly unpopular. 4/

Diagnostically, Trump and Project 2025 - the inner circle of MAGA world on the one hand and the institutional and intellectual elites of conservatism on the other - are not the same. However, that’s no reason to relax or be any less concerned about what’s going on here. 5/

On the contrary, the full extent of the Right’s radicalization becomes clear if we accept the fact that there is no need for a massive conspiracy orchestrated by Trump, as MAGA extremists and the conservative establishment are aligned on personnel, policy, and ideology. 6/

Project 2025 is not the work of henchmen merely doing their dark lord’s bidding, but an effort that has united much of the American Right’s elite machinery. The people behind Project 2025 are true believers in their extremely reactionary vision for America. 7/

This alliance against pluralism and equality is not only defined by shared personnel. It is also based on a deep ideological affinity, compatibility of plans, a shared reactionary vision for the country, and a shared desire to punish and exclude their enemies from the body politic. 8/

All the planning on the Right is driven by a desperate sense that nothing short of a reactionary counter-revolution will suffice to save the nation from the onslaught of anti-American “woke,” “globalist” forces – and that there is very little time left to pull it off. 9/

Project 2025 crystallizes the self-mobilization of a rightwing elite that has radicalized to the point where their plans are entirely in line with Donald Trump’s vengeful desires and the fever dreams of the extremist fringe. That’s why American democracy is in such peril. 10/

Trump’s rise and Project 2025 are both manifestations of the same underlying radicalization of long-stranding anti-democratic tendencies on the Right. More here - please consider subscribing:

Allies Against Democracy: Trump and Project 2025thomaszimmer.substack.com Trump is not the mastermind behind Project 2025. It’s worse: The rightwing establishment has radicalized to the point where their plans are entirely in line with his vengeful desires

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