Right wing – The Concordian

Project 2025, the dystopian political agenda you need to know about

As the United States elections draw closer, the right-wing has a plan up its sleeve to undermine democracy and backtrack the country by decades.

The American political landscape is grim. As an American watching her country become increasingly more and more divided, unravelling into policy-making mayhem, I can’t help but worry for the safety and wellbeing of my family in the swing state of Pennsylvania.

Even though I voted for him in 2020, I’m worried about Biden’s ability to govern for another four years. Donald Trump currently has a significant lead in the polls, and it looks like he’ll become the Republican Party nominee for the 2024 election. To me, voting for Trump is out of the question. So, I toyed with the option of not voting in the next election. But since I was told about Project 2025, I think every American needs to go to the polls and vote for Biden to prevent this horrific vision from becoming reality.

If Trump is elected into office, I think Project 2025’s manifesto will become his main handbook. He’ll sign off on the majority of its proposals and will reverse the progress that the United States has made by decades.

Project 2025’s 920-page manifesto Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise is spearheaded by the right-wing organisation The Heritage Foundation which aims to “unite the conservative movement and the American people against the elite rule and woke culture warriors.” Its goal, backed by several dozen right-wing think-tanks, is to establish a stand-by government that will be ready to implement their ideas and power on day one of the next Republican president’s administration.

In a nutshell, their goal is to return to fundamentalist traditional values. They intend to bring back the “picturesque” 1950s nuclear family as the centrepiece of American life, dismantle the administrative state, and return the country to a self-governance state. They want to further the definition of Article II, which establishes the power of the Executive Branch of the government, meaning they would implement the unitary executive theory that would give the president exclusive power. This could override congressional and judicial review and grant the president more power than ever before.

Their desire to turn back the clock on LGBTQ+ and women’s rights by more than half a century includes proposed policies such as making it criminal to even help someone get an abortion, stating a “robust agenda to protect the fundamental right to life, protect conscience rights, and uphold bodily integrity rooted in biological realities, not ideology.”

Another notion of theirs is to “maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family,” essentially making all LGBTQ+ marriage invalid. This, along with heavy Evangelical Christian ideals presented throughout the manifesto, starts to sound like a watered-down version of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. If you want to know more, I highly recommend YouTuber Leeja Miller. She breaks down their entire plan, and it’s terrifying.

Trump’s base will be Project 2025’s secret weapon. Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement has been identified by scholars as a quasi-New Religious Movement—a kinder way of saying it’s a cult. Project 2025’s initiative aligns perfectly with his fear mongering strategy which states, “The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before.”

Trump’s rhetoric preys on the middle class by telling them the answers they desperately want to hear, which has indoctrinated people so deeply that their undying loyalty to Trump will deploy them in droves to the polls.

The U.S. is so divided, but the least we can do is to try to prevent the Great American Experiment from falling into a religious-based fascist dictatorship. Awareness of Project 2025 needs to be mainstream. It isn’t getting the media attention it deserves because people think it’s too fringe. But wasn’t the idea of Trump becoming president of the United States fringe at one point?

The indefensible defense of Russell Brand

Russell Brand’s lies fuel backlash against sexual abuse victims, driven by paranoia and populism.

On Sept. 18, The Onion, a satirical news organization, reported “Nation Could Have Sworn Russell Brand Was Already Convicted Sex Offender.” To those familiar with Brand’s past, a report detailing years of sexual violence was hardly surprising. His controversial rise to stardom was based on him being an objectifying womanizer.

Russel Brand’s trial in the court of public opinion has become a dire warning for the state of women’s rights in America, and an alarming example of how blind partisan loyalty has taken precedence in the American right-wing.

In recent years, Brand, an established comedian, transformed himself into a beacon of misinformation for the alt-right, and this status has become his lifeline. His anti-media rhetoric, defined by conspiracy theories and a persecution complex, has cultivated a base with an unshakable conviction of his integrity.

A day before YouTube demonetized Brand’s content, he addressed the allegations for his over 6.6 million subscribers. Understanding his paranoia-filled response—and why it worked—can shed light on the American underbelly we often struggle to accept: the growing world of online conspiracy theorists.

Heavy with misinformation, Brand’s two-minute response could be Russell Brand the actor grifting to an audience disillusioned by political institutions. Or it could be Russell Brand the YouTube conspiracist paranoid of the shadowy machinations of mainstream outlets. Or even a calculated mix of the two.

But his outlandish statements were not discarded as such. American TV host Greg Gutfeld doubted the victims’ intentions saying, “People don’t go to the cops for their own reasons.” Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, and Tucker Carlson all came out with similar statements. Elon Musk tweeted: “I support Russell Brand.”

The evidence and interviews assembled by journalists detail the stories of four women Brand sexually abused, and the report is as jarring as it is conclusive: Russell Brand is a serial sexual predator. But for the millions of Americans who consume right-wing media, Brand is the victim of a witch hunt. Being demonized by the left and demonetized by YouTube energizes his base all the more, and proves to them the accuracy of his narrative. His skillful villainizing of the system makes him the victim.

What Brand’s supporters discredit as woke media lies are in fact the horrible, pervasive realities of sexual harassment and gender discrimination. And while it is easy to disregard them as radical, fringe, or downright crazy, Brand’s resilience is proof that they wield true power at the heart of American institutions.

This story is as much about party loyalty as it is about the persistence of the patriarchy. It is no coincidence that when the crime is objectifying and degrading women, the punishment is suddenly lax. This lenience towards Brand could not have occurred if rampant media skepticism and alt-right misogyny were not already commonplace in the conservative mainstream.

As partisan loyalties overshadow deep-seated misogynistic issues, the messaging from the post-Trump right is increasingly clear: fight the noble fight and you will find support from a powerful network of conservative influences. Feign conspiracy and rape allegations carry no weight.

The case of Russell Brand is a damning indictment of the American political landscape, and a terrifying alarm in the fight for women’s rights. Russell Brand is an alleged rapist and confirmed conspiracy theorist but to the American right, the latter has proven more important than the former.