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In recent weeks, long-simmering online fears percolated to the forefront of the collective digital consciousness over Project 2025, a radical far-right blueprint for the nation.
The fervor spiked so high that former President Donald Trump distanced himself from the movement, calling some of the ideas abysmal, despite the clear ties between his political stances, the people at the Heritage Foundation who wrote it, and the likelihood those staffers will populate his upcoming administration.
The 900-plus page document is a far-right fever dream, cracking down on pornography and the regulator state, pushing Christian nationalism, and expanding Trump’s ability to lord over the nation.
Over on BlueSky a simple plan to fight back emerged. Make it relatable.
The conversation stemmed from struggles to truly state the massive scope of it. How do you distill a massive authoritarian ethos into tangible harms?
The site settled on going as simplistic as possible.
“They want to eliminate national parks” is a very simple way to get just about anyone on the Stop Project 2025 train. Are there much more glaring and life-threatening goals of P25? Yes but even your most bigoted cousin does not want to see the parks system sold for parts,” wrote one user.
Another pointed out how memetic language could make a marked difference.
“I feel like the trick with Project 2025 is exactly the same as the WGA strike. little snippet screencaps going viral all over normie social media that make some shocking thing you had no idea about instantly digestible to anyone regardless of their information level or background,” they wrote.
That idea prompted others to find brief tidbits that could easily be understood and shared.
“Project 2025, page 592: make it harder for employees to be paid at overtime rates by allowing employers to average the number of hours worked over 2-4 weeks,” noted one person, hypothesizing how that might go over with the GOP’s blue-collar base.
“Project 2025, page 455-456: a national abortion database that includes detailed medical information, including the person’s state of residence to assist with criminal prosecution.”
“Project 2025 wants to put private equity in charge of nuclear waste disposal (page 371),” said another.
The popularity of the posts even prompted a call for volunteers to crowdsource the scouring of the document.
“I want to see a moral panic raised up against Project 2025,” said one.
2) Kamala’s Missing Kids
At a rally this week, Trump said that since Vice President Kamala Harris took over as President Joe Biden’s border czar, over 150,000 children have gone missing.
“The Biden-Harris has lost track of an estimated 150,000 children … many of whom have been raped, trafficked, killed, or horribly abused,” Trump said. “Nobody knows where they are. Many are not with us any longer,” he added, citing a rash of purely speculative outcomes.
Trump appears to be upping his attacks on Harris as she looms as a potential Democratic replacement for Biden given the recent backlash to his debate performance.
But the number Trump appears to be citing isn’t correct either.
Two years ago, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) asked the Department of Health and Human Services for data on migrant children.
The 150,000 figure appears to reference children who were released to sponsors by HHS, not those who have gone missing.
The government has not been able to reconnect with the sponsors of 20,000 children within that group, who could be deemed unaccounted for.
While the potential for abuse among undocumented migrant children is high, the number only references being unable to contact the families and hosts, and doesn’t mean these kids have been abducted.
But Trump is wildly inflating the number to throw red meat at his base, the pedophile hunters of QAnon.
On their numerous Telegram channels, they deduced that Trump’s message was secret code to activate U.S. Marshals, with commenters pleading for success.
(Although it’s unclear if they realized Trump was talking about migrant children and not white babies, from their responses).
“GOD PLEASE HELP THE MARSHALS FIND OUR BABIES!” said one.
“Prayers for the Marshall’s involved (and everyone actually) in this type of rescue,” added a commenter.
But others thought the U.S. Marshals’ news (which isn’t real) was a sign a big target was about to go down.
“US Marshals are a BIG deal. Think I read somewhere way back They can arrest a pResident”
Whether that target would be Biden or Harris, they didn’t say.
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