Living in a Real Conspiracy?

“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it.” This menacing threat came from Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts. This is in reference to their Project 2025.

Last year I wrote “Conspiracy Theories Not What They Used to Be?” contrasting real conspiracies with muddled paranoid delusions that serve powerful interests.

Project 2025 is a real conspiracy. With roots in another real conspiracy: The Powell Memo of August 1971.

Corporate lawyer Lewis Powell wrote his Memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to sound the alarm that business and its alliance with American governance were under attack. I was just 12 years old, but I vividly remember the atrocities being committed by our government and how powerless we felt. Notably, Nixon slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Cambodia and Vietnam. And declaring his indifference to the hundreds of thousands of American citizens protesting outside his door. (Including our family.)

It is laughable to read the Powell Memo and to see how besieged they felt by our actions, while we felt so powerless!

Powell laid out a road map for business to fight back against Ralph Nader and his consumer advocacy – to fight, that is, against Nader’s regulatory desire to protect the environment and worker safety.

Even more important, Powell felt the urgent need to defend our very “free enterprise” system against its imminent collapse! He claimed that college professors and student protesters were on the verge of tearing down our entire system and turning the U.S into a Soviet Communist system.

The only hope was for the weak and beleaguered businesspeople to organize for battle. How? First, by setting up think tanks with smart people who would strategize on behalf of business, and against labor, environmental, peace, and civil rights activists – a cohort he saw as more powerful than American business!

He then wanted business to take control of mass media, education, the political system, the courts, and the legal system.

Much of what Powell laid out has indeed come to pass with surprisingly little notice or commotion. Nixon rewarded him with an appointment to the Supreme Court. Our current corrupt and politicized Court can be traced back to his Memo.

The Heritage Foundation was the leading right wing think tank that followed from his recommendation. Their Project 2025 is only the latest incarnation of the “Mandate for Leadership” they first served up for Reagan. Heritage claims that Reagan happily fulfilled 60% of their 2,000 Mandate proposals in his first year in office.

Project 2025 was drawn up mostly by Trump appointees. Trump’s people created it, yet he claims to know little about it. Trump knows that much of it will be deeply unpopular, yet his backing comes from these people.

Project 2025 would eliminate all programs trying to solve the Climate Crisis and would aggressively promote fossil fuel use here and abroad. Perhaps most important, it would replace scientists and other experts in many government agencies with political cronies. Equally important, it explicitly calls for the Department of Justice to serve the President, rather than being an independent agency serving the public interest.

Anne Applebaum, interviewed about her book Autocracy, Inc., notes that Project 2025 creates a path to autocracy.

Project 2025 also does its best to advance the Christian Nationalist agenda. It promotes private schools at the expense of public education. It tries to undermine or eliminate abortion access.

Credit to talk show host Thom Hartmann for talking about the Powell Memo for years. I have provided links to the original Powell Memo and several relevant commentaries on my web site at swt.org/mojo/powellc

On that same page are links to the full Project 2025 Mandate and commentaries on it.

This is a conspiracy that is laid out by the conspirators for all to see. We often feel overwhelmed by the wealth and power of these anti-public interests. Yet they claim they are the victims who have to fight to survive.

In a way, they are correct. The public does have the power and the bullies are scared. We just have to realize we have that power, and fight for a better future for the public interest and for a sustainable environment.