One popular meme that is circulating states that P25 wants to do away with all tenure throughout academia, even going so far as to cite page 104 of the document. So let’s actually look at what it says on page 104:

Audit the course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination, eliminate tenure for academic professionals, and apply the same rules to instructors that are applied to other DOD contracting personnel.

This is item #6 in a 7-point list that begins on the previous page. First, notice that it clearly is not talking about academia in general, but rather is specifically limiting its remarks to the military academies. This is not a subtle distinction, nor is it in anyway difficult to see. So the people sharing the above meme are either guilty of inexcusable laziness or they are simply lying. This is not a good start, especially given how vile what the statement actually says is all by itself.

First off, even though the elimination of tenure is “limited” to the military academies,ⁱⁱ that’s already quite shocking enough. These people want to reduce the entire professoriate at the otherwise highly regarded military universities to nothing more than at-will hires who will only be permitted to regurgitate predetermined propandist pablum, rather than present genuine research and scholarship to cadets.

Secondly – and I honestly find this even more shocking – what the hell is this sniveling nonsense about “Marxist indoctrination?” Not to be be overly delicate, but what in the ever-loving-fuck-to-God does that even mean? It is a completely nonsensical phrase; you can do your own search on the document, or you can take my word that at no point do the P25 authors even pretend to explain what such sophomoric, vacuous dog-whistle hand-waving drivel actually refers to. Evidently this is an example of that classic and “much beloved” “syllogism,” the IIO (It Is Obvious.) This childishly pompous sort of drivel is the go-to dodge of the vapid and the vicious.

Which brings me to what I see as the real danger of P25. As bad as what it actually says, it is the way it does NOT say it that is the burning red flag.

What is “Marxist indoctrination” anyway? No, seriously, what? Why, it is anything HF declares it to be, which of course will be anything they don’t like. There is no rule here, no law or logic. Just the whimsical decision of absolutist authoritarians.

And THAT is fascism. I’ll present some more examples with commentary.

Having mentioned the 7-point list on pages 103 – 104, item #1 is worth noting: “Strengthen protections for chaplains to carry out their ministry according to the tenets of their faith.” Military chaplains are not lacking any “protections” as anyone with even the abstract possibility of basic intelligence (never mind actual military experience) already knows. What some of them might perceive themselves as lacking is the power and privilege to COMPEL the imposition of their religious beliefs and practices on others. But P25 does not say that outright, so its authors can pretend to represent a reasoned purity even as they require theocratic absolutism in the military.

What they have to say about transgender persons (a group that comprises less than ½ of 1% of the total population) is slightly less vague in its explicit points, while being ruthlessly savage in its implications. Consider this bit of pure fabrication from the forward: “Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children” [pg 5]. Notice the ham-fisted equivocation of pornography with a non-existent “transgender ideology”, and the “sexualization of children” which is most rampantly exemplified by persons on the political right. But of course, HF is not referring to the Barbie doll fetishizing of 5 year olds in photo shoots (which, one expects, is something they approve of), but of the presentation of the reality of sexual identities that are other than CIS and viciously intolerant of their very existence. In other words, any thing that even mentions “gay” or “trans” is automatically porn. (I suppose an exception will be made for any such mentions as long as the person is savagely lynched.)

And, again, “transgender ideology”? What pathetic nonsense. There is no such thing, a fact which any person graced with even a scintilla of intelligence or decency easily recognizes. But precisely because it is so vague, it means that victims can be “identified” at any time and in any manner when “a victim must be found.”ⁱⁱⁱ P25 does go into greater detail about how transgender individuals are to be denied any form of medical coverage or legal protection, one of the few times they actual deign to get specific. Presumably this greater specificity is because transgender persons do form such a vanishingly small part of the populace, and as such they are persons “who never would be missed.” This is akin to Hitler’s own antisemitism, and the tactic of all fascist movements in ginning up their populist base in what I call a “cult of victimhood,”^iv by blaming vast societal ills on a powerless minority so as to gull the credulous into paroxysms of hatred while stripping them of all their liberties.

Finally, let’s glance at libraries. When have the book banners/burners ever been on the right side of history? So three guesses where HF and P25 come down on the issue (and the first two don’t count.)

Let us look at page 1: “children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.” First, I skip over the childish lie about inflation since what families are actually suffering from is rampant corporate price gouging and profiteering, a thing that does not occur in a true inflation regime. It is, once again, anyone’s guess if the HF authors are too stupid to understand the difference or are just lying. No, I want to observe the wanton association of “transgenderism with drag queens and pornography” with libraries (specifically school libraries, in this instance.) Ever word of that breathless, chest-thumping bunk is, of course, a bald-faced lie. But coupling the undefined “pornography” with a few other pitiful dog-whistles, they legitimize any attack they want upon libraries. As long as they stick to fact free claims and entirely vacuous terms, they can assert any authority they want.

Turning back to their deliberately vague and misleading innuendos, HF states explicitly the standard of terrorism it intends to employ:

Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children … The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered [pg 5].

Recall how the first part is either indefensibly vague, or else childishly false, opening the doors for authoritarians to take any action they wish, unhindered by trivial matters like logic, law, or decency. This is the terrorist regime HF wants to bring to America, where their’s is the hand inside the mailed gauntlet of “law,” which is in fact without either law or logic.

And let us not pretend that Jabba-the-Trump is somehow innocent or disconnected from all of this. Quite aside from the fact that the man is a pathological liar and narcissist, or the fact that he needs help reading a Dick & Jane story, his own people have been deeply involved with P25.^v There is not one notion expressed in P25 that he has ever explicitly opposed, and many of them (possibly most) he has at one time or another explicitly embraced. Then there is the fact that the document enthusiastically mentions him no fewer than 270 times (not counting “Trump’s” and “Trumpwhitehouse.” Some copy editing might have helped here.)

So let us attack the document for what it is: a deliberately vague invitation to right-wing savagery, executed without let or hindrance from logic, law, or anything even remotely akin to basic decency.

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i The full .PDF is available here, https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf (verified 07/23/2024.)

ii Realistically, of course HF wants to destroy tenure throughout the entirety of academia. But that’s not what they are explicitly saying here, and it is the latter on which we are focused.

iii My attempt at being coy, a reference to a line from Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado:

As someday it may happen that a victim must be found

I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list

Of society offenders who might well be underground,

And who never would be missed—who never would be missed!

iv However, Robert O. Paxton discusses the phenomenon at length in his The Anatomy of Fascism. See also my remarks here https://garyherstein.com/2015/12/15/it-isnt-a-fallacy-if-its-true/ and here https://garyherstein.com/2016/05/23/american-fascist-the-reality-show/

v See, for example, Ex-Trump Administration Officials Involved in Project 2025: Full List – Newsweek (verified 07/23/2024.)