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RADICALLY SPEAKING - The president of the right-wing group spearheading Project 2025 raised the specter of violence Tuesday against those who refuse to capitulate to what he characterized as "the second American Revolution" ushered in by presumptive GOP nominee and would-be authoritarian Donald Trump.
Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, said in an appearance on "Real America's Voice" that the coming "revolution" will "remain bloodless if the left allows it to be"—a thinly veiled threat against those who resist the far-right's efforts to seize power.
Trump said in April that whether there is violence surrounding the 2024 presidential election "depends" on the "fairness" of the contest and the outcome.
Watch Roberts' remarks:
"We are going to win. We're in the process of taking this country back," declared Roberts, who has said Project 2025 is "institutionalizing Trumpism" in preparation for a possible victory in November.
The Heritage Foundation president also hailed as "vital" the U.S. Supreme Court's decision earlier this week bestowing what analysts and critics described as king-like powers on the presidency—powers that Trump is already planning to exploit.
Project 2025, a sweeping 922-page document, provides Trump with a detailed blueprint to advance his far-right agenda, including by purging career federal civil servants and replacing them with loyalists and centralizing power in the executive branch.
Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has called Project 2025 "a blueprint for autocracy," characterizing it as "a direct copy of the plan that Viktor Orban used to take over the Hungarian government in 2010."
"If it is carried out, Project 2025 will concentrate huge power in the hands of the president, giving him the power to control the whole federal government at his whim," Scheppele added.
Scheppele's assessment echoed that of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which warned in an analysis published late last year that "the entire project is devoted to aggrandizing executive power by centralizing authority in the presidency, and a key aspect of democratic backsliding is viewing opposition elements as attempting to destroy the 'real' community, an essential aspect to quashing dissent."
"Project 2025 paints progressives and liberals as outside acceptable politics, and not just ideological opponents, but inherently anti-American and 'replacing American values,'" the analysis said. "Targeting vulnerable communities is a core tenet of Project 2025. Project 2025 is very clearly on a path to Christian nationalism as well as authoritarianism."
(Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams where this was first published.)
