Steve Bannon, Project 2025, and their Perverse Affirmative Action Project

A recent piece from New York Times columnist David Brooks, “My Unsettling Interview with Steve Bannon,” unsettles me. I realize that after this upcoming presidential election, we may have to endure one of the most perverse affirmative action projects in American history.

From the beginning of the interview, Bannon spoke in his usual combative manner. Brooks asks, “Do you see yourself in the same business that Fox News’s Roger Ailes was in, sort of right-wing journalism?”

Bannon’s response:

“I’m not a journalist. I’m not in the media. This is a military headquarters for a populist revolt. This is how we motivate people. This show is an activist show. If you watch this show, you’re a foot soldier. We call it the Army of the Awakened.”

Revolt. Soldier. Army.

I know that sometimes people use the term army like the term nation to denote community, as in “Raider Nation” for fans of the Las Vegas Raiders or the “KISS Army,” which refers to the rock band KISS’s dedicated fan base.

But Bannon is serious. He’s not using these terms as a metaphor. Consider the sentiments expressed by Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation:

“We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the Left allows it to be.” — Kevin Roberts, Heritage Foundation President.

These words were said on Steve Bannon’s podcast, The War Room, as reported by the BBC. Roberts was discussing Project 2025, a document describing plans for the new Trump administration. I read the first few pages of the document, which amount to a summary. Some of Project 2025’s proposals seem batshit crazy: jailing people who produce pornography, hiring only conservatives for government jobs, abolishing the Department of Education and the FBI, and deleting words they don’t like, such as “abortion” and “gender” from all government documents. As I was researching this story, I learned that Project 2025 wants to ban same-sex marriage. It’s so unbelievable that Trump has tried, at least publicly, to distance himself from it.