AGENDA 47

In Chauncey DeVega's 7-14-23 SALON article entitled "Be Very Afraid: Trump's 'Agenda 47' Is No Joke," journalist Paul Mason (author of HOW TO STOP FASCISM) comments on Trump's AGENDA 47:

"The key difference between Agenda 47 and the original Trump pitch in 2016 is its total lack of focus on corporate, capitalist goals, and its total focus on fulfilling right-wing populist fantasies. Dud city building projects in the desert, the expulsion of homeless people to tent cities, the pardon of fascist insurrectionaries and a year-long funfair… it's like a politics designed around video-game fantasies. The good news is, it's a signal of how detached Trump is even from the libertarian-turned-fascist wing of the American tech elite. It lacks any sense of realism even about the agenda they want - massive deregulation and the marketisation of public services.

"The bad news is that it could work. Like QAnon, this collection of fantasies will take on a life of its own and is intended to: you can design your own state fair, state by state, with the Gadsden flags and AR-15 firing ranges. You can fantasize about which particular homeless street you would hose down first, the day after the inauguration. What matters is that serious GOP politicians push back and explain gently to the American people that this is baby talk, and that what stands behind it - should Trump succeed - is the intended collapse of American power and status in the world.

"The imaginary cities are about more than just Jetson fantasies - they will be read, quite openly, as white only; and on Federal land they will be designed to abrogate the rights of homeless people - they're a sop to the fantasies of the seasteaders and the preppers. Like all fascist myths they are designed to animate action in the present rather than actually to get built - just like Hitler's never built Germania model: it was something to clear slums for and remove populations long before they ever actually planned to build it."