Nearly three years ago, in January 2023, a small group of about 15 people gathered for three days at the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C.
Their mission: to create a far-right plan to consolidate power, undermine democracy, and ultimately create a new nation based on conservative and Christian nationalist principles.
Beginning that day, more than 100 conservative organizations joined in that initiative and launched what would become Project 2025, a blueprint to defeat democracy and create a theocracy.
And even though President Trump said before last year’s election that he knew “nothing about” Project 2025, 32 of its 38 authors have worked or are working in the Trump administration. It’s clear now that the plan, with top government official Russell Vought in charge, is being implemented step by awful step.
As a military veteran, I abhor Project 2025’s idea that national security officials be appointed based on their political loyalty rather than their nonpartisan expertise.
But it’s the section on Veterans Affairs in the Project’s “Mandate for Leadership” handbook that causes me the most distress. Among other plans to gut veterans’ benefits, it suggests that veterans currently receiving care for service-connected disabilities may see that care reduced or eliminated, harming thousands of veterans.
With a series of 2025 announcements, Doug Collins, the VA’s secretary and a Baptist minister, aims to restructure the VA by expanding the use of “community care,” pushing more veterans into expensive private-sector health care. Inevitably, this will reduce funding for the VA’s own medical centers and their already overworked professionals.
Ultimately, this could destroy the VA health care system, undermining veterans’ physical and mental health and increasing the rates of veterans’ homelessness, premature death, and suicide.
Trump’s recent rhetoric, like calling Somali Americans “garbage,” reveals his desire to cast aside those he despises. What has he called veterans? “Losers” and “suckers.”
All of us, especially veterans, must pay attention. Behind Trump’s words lies a deliberate, careful plan — Project 2025. History gives us a chilling example of another deliberate, careful plan for ridding a society of its “undesirables.”
On Jan. 20, 1942, 15 senior Nazi bureaucrats, including Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann, enthusiastically assembled to organize and plan their “final solution” to the “Jewish Problem” at The Wannsee Conference in a Berlin villa. That plan led to the Holocaust, the murder of about 6 million Jews and millions of other “undesirables” — a historical fact of which, according to the Anti-Defamation League, about half the world’s population is unaware.
What should we take from Holocaust history for our present moment, to allow us to shape our own history for the better?
To start, we must broadly educate ourselves and others, especially in areas not served by traditional or responsible news media, about the undeniable parallels to America today.
We, the 2025 resisters of fascism, have one big advantage over our forebears in the 1930s and 40s. Unlike the “Secret Reich Matter” proceedings of the Wannsee Conference, we can find and read all 920 pages of Project 2025 online.
I implore all, especially my fellow veterans, to read Project 2025 in its entirety and pay special attention to the section on Veterans Affairs, which starts on page 641. It’s written not by a medical professional but rather by a retired Army infantry officer who was the VA chief of staff in Trump’s first administration.
Like the Nazi bureaucrats, the authors of Project 2025 aim to impose a dangerous agenda that threatens religious freedom and democracy. While the endgame for the Nazis was the “Fourth Reich” and total Aryan supremacy, the White Christian nationalist movement behind Project 2025 hopes to impose one extreme religious worldview — and society — on all of us.
We’ve seen this picture before. We know how this will play out. Unless we stop it.
Beyond educating ourselves, we must talk to family members serving in the military as well as veterans who use VA benefits and services, and to our friends and neighbors, asking them to educate themselves and join us in the nationwide movement to resist the Trump administration.
In January of 1942, 15 people met to plan the “Final Solution.” In January of 2023, 15 people met to frame a Christian nationalist right’s interpretation of what America should look like. Unlike the U.S. military of the 1940s, which worked with our allies to defeat Nazi Germany, our current senior military officers cannot be counted on to deliver us from this threat; to date, they have prioritized loyalty to Trump over their oaths of office.
To be sure, the political climate this year has left many of us feeling overwhelmed and scared and waiting for the next shoe to drop. But there is hope in action.
If you’re looking for a New Year’s resolution, or if you are unsure of the steps you can take, visit Indivisible.org and find a local chapter. Here in the Valley, there are several. They will guide you to prudent, peaceful, powerful action.
Together, we will elect leaders who serve us and not the oligarchy, and we will rebuild our democracy to prevent Project 2025 from further reshaping our nation into a dystopian society that none of us wants to live in.
John Paradis is a member of the Veteran Action Team with Indivisible Northampton — Swing Left Western Massachusetts. He is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and lives in Florence.