"Is This Not What You Expected to See?"
Short wave radios, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Open Technology Fund, personnel and a reappearance of inmate number P01135809's most repugnant lackey with more "weird shit."
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VIDEO CONTENT WARNING: In Part Two, Pink targets the Jewish community and uses racist and homophobic language in addition to physical harassment of the marginalized. Bob Geldof as Pink in Pink Floyd — The Wall. This video clip shows Pink in his fascist dictator hallucination at a mass rally/concert.
The deeper we dive into Project 2025’s plans for the U.S Agency for Global Media, the more its nefariousness becomes revealed. The propaganda planned for Voice of America (VOA) won’t escape Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia. This section also focuses on the USAGM’s Open Technology Fund (OTF). During inmate number P01135809’s administration, these stations like VOA and OTF were targeted by former USAGM CEO Michael Pack and his minion Morvared Namdarkhan, the author of this section in Mandate for Leadership’s “Media Agencies” chapter. But Project 2025’s planned chaos and ruination doesn’t stop there. Project 2025 also diminishes another form of communication the majority of people use around the world — the internet. The reason? Hawkishness for foreign conflict and war. Kevin Roberts’s foreword blatantly gins these up toward China.
Namdarkhan claims that short-wave radio transmission for the USAGM is more reliable than the internet’s underwater cables in times of military conflict or war. She claims that investment should go toward short-wave radio transmission rather than the internet because war puts “undersea cables” at risk.
Roberts’ Sinophobic foreword warns readers about what he and The Heritage Foundation see as the evil and danger China for the United States and the entire world. He calls for ceasing “[e]conomic engagement with China.” He also labels China a “totalitarian enemy of the United States” while conveniently forgetting inmate number P01135809 praised President Xi Jinping several times including for his autocratic handling of the 2019 Hong Kong protests where protesters experienced punitive punishment according to a report from the Center for Asian Law at Georgetown Law.
Roberts wrote:
It cannot be denied that China has stolen U.S. intellectual property and that Tik Tok usage raises security and privacy concerns as well as anxiety regarding global “political manipulation” according to a Guardian article by Dan Milmo. However, Roberts’ rhetoric and language takes a binary approach in addition to aggressive and violent language — “We solve them not by trimming reshaping the leaves but ripping out the trees —root and branch.”
Most of all, Roberts and Project 2025 are more concerned about U.S. businesses losing money to China even though for decades businesses and the federal government were not outraged about outsourcing to China and eliminating American jobs — especially ones lost by the working class jobs Roberts cynically uses and manipulates. The hawkish rhetoric toward China echoes inmate number P01135809’s Sinophobic rhetoric despite him fawning over Xi and his government’s authoritarianism.
Like VOA, Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty broadcast to countries under authoritarian rule without the free speech protection found (for now) in the United States. Yet Namdarkahn only cares about their financial waste and redundancies. This is the reason for Project 2025’s plans to consolidate or reduce the these channels; Namdarkhan sarcastically places “‘internet freedom’” in quotation marks when addressing this consolidation and reduction.
Namdarkhan also claims that “espionage” and “spies” plague Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Yet when I went to the endnote that cited the source for this evidence, it did not take me to the “Consolidation Report” link provided to the U.S. House of Representatives but to a USA Today article about sexual assaults in The Peace Corps. As with Project 2025 director Paul Dans’s “A Note on ‘Project 2025’” and Roberts’ foreword, Namdarkhan’s scholarship is either sloppy or academically dishonest. Whatever the case, her argument and proposal uses faulty logic too. While Roberts itches for a conflict with authoritarian China, Namdarkhan describes authoritarian Hungary ruled by Viktor Orbán as a democratically elected leader.
Like VOA, Radio Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Namdarkhan mentions Project 2025’s plans for finally dismantling and outright destroying OTF.
In order for Project 2025 to successfully carry out these plans, Namdarkhan outlines a complete restructuring of USAGM’s organization and personnel. She writes,
As an executive branch agency, the USAGM ostensibly should report to the President and coordinate activities with the National Security Council (NSC)—especially given the direct and implied national security aspects of the agency’s messaging globally. However, there currently is no specific office in the White House or NSC liaison for the USAGM.
Along with the USAGM, VOA would be put under the NSC. This transparently demonstrates Project 2025’s goal for propaganda, military conflict and war. Congress is also included in Project 2025’s autocratic machinations. Once in Project 2025’s grasp, elected Congressional representatives and senators would appraise “[a]n overhaul of the agency . . . to modernize, streamline, and reduce waste [that] must be done with congressional support.”
Even people not elected to federal office by American citizens at home and abroad are included in this “restructuring”:
USAGM Watch and BBG-USAGM Watch are made up of volunteers, “citizen journalists,” a former VOA staff member who served in inmate number P01135809’s administration. These web sites include articles from conservative publications such as The Washington Times and The National Review. The lack of credibility and transparency gets worse with the Whistleblower Protection Project. When I click on the link in the end notes, a screen opened that read “This site can’t be reached.” When I entered the individual words Whistleblower Protection Project into my search engine what showed up was a broken bird app page for Dan Robinson. His post included the link that also opened to a screen saying “This site can’t be reached.”
On Robinson’s broken bird app bio , it states he is a “Former White House, Congressional and Foreign Correspondent” though he doesn’t state who for. When I entered the key words of his name, correspondent, white house, DC into my search engine, I arrived at his LinkedIn page. His work experience lists him having worked for VOA from the Reagan administration before he left VOA in 2014. Hi broken bird app page is filled with him sharing posts from conservative publications, criticizing VOA journalists referring to “Hamas fighters” instead of “Hamas terrorists.” His page utilizes an anti-Palestinian framing.
But most terrifying and infuriating is that Jewish white supremacist and white nationalist Stephen Miller heads America First Legal Foundation whose mission focuses its on rescuing the pluralist United States from “an unholy alliance of corrupt special interests, big tech titans, the fake news media, and liberal Washington politicians” Miller, whose own family repudiates him, was behind the Muslim travel ban and separation of migrant children from their parents. He also wrote inmate number P01135809’s Presidential inauguration speech that George W. Bush called “some weird shit”
Morphing from the America First Committee in 1941 with the anti-Semite and Nazi-adjacent Charles Lindbergh as its face, inmate number P01135809 and his minions took America First and its isolation believes several steps further with their unilateral approach to foreign and domestic policy that embraced racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-immigration, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and ableism.
Miller’s racism and xenophobia along with his core vileness were not just reserved to his years as senior advisor to inmate number P01135809. During high school in Santa Monica, CA, Miller ran as a student government officer on the platform of not having himself or his classmates pick up their garbage “when janitors [are] paid to do it for us!” Before he ran for his coveted student government position, he created an unpleasant experience for his Latinx classmates.
Most readers won’t read Mandate for Leadership in its entirety. I get it. At close to 900 pages, reading these policy proposals in between work, raising a family and life itself is challenging. Even when people make time to read, not a lot of readers go to a book’s end notes nor investigate them. Regardless, the propaganda, totalitarian and hawkish plans hidden in the USAGM section like the rest of Project 2025 are terrifying and overwhelming. For the lay person living in the United States and abroad, not only do we need to remain vigilant in the 2024 Presidential election but also all down ballot races. Among the first groups authoritarians go after is the media and journalists.
Thank you, Laura, for these important synopses and analyses.