Does Project 2025 Propose the Use of Labor Camps?
Today's Reader Question PLUS a late addition to today's newsletter at the bottom (Scroll to the end to listen)
Today’s Reader Question: Does Project 2025 propose the use of labor camps?
Because this question fits with this week’s economic themes, I saved it for today.
Project 2025 slips this paragraph into its section on immigration:
CBP’s established national standards of Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search (TEDS) have been widely interpreted and expanded by lower courts. This has resulted in unrealistic and differing detention standards for CBP facilities based on the jurisdiction within which they fall, negatively impacting operations. ICE has suffered similarly. A single nationwide detention standard should be codified that prevents individual states from mandating that federal government agencies adhere to widely expansive and ever-changing sets of standards. Such standards should allow the flexibility to use large numbers of temporary facilities such as tents.
Project 2025, page 140
Project 2025 does NOT overtly propose the use of labor camps. However, their economic plans to “re-industrialize” the US mean they will need unceasing access cheap and/or free labor. They have four pools from which to pull:
Detained immigrants
People already in prison (Florida has perfected the use of prisoners as free enslaved labor)
“Enemies” of the regime
Children (Red states have been systematically weakening child labor laws)
The full-throated endorsement of “temporary facilities such as tents,” coupled with 45’s near-incessant talk of vengeance and retribution, make it reasonable to conclude Fascist Republicans would round up their enemies and put them to work in labor camps.
Labor camps are most desirable to authoritarian regimes when they cannot be seen by the general population. The Nazis chose places like Dachau, an out-of-the-way town in southern Germany near Munich, which grew to encompass over 100 labor camps across rural southern Germany and Austria. The Russians send people to Siberia.
Can anyone say "Alaskan Labor Camps"?
I alluded to this concept in my newsletter about extraction in Alaska.
Alaska can be an inhospitable living environment, perfect for some people, but probably not attractive enough for the population needed to staff a full-bore extraction economy. Companies will have to pay commensurate wages to attract workers, or they will need another source of labor.
To repeat my list above, Fascist Republicans and their billionaire overlords have four pools from which to pull:
Detained immigrants
People already in prison
“Enemies” of the regime
Children
Given red-state hostility to required water and rest breaks, it isn’t unreasonable to conclude that labor camps would be comprised of cheap, temporary tents, substandard food, and inadequate sanitation. Authoritarians do not view immigrants, the incarcerated, or “enemies” of the regime as fully human. They believe such people don’t deserve to live and work in humane conditions.
Red states like Florida already force incarcerated people to work for free. Labor camps will be a Fascist Republican source for cheap/free labor to power their authoritarian economic machine. We cannot let them win.
LATE ADDITION: (I’m sorry it isn’t included in today’s recording.)
Interesting data coming in from my call for Project 2025 research assistance.
So far, my researchers have found 4 contributors who clerked for Samuel Alito (one twice - as an appellate judge and SC justice).
It’s early days, but 1 contributor clerked for Clarence Thomas and another was cited favorably by Thomas in a SC opinion.
1 contributor worked on Neil Gorsuch’s SC nomination.
We’ve found numerous connections to sitting Republican politicians including Elise Stefanik, Tom Cotton, Steve Scalise, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, Ron DeSantis, and more.
We’ve found ties to several hate groups. One contributor wrote hate speech online under a pseudonym for years before he was outed. He’s also written for NYT, WaPo, and The Atlantic, because OF COURSE HE HAS.
All this with only around 10% of Project 2025’s 250-ish individual contributors fully researched.
We’re still awaiting a lot of data, but I want to make one thing clear:
Project 2025 belongs to the REPUBLICAN PARTY, from its politicians to its judges and Supreme Court justices. It is the REPUBLICAN PARTY’S VISION FOR AMERICA. Project 2025 is the REPUBLICAN PARTY’S PLATFORM.
Didn’t get this call for research assistance? You missed it because you’re not a paid subscriber. I’m grateful to dozens of paid subscribers who offered to help compile this vital Project 2025 data. Thank you so much for financially supporting this work to expose and defeat Republican fascism. You keep this Project 2025 engine running.
One of the things that has been accomplished, thanks to the Supreme Court, is enabling cops to arrest the homeless.
So they can get rounded up and put in these labor camps and rented out to private employers for next to nothing.
So major industries can fire their workers, and replace them with cheap detained labor, who will basically be Krupp's sklavenarbeiter of World War II.
The fired workers, being broke, will soon find their homes foreclosed, and be evicted from their rented apartments.
Which puts them and their families on the street, being homeless.
So they get jailed for that and put in detention camps indefinitely.
And their former employers rent them back from the government at pennies on the dollar.
So they do their old jobs as sklavenarbeiter.
CAPITALISM ON THE MARCH!!!!!!
The fact that everything points to slavery is such a mind fuck when you start looking at that a little deeper. All these things in P2025 are deplorable and horrendous and it is baffling how so many of them point to what I see as a fundamental feature of the people who are champions of its ethos : They are inherently, spiritually, cognitively, intellectually, fundamentally LAZY. The "no one wants to work anymore" group, doesn't want to do ANY work and they don't want their progeny to have to do any work ever again either.
They need a pool of disempowered women to be everyone's slave mommies for life.
They need umpteen mechanisms to create infinite slave labor pools so they don't have to lift a finger.
Even though they've determined they are so superior and should be in charge of everyone and everything, they can't imagine burning any calories on the brain power required to be in charge.
They need laws that never change so they don't have to think about changing them.
They need a power structure that requires the least effort for maintenance so they don't have to maintain it (HaVe An elECtion where EVERYONE votes? SoUnds exHAusting).
They need to rely on ancient ideas that already exist so they don't have to think of new ones.
They are unable to perceive any version or view of the world beyond their own white dicks so they need all the people who might identify any problems or questions they don't personally experience or understand to just go away. That way they don't ever have to think too hard or run the risk of experiencing an emotion like regret, compassion, or empathy, all of which are taxing for anyone who is familiar with experiencing them on a regular basis.
It is absolutely maddening.