Today in “obeying authoritarians in advance,” we have the US Naval Academy letting Project 2025 dictate its curriculum. Yes, the Naval Academy, immediately surrendering to howls from the right-wing outrage machine that cozies up to Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán on the regular.
What happened was the USNA invited expert on authoritarianism Ruth Ben-Ghiat to speak about her work at the annual Bancroft Memorial Lecture, on October 10. Ben-Ghiat’s a professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University, specializing in authoritarians, propaganda, and democracy protection, and author of the book “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present” (Wonkette referral link!). And Project 2025 leaders do not want the midshipmen to worry their pretty, neatly trimmed little heads about that.
Ben-Ghiat noted on her Substack in September,
I will be speaking about what happens to militaries under authoritarian rule, touching on Fascist Italy, Pinochet's Chile and the Russian military during the war on Ukraine.
The lecture’s title was “Militaries and Authoritarian Regimes: Coups, Corruption, and the Costs of Losing Democracy,” so of course the people who would like America to lose democracy were personally offended on Trump’s behalf. Ben-Ghiat was actually not planning to speak about Trump at all, she said, and emailed Baltimore Banner reporter Rick Hutzell: “The lecture had nothing to do with contemporary America and I was not going to mention Mr. Trump at all in this strictly nonpartisan event at an institution, the U.S. Naval Academy, which I greatly admire.”
But Ben-Ghiat has previously pointed out the many ways Trump has been running the fascist playbook, and has also appeared on MSNBC, which was enough to get Heritage Foundation spokes-hams Hans von Spakovsky and Cully Stimson’s boxers in a bunch.
Hey, Spakovsky, we were just writing about his election conspiracy-theory lies the other day!
Anyway, Spakovsky and Stimson lied in The Daily Signal (a web site founded by the Heritage Foundation) that Ben-Ghiat planned to “attack” Donald Trump in her lecture, and that was “partisan political activity,” “indoctrination,” and “venomous,” and that she has “hallucinations” inhabiting her mind.
And so a day later, US Rep. Keith Self, a West Point graduate representing a district in Texas, wrote the Academy Superintendent, demanding that the USNA cancel the lecture. Which they did! Ben-Ghiat was disinvited. But that was still not enough. US Rep. Jen Kiggans of Virginia and 16 Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee also fired off an angry Karen letter, pouting and stamping their little feet, demanding to speak to the manager about how a “partisan individual like Dr. Ben-Ghiat was selected in the first place” and demanding to know “What steps will the USNA take to ensure that future speakers at the Bancroft Lecture series reflect the Academy’s commitment to impartiality and intellectual rigor, particularly on politically sensitive topics?”
Politically sensitive! It’s Schrödinger’s strongmen, so strong they should rule the world and be able to tell everybody else what to think, read, do with their bodies etc., and yet so sensitive they cannot handle anyone even noticing that they want to rule the world and tell everybody else what to think, read, do with their bodies etc.
It is a play out of the fascist playbook. Literally! On page 104 of Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership”:
Audit the course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination, eliminate tenure for academic professionals, and apply the same rules to instructors that are applied to other DOD contracting personnel.
Gee, sounds pretty Thought-Police-y. So much for freedom of speech! Oh hey, guess which partisan was invited to speak to West Point, and the Air Force Academy? Why, Elon Musk! West Point described him as a “thought leader,” though his thoughts are mostly of the racist, anti-semitic conspiracy-theory, jump-up-and-down-like-a-dipshit-for-Trump variety. Not everybody liked that he was invited either, but it didn’t get him disinvited.
Not a great sign for democracy, folks.
But hey, what IS a good sign for democracy, Baltimore Banner’s Annapolis reporter Rick Hutzell! He is former editor of the Capital Gazette, and happened to be off the day of the mass shooting there, which killed employees Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman, Wendi Winters, John McNamara, and Rebecca Smith. And the paper still got out on schedule. Hutzell retired three years later, but now apparently he is un-retired, and working at the Banner, and digging up important stories like this one. The Naval Academy may surrender to the sound of a little whining, but subduing all the journalists is probably not going to be so easy.
And now there’s something in my eye!
[Baltimore Banner archive link]
Way to teach our naval officers about cowardice. Five stars, no notes.
115,000 USN personnel died fighting fascism.
I hope the Academy is proud of the way it PERSONALLY dishonored each and every one of them.