Mentions The Heritage Foundation

When the history of the 21st century comes to be written, surely the cuddly and playful ranks of the gay furry hackers will be remembered as our Greatest Generation.

A group of self-proclaimed “gay furry hackers” says it breached the Heritage Foundation earlier this month, releasing two gigabytes of the right-wing think tank’s internal data on Tuesday. On its Telegram channel, the hacktivist collective SiegedSec — which has previously claimed responsibility for hacking NATO’s computer systems — said the Heritage hack was part of its #OpTransRights campaign, which also targeted the far-right media outlet Real America’s Voice and the Hillsong megachurch. The group also cited their objections to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s policy proposal for a second term for former President Donald Trump, as a motivating factor.

In an email to The Verge, Heritage Foundation spokesperson Noah Weinrich denied that Heritage had been hacked, calling it a “false narrative and an exaggeration by a group of criminal trolls trying to get attention.” 

[…] 

A SiegedSec representative who goes by vio told The Verge they “completely expected” Heritage to deny that it had been hacked. “Many companies try denial to save face,” vio said. “The server we hacked was linked to The Daily Signal, and the server was named ‘first-heritage-foundation’. Clearly, Heritage was genuinely hacked.”

“Mike’s threats and insults showed anger that confirmed what Heritage denied,” vio said.

In a statement on Telegram, SiegedSec said the goal of the hack was to draw attention to — and combat — the Heritage Foundation’s anti-LGBT and anti-abortion policy proposals.

I am pornography. Granted, it's not necessarily the first thing you'd notice about me. That is to say, I am not the subject of pornography, but the thing itself, 24/7. It's jolly tiring, I can tell you.

The prominence of pornography in Project 2025 is no mistake, of course; it’s absolutely core to the authors’ agenda for Trump. The attack on porn is inseparable from the attacks on abortion and contraception, on marriage equality and trans rights, and of course on drag queens and library books—all of which, they believe, threaten the straight, married family as the natural bedrock of society. All of these threats, to them, constitute pornography. By calling on the president to outlaw porn, they’re calling for the eradication of all these imagined enemies of the family.

Though Project 2025 does not define “pornography,” their concern clearly extends beyond porn itself. Pornography, according to the Mandate, is responsible for the “normalization” of non-normative gender expression and identity among young people—what the right often calls “gender ideology.” Pornography could be anything that contributes to that purported normalization. “Pornography,” Roberts continues, is “manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children.” And how should it be outlawed? “The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.” Project 2025 is not targeting “pornography” as something that’s harmful to children per se, but rather redefining anything concerning sexuality and gender that they say is harmful to children as pornography. 

The US Bill of Rights? That's pornography. Have you seen what's in it? Can you imagine how exposure to that sort of thing might harm children?

Wow; this guy knows the US Right. His argument that what unites them is a powerful shared vision of what (indeed who) they do not like is utterly sound. By the time they have worked their way through this list, there will be very little satisfaction to be had from watching them turn on each other.

As the broader public turns its attention to these plans, and most people rightfully react with a mixture of horror and concern, a lot of skepticism remains. What is the role of Trump in all of this: Isn’t it more likely that he is going to mess things up, as he has never shown any interest in meticulous planning nor the necessary discipline to enact an ambitious agenda? The Right may try to present a unified front now, but there are so many groups and factions here, and they don’t all share the same ideas about what America should look like: Shouldn’t we expect a lot of infighting and self-sabotage rather than a well-oiled regime? And most importantly, perhaps, haven’t we been through this once before: Isn’t it more likely we get a repeat of the kind of chaos that was so characteristic of the first Trump presidency?

These questions are important. But too strong a focus on Trump’s erratic nature and the many rivalries on the Right obscures the fact that reactionaries are actually united by the desire to punish their enemies, “take back” the country, and restore the “natural order” of unquestioned white Christian patriarchal rule – a unity that is indicative of a broader realignment on the Right towards an aggressive embrace of state authoritarianism. And those who expect merely more of the same chaos that defined Trump’s presidency tend to overlook the fact that the Right would be operating under much more favorable conditions this time: With a fully Trumpified GOP, a reactionary super-majority on the Supreme Court, and with the omnipresent threat of escalating political violence intimidating anyone who dares to dissent.

Trump world wasn’t ready in 2016. The American Right more generally wasn’t ready – they didn’t have the know-how, the plans, or the personnel to get anywhere close to remaking the nation in accordance with their reactionary vision.

They are determined to not make that mistake again. “Project 2025” is evidence that the Right has concrete plans to take over and transform American government into a machine that serves only two purposes: Exacting revenge on the “woke” enemy – and imposing a minoritarian reactionary vision on society.