Project Esther: A Trumpian blueprint to crush anticolonial resistance

The Heritage Foundation strategy named after the biblical Jewish queen offers insights into the persecution those who oppose Zionism and white-supremacy will likely face in Trump’s America. “Project Esther” shamelessly states its aims to eliminate anticolonial perspectives from the US education system, limit the dissemination of related information and restrict advocates’ access to American society, the economy and Congress. With fearmongering rhetoric draped in patriotism and “American values” and the latest Zionist spin on rebranding offensive aggression as “defence”, “Project Esther” institutionalises repression of dissent within a fallacious, fascistic theoretical framework, casting itself as the final bulwark against an imaginary threat of “foreign influence” and valiant protector of citizens from brown-skinned heathen hordes who have supposedly promised to infect white American open society with an anticapitalist agenda. Calling on “the silent majority” to “break its silence and speak” to “recover its voice and convert its words into actions to render impotent an illegitimate, hateful minority that threatens America’s soul” by, among other accusations, “corrupting our education system”, “Project Esther” weaponises xenophobic trends bolstered by the incoming Trump administration to threaten and fracture anticolonial movements that conscientiously oppose Zionism and white supremacy alike. Ultimately, campaigns like “Project Esther” manipulate Jewish historical trauma to promote white supremacy and suppress anticolonial, antiracist movements while gaslighting the public to accept Palestinian solidarity, even when expressed by Jews, as anti-Semitic.