It looks as though the Trump Accountability Project, a vile, literally fascist scheme to hound and persecute former Trump supporters big and small in the presumed post-Trump era, is shutting down.  It had been touted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and former Pete Buttigieg spokesman Hari Sevugan as the next order of action.  According to Breitbart News:

The Trump Accountability Project, which targets supporters of President Donald Trump by adding them to a list and "holding them accountable" after the election, has announced that it is "no longer active."

As of Nov. 12, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, featuring a photo of Obama-era migrant cages, they had this declaration on the front of their site:

We must never forget those who furthered the Trump agenda.

We should welcome in our fellow Americans with whom we differ politically.

But those who took a paycheck from the Trump Administration should not profit from their efforts to tear our democracy apart. The world should never forget those who, when faced with a decision, chose to put their money, their time, and their reputations behind separating children from their families, encouraging racism and anti-Semitism, and negligently causing the unnecessary loss of life and economic devastation from our country's failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Coming together starts with acknowledging the truth: These individuals have shattered laws and norms that hurt our democracy, including right now, as they use the levers of government — DOJ, GSA and state officials — to subvert the fundamental underlying tenet that makes America what it is: The peaceful transfer of power from the loser of an election to the winner.

Targeting...

Those who elected him.

Individuals who worked for the Trump for President campaign, Republican National Committee, and affiliated organizations and contributed to undermining confidence in the American electoral process and the objectivity of fair journalism with baseless claims.

Those who staffed his government.

Individuals who worked as political appointees in the Trump Administration and contributed to policies including family separation, using the Department of Justice to undermine a free and fair election, and preventing the American people from hearing the truth about the threat from COVID-19.

Those who funded him.

Individuals who used their massive personal wealth and influence to bundle money for Trump.

Previous screenshots from Wayback had even longer lists of targets.  Whoever the anonymous sleazeballs behind this "project" are, they now put out this statement:

The Trump Accountability Project was started because we believe restoring democratic norms are vital to protecting America's future. A critical part of making sure the nation never finds itself in this position again is to make sure those members of the Trump administration responsible for loosening the guardrails of our democracy are not rewarded with book deals, TV contracts, or six-figure salaries in the private sector based on that experience. Ultimately, however, the goal of the project was to play a part in restoring the soul of the nation, and we'll follow President-elect Biden's lead to get us there.

Accordingly, in the spirit of the President-elect's call to build a more united country, this project will no longer be active.

Restoring the "soul" of the nation through fascism?  Through blacklists?  The way Venezuela's Hugo Chávez used to do with his "Tascon list" against his opponents?  The left always did think America was "fascist," but with this crap going on, maybe that's because they were in it.

Among other things, the "Trump Accountability Project" didn't jibe well with Joe Biden's call for "unity," making the so-called "president-elect" look like a sleazy, lying, hypocrite.  It may well be that someone from Camp Biden got to whoever these creeps are (which would tell you that they know who they are) and told them to cut it out.  After all, with Biden presumably in on a weak mandate, it was a public relations liability.

According to Politico, citing an anonymous Trump official:

"The Democrats will face significant backlash for this and as per usual, they've gone way too far," said a former senior administration official. "Making a list of your political enemies and promising that they will get payback and people will go after them because they worked for a different political party is literally fascism."

Many Republicans thundered against this vileness ever since the group's website went up, apparently on Nov. 3, according to the first crawl from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, with Senators Ted Cruz and Marsha Blackburn prominent to speak out against it.

But it also attracted disgust from more than just the GOP.  Anyone with any human decency is repelled by fascist blacklists, which might be why the group refuses to put its own names out there.  Even some establishment journalists, such as CNN's Jake Tapper, were repelled, tweeting this:

An organized attempt by former Dem officials to blackball from employment anyone who worked for the US government during the Trump administration seems the exact opposite of the calls for unity and healing we’ve heard from President-elect Biden. https://t.co/IICk2fDOck

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) November 10, 2020

Sheer human revulsion is as good a guess as any for the sudden shutdown. Anyone with a shred of decency is repelled by this. Many, in fact, feel fear, for it won't stop at mere Trump political appointees in Washington, according to various observations made in Politico. Were there any conservatives calling for Ben Rhode, Marie Harf, Joe Lockhart, or other reviled outgoing Democrat operatives with past administrations to go on blacklists? Nope. This list-making is a Democrat show, and so long as it was up, they own it.

But there are other reasons, too.

First, it was bad for Biden.

Joe Biden's unity theme isn't altruism and kind-heartedness as his minions would have you think. We all saw how nasty he was on the campaign trail and Hunter Biden's emails suggest an even meaner person in private.

Biden's 'unity' theme, according to the thinking of Richard Fernandez, as seen on Instapundit, is little more than a bid to separate Trump from his followers, a formidable force with a fanatic and enthusiastic devotion to their leader that Biden knows he can never match. There's nothing Biden would like more than to see the formidable coalition Trump built, with huge new additions of black and Latino voters, break apart and dissipate. Biden, who's been in politics for 47 years, is obviously some kind of survivor, and it's his own skin he'd be thinking about with the shutdown of the sleazy site, which chiefly unites the Trump political army.

Second, the blacklist was laughably ineffective, as Politico, which checked out what Republicans thought about being on such a list. 

Many top Trump advisers now say they’re not worried, and they point to the aftermaths of similarly controversial administrations as reassurance. They argue that if the Bush-era politicians and staffers who led the country to war in Iraq survived without being purged from politics, media and corporate America, then Trump’s advisers won’t either.

...and...

“For somebody like me, I'm writing a book, I'm going to write a sequel,” the close Trump adviser said. “I get paid handsomely to give speeches. I have my corporate consulting. Maybe that’s not everyone else. But I can’t imagine I’m alone in that way. Are people going to say, ‘Oh shit, Mike Pompeo, you’re not secretary of State anymore so we can’t talk to you!’ Even the younger staffers — people still want people who worked in the White House. You have breathed rarefied air.” 

Third, the group did the damage it wanted to do, dissipating its slime. For example, the group's blacklistings still appear on the website of the pro-gay agenda GLAAD, complete with Vishinsky-style profiles of each target.

Here's another example of it, described by BloombergLaw, the media organ that smeared a young Labor department appointee with false claims of anti-Semitism a couple years back. Guess they're quite plugged in to these guys too and enjoy spreading the word.

Trump administration lawyers who have “abused” their roles by aiding the president shouldn’t get jobs at big firms and universities, a group of law students and new attorneys said Friday.

Those who shouldn’t get posts include former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, former Solicitor General Noel Francisco, and former Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division John Gore, according to the open letter by the People’s Parity Project.

“The goal of the project is to hold the political and legal architects of these policies accountable,” said Sejal Singh, one of the group’s co-founders. “Our goal is not to target career civil servants.”

Why stay up as a public relations liability when the slimework has already been spread far and wide? Easier to shut it and avoid becoming a target themselves. According to this complaint posted by the Daily Caller, it looks like it's the doing of professional smear artist David Brock and his minions, which if so, wouldn't be surprising. Smearing and blacklisting others is Brock's sorry lifework.

Lastly, declaring that an organization has shut down doesn't really mean it's shut down. They may be carrying on their nefarious work blackballing political opponents without the sitting target of a website. We all know that the JournoList, in which journalists and political operatives coordinated their 'talking points' under cover of secrecy, continued on in various forms after it was nominally shut down. Staying up makes it a target, potentially for civil rights lawsuits, with friendly juries given the widespread public disgust, and maybe big payouts. 

Yes, it had to shut down, but the venom that fuels some quarters of the Democrats carries on.

In any case, good riddance, it tells us there are still some lines that aren't to be crossed, and some leftist fascists still aren't to show their faces.

Image credit: Needpix public domain