The worrying thing is that we now know about the lies where there's clear evidence, but we don't know the extent of the illegal torture/brutality where we don't have evidence (e.g. inside the concentration camps used to hold "immigrants").
Reminder that the government has recruited heavily from the Bureau of Prisons for these roles. This type of treatment could become ingrained into the Federal system/our society.
> "They are trying to control a narrative from the very start, and they don't seem to care when they're proven wrong," said David Lapan, who was the DHS press secretary in 2017, during Trump's first administration.
That's the key bit. They don't need to be proven right. They don't even need their story to be consistent.
> “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
> ― Jean-Paul Sartre
"I'm coming to Boston and I'm bringing hell with me."
--Homan in February
"Do I expect violence to escalate? Absolutely."
-- Tom Homan in March
"I actually thought about getting up and throwing that man a beating right there in the middle of the room"
-- Homan in July, referring to a D congressman
But American citizens exercising their constitutional rights? THEY need to tone down the rhetoric.
It’s hilarious seeing the kind of narratives the right is coming up with to avoid admitting the obvious truth which is on video from multiple angles. I’m now seeing people say things like “you can’t carry a gun at protests” (even though there are numerous photos of people openly carrying guns at right wing protests), or “here’s a different video showing Pretty was an agitator” (as if that excuses the execution), or “wait for bodycam footage” (even though there is a video of them removing his gun and later putting him on his knees).
I will say though that I am also a bit scared. When government officials push a blatantly false narrative, that they know is a lie, and their supporting voters completely accept that version of reality over what they can see with their eyes, it suggests that those same voters would be okay with ANYTHING the administration does.
Yes, this. After watching all the video angles, to have seemingly intelligent people come to some crazy conclusion means they are hopelessly mindfucked. It's really hard to understand how these groupthink spells work, but clearly they do. I think my perspective is so focused on facts that my mind is having trouble bending to the fact that MANY people do not critically think from first principles, about nearly everything. It's troubling to me, making me feel somewhat alienated to at least 40% of the human race.
It's been this way for a while, though. It's just that the stakes of the things they are willing to tell folks to "2+2=5" about seem to have dropped substantially. It used to be about the goodness of US foreign interventions and, say, "imperial capitalism" in general, and they made plenty of fun propaganda to support it: "Red Dawn" or "First Blood"- quality and fun propaganda.
When they started kidnapping folks from our communities who've been peacefully chilling and being community members for decades, it got a lot less abstract, I think.
If it helps, understand that it becomes ever easier to get folks to disbelieve the government when they can see it; it's far harder to get the average brunch-enjoyer to care when they are doing a central american coup... much easier to care when they are shooting yt wmn in the streets.
Famously, there are plenty of stories in the west about eastern-bloc countries and propaganda, where everyone knows that that the papers don't tell the truth but the truth circulates regardless.
So maybe don't worry about the false narratives- worry about the recouperative powers of capital to pull all those radicalized liberals back into the fold instead of using a mass line of organization to force structural changes.
> Nonviolent crowd control does not seem to be a core competence of these federal forces.
Why is crowd control even needed?
ICE existed for many, many years before now, and them doing their job never caused crowds previously (under both R and D administrations), so what (rhetorically) changed?
Oh this is easy: a gigantic funding increase is being used to massively expand workforce with minimal training, then that workforce is being deployed with an ambiguous mission and apparent arrest quotas, while also being told they’re immune from any criminal liability for their actions (they’re not), including internal memos telling them they’re allowed to enter private homes without judicial warrants (they’re not), and a SCOTUS decision that is being represented to mean that racial profiling is legal now (it's not)
Deploying literal hordes of poorly trained, well-armed men onto American streets with explicit guidance that runs directly contrary to the US Constitution's plain text can, will, and SHOULD attract crowds in opposition.
It's completely intentional choice by the Miller/Noem wing of the admin to create media drama and "own the libs", overriding the Homan wing which was pushing for easy wins rounding up known criminal offenders in custody / in red states / etc.
There's a big difference between seeing an immigration raid where you know whoever gets picked up is going to have access to a lawyer, be subject to proper due process, and at worst be sent back to their home country. We knew - or at least believed - that if they detained someone who was a citizen, that person would be released.
Now, when we see ICE grabbing someone, we know that person probably won't have access to legal representation even if they are here legally, even if they're a citizen. We know they might be sent to a concentration camp in a foreign country they aren't from, and we know they might even get murdered in the street. It's a very different dynamic.
Exactly. Comply with the armed men and you won't die. Compliance is required for a healthy society. Just comply and you won't be hurt. Compliance is required for a functioning society. Comply and purge society of undesirables. Even if your rights are violated, comply or you will be hurt. Remember America's slogans: land of the free, home of the brave if you comply with the masked mens' orders. Remember the hacker ethos: compliance with the government is required for your safety. Otherwise, you are engaging in domestic terrorism and will be dealt with swiftly by anonymous agents of the state.
Truly ridiculous. I briefly wondered if you actually believe this rhetoric, but then I saw your three-day-old account.
Not going to debate with someone who doesn't have the courage to stand behind their convictions. Your account is a throwaway and only exists to launder white supremacist talking points. Best of luck with your new American government, we all know it ended well for the leaders of Italy and Germany.
The only lunatics in this scenario are the ones executing people in the street and dragging children out of their homes and into concentration camps as well as the people who think that's all reasonable. It's entirely reasonable, and right, to resist them.
"They are actively committing a crime against the citizens of the US."
What crime? You are confused if you think being an undocumented immigrant is a crime in it of itself. It's not, despite the right's attempts to paint them as "illegal." And, even if it were a crime, that doesn't suddenly make it "evil" or something that victimizes the "citizens of the US." The law is not the arbiter of good and evil, and very often it's on the side of evil. Miscegenation was a crime. Sodomy was a crime. Those acts were no more evil then than they are now.
So next time when they arrest you, thinking you’re an illegals immigrant, put you in jail for 2-4 weeks, without access to a lawyer or even a phone call, and then release, will you be stretching your neck to make it more comfortable for them to tread on it?
lol, "your people." I've seen enough of you guys in real life to know what lies behind the bold Nazi larp online. Meek, resentful, small men. You may piss your pants at the sight of a non-white person, but 99% of people don't. Nothing you hope for or think is going to happen will happen. The world you yearn for never existed and never will. Much like every other fascist movement in history, the current one will only be remembered as a pathetic failure.
Huh? We have no reason to believe e.g. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was non-compliant in any way with anything, and he was sent to a foreign torture prison without access to a lawyer, without being charged with a crime, without being afforded basic rights that everyone (citizen or not) has under the US Constitution.
We have numerous examples of people who have followed all legal procedures and have legal status in the US who were likewise denied basic Constitutional protections.
As Timothy Snyder (an historian of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust) observed last year:
> If you accept that non-citizens have no right to due process, you are accepting that citizens have no right to due process. All the government has to do is claim that you are not a citizen; without due process you have no chance to prove the contrary.
Because ICE has gone way beyond arresting illegals. In Boston, for example, they stopped a naturalization ceremony literally minutes before people were to become citizens. Do you support that?
Before now, ICE was primarily paperwork police. Border patrol and occasional visits to round up undocumented immigrants at factories still existed, but the vast majority of their job was related to like customs and visa forms. It's like hiring 10x the postal workers and giving them guns and "qualified immunity" -- you're going to get some new problems.
Nope. While there was a large increase in immigrant inflows, there is no evidence their enforcement decisions were significantly different than e.g. Trump 1.
What the statistics actually show is that the United States was a far more attractive destination for immigrants under Biden, but that enforcement policies were largely the same. That makes sense since enforcement policy is mostly set by Congress and not by POTUS.
The increased appeal of the US is entirely explained by the fact that the US economy was excelling far beyond any country in the world, and especially any country in the western hemisphere. At the same time, Central and South America were getting hit by successive political and economic shocks amplified by COVID.
The significant reduction in immigrants towards the tail end of Biden is not because they suddenly decided to "follow the law" and "close the border." It's that they decided NOT to follow the law anymore and to unilaterally ignore the asylum laws that Congress actually sets.
So really what you're seeing is the difference between the US being a desirable place to come to versus an undesirable one. I'm sympathetic to the argument that there's moral hazard involved in making the US appear to be highly desirable to people who we don't want to accept, but I'm not sympathetic at all to the view that that means the executive can simply ignore whatever laws they want, or they can turn the US into such a dystopian hellhole that only the most desperate immigrants around would bother attempting entry.
Exactly. There should be no crowd control, because they shouldn't be interacting with the American public except as fellow citizens. If someone commits a crime against them, they can turn the details over to the local police for enforcement of assault, etc.
At this point after how they've been operating, they shouldn't even be allowed to carry weapons. No guns, no grenades, no pepper spray, no masks to escape accountability. These are supposed to be public servants, they should be accountable to the public. If someone they're trying to apprehend reacts violently then they can escalate the situation to the local police or maybe the FBI after the federal agencies have done the work of regaining the public trust.
Didn't ICE and predecessor organizations do workplace raids? Maybe that's not as big of a crowd, but it's still a crowd. I think they would tend to do workplace raids in concert with the FBI.
Surely, you're not saying that the feds are saying things that are counter to what's actually happening on the ground, are you? /s
At this point, you just have to assume the truth is exactly the opposite of what the feds are saying. How do you know a fed is lying...their mouth is moving.
This is beyond naive at this point. The objective is to hurt people. Republican voters have repeatedly explicitly asked for it. There's a reason they flocked to Trump. Cruelty is the point. It's astounding the number of people still so credulous wrt what is happening in this country. You have "Christian" preachers talking about empathy being a sin for fucks sake. Like how can people maintain this sort of ignorance into 2026?
And I don't mean this towards you necessarily. I get some people are still entertaining folks who will never participate in a conversation in good faith because it might influence ignorant observers who stumble across the conversation. But does that ever actually play out? How much time is wasted on people of obvious bad faith? How much time has been wasted on the Shapiros, the Kirks, the Tuckers of the world? The random HN commenter who drops obvious bullshit before disappearing to never be heard from again? You cannot out earnest people flooding the zone with bullshit.
Well, if local police is not cooperating then it's as designed by the constitution (states have the authority to police), to not give federal government powers to make the country a police state. Feature, not a bug. Federals should discuss and persuade the state and their police.
Nobody said the police are not policing. They have their own jobs and not there to do the bidding of the federal government. You're saying this like the local authorities are meant to drop what they are doing at the drop of dime because the feds have a request. These are not dangerous criminals that require a timely response before causing more harm. These are people trying to live their lives and it will not harm the rest of the citizens by doing immigration enforcement at a slower pace.
Your reply to deepsun made no sense as reply to deepsun. You said You're saying this like the local authorities are meant to drop what they are doing at the drop of dime because the feds have a request. But deepsun said the opposite almost.
I mean yeah, they're not "for" it but you can see how deploying the PD would be helpful as they're more inclined to be non-violent and also I'd reckon they have far more experience than ICE considering the mass requirements which results in many many ICE officers being pretty much just militarized citizens with lacking experience put into stressful situations.
fish rots from the head. Violence, lies and grift. The very head is convicted grifter who is openly using his position for personal enrichment. Right next - Noem - trigger happy dog shooter, and why suddenly so many DHS ads with her ? :
"Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts
The company is run by the husband of Noem’s chief DHS spokesperson and has personal and business ties to Noem and her aides. DHS invoked the “emergency” at the border to skirt competitive bidding rules for the taxpayer-funded campaign."
and that cherry on top:
"DHS, White House shared white nationalist song in ICE recruitment posts"
Naw. The rot has been here since the country was founded. It has never been adequately treated. We had our best opportunity after the civil war, but decided to throw away the antibiotics and just live with it. It took a long time, but now seems terminal.
One of the pleasant things, though, is that if that kind of thing is on the table you probably have some kind of moral imperative to start doing something about it.
Previously I felt like a hyperbolic nerd, and now I have a whole lot of new friends all working on the same stuff. Wheee. Go team. I hate it.
Fortunately it feels very much the other direction, lately- more folks seeing the dangers, more willingness to take the long bet. Fewer folks at brunch.
That's a bet some of have been taking for a while, though it's oftent felt dumb, and we haven't needed a great shocking occasion to do it.
> but not her wife telling her to "drive drive" when the officer is positioned in front of a car
where was everyone standing when she said to drive? could she see the ICE agent in front of the car? also, you can tell someone to "drive drive", but that does not mean to "drive over whoever is in front of you". reads to me like you are as guilty of reading more into it as you claim they are for not quoting 'drive drive'.
If you think nuance is missing, you could add the nuance of agents swarming her vehicle with a high likelihood of violently extracting her from the car and detaining her.
This is the upgraded version of "you may beat the rap but you won't beat the ride" -- where that ride may take you halfway across the country and be detained incommunicado for many days before being ejected out of the holding center and on your own to get home.
This is well-documented and a legitimate concern of any legal protester being illegally detained.
Edit: Why the disagreement? I don't like it that people were killed, same as you all I hope.
> violently extracting her from the car
Isn't that what always happens when someone doesn't comply when told to exit their vehicle? Since when has not complying with an officer on the street resulted them in saying, 'Oh, okay, carry on what you were doing'?
I imagine if I parked perpendicular on a road and danced while honking my horn (timestamp 39 seconds in video below), then not complying when the police told me to exit the vehicle, the police would try to extract me by force as well.
I always thought a protest was chanting with signs, but it seems like times have changed.
I haven't seen videos and of officers going up to people holding signs (who are not trying to be physical with the officers) and initiating physical contact.
I haven't seen video of the officers walk up to Alex Pretti and tackle him for no reason. I have seen a video of him on a prior day kicking and breaking the light off a vehicle:
As far as her vehicle was concerned, I've seen elsewhere that she had been parked earlier and had pulled out but was letting other vehicles go through first, waving them on.
Not complying with a masked men with guns who gave conflicting info (leave now/get out of the car) who were going to mess her up as much as they could? Really? She was trying to leave.
You should watch the video where Alex Pretti tries to protect and aid a women who was pepper sprayed by ICE officials approaching them, and then tackled and shot multiple times, and then more for good measure.
> I'm not a fan of anything that's going on, and it appears that people are trying to make things worse, not better. Why?
If you are a rationalist, you should be taking in all possible information and be prepared to change your mind as compelling evidence is presednted.
Let's work backwards from the situation: Why is ICE in Minnesota in the first place? Ostensibly because of financial fraud (not their area of interest), and more so, as a show of strength and intimidation.
Steven Miller has publicly stated that ICE has zero accountability and freedom to act as they see fit. 1st Amendment and 4th Amendments are doormats to these people. And with Alex Pretti, they now declare that 2A is null and void too.
So your position is kneel and comply regardless of why?
Edit: I didn't downvote you because I wanted to answer with dialog instead. You send some very mixed messages about not liking what's happening but also blaming the victims for their fate.
I don't blame them for getting shot. From what I can tell, they should not have been shot.
Since when is victim-blaming binary?
I can't say that victims should be aware that their actions or choices have consequences?
> masked men with guns
Did they not know they were going to protest ICE? That they were masked? (And that they're masked because people are harassing them and others?)
If I don't want to risk being shot, I don't go around to other people who I know have guns and are being harassed and assaulted. Neither group should be assaulted - the protestors or the officers.
If I assault someone with a gun, I should be prepared that they might use that gun, especially when they can't think straight because I'm yelling in their faces, blowing whistles at them, kicking the lights off their cars, etc.
If I choose to be a part of a group that's doing those things, I should be prepared to be treated as a member of that group.
> be prepared to change your mind
What should I change my mind about? 'They should not have been shot' - do I change that?
> Edit: I didn't downvote you because I wanted to answer with dialog instead.
I upvoted you as a thank you for taking the time to write and be apart of this dialogue.
Please note that my objective in this discussion is to try and reach some sort of consensus, and that text communication can easily be misconstrued even when both parties know each other and are "on the same side".
The situation with ICE is in a sense uncharted territory (even with traditional abuses by police there's ostensibly some accountability, but ICE has been declared by the administration to have carte blanch in their operations -- explicitly told that they can act with impunity).
From the goog ai:
The First Amendment protects the rights to free speech and peaceable assembly, allowing public protest in traditional forums like streets, sidewalks, and parks. While peaceful protest is protected, the government can impose content-neutral "time, place, and manner" restrictions, such as permits for large, disruptive, or traffic-obstructing events.
> If I assault someone with a gun, I should be prepared that they might use that gun, especially when they can't think straight because I'm yelling in their faces, blowing whistles at them, kicking the lights off their cars, etc.
It should also be noted that Pretti was absolutely within his rights and had permits to carry and never brandished it. I'm not a gun nut and think that bringing a gun to a protest is not a good idea, but it's a non issue on the justification of his murder.
ICE's presence and actions are not in good faith -- they are not there to catch "murderers, rapists, and other bad guys". They are hunting for any possible bounty regardless of legality and have detained US citizens.
> If I choose to be a part of a group that's doing those things, I should be prepared to be treated as a member of that group.
It's been shown that "being a part of that group" has been loosely applied where people in the vicinity who are not protesters are also being attacked by ICE.
Note that ICE was enforcing the law and removing "bad guys" in the previous administrations without going to the extremes they are now.
And most importantly, it's clear that the Trump administration wants some sort of violence to occur so that it can "justify" notching up enforcemnt even further -- likely martial law.
If you evaluate whats happening as if the government is acting legally and in good faith you are either misinformed or a supporter of the administration and have no loyalty to the Constitution.
>to "drive drive" when the officer is positioned in front of a car
when you're in front of of the car at some distance like the shooting ICE in the video and the car is making a turn in front of you, you clearly see that the car is moving away from you to the side, not moving toward you.
Jonathan Ross: shoots a woman three times, with the killing shot to the head fired from the side of the vehicle after the danger had passed, if there ever was any danger to begin with.
News: holy shit this guy murdered that lady on camera.
What problems did "Woke" (I'm not sure it's a thing, but whatever) have with the truth?
Are we talking about opinionated gender vs biological sex? Or how others shouldn't offend? Trans women sports?
If it is, I think these are firmly opinions about inclusion. Asking people to ignore biological sex isn't the same thing as saying he said Greenland when he said Iceland. It's weird that you even think them comparable.
I agree, these are completely different things. But what is more or less important for changing political reality, is not obvious. I dont buy such arguments like "it is only language".
You're employing some polarizing language yourself. Calling people "illegals" because of their immigration status demeans them. Beyond that, this language is often used to justify illegal restrictions of their civil rights. Immigrants, regardless of their legal status, have civil rights and human rights.
This is not a political calculus. Nobody with half a brain believes that Trump's choices are about efficiently deporting people here illegally; they are designed to intimidate and punish his opponents while making the US more authoritarian.
The government cannot send out masked, untrained goon squads to bust down doors without warrants or probable cause. They are forbidden from doing that by the Constitution.
The "inevitable tragedies" are from free people exercising their rights in the face of an administration which obviously has nothing but contempt for them.
I get it - you love Republicans and hate Democrats. I hate them all. Can you just connect a few more neurons in your brain and rise above it for a little bit and consider the costs? We're losing our rights and seeing a test of them live on video. Assuming we have elections again this can be used by both. Wake up dude.
Honestly I haven’t seen that video before now but are you kidding me? First of all cars don’t break like that from a kick. Second of all where’d the ford logo on the car go? Clearly AI. Classic AI video tells, it’s not even subtle.
Sad for you that you fell for it but not expected. If you don’t see murder in the original cell phone videos, you’ll rationalize this any way you can.
That's not what I said, I said I've witnessed AI cars explode like that, but I've never seen a real car explode like that. Ask yourself the simple question: where is that car? If that happened, let's see the actual car up close. Let's actually get a shot of that damage that occurred. We'll never see that because that car is not damaged in that way, because this thing is false.
> where everything you don't like is AI
This is projection. You're doing the same thing in reverse -- treating AI output with credulity because you want to believe it.
There are untrained MASKED federal agents killing American citizens. They pistol whipped Alex Pretti before shooting him. This is not normal. I think its appropo.
> Calling ICE "gestapo" and Trump "Hitler" and are genuinely crazy things, gestapo can be pretty accurately described by 1984 as the thought police, ICE, while being an organ of a state is far from that.
I'm not sure what you mean. The Gastapo was an organ of the state. Geheime Staatspolize means "Secret State Police."
According to your own numbers, Clinton and Obama managed to to deport 15 million people, and somehow they managed to do it without executing any citizens in the street.
No one is killing American citizens with immunity - except ICE. The man who killed Laken Riley is in Prison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Laken_Riley. Where are the masked agents who killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti?
> officials rushed to defend immigration officers without waiting for key facts to emerge – in what former immigration officials called a clear break with past practice for federal agencies
Without obscuring how bad is it, I don't believe there was ever a time when officials _didn't_ rush to defend federal officers without waiting for key facts to emerge. The us government has constantly loved to say that no one working for them has done anything wrong.
Calling American citizens domestic terrorists 30 mins after they were shot dead by agents of the President's shiny new initiative is a bit of an escalation on the generic government face-saving responses. The rhetoric is escalating and dangerous.
Is it? I really don't think so. You don't remember the whole "superpredator" thing? Every time a black dude is shot, they'll start talking about how he must have been some kinda criminal. People of color have been suffering this shit forever. Sure, the Internet makes things faster, but the policies are the same.
You’re right about that. But the actual escalation is that the line of “whiteness” is shifting. Anyone not MAGA now is in the “not white” category as far as this administration is concerned. That means white liberals are now getting the “superpredator” treatment, building a permission structure to do state violence to them.
The way Noem et al. immediately started with the violent domestic terrorist rhetoric / we've done nothing wrong was absolutely unheralded, and the government was never like this. When there's a shooting you say that the situation on the ground is dynamic, evidence is being amassed, the subjects are on leave pending the investigation, etc.
This was completely unlike the historic norm, and clearly it was the marching orders. They were obviously instructed to ape Trump's habit of utter confidence in the face of devastating reality.
And I mean, it just reflects how Trump operates. Reality is secondary to what you claim it is, and if you lie, and everyone knows you lied, just repeat the lie again and again and it breaks many people's brains until some subset of the population will just go "Wow, no one is so shameless or vile they'd lie like this, so he must be telling the truth!". Similarly, immediately pretend that these situations and slam dunk, quick-close cases with over the top rhetoric (terrorism! ICE agent hospitalized in mortal danger, etc) no further consideration needed, is perfectly coherent with the way Trump has managed to con so, so many.
I think to an extent Trump is a fall guy, even when it comes to Venezuela he was dragged through the mud where his predecessors have constantly undermined the sovereignty of other nations and attacked them under the guise of protecting the US from terrorism when it was about oil and mineral ritches [1], the same with the deportation centers which while they were getting some criticism it was nowhere near the level of slander that there is towards the current admin doing the same thing.
Our cities are being occuppied by paramilitary forces who are assaulting residents, routinely telling brazen lies about high-profile incidents, and racially profiling without pretense. This is not normal.
That’s a strange conclusion to make, because the definition of a “fall guy” is someone who takes the blame, while others, who are more culpable, go free. Whereas most critics would say he’s the “kingpin”, and supporters say he’s “the decider”.
You don’t need a very long awareness of political history to find examples of what government was like before to realize the US is in extraordinary times in terms of loyalty to his leadership and presidency. You don’t need to look long before you find repeat examples—from the Congress, the Supreme Court, and his appointees—of individuals making excuses or previously inconceivable accommodations for the president’s conduct, choices, and decisions to then conclude the president is, as they say, “calling the shots”. That is not the characteristic of a “fall guy”, but a “kingpin”.
Personally, I feel we’re lucky that our “dictator-in-chief” is in the pattern of a real estate developer and not, say, a paranoid military general.
If Trump got "dragged through the mud" on Venezuela, he did it to himself. What we know about that operation indicates it's clearly a Trump op.
But overall, I also disagree. The press has been very easy on Trump, from going easy on the grab then by the pussy tape, to never saying that he lies, to not making an issue out of his mental decline.
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