Wow…just wow.
A recent essay from the Bulwark really shook me. It reminded me of a long-ago discussion with my mother. We’d been watching a TV mini-series on the Holocaust, and my mother said something to the effect that she would never have been one of the compliant Germans who put their heads down and went along with the brutal Nazi assaults. As I told her then, I wish I could be certain that I would stand up under such circumstances–but it’s not easy to predict what you’d do if your livelihood or liberty or children were at risk.
How many of us really would chance public resistance in such a threatening environment?
The Bulwark essay raised that question, albeit somewhat obliquely. The author, Jonathan Last, began by sharing a message he’d received from a friend.
Are you absolutely sure that as Christians this isn’t the time to hide Anne Frank? Shouldn’t I be willing to help migrants avoid deportation/detention at whatever legal perils await me? If not now then when . . . when it gets twice as bad or three times as bad or ten times as bad?
Sorry if this sounds weird, but everyone likes to think that given the opportunity they would be Mississippi freedom riders or on the bridge at Selma. Well what if it’s that time for me?
Last writes that his first reaction was denial–that bad as things are, the U.S. is not near an “Anne Frank” moment. But then, he began to think about it–and while his certainty didn’t evaporate, it certainly moderated.
Let’s say you’re an immigrant with questionable legal status. You’re married and your spouse is the same. You have lived in America for many years, paying taxes and whatnot, and own a house. You have two kids and they are American citizens—for now.
You and your spouse show up for a routine court date and are snatched by a group of men in masks who claim (without showing identification) that they are agents of the state. You are put in jail. And let’s assume that you are deported. Perhaps to El Salvador.
What happens to your children in the hours after you are arrested? Who picks them up from school? Who feeds them? Where do they sleep?
What happens to your assets?
If you own a home, what happens to it? Is it sold? By whom? Through what process? Where do the proceeds of the sale go?
What about your bank accounts? Do you have access to your savings?
How about your property? Your car, the furniture in your house, your clothes, your computer. What happens to all of that?
Last says he would be surprised if theoretical legal procedures–assuming they exist– are being applied to property rights, since these immigrants aren’t even being given their more basic due process rights.
Worse, even if you are a MAGA bigot who considers everyone who came here illegally a hardened criminal by definition, Last reminds readers that this administration has actually created “illegal immigrants” by arbitrarily changing the status of people who previously had legal status. It has revoked student visas (without bothering to inform the visa holders), and terminated Temporary Protected Status for refugees from Venezuela and Afghanistan.
It was Trump who made their presence “illegal.”
So when we ask these questions about the people that masked ICE thugs are rounding up– taking them off the streets and out of scheduled immigration meetings– when we ask what happens to their property, money and other belongings, we don’t get satisfactory answers. We don’t get answers at all. As Last says, we’re may not be at Anne Frank territory, but “we’re awfully close to the period in which German Jews were having their businesses seized.”
We have masked, unidentified agents of the state snatching people off of the streets. We have the government attempting to skirt due process. We have people being deprived of their property. We have an attempt to revoke birthright citizenship.
Maybe we’re not in Anne Frank territory. But also: Maybe the hour is later than we think.
Maybe it’s time to decide not to be compliant Germans….
Well, for one, why isn’t the oligarchy-owned press finding out who exactly these “ICE Agents” with masks are? How many of the Proud Boys have been deputized to work under the Trump regime?
Before I take on an enemy, I want to know exactly who they are that are snatching people off the streets. I know for a while several groups were scouring social media to “out” what they called anti-Semites. Some were even swatting their targets by calling local police to inform them about illegal activities, which brought out the SWAT Team. These are American citizens harming other American citizens. These are part of the sleeper cells of MAGA, which exist in all of our communities.
The worst part is that this is not only the racist and fascist groups like the Proud Boys. These MAGA people are “self-declared good Christians.” You may attend church with them on Sunday, and they are marking you on a list on Monday.
And, the primary list-builder right now is Peter Thiel and Palantir. There is an excellent article in The Rolling Stones about the techno-fascist, “Broligarchy.” I will try to attach it later, as it further explains the endgame for these individuals who aim to create colonies out of countries they rule with the help of AI.
Trump has approved Palantir to utilize its list-building expertise on all Americans, regardless of citizenship status. This is what Musk and DOGE were tasked with when they were found to be uploading data from the federal government into their cloud so they can scan ALL OF OUR INFORMATION, including financial information. Why would they need access to that? 😉
As you can imagine, it would answer some of the questions posed by the authors in Sheila’s post. There is a small handful of Democrats and Republicans opposing such an infrastructure, but most elected officials from both parties agree, just like they’ve agreed to attack Iran for nothing.
As I said, I’m all for resisting, but let’s make sure we know what we’re dealing with, because this isn’t 1930s Germany, not even close.
I was at a large wholesale store yesterday in South Carolina 50 miles away from home and as usual I heard many languages … beautiful families with children. It occurred to me a ripe situation for ICE. I am many years beyond warranty tolerating pain with Tylenol. But what could I do. My thought if in the event of ICE raid is to talk assertively with the agents to draw attention to buy time for others to be sheltered or move onto unattended exits. I could go on to think of something else short of being a 22 year old hero and placing my family at risk. This is an open forum. What would you do (besides another rant) given your circumstances?
We are absolutely seeing the modern version of kristallnacht! The night of broken glass. It was a warning of things to come, things that got worse for others that were added to the list of the unwanted. Those unwanted Germans were rounded up, some executed immediately, others put in concentration camps. What does the new facility opening up in the Florida Everglades in the middle of alligator infested swamp tell you? You try to escape, you’re going to be eaten. So just think about that for a moment. Has something like this ever been contrived in this country before? I mean there’s been a lot of terrible things done in this country. Giving the native Americans blankets contaminated with smallpox, that was pretty bad, don’t you think? The Japanese were rounded up and put in concentration camps. Not the Germans, who were actively subverting American society through the use of the Nazi Bund. The effects of which are still stirring the pot today with white supremacist organizations that are all offshoots.
The parallels that are happening today, the Nazis in the late 20s and 30s, and present day USA are striking! The building of other concentration camps outside of this country, paying and bribing these smaller nazi-esque countries to allow the construction. What will happen inside of these facilities? You think it can’t happen? How many children are still missing from the last time this administration rounded up immigrants? Children were taken away, many were never reunited with their families, and actually, what happened to those kids? Have they been trafficked? I would put a lot of treasure on that idea, I think that’s exactly what happened. Considering the United States Marshals office finding 60 habitually missing children in Florida enclaves. They were in the hands of traffickers.
These kids are the USA version of Anne Frank. Except not hidden and kept safe, but used, abused, and then tossed in the alligator infested waters of the Everglades.
The history of this country is not a good one, and like has been mentioned before, this country was based on wealthy slave owning white men owning slaves and ruling the roost.
Manifest Destiny, and The White Man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling, explains a lot. Read it again for yourself, It isn’t going to get any better, because eventually there will be a declaration of martial law because of manufactured threats. The groundwork has already been laid, concerning supposed sleeper cells in the United States. Any unruly protests will do the same.
With martial law declared, you can be shot down in the streets for violating the military law. Will the military go along with this sort of thing? Will there be another Night Of The Long knives?
Can’t fathom that? 10 years ago, you couldn’t fathom this!
And one last thing, the Nazis had gotten eugenics from the United States and Britain. Using that as a reason, one of many to exterminate Jews and others. Coincidentally, Indiana was one of the first and last in the eugenics research in the United States. Many thousands of citizens were sterilized without consent. They didn’t have the correct genetic makeup for what was deemed a more perfect society, does that sound familiar?
Just think about all those missing babies from the previous iteration of this administration, don’t think it can happen? Don’t think it did happen?
Gandhi taught us that “non-cooperation with evil was a sacred duty.” That is my stand in these times. I hope that I would have the courage to not get out of the way, nor shut up, nor back up, nor go back inside, nor put my camera down, nor obey any other order that facilitates the crimes being committed by ICE.
I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s with Life and Look and Time, etc, magazines and the images of horror that occurred in Germany…the brutal beatings and murders in the South…and it made me a protester from the time I entered college in the late 60’s. I will make great noise if confronted with a situation like that.
I sponsored an immigrant into this country legally. He is my grandson’s stepfather, one of the hardest working men I know and a wonderful father. I assume most immigrants are like my guy.
These camera images will be used to eventually bring these thugs to justice. It happened for J6; it will happen here.
Thank you, Theresa. Good post. Be well.
Perhaps the actual “Good Germans” are again obedient, and a threat to world peace.
In a talk last week with a Dutch engineer, I asked if the Germans are preparing for war with Russia (which did not go well for the Germans last time).
The Dutchman assured me the Germans indeed were mobilizing for war. He said the only party which opposes war is the minority AfD party, which is not in power.
Here’s another perspective. I have been part of two protests so far, and there is no question in my mind that the people I met both times were much more compatible and easier to be around than if I somehow had spent that time in a country club bar.
This morning, my neighbor is having a new roof installed. We live under a maintenance agreement association, which is responsible for many of the chores I used to do myself, so our roof is next. The crew replaced other roofs in the association last year, and I enjoyed meeting them then, but there is a language barrier. Roofing is a very physically demanding craft, and this crew demonstrated to the neighbors how diligent and exacting they were under miserable conditions. I respect that more than I respect country club bar flies or DC politicians.
But I worry about their future, and maybe their present.
Would a neighbor “report” them after hearing the banter they typically enjoy while they work? Would I intervene if ICE showed up?
IDK.
It seems that Stephen Miller has been given carte blanche to do his evil deeds outside the law. He employs a master thug in Homan. Yeah. I’d love to see who these ICE thugs really are. I’d also bet heavily on the fact that they are Proud Boys and other bigots who had their G.I. Joe toys taken away from them at an early age.
I will post later an excerpt from the non-fiction book, “In the Garden of Beasts” by Erik Larson to illustrate what’s happening today in OUR country happened in 1933 Germany.
We already have soldiers in the streets of Los Angeles two weeks after the protests.
When do they go back to their jobs? Plans are to do the same in other blue cities in blue states.
If you’re going to protest, do everything you can to make sure it’s a peaceful protest. I suggest having volunteers who will walk the perimeter of your protest to get ahead of anyone seeking to up the ante. During the BLM protests there were some people not connected to the movement who did a lot of damage on the fringes of the protest.
Maybe I’m a little paranoid, but I’m also old enough to remember the Vietnam War protests and I remember there were those among the last speakers who tried to incite violence. No one knew who they were, but they were exhorting students to go into town and “shake up the townies,” or set fire to a building, or do something else that would be stupid enough to mobilize the Guard!
It’s just occurred to me that my real life started with protests and there’s a chance it will end in protest. As long as the cause is just, I’m okay with that.
Troops still in L.A. are now there for the purpose of “normalizing” seeing them in our streets. It’s a classic autocratic tactic.
Here’s a link that summarizes what the Miller/Homan thug show is about. Note: 3,000 deportations per DAY!
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/26/politics/immigration-deportations-trump-asylum-seekers
Meanwhile, in Gaza…
Pete, here is something that supports your view.
Excerpt from In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
It was common for American expatriates to visit the U.S. consulate in Berlin, but not in the condition exhibited by the man who arrived there on Thursday, June 29, 1933. He was … a physician from New York who until recently had been practicing medicine in a suburb of Berlin. Now, he stood naked in one of the curtained examination rooms on the first floor of the consulate where on more routine days a public-health surgeon would examine visa applicants seeking to immigrate to the United States. The skin had been flayed from much of his body.
“He had been beaten with whips and in every possible way until his flesh was literally raw and bleeding.” The beating … had occurred nine days earlier … [The consulate] wondered what had the wounds been like immediately after the beating.
On the night of June 21, [the physician] was visited at his home by a squad of uniformed men responding to an anonymous denunciation of [the physician] as an enemy of the state. The men searched his home and found nothing, then took the physician to their headquarters. He was ordered to undress and immediately subjected to a severe and prolonged beating by two men with whips.
There had been beatings and arrests of American citizens ever since Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in January, 1933, but nothing as severe as this one. Thousands of native Germans had experienced equally severe treatment – and often far worse.
Sorry Todd, but YES, we are in 1930’s Germany.
I took part in several Vietnam era protests, including the one at the Pentagon, and miss 6/14 because we had long been scheduled for a trip that weekend. I do not doubt that Miller has hired the Trump thugs of 1/6, and is paying them well.
I’m an old man but would be proud to quietly interfere with an ICE event as Theresa paints it, above.
Trading in how to conduct non-violent protest helps. I think Indivisible or 50501 offers such training. Perhaps it is available elsewhere, too. ACLU also offers information (Know Your Rights) that would be helpful in confrontational situations. If you have never taken part in a protest but expect to do so, I suggest you look for such sources. Being prepared and knowing you are prepared could make all the difference in how you react.
Sorry, Mitch, we aren’t even close to the 1930s Germany because we are living in a very high-tech surveillance state with facial recognition software, NSA spy surveillance apparatus collecting data from phones, laptops, and desktops.
Most people have forgotten how the J6 insurrectionists were captured. Facebook’s facial recognition software was used. What wasn’t disclosed publicly is that our local police have access to Facebook’s backdoors. Google does the same thing.
Add to it the snitches who want to be part of the fascist regimes, and we can hardly move from point A to point B without being tracked. Our cell phones’ GPS is tracking our every move. My Google Maps can give me a daily timeline of every single place I’ve visited.
Peggy mentioned the BLM protesters who were accompanied by Antifa, who carried guns to protect participants from the racist thugs who preyed on BLM protesters. One Antifa shot and killed a racist thug, and was tracked down and murdered by Bill Barr and Donald Trump. He was murdered by federal and state “law enforcement,” and both Barr and Trump bragged about it on social media.
So, when I say this ain’t the 30s, it’s much worse. If Hitler and his thugs had access to our propaganda networks and high-tech surveillance, how many more Jews could they have murdered, and there would have been NO escape.
A brief reply to John Sorg – German immigrants were interned. See “The Train to Crystal City” by Jan Jarboe Russell and the deeply researched novel by Nancy Jensen “In Our Midst.” The latter is set in an Indiana town, which brings the message home to Hoosiers.
True, there were families that were located or relocated in Crystal City. They were used in prisoner exchange programs. Trading one human for another. Something that’s still done today.
The Italians and the Japanese did not have organizations in this country like the German Bund. The Bund actually had connections to the KKK. The KKK were the useful idiots. The Bund was directly in contact with the German Nazi party. They were coordinating. They were in fact Nazis. These prisoner exchange programs concerning the Germans, were trading spies for spies. There was a soft spot in the United States concerning the Nazis. Hence, the import of so many Nazi scientists working on the space program and weapons technology. Also, the special program to allow Nazi military members to come to this country and work for 15 years, then go back to Germany and collect American social Security. This was done as a favor to those Nazis of stature brought to this country. It wasn’t done with the Japanese, or the Italians!
My father’s half brother-in-law, Joe Rager lived in Germany with his family My father’s half sister Ahna and kids. Very German. He said that those Germans that came back from their social security earning hitch in the United States, we’re not liked back in Germany. Because they flaunted their ill gotten gains, building huge homes and driving fancy vehicles. Everybody knew that they were the dyed in the wool Nazis, not just acolytes.
There are a lot of differences between 1930’s war torn Germany and USA today. From what I can glean from history Germany was always a more authoritarian society than US. They’re harsh sounding language exemplifies the strictness and adherence to hierarchy and laws. The prevailing culture pride in excellence of quality of man-made products was evident. Their engineered superior weapons of war, tanks, guns etc. are examples.
In Maddow’s book “Prequel” the way some Americans got around the laws regarding equality (especially in the South) was studied and used by Hitler to target, control and eliminate his scapegoats. Germans had a tendency to go by letter of the law and Hitler needed to mitigate that aspect to have his tyrannical, unjust way. The culture and law in the American south now referred to as “Umwege” law became Hitler’s blueprint. It’s an example of what can happen when US Bill of Rights and Rule of Law is not respected and upheld and to what degree of cruelty can be normalized, tolerated by many who just look the other way.
Rose,
Excellent post! Also, research how many Americans and American corporations built the Nazi war machine. Westinghouse, Ford, Edison, General Electric, JP Morgan, They cooperated with Benz, and Bavarian motor Works. Amongst others! So if their weapons were so superior, it was due to American cooperation with the Nazis. There was a lot of money to be made, so it didn’t matter what side a corporation was on. Hopefully, in their mind, they were on both sides as you can see, that way they could get double or triple their investment back. Just like slavery, many of the banking and railroad corporations you see today, were involved in slavery also. America has been pretty rotten! And unlike you Rose, folks would rather bury their head in the sand. MAGA wants to bring all of that back!
I have been thinking that the most effective way to put sand in the gears would be a massive sit-down protest between ICE and the immigrants, with others filming through telephoto lens at a safe distance (uploaded immediately to the cloud), then posted onto every and all platforms.
It would require organization, foreknowledge of raid sites, and a level of fearlessness we haven’t seen since the Civil Rights Era. I am not certain that I have that kind of fearlessness.
I have one other fantasy. When democracy is restored, we take everyone on the ICE payroll, and arrest them for kidnapping. They should be put in the emptied ICE facilities pending trials (slow walked). While I fantasize, Steven Miller should be accused of faking his documentation and deported to South Sudan — just in case.
Today is one of my “karmic fantasy” days – sorry.
John Sorg. I question your assertion that German tanks were produced by American Companies. My research shows German tanks were made in Germany by German companies that were taken over by the Reich. German engineering has always had a solid reputation for durable reliability.
I do know that the Koch brothers’ father, a libertine capitalist, made a fortune in WW11 selling oil to the Nazis. Jane Mayer in her book “Dark Money” covered that.
Todd, you have a point there, in the details, but not in the overall effect that Trump has being created, and in the direction he is leading us towrd.