The other implication of the huge amount of money going to ICE in the budget is that T doesn’t have to use the military to intimidate Americans, the vast increase in masked, anonymous, gun-wielding militia sadists gives him so much more scope for terrorizing Americans for all sorts of reasons not limited to immigrants
ICE is the Trump equivalent of Hitler’s brown shirts. They act outside the law, with impunity, hiding their identity, and without any semblance of due process.
Does that mean we can look forward to a "Night of the Long Knives," a purge of those American brown shirts because of Trump's insecurity as well as his history of dumping people after he has used them.
Look at the size of the budget for DHS, ICE and Border Patrol. Biggest "police force" in the U.S. Can they get out of control? Possibly. But the funding and being under Secretary Noem's direction ultimately, suggests that if they go rogue, Trump won't be able to stop them.
I woudn't count on it. Trump has just sent 200 marines to Florida to help ICE. Using the military to enforce his policies is one of the few remaining hurdles he faces and don't be surprised if he wants it removed from his path to glory.
But will he actually need the military at all? From what I saw, $150 billion in the budget bill are allocated for more ICE and facilities. Which makes ICE larger than other countries’ military.
ICE has around 20,000 agents with about 6,000 on deportation. The Bill allocates around $29bn for training, recruitment and retention of agents. I don't think they are likely to increase to the level of any G7 country's army. Most of the rest of the money is going towards the border wall and detention facilities (around $45bn apiece). Some of my figures might need updating, but you get the point. Not in any wingnut's fever dream will they have enough people to arrest, detain and deport 11 million undocumented migrants. That's why Trump is demanding support from the state police and the National Guard - and, of course, the military. The whole enterprise has been badly thought through and incompetently implemented and that's why it's been bogged down in the courts.
I keep reminding myself that cruelty isn’t just the point for them, it’s the whole deal. That and intimidation.
Every one of Trump’s schemes is a jerry-rigged Rube Goldberg contraption, held together mostly with fear, duct tape and pissy bravado — ghastly, half-assed schemes of illegality, incoherence and arrogance.
I realize that’s no consolation to the family of the grandmother just abducted from her front yard as she was gathering figs, stuffed into an unmarked van and carted off like luggage to God knows where. But it’s a reminder to me that these people have no idea how to run a drug store, much less a GULag system. We must not lose sight of their gobsmacking incompetence. It will help us plan the Resistance all that much better.
People are already dying because of these horrid policies. Last year, 12 people died in ICE detention centres; this year, already 11 people have died. The problems faced by both staff and inmates at the so-called Alligator Alcatraz - the summer heat, mosquitoes, and hurricanes - will be formidable. It's reported to have been built to withstand category 2 hurricanes but that's doubtful since it went up in only eight days.
The ridiculous Nancy Mace posted this on Twitter/X:
The disastrous Texas floods shows that the administration had better get back to doing its proper job of governing the country very soon if more such calamaties are to be avoided.
"Need," Marguerite, differs for sane people and for criminals and mad men.
The criminal in the White House has all his life needed criminality. Cheating. Raping. Lying. Dumping on contractors.
And he's also always needed a larger and larger stage to perform his stunts (he actually thinks he can dance!).
Sorry for all the decent teachers who tune in here, but America has 77 million who voted for this criminality, the now-massively-upped cruelties to immigrants, the end to saving lives around the world, the economic idiocy of killing all U.S. green energy, Medicaid cuts, tax cuts for the rich to grow the inequality gap, food for poor kids, cuts to scientific and medical research, mixed with his "bing-bing-boing-bong" and double-jerking-off two imaginary guys at the same time.
Yes, Marie, he's got his police state. Now additionally congressionally amply funded.
The U.S. is now, officially, as Timothy Snyder states here: "fascist dehumanization on a grand scale," "a fascist order . . . normalizing dehumanization."
I regret he attributes this simply to the economics of our now-long-entrenched neoliberal systematized greed.
Let's remember, please, that the far-right foundations of the 1971 Powell memo first targeted the schools. First removed humanities. Made all higher ed vastly-more-expensive, neutered silos. Made all K-12 captive to the testers.
And what's the first and final rule of testing, of dehumanization? That only authorities ask the questions. The rest of us reduce to only one correct answer from their A)-B)-C)-D).
So who is going to stop the madness? Trump has the momentum. The rest are without direction. Running around shouting, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" And the sky actually is falling. The props against it have failed. Who is going to stop the madness?
Individuals in mass are going to stop this. There are groups organizing protests around the country. It’s a small thing to attend and carry a sign that calls this out, like the #NoKings protest on Trump’s birthday. Likewise attend virtual meetings like the John Lewis Good trouble webinars that are working against voter suppression. Finally protest with your wallet, just like the Canadians. Help organize lists of companies that are doing the right thing starting with those who push back against Trump’s war on DEI. (Netflix, Costco). There needs to be a cost for those companies that are supporting the administration like AirBnb, Amazon, Meta…If you can afford it, send money to help Ukraine buy drones, outfit trucks, or rehab wounded soldiers and citizens. We do not need to wait for an elected representative to act for us, but support those who are pushing back like Panetta, Booker, Jeffries.
Have just signed up for webinars to learn how to do more. Thank you for the reminder to support Ukraine, which I have been doing all along. United 24 is a good place to start, and I also recommend Richard Woodruff’s Frontline Kitchen who has a small army of volunteers building drones, and otherwise assisting those at the front.
Excellent references for where to get involved. I wish somebody with the reach Tim has would devote an entire page on their site of all of the efforts everywhere going on and how to support them.
Because I don't have the means, Suzy. I'm a retiree, so I have the time, but not the drive to pursue it - collecting, verifying and keeping the sites updated, finding the platform, etc. without knowing it will end up being worth my time. If I were younger, sure I'd make that investment.
I would certainly assist anyone taking the lead to the extent that I can.
Then you can write or make phone calls to fight back, Sandy. We are all holding onto our wallets. I urge you to go to www.5calls.org. They have an app you can download. Each day, you can make phone calls on various issues. It gives you a sense of contributing to the fight.
DeSantis said the next "Alcatraz" is being built near Jacksonville FL. Let's get the pledge cards, not to use that labor, to the local employers:
Amazon distribution center; US Navy (civilians and civilian contractors); Duval County Public Schools and the school bus drivers; City of Jacksonville Parks Department; State of Florida Department of Transportation; JaxPort and its tenants (including a federal facility which shrink-wraps all military equipment heading to the Middle East); airport baggage handlers; garbage collection; major hospitals including the Mayo Clinic for laundry, cleaning, groundskeeping; several call center operators including the Wall Street Journal and national banks.
I'm here in Jax if you have questions, need housing, other.
I would like to suggest to organize a day ( just one day) when millions of Americans will not use Amazon or Facebook or any other corporation supporting Trump.
They understand only Profit, so let’s hurt them there.
It may have a small impact individually but it is noticed by shareholders and corporations. Look at Tesla and Target. They have been hurt by the protests already. When did you last hear that someone was planning to buy a Tesla? Look at Tesla sales in Canada and Europe. People are having an effect.
Actually, you are, or you should be. If you think those of us working to defend democracy are "without direction," you have not been paying attention. Get off your high horse and commit to doing whatever you can do, wherever you are, with whatever you have. You have nothing to lose but your cynicism.
If I couldn't be cynical I wouldn't be worth having around. Speaking of cynical, how's this for cynical: "How to make things the way they ought to be without killing anybody or waiting for the right people to die is inconceivable."
You are right, of course. In this swirl of madness changing minds enough to work together to make things as they ought to be is "like dying." It certainly requires a transformation of what is important, of what matters most and of what is called for, here, now. We don't literally kill anyone, but everyone dies, everyone becomes someone else--who we all ought to be, in order to do things as they ought to be done. This is the Great Reversal, and will take a lot of sitting silently, empty of everything, open to everything in order to grow up against our will again, and again. This is what needs to happen. It is actually a great revival I'm talking about in a deeply religious sense of the term. A new becoming. A new way of being together as one in the deepest, truest possible way. No?
Yes. You are onto something: change (and resistance to it) is about who we are. For change and even dialogue we must change our idea about ourselves and each other.
For me at this point in my life (Today is my 81st July 5th), everything flows from and leads to silence where we know what is called for in each situation as it arises and are equipped to do it where, when and how it is called for, with no plan, no strategy, no opinion, no fear, no desire, nothing to gain, nothing to lose in a neti-neti (Not this and not not-this) kind of way. For what, we do not know, or care. Just meeting the moment as the moment needs to be met is what we have to offer the world, trusting it is exactly what the world needs. And not knowing if we are right. When you are up for it, I would like to hear more about starting with killing yourself.
With his hugely unpopular mega-bill, Trump has given the Democrats something they seemed unable to achieve on their own: a unifying message for the midterms. All the different factions in that party can finally unite on one thing: opposition to the bill. The bill cynically but cleverly front-loads the tax cuts but delays the spending cuts so that either they take effect after the midterm elections or too late in 2028 for their impact to be felt before the next national election. The job for the Democrats then is to tell people what the bill contains and to do this relentlessly and comprehensively (because poor people in red states are likely to be hardest hit). Between now and then the only ways to resist are by civil disobedience and protests.
I believe that a Trump administration will always contain the seeds of its own destruction. In 2020 he became the first president since 1932 to lose the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives in a single term. He's surrounded himself with sycophants who have already shown that they are incompetent. He's firing all the competent people and replacing them with stooges. The first real crisis he encounters will be a disaster for the administration. We saw that in his first term with his chaotic response to the pandemic which led to the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.
MAGA won. We lost. The whole world is fucked. They are steamrolling everything in sight. Now it is the dehumanization of “the Democrats” as they move toward a one-party system for all intents and purposes. There will be bodies in the streets. Do whatever you need to do to survive. Above all — get used to it. Fascism has arrived.
If it makes you feel any better, he seems to hate everyone. No one stays on his good side for long, and he has thrown everyone under the bus, whether they voted for him or not. A million people died of Covid on his last term, many of them were devout MAGA followers. He may say he hates Democrats now, but he also said he thinks Republicans are stupid.
If you mean take care of yourself and develop a plan, yes. But understand that others need help and support. You can be against more than one Trump edict that impacts others as well. His war on journalists, science, immigrants, voter suppression, regulation, affects us all. You don’t have to be a single issue voter. That is how the GOP divided us during the last election. How many people didn’t vote because they were angry at the Dems on a single issue (Gaza, abortion, immigration, egg prices…)? Enough that it made a difference in the election.
Thanks for the article, very informative. Did people know what they were getting, or were they following Trump’s “what do you have to lose” prompt? I think many people who voted for Trump wanted the MAGA agenda, as long as it didn’t hurt them. They are now seeing an administration that doesn’t follow the law, and will weaken our country at home and internationally. Did they knowingly vote to elect a dictator? Most would say No, they voted to improve their lives. Dems have to keep pushing the narrative that we are a country of 200 years of laws. The constitution has the emoluments clause, it needs to be enforced.
That makes total sense because people who don't bother to vote believe either" it's all rigged" or "their vote doesn't matter" or "the Jews . . . ". Nihilists, all of them. If they were forced to choose, of course they'd choose Trump.
1) Propaganda works! Telling big lies over and over and never backing down WORKS! Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels knew that. Roy Cohn knew that and taught it to Trump;
2) The traditional main-stream media practices real journalism: double confirmation, vetting sources, fact-checking, etc. That’s time consuming, requires ethical integrity, and is expensive. There was a reason Trump’s early campaign appearances in 2016 took level aim at the MSM as “the enemy of the people;
3) Most people nowadays get their news from social media feeds and hence are being passively propagandized; and
KEEP fighting - until it makes you give up fascism has not won. Fight the part of your mind that wants to be cynical and give up. Take action. Get off the computer into the community and be a helper!
You get a D- from me. D for "defeatist" - someone who anticipates failure and accepts defeat without a struggle, often characterized by a negative and pessimistic outlook. Not sure why you are here except to get agreement from other defeatists.
I agree with the sentiment but not your conclusion. We can’t get used to it. Thats exactly what they want. And WE cannot want to give it to them.
Our job is to thwart the hell out of all of their grotesque efforts.
And a big part of that is to recognize that we’re not each others’ enemies. They’re using Divide and Conquer and even Democrats are playing right into their hands. But in reality THEY are the only enemy we got.
I disagree about what the rest are doing. To characterize the No Kings protests and the John Lewis (see Mary's comment below) webinars as running around shouting is completely unfair. Have you participated in your community and will you continue to participate?
I agree with Mary - Individuals in mass are going to stop this.
One thing you can do is write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper informing citizens of what is about to happen. Most people, especially older folks who remember WWII, would be appalled with labor camps in this country.
Beautifully stated! "We are all we have-we are all we need!" You and I and everyone else here, and all of those not here! Nicely done! And I take it that what we will do about it, to stop.it (the madness) is what is ours to do, what we do best, day in and day out--without caring what our chances are. Just doing what we do best and enjoy doing most for nothing beyond the joy of doing it and the satisfaction of having done it, in the service of what is called for in each situation as it arises every day for the rest of our lives, no matter what. Offering one another our good company as encouragement and communal presence and mutual appreciation for jobs well done! "The game is on!"
Yes! Do what you can, whenever you can, with whatever you have, wherever you are. Local community level actions are often where real solid resistance, change and preparedness take place. It's also the best place to grow resilience in the face of climate change, civil unrest, and other threats from lack of healthcare to food insecurity.
I have nursed a recent realization into being: God is a psychic reality, not a spiritual being. Which means, of course, that we are God. We bring God to life, or not, in the way we live. We don't "believe," we DO! Or do-not. And it is not great and grand things that we need to do. It is "a cup of cold water" kind of things, daily, all of the time, as God would do it, if God were real, and here, now. Just doing here, now right. The way here, now, needs to be done, is all it takes to raise Jesus from the dead again. Jesus got it about God, and did it. No?
It looks like Elon Musk could be the one who stops the madness, or, at least diverts and dilutes the madness. Who saw that coming? And how it plays out could be the most interesting thing that has happened in our life time. We will certainly stay tuned. No?
I have been thinking about this frequently over the past few months. Our society is forgetting the horrors of Nazi, Russian and Japanese concentration camps during WWII. The United States cannot participate in those atrocities and we the people must stand up against the immorality and dehumanization that is occurring in our country.
Adding to the problem is that many, likely most, Americans do not know what a concentration camp is. Most know very little history. Many cannot read. We have been weakened by our failure to educate our population. It will get worse.
Moreover, as Prof. Snyder has pointed out over the years, concentration camps are zones of lawlessness; because the rule of law doesn't apply, there is no limit to the cruelty guards can use with impunity. I received Nikolaus Wachsmann's "KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps"(2016)—linked above in this essay—about a week ago. I haven't gotten to it yet because I'm trying to finish a few other books. But my understanding is that it is *the* most important work ever published on the concentration camp system in Germany.
Professor Snyder's book 'Black Earth' actually shows that the nazis' worst horrors occured in Poland and Czechoslovakia where there was no law at all. There were no death camps in Germany itself.
America is a nation of laws and people must continue to insist on their rights. Trump has lost 96% of lawsuits that have come to court, despite the craven actions of the conservative super-majority on the Supreme Court. There are over 300 lawsuits in progress.
Let’s not forget Stalin in Ukraine. Anne Applebaum’s “Red Famine” details that horror. Footage from Palestine today loudly echoes it. History does not have to repeat itself.
One can always point to similarities between authoritarian leaders and their regimes because there's a playbook they all use. I am not sure thereafter whether such parallels (if that's the right word) serve any useful purpose. Better people than I have written about this but my own view is that Trump's obsession with retribution is more than matched by his desire for self-enrichment; and has there even been an authoritarian leader who was such a colossal chump?
I'm afraid I can't agree with your interpretation of 'Black Earth.' You're right that there were no camps in Germany that were built for the purpose of killing people, though many died in these camps. As Prof. Snyder points out in 'Bloodlands,' the only concentration camps that were built specifically for the purpose of extermination were the Soviet POW camps. Now there were some Jews who were selected for labor, but he's quite clear that the Nazis' worst atrocities were committed in Belarus', and especially in Ukraine. Towards the end of the war, Hitler admitted that instead of murdering so many Ukrainians, he ought to have done what one of the people close to him had suggested early on, which was rather than killing Ukrainians, he could have gotten them on his side. After all, they did greet the Wehrmacht with bread and salt which, considering what they had endured under Stalin, made sense from their perspective.
None of which is to deny the Nazi atrocities committed in Czechoslovakia—more specifically Bohemia and Moravia—and Poland, or anywhere else, such as the Balkan Peninsula, but Ukraine lost about 40% of its population. As Prof. Snyder has stated publicly a number of times, Ukraine was the most dangerous place in the world after June 22, 1941; it lost more people both in relative and absolute terms, than any country in the world during that war.
My point was that the professor's thesis is that places without a system of law was where the nazis could operate with impunity. America is not such a place.
I disagree completely. I believe America is fertile ground for such a thing, exactly because it has a rigged criminal Justice system. It is rigged against black and brown people, yes, but foremost it is rigged against the poor. In America, it’s almost a crime in itself if you’re poor. Republicans hate people who have no money, they e demonized them forever. And because they’re so useless, they have found a way to profit from their bodies, as dystopian as that sounds, and is. Don’t forget that the prisons are for profit, GEO Group Inc trades on the stock exchange and owns about 80,000 beds at 99 facilities, including prisons and immigrant detention facilities. Their stock has soared over the past year.
German camps were dedicated to “death by work.” My father survived one of those. Prisoners there were breaking up rocks all day, supposedly for an underground munitions factory. The commercial beneficiary of that camp and many others was an infrastructure corporation (ironically) named Organisation Todt. In German, “Todt” means death.
But wait… Didn't the Supreme Court rule last week that executive orders can’t be stopped or paused anymore by a single judge, or something to that effect?
They placed restrictions on nationwide injunctions but allowed class action certifications. Many lawyers have already filed applications. It was an absurd decision that because of Trump's arbitrary actions will over-burden the court system and leave a patchwork of legal rights in different states and vast uncertainty for anyone affected.
I’m thinking that us older Boomers and perhaps our children, know anything much about the Second World War or the horrors of the German death camps and doubt that anyone younger knows anything at all about the subject except the dates of when the war happened. Out of the millions of us who have lived in the States, how many have been through the Holocaust Museum in Washington? I have but my sons haven’t. It is, after all like touring a house of horrors, and who wants to do that when there are so many other things to do and see there? So, no. I doubt seriously that there are that many who have any meaningful way of knowing much about what happened during the German occupation and the pogroms that took place. So much of that is “ancient” history to the younger generations and even though they grew up in the Information Age, that kind of information is of interest only if one is doing advanced studies in history.
I was 10 or 11 years old when I found the collection of LIFE and LOOK magazines that my grandparents had kept all during the war. I remember the pictures of the liberation; the haunted faces of those who got liberated as well as the piles of bodies that had hastily been shot and only partially buried before the Germans departed their “camps”. I remember the pictures of the ovens and all the remnants of those who lost their lives in them because they had been ordered to strip down in order to “shower”. I also remember what the beaten, upside down corpse of Benito Mussolini looked like after his citizens got through with him as well. I’m almost 80 now but I’ll never forget what I saw then. We forget our human history at our peril because we will always repeat it. After all, that’s what we’ve always done. When will we ever learn?
I think the average student of the past two generations have never been taught the hard things like concentration camps. They also lack historical information that is pertinent to many to truly be informed and educated. Too many parents interfere with the content of education and so their children grow up uneducated and uninformed. Now we have the uneducated and misinformed leading our government and institutions of learning. I think to run for a school board position, he/she should be asked what 3 books have you read in the past year? Voters should take note as to quality of information the applicant is seeking. Is it entertainment or knowledge? As long as the pay for teachers remain extremely low, we will never attract quality teachers to our school systems. There are many problems within the education system. Lack of good teachers, lack of funding to pay for quality teachers, ignorant people elected to school boards, even the inane inability to remove lead from the water in many schools! The list is endless.
Agree with you about the many problems in K-12 public education, but not that they have never been taught the hard things like concentration camps.
In my state, CA, 10th-grade students are required to analyze the causes and consequences of World War II, including "the Nazi policy of pursuing racial purity, especially against the European Jews; its transformation into the Final Solution; and the Holocaust that resulted in the murder of six million Jewish civilians." I'm sure every other state has a similar requirement.
In our middle school library, we had an entire section of books related to the Holocaust, many of them firsthand accounts of survivors' experiences. I was amazed at how many 7th and 8th graders at my school were interested in books about WWII.
They've been taught, for decades. Does this knowledge matter to them in their lives as adults? For the most part, no. But that is not the failure of the educational system. That's something else, something to do with our social values and what technology has done to social groups.
Happened to us in Montgomery County, Maryland. The Supreme Court sided with the narrow minded uninformed, much like themselves. SCOTUS keeps ruling on their religious view, not for the people by the people. As it happens we’re a very blue county, and it’s a very wide world.
Do they not learn anything about it at school? My kids didn't get graphic detail, but they were certainly aware of the Holocaust. Maybe it's different in the UK.
What thawed out from a hard winter at Valley Forge turned out to be men of steel filled with resolve. It was one bad winter. We are there again. We know what to do. Wear them down. Wear them out. Vote’m Out! Block the concentration camps. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/concentration-camping?r=3m1bs
I would strongly discourage self-soothing with the idea of the midterm elections. Our dear elected Democrats are doing that right now and it’s clouding their thinking. There won’t be any midterms. Not real ones. Anyone thinking that is fooling themselves. So far only Chris Murphy seems to have admitted this publicly.
You are so wrong. All House representatives are out of a job when their term ends. The current House of Representatives term, which is the 119th Congress, concludes on January 3, 2027. This is the end of the second session of the 119th Congress. Members of the House are elected for two-year terms, and the 120th Congress will begin on that same date. You can either help build our platform or sink the ship. What do you think you are doing?
She's clearly about sinking the ship. Then, when it goes down, she gets to say "I toldja' so." I don't know why these nihilists subscribe. Only to find a place to shout their nihilism.
Are you talking about me? I’m right here. You can talk to me directly. Don’t act like this is your private little club that I just stumbled into to spoil your cozy tea party and ruffle your doilies.
I have a question for you though: Do you even know what you’re subscribed to? Do you know Timothy Snyder and his work? I get the feeling you’re implying that all we got to do is wait for next year’s election and everything will turn out all right again. You’re leaving out the tiny little detail that this is a complete takeover of the government that we’re witnessing here, in real time, and I don’t think future fair elections are part of those people’s plans.
Yes, I was talking about you. And yes, it was snarky of me not to speak to you directly. I apologize for that.
I don’t know what I have said that would imply I think all we’ve got to do is wait for the midterms. To be clear, this is what I think about the midterms:
The midterms is all we have left to stop Trump’s destruction of our constitutional order. We need to do everything we can to support the Dems in taking control of the House. That includes doing everything we can to assure that the midterm elections are free and fair. That is a lot of work.
Thank you. We need this kind of clarity. We need to know HOW to refuse to obey in advance.
There's a book, "Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed," about a village in France that sheltered Jews. They started with small things, like refusing to give Nazi salutes. They knew that small acts of obedience (or disobedience!) will be followed by larger ones.
I met a man (In Ukraine) who had rescued a Jewish prisoner unexpectedly. He was just a young teen at the time. The Nazis were marching a bunch of prisoners to their death. He was nearby and overcome with horror. When the guard wasn't looking he grabbed a prisoner and pulled him off the road. And to his parents' house. They were frightened. But hid him in the attic and kept him alive until the end of the war. He said "I don't deserve credit. I was just a human being."
Love this. This is the theme in all I see in the decline of our democracy: The essential conflict we have is whether all men are created equal or not. If you recognize the dignity of each human being, then yes, they are. If you don't, if you fear the Other and the loss of your place in line for the American Dream you think they've caused (see Arlie Russell Hochschild's "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right" - https://thenewpress.org/books/strangers-in-their-own-land/), they aren't. Dehumanizing the out-group is a feature of all authoritarian regimes and the foundation of all genocides.
I never understood that those who subscribe to "all men (persons) are created equal" was such a minority.
Wow. I’ve noticed from stories like this that the people who showed courage in those extreme situations of life and death tend to be quite humble about it. Thank you for sharing this. We can only hope to be anywhere near this heroic when called upon…
Another thing to know about Le Chambon is that the villages (there were a number) had a track record of activism/resistance--as Huguenots, Quakers, Socialists, Communists, and other groups. So, as one of the leaders said, "we were habitue" (used to it). In general, activism leads to more activism, just as passivity escalates passivity. As I say to my students, "an activist in motion tends to stay in motion."
When I saw Dr. Snyder's headline, I assumed that was the next step in the illegal rendition process-shipping folks to third world countries where they'd be put to work for the country imprisoning these people. The future you describe is even more horrifying. I wanted to shout, that this can't happen here, but I only had to remember what has already transpired, a long list of human rights and civil rights abuses enthusiastically embraced by the Justice Department, carried out by ICE, and often given the cloak of legality by the Supreme Court. So who will stop this? It's up to us; and I hope I have the courage to resist; I can't ignore what's going on.
I have just signed up for “No Kings Mobilize” One Million Rising online event in order to learn how to organize and effectively protest. I cannot sit back and do nothing.
Last night in Iowa, Trump said out loud what he hasn’t said directly, “I hate the Democrats, I really HATE the Democrats”. This will be his new mantra in the escalation against the majority of Americans.
Also, he has threatened to deport Zohran Mamdani, calling him a communist and a threat to national security. I believe he is in grave danger, I really do. DT throws out these floaters, testing the water to see how far he can go. Will there be immediate pushback or just shrugs.
He’s also putting the infrastructure in place at the FBI. I do think that he will start targeting his high profile enemies (Jan6 committee, investigators). The disgraced Jan6 insurrection supporter and disgraced attorney Ed Martin, hired another disgraced and rabidly pro “kill the cops” insurrectionists last week. This is where we are at.
Do you know if anyone is keeping track of these hires? The building up of the American Gestapo? We knew when he pardoned them en masse that he had a ready army of 1500.
Proportion of pushbacks to shrugs? Who knows? First, people need to know what is happening before they are ready to push back.
It is really hard, especially for people who work and raise children, unlike old biddies like me with time to be writing this. It’s also because there’s always the latest shiny object, like bombs to Iran nuclear facilities, Trump’s boasts, his boasts are debunked, leakers must be found, etc.
We must learn how to neutralize Trump’s masterful distractions.
Reading news makes me sad, motivated, creative, determined.
But this awakens something different in me. In the abstract, I don't want to blame his followers for following him. Yet when I witness with my own eyes the gleeful audience on full view behind him, the full evidence of their adoration and capitulation, my heart goes into overdrive, and I'm hit with a visceral anger, almost paralyzing.
Not sure why you don't want to blame his followers for following him and their glee at his expressions of hatred. Maybe you mean you want to understand them? I can recommend many good sources on this, if you're interested.
Hitler first called them “protective custody camps”, “labor camps”, and “ reeducation camps.
Here in the US, we’ve gone from calling them "federal migrant shelters" or "detainment facilities" to “detention centers” and now “Alligator Alcatraz”. All of them, Britain’s camps in South Africa during the Boer War, the Spanish in Cuba, the millions killed in Russian camps in Siberia, the Nazi camps. They were and are all “concentration camps.” Using the correct term does not minimize the Holocaust.
We must not wait for the media to call them concentration camps. We must use those horrific two words now and over and over again to refer to the mass detention of human beings without trial. Words do have power.
Yes!! Thank you for saying that. Words absolutely have power, in fact, Trump himself is nothing without his words. I keep thinking of him as a giant malignant motormouth, it’s an organ through which he has achieved everything in his life. He is a master manipulator. And using the correct term does not diminish the Holocaust. You know I have often wondered if being overly precious about using these awful terms from that dark time in our modern awful times hasn’t perhaps backfired in some way.
Yes Marguerite I agree. Let's not forget that this is the same person who banned approx 17 words in his first weeks in office. As ineloquent a speaker as he is, he does know the power of language. If masses started using "concentration camps" it would beyond infuriate him. And his banning the word just can't be done - once the proverbial cat is out of the bag. Again, the power of the public's language!Thank you for your comment.
I’m thinking we need to tie Trumps name to these camps, so it follows him into history. I am partial to Donnie’s Death Camps, but we’re not there yet? I guess we wait until an infectious disease or insanitary conditions kill a bunch of people? Until some people rebel and get shot?
And half of them haven’t done anything wrong, and they know it.
Reminds me of this clip I saw, two ICE agents were arresting a man in front of his home. Another ICE agent said, “Wait, that’s the wrong guy.” And the other one:”Let’s take him anyway.”
Last night I protested with 2 others in advance of a “family friendly” fireworks event. Many passersby honked, gave thumbs up, and waved in support of the resistance. Many were youngish white men. Those who screamed obscenities were ALL young and older white men, a couple of whom shouted with laughter “losers” as if this is entertainment with wins and losses. That’s how some may have been conditioned now. Thinking about that, I reflected on how the Pro-Democracy side views what happens with a Bill or decision by a court. Mostly, it’s not framed as a “win” per se, rather it’s framed in terms of positive impact on people ie. People will be able to keep their health care or their parents will be able to continue with home healthcare or children won’t starve. MAGA has been conditioned to see outcomes in the frame of UFC fighting or NASCAR. And now, the White House will be turned into UFC fights and other violence leaning entertainment.
I wonder about those passersby at the protest. Everywhere there are protests there are now emboldened young, white men, who are captured by the violence and the rhetoric of MAGA. Will these be those ’new hires’ for the concentration camps that will be spread across the country? My god.
Think the unthinkable. That is what the enemy is doing right now. You have just seen how quickly they can operate. Today, July 4, they celebrate another victory.
Tomorrow a new slavery begins in full force. Fight it any way you can. In sight and out of sight. Plan today, act tomorrow and every day after that. We have the numbers on our side.
Sadly, I had thought about this scenerio just yesterday, particularly related to agricultural and food processing workers. ICE nabs them out of the fields, detains them in one of these prison camps, employers don't have the work force to "feed the nation", ICE/HS whines because it is costing so much to feed/shelter the internees, cites "national security threat" to our food systems, forces prisoners to work.
It's a no brainer. I'm sure it's been part of the plan all along. You could see it coming a mile away. ICE rounds up all the foreigners it can for one reason or another initiate deportation proceeding against them and the places them in camps. They don't have to be illegally present. Its a dragnet. Anyone they can or have special reason to. Meanwhile Erik Trump or Jared Kushner get together with their wealthy friends and form a temporary worker company. Perfectly legit. They hire people out to farmers, meatpacking companies, production facilities, any concern with unmet requires for short term unskilled or semi skilled labor. Highway construction workers. Flaggers. They agree to handle all the bookkeeping, payroll, legalities, insurance, recruitment, accomodations, you name it. They buy low and sell high. They buy from ICE. People arrested are given a choice. Immediate deportation, confinement in a prison camp, or parole to go work from Trump Manpower Services. At a work camp. Or in company housing. Or a cheap motel. For slave wages.
Simple. You know this is in the works because it is just too good an opportunity for team Trump to pass up. And it is as he would say "beautiful". Because this way he pacifies his corporate donors in the farm belt, and service industries, and their politicians, who will otherwise be screaming bloody murder when their facilities are raided.
The other implication of the huge amount of money going to ICE in the budget is that T doesn’t have to use the military to intimidate Americans, the vast increase in masked, anonymous, gun-wielding militia sadists gives him so much more scope for terrorizing Americans for all sorts of reasons not limited to immigrants
ICE is the Trump equivalent of Hitler’s brown shirts. They act outside the law, with impunity, hiding their identity, and without any semblance of due process.
GESTAPO
" work shall set you free"
Gosh, I forget... where's that from? (I'm not alone in my forgetting)
Does that mean we can look forward to a "Night of the Long Knives," a purge of those American brown shirts because of Trump's insecurity as well as his history of dumping people after he has used them.
After the brown shirts come the kristi gnomes...
Look at the size of the budget for DHS, ICE and Border Patrol. Biggest "police force" in the U.S. Can they get out of control? Possibly. But the funding and being under Secretary Noem's direction ultimately, suggests that if they go rogue, Trump won't be able to stop them.
I woudn't count on it. Trump has just sent 200 marines to Florida to help ICE. Using the military to enforce his policies is one of the few remaining hurdles he faces and don't be surprised if he wants it removed from his path to glory.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/200-marines-florida-ice/story?id=123466361
But will he actually need the military at all? From what I saw, $150 billion in the budget bill are allocated for more ICE and facilities. Which makes ICE larger than other countries’ military.
ICE has around 20,000 agents with about 6,000 on deportation. The Bill allocates around $29bn for training, recruitment and retention of agents. I don't think they are likely to increase to the level of any G7 country's army. Most of the rest of the money is going towards the border wall and detention facilities (around $45bn apiece). Some of my figures might need updating, but you get the point. Not in any wingnut's fever dream will they have enough people to arrest, detain and deport 11 million undocumented migrants. That's why Trump is demanding support from the state police and the National Guard - and, of course, the military. The whole enterprise has been badly thought through and incompetently implemented and that's why it's been bogged down in the courts.
I keep reminding myself that cruelty isn’t just the point for them, it’s the whole deal. That and intimidation.
Every one of Trump’s schemes is a jerry-rigged Rube Goldberg contraption, held together mostly with fear, duct tape and pissy bravado — ghastly, half-assed schemes of illegality, incoherence and arrogance.
I realize that’s no consolation to the family of the grandmother just abducted from her front yard as she was gathering figs, stuffed into an unmarked van and carted off like luggage to God knows where. But it’s a reminder to me that these people have no idea how to run a drug store, much less a GULag system. We must not lose sight of their gobsmacking incompetence. It will help us plan the Resistance all that much better.
People are already dying because of these horrid policies. Last year, 12 people died in ICE detention centres; this year, already 11 people have died. The problems faced by both staff and inmates at the so-called Alligator Alcatraz - the summer heat, mosquitoes, and hurricanes - will be formidable. It's reported to have been built to withstand category 2 hurricanes but that's doubtful since it went up in only eight days.
The ridiculous Nancy Mace posted this on Twitter/X:
https://x.com/NancyMace/status/1940075486891159992
The disastrous Texas floods shows that the administration had better get back to doing its proper job of governing the country very soon if more such calamaties are to be avoided.
"Need," Marguerite, differs for sane people and for criminals and mad men.
The criminal in the White House has all his life needed criminality. Cheating. Raping. Lying. Dumping on contractors.
And he's also always needed a larger and larger stage to perform his stunts (he actually thinks he can dance!).
Sorry for all the decent teachers who tune in here, but America has 77 million who voted for this criminality, the now-massively-upped cruelties to immigrants, the end to saving lives around the world, the economic idiocy of killing all U.S. green energy, Medicaid cuts, tax cuts for the rich to grow the inequality gap, food for poor kids, cuts to scientific and medical research, mixed with his "bing-bing-boing-bong" and double-jerking-off two imaginary guys at the same time.
We’ve already seen isolated incidents of just that happening.
Yes, Marie, he's got his police state. Now additionally congressionally amply funded.
The U.S. is now, officially, as Timothy Snyder states here: "fascist dehumanization on a grand scale," "a fascist order . . . normalizing dehumanization."
I regret he attributes this simply to the economics of our now-long-entrenched neoliberal systematized greed.
Let's remember, please, that the far-right foundations of the 1971 Powell memo first targeted the schools. First removed humanities. Made all higher ed vastly-more-expensive, neutered silos. Made all K-12 captive to the testers.
And what's the first and final rule of testing, of dehumanization? That only authorities ask the questions. The rest of us reduce to only one correct answer from their A)-B)-C)-D).
See: Stochastic violence
He's sent Marines to Florida.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK-oE4HSUj8
Yup.
So who is going to stop the madness? Trump has the momentum. The rest are without direction. Running around shouting, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" And the sky actually is falling. The props against it have failed. Who is going to stop the madness?
Individuals in mass are going to stop this. There are groups organizing protests around the country. It’s a small thing to attend and carry a sign that calls this out, like the #NoKings protest on Trump’s birthday. Likewise attend virtual meetings like the John Lewis Good trouble webinars that are working against voter suppression. Finally protest with your wallet, just like the Canadians. Help organize lists of companies that are doing the right thing starting with those who push back against Trump’s war on DEI. (Netflix, Costco). There needs to be a cost for those companies that are supporting the administration like AirBnb, Amazon, Meta…If you can afford it, send money to help Ukraine buy drones, outfit trucks, or rehab wounded soldiers and citizens. We do not need to wait for an elected representative to act for us, but support those who are pushing back like Panetta, Booker, Jeffries.
Have just signed up for webinars to learn how to do more. Thank you for the reminder to support Ukraine, which I have been doing all along. United 24 is a good place to start, and I also recommend Richard Woodruff’s Frontline Kitchen who has a small army of volunteers building drones, and otherwise assisting those at the front.
Excellent references for where to get involved. I wish somebody with the reach Tim has would devote an entire page on their site of all of the efforts everywhere going on and how to support them.
Because I don't have the means, Suzy. I'm a retiree, so I have the time, but not the drive to pursue it - collecting, verifying and keeping the sites updated, finding the platform, etc. without knowing it will end up being worth my time. If I were younger, sure I'd make that investment.
I would certainly assist anyone taking the lead to the extent that I can.
Then you can write or make phone calls to fight back, Sandy. We are all holding onto our wallets. I urge you to go to www.5calls.org. They have an app you can download. Each day, you can make phone calls on various issues. It gives you a sense of contributing to the fight.
DeSantis said the next "Alcatraz" is being built near Jacksonville FL. Let's get the pledge cards, not to use that labor, to the local employers:
Amazon distribution center; US Navy (civilians and civilian contractors); Duval County Public Schools and the school bus drivers; City of Jacksonville Parks Department; State of Florida Department of Transportation; JaxPort and its tenants (including a federal facility which shrink-wraps all military equipment heading to the Middle East); airport baggage handlers; garbage collection; major hospitals including the Mayo Clinic for laundry, cleaning, groundskeeping; several call center operators including the Wall Street Journal and national banks.
I'm here in Jax if you have questions, need housing, other.
I would like to suggest to organize a day ( just one day) when millions of Americans will not use Amazon or Facebook or any other corporation supporting Trump.
They understand only Profit, so let’s hurt them there.
Amazon Prime Day is July 8-11. People wait for it and look forward to it. Amazon has special deals and profits greatly.
WHAT IF NOBODY SHOWED UP THIS YEAR? #BOYCOTTPRIMEDAY
I am pretty certain Move On and Indivisible has proposed this to happen.
Not working.
It may have a small impact individually but it is noticed by shareholders and corporations. Look at Tesla and Target. They have been hurt by the protests already. When did you last hear that someone was planning to buy a Tesla? Look at Tesla sales in Canada and Europe. People are having an effect.
Tesla has been hammered!
The trump cultists have been in the works for decades. It wasn’t working for them until now. Our resistance will take a moment. (Hope you voted)
Actually, you are, or you should be. If you think those of us working to defend democracy are "without direction," you have not been paying attention. Get off your high horse and commit to doing whatever you can do, wherever you are, with whatever you have. You have nothing to lose but your cynicism.
Completely agree.
If I couldn't be cynical I wouldn't be worth having around. Speaking of cynical, how's this for cynical: "How to make things the way they ought to be without killing anybody or waiting for the right people to die is inconceivable."
Killing people doesn't help. If I thought it did, I would start with myself.
You are right, of course. In this swirl of madness changing minds enough to work together to make things as they ought to be is "like dying." It certainly requires a transformation of what is important, of what matters most and of what is called for, here, now. We don't literally kill anyone, but everyone dies, everyone becomes someone else--who we all ought to be, in order to do things as they ought to be done. This is the Great Reversal, and will take a lot of sitting silently, empty of everything, open to everything in order to grow up against our will again, and again. This is what needs to happen. It is actually a great revival I'm talking about in a deeply religious sense of the term. A new becoming. A new way of being together as one in the deepest, truest possible way. No?
Yes. You are onto something: change (and resistance to it) is about who we are. For change and even dialogue we must change our idea about ourselves and each other.
For me at this point in my life (Today is my 81st July 5th), everything flows from and leads to silence where we know what is called for in each situation as it arises and are equipped to do it where, when and how it is called for, with no plan, no strategy, no opinion, no fear, no desire, nothing to gain, nothing to lose in a neti-neti (Not this and not not-this) kind of way. For what, we do not know, or care. Just meeting the moment as the moment needs to be met is what we have to offer the world, trusting it is exactly what the world needs. And not knowing if we are right. When you are up for it, I would like to hear more about starting with killing yourself.
If it doesn’t preserve our liberal democracy, I’m not interested. I have already accepted that we might not.
Being cynical is all you have to offer?
It is the closest thing to Truth there is!
With his hugely unpopular mega-bill, Trump has given the Democrats something they seemed unable to achieve on their own: a unifying message for the midterms. All the different factions in that party can finally unite on one thing: opposition to the bill. The bill cynically but cleverly front-loads the tax cuts but delays the spending cuts so that either they take effect after the midterm elections or too late in 2028 for their impact to be felt before the next national election. The job for the Democrats then is to tell people what the bill contains and to do this relentlessly and comprehensively (because poor people in red states are likely to be hardest hit). Between now and then the only ways to resist are by civil disobedience and protests.
I believe that a Trump administration will always contain the seeds of its own destruction. In 2020 he became the first president since 1932 to lose the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives in a single term. He's surrounded himself with sycophants who have already shown that they are incompetent. He's firing all the competent people and replacing them with stooges. The first real crisis he encounters will be a disaster for the administration. We saw that in his first term with his chaotic response to the pandemic which led to the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.
MAGA won. We lost. The whole world is fucked. They are steamrolling everything in sight. Now it is the dehumanization of “the Democrats” as they move toward a one-party system for all intents and purposes. There will be bodies in the streets. Do whatever you need to do to survive. Above all — get used to it. Fascism has arrived.
They have been dehumanizing Democrats for decades already. It has worked well enough to elect 45/47 and all of the Republicans in Congress.
Get used to it? Never. Vigilant always.
I saw T say on tv that he hates Democrats. Can u f-ing believe a president of the entire country saying he hates half of us
If it makes you feel any better, he seems to hate everyone. No one stays on his good side for long, and he has thrown everyone under the bus, whether they voted for him or not. A million people died of Covid on his last term, many of them were devout MAGA followers. He may say he hates Democrats now, but he also said he thinks Republicans are stupid.
Hi Susan,
Can you remember when / where he said this? This is evidence. I'd like to "put it in a file.' Thx!
"But all of the things that we’ve given, and (the Dems) wouldn’t vote. Only because they hate Trump. But I hate them, too. You know that? I really do, I hate them. I cannot stand them, because I really believe they hate our country, you want to know the truth” (https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5385217-trump-on-democrats-who-voted-against-gop-megabill-i-hate-them/).
He hates them because they hate him. They started it.
What a juvenile.
“All the things we’ve given?” Wtf??? All whiplash and permanent anxiety? The drive to emigrate to greener pastures? The need for BP meds?
Thx for finding that!
It was on the news last night. Maybe NBC
I found it. Thanks!
Amen, Carol.
If you mean take care of yourself and develop a plan, yes. But understand that others need help and support. You can be against more than one Trump edict that impacts others as well. His war on journalists, science, immigrants, voter suppression, regulation, affects us all. You don’t have to be a single issue voter. That is how the GOP divided us during the last election. How many people didn’t vote because they were angry at the Dems on a single issue (Gaza, abortion, immigration, egg prices…)? Enough that it made a difference in the election.
Voting? We won’t see that again for a while. At least not in any meaningful sense.
Pew Research published post-election polling data indicating that if all eligible voters HAD voted, Trump’s margin of victory over Harris would have been greater. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/behind-trumps-2024-victory-a-more-racially-and-ethnically-diverse-voter-coalition/
Thanks for the article, very informative. Did people know what they were getting, or were they following Trump’s “what do you have to lose” prompt? I think many people who voted for Trump wanted the MAGA agenda, as long as it didn’t hurt them. They are now seeing an administration that doesn’t follow the law, and will weaken our country at home and internationally. Did they knowingly vote to elect a dictator? Most would say No, they voted to improve their lives. Dems have to keep pushing the narrative that we are a country of 200 years of laws. The constitution has the emoluments clause, it needs to be enforced.
That makes total sense because people who don't bother to vote believe either" it's all rigged" or "their vote doesn't matter" or "the Jews . . . ". Nihilists, all of them. If they were forced to choose, of course they'd choose Trump.
@Mary Margaret Perez & Sandy G:
I think it’s important to bear in mind that
1) Propaganda works! Telling big lies over and over and never backing down WORKS! Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels knew that. Roy Cohn knew that and taught it to Trump;
2) The traditional main-stream media practices real journalism: double confirmation, vetting sources, fact-checking, etc. That’s time consuming, requires ethical integrity, and is expensive. There was a reason Trump’s early campaign appearances in 2016 took level aim at the MSM as “the enemy of the people;
3) Most people nowadays get their news from social media feeds and hence are being passively propagandized; and
4) See 1) above…
KEEP fighting - until it makes you give up fascism has not won. Fight the part of your mind that wants to be cynical and give up. Take action. Get off the computer into the community and be a helper!
Well said, Laura!
You get a D- from me. D for "defeatist" - someone who anticipates failure and accepts defeat without a struggle, often characterized by a negative and pessimistic outlook. Not sure why you are here except to get agreement from other defeatists.
I agree with the sentiment but not your conclusion. We can’t get used to it. Thats exactly what they want. And WE cannot want to give it to them.
Our job is to thwart the hell out of all of their grotesque efforts.
And a big part of that is to recognize that we’re not each others’ enemies. They’re using Divide and Conquer and even Democrats are playing right into their hands. But in reality THEY are the only enemy we got.
I seriously doubt they "won". But we're screwed nonetheless.
Don’t give up! Recovery is possible!
I disagree about what the rest are doing. To characterize the No Kings protests and the John Lewis (see Mary's comment below) webinars as running around shouting is completely unfair. Have you participated in your community and will you continue to participate?
I agree with Mary - Individuals in mass are going to stop this.
"...the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity" -- Yates, The Second Coming.
Yeats
Oops! Yeats. :-) Thank you!
You are. WE ARE!
One thing you can do is write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper informing citizens of what is about to happen. Most people, especially older folks who remember WWII, would be appalled with labor camps in this country.
All of us must step up
You and I
Beautifully stated! "We are all we have-we are all we need!" You and I and everyone else here, and all of those not here! Nicely done! And I take it that what we will do about it, to stop.it (the madness) is what is ours to do, what we do best, day in and day out--without caring what our chances are. Just doing what we do best and enjoy doing most for nothing beyond the joy of doing it and the satisfaction of having done it, in the service of what is called for in each situation as it arises every day for the rest of our lives, no matter what. Offering one another our good company as encouragement and communal presence and mutual appreciation for jobs well done! "The game is on!"
Yes! Do what you can, whenever you can, with whatever you have, wherever you are. Local community level actions are often where real solid resistance, change and preparedness take place. It's also the best place to grow resilience in the face of climate change, civil unrest, and other threats from lack of healthcare to food insecurity.
I have nursed a recent realization into being: God is a psychic reality, not a spiritual being. Which means, of course, that we are God. We bring God to life, or not, in the way we live. We don't "believe," we DO! Or do-not. And it is not great and grand things that we need to do. It is "a cup of cold water" kind of things, daily, all of the time, as God would do it, if God were real, and here, now. Just doing here, now right. The way here, now, needs to be done, is all it takes to raise Jesus from the dead again. Jesus got it about God, and did it. No?
It looks like Elon Musk could be the one who stops the madness, or, at least diverts and dilutes the madness. Who saw that coming? And how it plays out could be the most interesting thing that has happened in our life time. We will certainly stay tuned. No?
Join Indivisible, Jim Dollar. People are doing something! Join them. There are other organizations too
I have been thinking about this frequently over the past few months. Our society is forgetting the horrors of Nazi, Russian and Japanese concentration camps during WWII. The United States cannot participate in those atrocities and we the people must stand up against the immorality and dehumanization that is occurring in our country.
Adding to the problem is that many, likely most, Americans do not know what a concentration camp is. Most know very little history. Many cannot read. We have been weakened by our failure to educate our population. It will get worse.
Moreover, as Prof. Snyder has pointed out over the years, concentration camps are zones of lawlessness; because the rule of law doesn't apply, there is no limit to the cruelty guards can use with impunity. I received Nikolaus Wachsmann's "KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps"(2016)—linked above in this essay—about a week ago. I haven't gotten to it yet because I'm trying to finish a few other books. But my understanding is that it is *the* most important work ever published on the concentration camp system in Germany.
Professor Snyder's book 'Black Earth' actually shows that the nazis' worst horrors occured in Poland and Czechoslovakia where there was no law at all. There were no death camps in Germany itself.
America is a nation of laws and people must continue to insist on their rights. Trump has lost 96% of lawsuits that have come to court, despite the craven actions of the conservative super-majority on the Supreme Court. There are over 300 lawsuits in progress.
https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/
Let’s not forget Stalin in Ukraine. Anne Applebaum’s “Red Famine” details that horror. Footage from Palestine today loudly echoes it. History does not have to repeat itself.
One can always point to similarities between authoritarian leaders and their regimes because there's a playbook they all use. I am not sure thereafter whether such parallels (if that's the right word) serve any useful purpose. Better people than I have written about this but my own view is that Trump's obsession with retribution is more than matched by his desire for self-enrichment; and has there even been an authoritarian leader who was such a colossal chump?
https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/6-disturbing-parallels-between-stalin-and-trump
Good link. Thanks.
I'm afraid I can't agree with your interpretation of 'Black Earth.' You're right that there were no camps in Germany that were built for the purpose of killing people, though many died in these camps. As Prof. Snyder points out in 'Bloodlands,' the only concentration camps that were built specifically for the purpose of extermination were the Soviet POW camps. Now there were some Jews who were selected for labor, but he's quite clear that the Nazis' worst atrocities were committed in Belarus', and especially in Ukraine. Towards the end of the war, Hitler admitted that instead of murdering so many Ukrainians, he ought to have done what one of the people close to him had suggested early on, which was rather than killing Ukrainians, he could have gotten them on his side. After all, they did greet the Wehrmacht with bread and salt which, considering what they had endured under Stalin, made sense from their perspective.
None of which is to deny the Nazi atrocities committed in Czechoslovakia—more specifically Bohemia and Moravia—and Poland, or anywhere else, such as the Balkan Peninsula, but Ukraine lost about 40% of its population. As Prof. Snyder has stated publicly a number of times, Ukraine was the most dangerous place in the world after June 22, 1941; it lost more people both in relative and absolute terms, than any country in the world during that war.
My point was that the professor's thesis is that places without a system of law was where the nazis could operate with impunity. America is not such a place.
I disagree completely. I believe America is fertile ground for such a thing, exactly because it has a rigged criminal Justice system. It is rigged against black and brown people, yes, but foremost it is rigged against the poor. In America, it’s almost a crime in itself if you’re poor. Republicans hate people who have no money, they e demonized them forever. And because they’re so useless, they have found a way to profit from their bodies, as dystopian as that sounds, and is. Don’t forget that the prisons are for profit, GEO Group Inc trades on the stock exchange and owns about 80,000 beds at 99 facilities, including prisons and immigrant detention facilities. Their stock has soared over the past year.
It didn’t used to be such a place. Not looking good now though.
German camps were dedicated to “death by work.” My father survived one of those. Prisoners there were breaking up rocks all day, supposedly for an underground munitions factory. The commercial beneficiary of that camp and many others was an infrastructure corporation (ironically) named Organisation Todt. In German, “Todt” means death.
🍀 Thank you for reporting this hellish fact and memory. 🍀
Was I contending that concentration camps in Germany in the 1930s were places one would go for a holiday?
Of course not. I just wanted to share the results of my 10-year deep dive into that period's history. 😏
But wait… Didn't the Supreme Court rule last week that executive orders can’t be stopped or paused anymore by a single judge, or something to that effect?
They placed restrictions on nationwide injunctions but allowed class action certifications. Many lawyers have already filed applications. It was an absurd decision that because of Trump's arbitrary actions will over-burden the court system and leave a patchwork of legal rights in different states and vast uncertainty for anyone affected.
I’m thinking that us older Boomers and perhaps our children, know anything much about the Second World War or the horrors of the German death camps and doubt that anyone younger knows anything at all about the subject except the dates of when the war happened. Out of the millions of us who have lived in the States, how many have been through the Holocaust Museum in Washington? I have but my sons haven’t. It is, after all like touring a house of horrors, and who wants to do that when there are so many other things to do and see there? So, no. I doubt seriously that there are that many who have any meaningful way of knowing much about what happened during the German occupation and the pogroms that took place. So much of that is “ancient” history to the younger generations and even though they grew up in the Information Age, that kind of information is of interest only if one is doing advanced studies in history.
I was 10 or 11 years old when I found the collection of LIFE and LOOK magazines that my grandparents had kept all during the war. I remember the pictures of the liberation; the haunted faces of those who got liberated as well as the piles of bodies that had hastily been shot and only partially buried before the Germans departed their “camps”. I remember the pictures of the ovens and all the remnants of those who lost their lives in them because they had been ordered to strip down in order to “shower”. I also remember what the beaten, upside down corpse of Benito Mussolini looked like after his citizens got through with him as well. I’m almost 80 now but I’ll never forget what I saw then. We forget our human history at our peril because we will always repeat it. After all, that’s what we’ve always done. When will we ever learn?
I think the average student of the past two generations have never been taught the hard things like concentration camps. They also lack historical information that is pertinent to many to truly be informed and educated. Too many parents interfere with the content of education and so their children grow up uneducated and uninformed. Now we have the uneducated and misinformed leading our government and institutions of learning. I think to run for a school board position, he/she should be asked what 3 books have you read in the past year? Voters should take note as to quality of information the applicant is seeking. Is it entertainment or knowledge? As long as the pay for teachers remain extremely low, we will never attract quality teachers to our school systems. There are many problems within the education system. Lack of good teachers, lack of funding to pay for quality teachers, ignorant people elected to school boards, even the inane inability to remove lead from the water in many schools! The list is endless.
Agree with you about the many problems in K-12 public education, but not that they have never been taught the hard things like concentration camps.
In my state, CA, 10th-grade students are required to analyze the causes and consequences of World War II, including "the Nazi policy of pursuing racial purity, especially against the European Jews; its transformation into the Final Solution; and the Holocaust that resulted in the murder of six million Jewish civilians." I'm sure every other state has a similar requirement.
In our middle school library, we had an entire section of books related to the Holocaust, many of them firsthand accounts of survivors' experiences. I was amazed at how many 7th and 8th graders at my school were interested in books about WWII.
They've been taught, for decades. Does this knowledge matter to them in their lives as adults? For the most part, no. But that is not the failure of the educational system. That's something else, something to do with our social values and what technology has done to social groups.
Happened to us in Montgomery County, Maryland. The Supreme Court sided with the narrow minded uninformed, much like themselves. SCOTUS keeps ruling on their religious view, not for the people by the people. As it happens we’re a very blue county, and it’s a very wide world.
Do they not learn anything about it at school? My kids didn't get graphic detail, but they were certainly aware of the Holocaust. Maybe it's different in the UK.
There are Tik Tok videos from a generation that was not alive during 9/11 who make videos mocking that event!
What thawed out from a hard winter at Valley Forge turned out to be men of steel filled with resolve. It was one bad winter. We are there again. We know what to do. Wear them down. Wear them out. Vote’m Out! Block the concentration camps. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/concentration-camping?r=3m1bs
I would strongly discourage self-soothing with the idea of the midterm elections. Our dear elected Democrats are doing that right now and it’s clouding their thinking. There won’t be any midterms. Not real ones. Anyone thinking that is fooling themselves. So far only Chris Murphy seems to have admitted this publicly.
You are so wrong. All House representatives are out of a job when their term ends. The current House of Representatives term, which is the 119th Congress, concludes on January 3, 2027. This is the end of the second session of the 119th Congress. Members of the House are elected for two-year terms, and the 120th Congress will begin on that same date. You can either help build our platform or sink the ship. What do you think you are doing?
Please check your dates. Did you write this before the last election in 2024?
Way to go Joyce. That was from the Wiki, I think. Elections on even years replace all House members. So the replacement is January 2027.
She's clearly about sinking the ship. Then, when it goes down, she gets to say "I toldja' so." I don't know why these nihilists subscribe. Only to find a place to shout their nihilism.
Are you talking about me? I’m right here. You can talk to me directly. Don’t act like this is your private little club that I just stumbled into to spoil your cozy tea party and ruffle your doilies.
I have a question for you though: Do you even know what you’re subscribed to? Do you know Timothy Snyder and his work? I get the feeling you’re implying that all we got to do is wait for next year’s election and everything will turn out all right again. You’re leaving out the tiny little detail that this is a complete takeover of the government that we’re witnessing here, in real time, and I don’t think future fair elections are part of those people’s plans.
Yes, I was talking about you. And yes, it was snarky of me not to speak to you directly. I apologize for that.
I don’t know what I have said that would imply I think all we’ve got to do is wait for the midterms. To be clear, this is what I think about the midterms:
The midterms is all we have left to stop Trump’s destruction of our constitutional order. We need to do everything we can to support the Dems in taking control of the House. That includes doing everything we can to assure that the midterm elections are free and fair. That is a lot of work.
What are you talking about? They’re working on getting re-elected. Re-elected for what? Giving speeches?
We need the Democratic Party to have something to offer voters. Otherwise its opposition to Trump won't have any weight.
You are so right. We must develop a platform that excites. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/forging-fate?r=3m1bs
“Save our institutions” doesn’t quite cut it. How about “Stay free or die?” Isn’t that even one of the state’s slogan? Maine, perhaps?
I will protest. I will run for county supervisor.
Amazing, Barbara. How can we support you??
Do It! That is great Barbara!!!!
Thank you. We need this kind of clarity. We need to know HOW to refuse to obey in advance.
There's a book, "Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed," about a village in France that sheltered Jews. They started with small things, like refusing to give Nazi salutes. They knew that small acts of obedience (or disobedience!) will be followed by larger ones.
I met a man (In Ukraine) who had rescued a Jewish prisoner unexpectedly. He was just a young teen at the time. The Nazis were marching a bunch of prisoners to their death. He was nearby and overcome with horror. When the guard wasn't looking he grabbed a prisoner and pulled him off the road. And to his parents' house. They were frightened. But hid him in the attic and kept him alive until the end of the war. He said "I don't deserve credit. I was just a human being."
These days, simple humanity deserves to be called out and praised.
Love this. This is the theme in all I see in the decline of our democracy: The essential conflict we have is whether all men are created equal or not. If you recognize the dignity of each human being, then yes, they are. If you don't, if you fear the Other and the loss of your place in line for the American Dream you think they've caused (see Arlie Russell Hochschild's "Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right" - https://thenewpress.org/books/strangers-in-their-own-land/), they aren't. Dehumanizing the out-group is a feature of all authoritarian regimes and the foundation of all genocides.
I never understood that those who subscribe to "all men (persons) are created equal" was such a minority.
Wow. I’ve noticed from stories like this that the people who showed courage in those extreme situations of life and death tend to be quite humble about it. Thank you for sharing this. We can only hope to be anywhere near this heroic when called upon…
Another thing to know about Le Chambon is that the villages (there were a number) had a track record of activism/resistance--as Huguenots, Quakers, Socialists, Communists, and other groups. So, as one of the leaders said, "we were habitue" (used to it). In general, activism leads to more activism, just as passivity escalates passivity. As I say to my students, "an activist in motion tends to stay in motion."
When I saw Dr. Snyder's headline, I assumed that was the next step in the illegal rendition process-shipping folks to third world countries where they'd be put to work for the country imprisoning these people. The future you describe is even more horrifying. I wanted to shout, that this can't happen here, but I only had to remember what has already transpired, a long list of human rights and civil rights abuses enthusiastically embraced by the Justice Department, carried out by ICE, and often given the cloak of legality by the Supreme Court. So who will stop this? It's up to us; and I hope I have the courage to resist; I can't ignore what's going on.
I have just signed up for “No Kings Mobilize” One Million Rising online event in order to learn how to organize and effectively protest. I cannot sit back and do nothing.
Thank you Professor Snyder, for all that you do.
Last night in Iowa, Trump said out loud what he hasn’t said directly, “I hate the Democrats, I really HATE the Democrats”. This will be his new mantra in the escalation against the majority of Americans.
For real? He said that? Do you have a clip?
Also, he has threatened to deport Zohran Mamdani, calling him a communist and a threat to national security. I believe he is in grave danger, I really do. DT throws out these floaters, testing the water to see how far he can go. Will there be immediate pushback or just shrugs.
He’s also putting the infrastructure in place at the FBI. I do think that he will start targeting his high profile enemies (Jan6 committee, investigators). The disgraced Jan6 insurrection supporter and disgraced attorney Ed Martin, hired another disgraced and rabidly pro “kill the cops” insurrectionists last week. This is where we are at.
Do you know if anyone is keeping track of these hires? The building up of the American Gestapo? We knew when he pardoned them en masse that he had a ready army of 1500.
Susan, the link provided by James Vander Poel to The Hill has the quote in it.
This was actually meant as a response to your previous post, just above.
Proportion of pushbacks to shrugs? Who knows? First, people need to know what is happening before they are ready to push back.
It is really hard, especially for people who work and raise children, unlike old biddies like me with time to be writing this. It’s also because there’s always the latest shiny object, like bombs to Iran nuclear facilities, Trump’s boasts, his boasts are debunked, leakers must be found, etc.
We must learn how to neutralize Trump’s masterful distractions.
https://youtu.be/CexZqxu-waQ?si=1krxaxEBVvyHK-xA
Thanks Susan.
Reading news makes me sad, motivated, creative, determined.
But this awakens something different in me. In the abstract, I don't want to blame his followers for following him. Yet when I witness with my own eyes the gleeful audience on full view behind him, the full evidence of their adoration and capitulation, my heart goes into overdrive, and I'm hit with a visceral anger, almost paralyzing.
Not sure why you don't want to blame his followers for following him and their glee at his expressions of hatred. Maybe you mean you want to understand them? I can recommend many good sources on this, if you're interested.
I think the people who go to those rallies are a special breed of awful. The average Trump voter would probably be embarrassed to be seen there.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5385038-trump-takes-big-beautiful-bill-victory-lap-in-iowa-5-takeaways/
Thank you. So sick to hear and read it.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5385217-trump-on-democrats-who-voted-against-gop-megabill-i-hate-them/
Yes,the real goal is a one party state,in which white evangelical Christians and their approved black/brown stooges have full rights.
Hitler first called them “protective custody camps”, “labor camps”, and “ reeducation camps.
Here in the US, we’ve gone from calling them "federal migrant shelters" or "detainment facilities" to “detention centers” and now “Alligator Alcatraz”. All of them, Britain’s camps in South Africa during the Boer War, the Spanish in Cuba, the millions killed in Russian camps in Siberia, the Nazi camps. They were and are all “concentration camps.” Using the correct term does not minimize the Holocaust.
We must not wait for the media to call them concentration camps. We must use those horrific two words now and over and over again to refer to the mass detention of human beings without trial. Words do have power.
Yes!! Thank you for saying that. Words absolutely have power, in fact, Trump himself is nothing without his words. I keep thinking of him as a giant malignant motormouth, it’s an organ through which he has achieved everything in his life. He is a master manipulator. And using the correct term does not diminish the Holocaust. You know I have often wondered if being overly precious about using these awful terms from that dark time in our modern awful times hasn’t perhaps backfired in some way.
Yes Marguerite I agree. Let's not forget that this is the same person who banned approx 17 words in his first weeks in office. As ineloquent a speaker as he is, he does know the power of language. If masses started using "concentration camps" it would beyond infuriate him. And his banning the word just can't be done - once the proverbial cat is out of the bag. Again, the power of the public's language!Thank you for your comment.
"a giant malignant motormouth" - OMG, YES!!! It cries out for an AI image.
I’m thinking we need to tie Trumps name to these camps, so it follows him into history. I am partial to Donnie’s Death Camps, but we’re not there yet? I guess we wait until an infectious disease or insanitary conditions kill a bunch of people? Until some people rebel and get shot?
The right name for this monstrosity is "American Gulag"!
The country is not aware that Trump’s ICE=Hitler’s Gestapo or Mussolini’s Brownshirts. A good idea for protest signs.
Already over 56,000 migrants are in detention (concentration) camps.
And half of them haven’t done anything wrong, and they know it.
Reminds me of this clip I saw, two ICE agents were arresting a man in front of his home. Another ICE agent said, “Wait, that’s the wrong guy.” And the other one:”Let’s take him anyway.”
And they did. They just took him.
Last night I protested with 2 others in advance of a “family friendly” fireworks event. Many passersby honked, gave thumbs up, and waved in support of the resistance. Many were youngish white men. Those who screamed obscenities were ALL young and older white men, a couple of whom shouted with laughter “losers” as if this is entertainment with wins and losses. That’s how some may have been conditioned now. Thinking about that, I reflected on how the Pro-Democracy side views what happens with a Bill or decision by a court. Mostly, it’s not framed as a “win” per se, rather it’s framed in terms of positive impact on people ie. People will be able to keep their health care or their parents will be able to continue with home healthcare or children won’t starve. MAGA has been conditioned to see outcomes in the frame of UFC fighting or NASCAR. And now, the White House will be turned into UFC fights and other violence leaning entertainment.
I wonder about those passersby at the protest. Everywhere there are protests there are now emboldened young, white men, who are captured by the violence and the rhetoric of MAGA. Will these be those ’new hires’ for the concentration camps that will be spread across the country? My god.
UFC fights on the White House grounds, gladiators in the Roman Coliseum, same idea. Bread and circuses.
Start now!! Do not wait for "2026 elections".
Think the unthinkable. That is what the enemy is doing right now. You have just seen how quickly they can operate. Today, July 4, they celebrate another victory.
Tomorrow a new slavery begins in full force. Fight it any way you can. In sight and out of sight. Plan today, act tomorrow and every day after that. We have the numbers on our side.
How to do that? First step, find a group. See https://indivisible.org/groups.
Let’s remember that Nazis at first gathered Jews in concentration camps with the idea of deporting them. Only
later were they made slaves or were murdered (the final solution) because they were too many and inconvenient to have around.
The brownshirts are tasting blood. The acceleration is everywhere.
Sadly, I had thought about this scenerio just yesterday, particularly related to agricultural and food processing workers. ICE nabs them out of the fields, detains them in one of these prison camps, employers don't have the work force to "feed the nation", ICE/HS whines because it is costing so much to feed/shelter the internees, cites "national security threat" to our food systems, forces prisoners to work.
It's a no brainer. I'm sure it's been part of the plan all along. You could see it coming a mile away. ICE rounds up all the foreigners it can for one reason or another initiate deportation proceeding against them and the places them in camps. They don't have to be illegally present. Its a dragnet. Anyone they can or have special reason to. Meanwhile Erik Trump or Jared Kushner get together with their wealthy friends and form a temporary worker company. Perfectly legit. They hire people out to farmers, meatpacking companies, production facilities, any concern with unmet requires for short term unskilled or semi skilled labor. Highway construction workers. Flaggers. They agree to handle all the bookkeeping, payroll, legalities, insurance, recruitment, accomodations, you name it. They buy low and sell high. They buy from ICE. People arrested are given a choice. Immediate deportation, confinement in a prison camp, or parole to go work from Trump Manpower Services. At a work camp. Or in company housing. Or a cheap motel. For slave wages.
Simple. You know this is in the works because it is just too good an opportunity for team Trump to pass up. And it is as he would say "beautiful". Because this way he pacifies his corporate donors in the farm belt, and service industries, and their politicians, who will otherwise be screaming bloody murder when their facilities are raided.
Slam dunk.
Perfectly reasonable, Tyler.