Unmarked Vans. Secret Lists. Public Denunciations. Our Police State Has Arrived.

[Loulit01]

Those of us who have lived in countries terrorized by a secret police force can’t shake a feeling of dreadful familiarity. “I never realized until this moment how much fear I carried with me from my childhood in Communist Romania,” another friend, the literary scholar Marianne Hirsch, told me. “Arrests were arbitrary and every time the doorbell rang, I started to shiver.”

It’s the shifting goal posts. They are taking not only people who are in the United States without legal status but also those who are here on a visitor’s visa and then also legal permanent residents. They are targeting not only people who have criminal convictions but also those whom they say they suspect of belonging to a gang and also those who participated in or supported campus protests and then also someone, like Ozturk, who merely wrote, with three other people, an opinion essay in a student newspaper.

It’s the lists. More than anything else, in fact, it’s the lists. A private company has launched an app called ICERAID, billed as a “protocol that delegates intelligence-gathering tasks to citizens that would otherwise be undertaken by law enforcement agencies.” The app promises rewards for “capturing and uploading images of criminal illegal alien activity” and possibly even bigger rewards for self-reporting — for adding oneself to the ICERAID registry if one is “an honest, hard-working undocumented immigrant with no criminal history.” The app, in other words, combines two time-tested secret-police techniques: incentivizing some people to denounce their neighbors and inducing others to add themselves to registries.

Opinion | Unmarked Vans. Secret Lists. Public Denunciations. Our Police State Has Arrived.

Those of us who’ve seen secret police in action can’t shake a feeling of dreadful familiarity.

www.nytimes.com

Congratulations, Trumpettes, we are now Red China.

Happy MAGA

 

[BitterPill]

Those of us who have lived in countries terrorized by a secret police force can’t shake a feeling of dreadful familiarity. “I never realized until this moment how much fear I carried with me from my childhood in Communist Romania,” another friend, the literary scholar Marianne Hirsch, told me. “Arrests were arbitrary and every time the doorbell rang, I started to shiver.”

It’s the shifting goal posts. They are taking not only people who are in the United States without legal status but also those who are here on a visitor’s visa and then also legal permanent residents. They are targeting not only people who have criminal convictions but also those whom they say they suspect of belonging to a gang and also those who participated in or supported campus protests and then also someone, like Ozturk, who merely wrote, with three other people, an opinion essay in a student newspaper.

It’s the lists. More than anything else, in fact, it’s the lists. A private company has launched an app called ICERAID, billed as a “protocol that delegates intelligence-gathering tasks to citizens that would otherwise be undertaken by law enforcement agencies.” The app promises rewards for “capturing and uploading images of criminal illegal alien activity” and possibly even bigger rewards for self-reporting — for adding oneself to the ICERAID registry if one is “an honest, hard-working undocumented immigrant with no criminal history.” The app, in other words, combines two time-tested secret-police techniques: incentivizing some people to denounce their neighbors and inducing others to add themselves to registries.

Opinion | Unmarked Vans. Secret Lists. Public Denunciations. Our Police State Has Arrived.

Those of us who’ve seen secret police in action can’t shake a feeling of dreadful familiarity.

www.nytimes.com

Congratulations, Trumpettes, we are now Red China.

Happy MAGA

I've been warning lib-progs forever to take our MAGA Revolution seriously, but not because I care about their collective well being. It is simply because I want to sell them red hats and FJB flags from my rather large inventory at cut-rate prices, so anyone who accuses me of undue empathy is barking up the wrong tree.

MAGA.

 

[Ishm]

First they came for the gang members
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a gang member
Then they came for the brown people
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a brown person
Then they came for the Palestine supporters
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Palestine supporter
Then they came for the political dissidents
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a political dissident
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

 

[BitterPill]

First they came for the gang members
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a gang member
Then they came for the brown people
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a brown person
Then they came for the Palestine supporters
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Palestine supporter
Then they came for the political dissidents
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a political dissident
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

If only one of your steps was becoming MAGA, you'd have nothing to worry over.

Please, please buy a red hat for your own protection.

MAGA.

 

[Ishm]

If only one of your steps was becoming MAGA, you'd have nothing to worry over.

Please, please buy a red hat for your own protection.

MAGA.

Red hat = Leopards eating own face party. My face may not be very pretty, but I would rather keep it thanks!!

 

[Lovebug]

Those of us who have lived in countries terrorized by a secret police force can’t shake a feeling of dreadful familiarity. “I never realized until this moment how much fear I carried with me from my childhood in Communist Romania,” another friend, the literary scholar Marianne Hirsch, told me. “Arrests were arbitrary and every time the doorbell rang, I started to shiver.”

It’s the shifting goal posts. They are taking not only people who are in the United States without legal status but also those who are here on a visitor’s visa and then also legal permanent residents. They are targeting not only people who have criminal convictions but also those whom they say they suspect of belonging to a gang and also those who participated in or supported campus protests and then also someone, like Ozturk, who merely wrote, with three other people, an opinion essay in a student newspaper.

It’s the lists. More than anything else, in fact, it’s the lists. A private company has launched an app called ICERAID, billed as a “protocol that delegates intelligence-gathering tasks to citizens that would otherwise be undertaken by law enforcement agencies.” The app promises rewards for “capturing and uploading images of criminal illegal alien activity” and possibly even bigger rewards for self-reporting — for adding oneself to the ICERAID registry if one is “an honest, hard-working undocumented immigrant with no criminal history.” The app, in other words, combines two time-tested secret-police techniques: incentivizing some people to denounce their neighbors and inducing others to add themselves to registries.

Opinion | Unmarked Vans. Secret Lists. Public Denunciations. Our Police State Has Arrived.

Those of us who’ve seen secret police in action can’t shake a feeling of dreadful familiarity.

www.nytimes.com

Congratulations, Trumpettes, we are now Red China.

Happy MAGA

All this is certainly worrisome because the insane among us have taken over. I am wondering if causing mass panic is the answer.

 

[Loulit01]

All this is certainly worrisome because the insane among us have taken over. I am wondering if causing mass panic is the answer.

Mass resistance would be better.