Chapters 11/12 of Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" have seldom been as relevant as they are today given what is happening in the United States. It has become clear that the MAGA movement and its orange oaf, guided by the authors of Project 2025, is transitioning to a bonafide totalitarian regime with an untouchable, loyal, secret police, expansionist geopolitics and a leader figure beyond rationality or reproach. They can still be stopped, but time is running out ... #fascism
"In Texas, a migrant died in ICE custody at an immigration detention facility. Witnesses say his final words were 'I can’t breathe' as five ICE officers placed their body weight on him. A medical examiner is expected to rule the death a homicide. In Minneapolis, a six-month-old baby was rushed to the hospital after ICE agents tear-gassed the family’s vehicle."
"Renee Good had two gunshots wounds to the right side of her chest, one to her left forearm, and a possible fourth on the left side of her head, according to a fire department report released Thursday along with police reports and 911 transcripts."
A lot of Europeans and even some Americans don't seem to understand why Americans aren't "doing more" to fight fascism. So as an American here's an explanation.
First, we are. It's not being reported. Our media has congealed into a few huge oligarchies. I was involved in a local protest in rural Georgia. Local media decided to send a reporter and photographer to a local high school volleyball game instead. Our protest didn't even get a mention
Historic #Fascism in Germany was a mass movement - the majority of the people WANTED to mass murder (especially to kill Jews). It had to be externally destroyed.
Contemporary Fascism in the United States of America is a fringe movement and an elite project. It could be be overthrown internally if everybody there just stopped to "function" as if everything was still totally normal. Because things aren't.
Reminder to all the #activists on here that you are on some level preaching to the choir: people on here are almost certain to be informed enough about #US #politics and the daily overreaches of #fascism and unregulated #capitalism, that we don't necessarily need more information.
Effective #activism through the #fediverse may be better off talking about how to inform and shift the perspectives of the people that aren't engaged, who aren't on platforms like this. Pretty much every "opinion" poll we see shows a split between voters who are informed or engaged in some way, and voters who aren't. Do you have any insight on who is giving these responses? Do you know someone you can talk to? Have you found something that would shift perspectives if it was more widely stated?
#Democracy requires discourse and outreach: we won't get anywhere by just talking amongst ourselves about things we all agree on.
ICE isn't the new Gestapo (German for Secret State Police). ICE is the new slave patrol.
When white Americans say, ICE is Gestapo, they can point to some distant country (Nazi Germany). It's easy to condemn Nazis because they were clearly evil.
But when white Americans have to realize that ICE is no different from slave patrols, they have to realize it is their own great-great-grandfathers they are recognizing in ICE goons, not some evil Germans far away.
358K likes, 6,148 comments - ashleytheebarroness on January 12, 2026: "People reach for the Gestapo comparison because it sounds extreme and foreign. It lets white Americans pretend this kind of policing came from somewhere else.
It's been a week since we watched an ICE agent shoot and kill Renee Nicole Good and then mutter "f*cking b*tch" at her. It's time we talk about the misogyny that's baked into ICE enforcement.
My wife and I have been brand-loyal Hilton customers for many years, but that just ended. I just told them to cancel our Hilton Honors membership. I based my email to them mostly on the template here indivisiblesf.org/blog/2026/1/… with some minor changes. If you are a Hilton Honors member you should do the same. I'm not going to patronize a business which has made it clear that it sides with the Nazis. #politics #USPol #fascism #boycott #Hilton #HiltonBoycott
We support businesses that refuse to cooperate with ICE. It is infuriating that not only is Hilton openly cooperating with fascists, but also retaliating against one of their subsidiaries for refusing to cooperate.
"…muss ich bekennen, dass wir alle […] nicht ein Hundertstel, nicht ein Tausendstel dessen für möglich gehalten haben, was dann immer wenige Wochen später hereinbrechen sollte."
- Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern
Ein autobiografisches Werk Stefan Zweigs.
Das Buch entstand kurz vor Zweigs Tod in den letzten Jahren (von 1939 bis 1941) seines Exils und erschien postum 1942 in Stockholm.
German language. Stefan Zweig. DIE WELT VON GESTERN. THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY is the autobiography of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig. The most famous book on the...
I see that others, like me, were dreading that it was going to be *another* famous Nazi slogan, given that it's the Department of Labour.
Who the Hell knows so *little* of U.S.A. history to think that it has a single heritage and a single people? Yes, that's rhetorical. All of the people in the background of the video are WASP.
'e pluribus unum' is clearly not the motto any more.
Heroic community members surround fascist paramilitary invaders as they attempt to abduct a man, ultimately forcing the agents back into their cars. (Minneapolis, MN)
"There's something beautiful about this image to me [of dead Mussolini hanging upside down at a gas station], and it bothers me that I find beauty in it, and it also bothers me that it bothers me, and so on."
Do you know how Mussolini died? He was shot. His body was hanged upside down at a gas station for people to throw rocks and spit on his corpse. Something about this image sticks with me... I don't delight in death or violence. At least, I think I don't. Although, I've been rewatching all of *Alice in Borderland* lately."
Tim Miller and Jonathan V. Last talk about how the MAGA response to Renee Good's murder is eye-opening because, as Tim says,
"A big percentage of my neighbors and our fellow Americans, you know, the people that we must share this tenuous liberal democracy with, have just a significantly lower bar for deadly violence than I do, particularly state deadly violence."
Tim Miller and JVL give their takes on the shocking Minneapolis ICE killing of Renee Good, the federal government’s handling of state-sanctioned violence, an...
"A society is judged not only by how it enforces its laws, but also by whether it upholds its most basic obligations in moments of crisis. If we lose the commitment to treat the injured, regardless of who they are, we lose something essential. And once lost, it will not be easy to reclaim."
"The recent shooting in Minneapolis is so deeply disturbing, not only because a woman was killed, but also because after she was shot, a physician on the scene was prevented by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from rendering aid.
"They’re attempting to control a wildfire by setting more fires. To this I say: Let them keep misreading the room. Let them believe their own delusional fantasies. The second they overreach, which they will, they’ll find out exactly how ungovernable this country really is when it’s pushed past the line."
"Following the murder of Renee Good, the regime has ordered another 1,000 gestapo forces to join the 2,000 forces already in Minneapolis. The goal is to terrorize Blue states and Blue cities and invoke martial law. We’ve seen this authoritarian playbook throughout history in other countries. It’s shameful this is what is happening in the United States."
"Americans now disapprove of ICE and support protests against the agency, according to a new poll conducted the same day a federal officer fatally shot a 37-year-old mother in Minneapolis."
"In October, ICE agents became annoyed that Marimar Martinez, an American citizen, was following them and warning people in her Chicago neighborhood that agents were in the area, so they rammed her car and then shot her five times. One of the agents had screamed, 'Do something, bitch!' before opening fire. That agent later boasted in texts, 'I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.'”
"This is not the first time that the administration has used this defense for killing someone amid its immigration crackdown. In an incident in September, ICE agents shot and killed Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, claiming that he had hit an agent with his car and dragged him 'a significant distance,' but videos show otherwise."
The killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, and Donald Trump’s and Kristi Noem’s despicable lies about it, show that we’re all living at the whim of the administration’s masked, trigger-happy goons.
"those were the only weapons — 'weapons' — protesters had. If the use of deadly force requires an imminent threat, the threat requires a rationalization."
"The rationalization of the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis is that she was using her vehicle to try to kill ICE agents, a claim belied by available video footage and by analysis from Bellingcat and others.
But there's probably a reason that, according to analysis from the New York Times, all nine of the ICE agents who fired their weapons from September through Wednesday were firing at people in vehicles:"
Congratulations; Hell Week is over. In preparation for Hell Week Redux, whenever it may arrive (next week), this week's newsletter flips data visualization on its head, focusing on a fascinating project that extracts data from presentations that…
"The case is yet another illustration of a point that is crucial to understand about the rise of fascism in this country: misogyny is not an incidental feature or an optional add-on or comorbidity. Misogyny is the beating heart of a fascism that violently safeguards and shores up white male authority—by punishing any social subordinate who questions the designated authority figures."
"With guns…. Where military law enforcement is being used to police American citizens under the pretense that something so dangerous is happening that this has to happen even though they are creating the danger."
"They're in, many of them, in cars or trucks or SUVs that are unmarked. Now, this is, you know, I've been around for many, many years. This has never happened to my knowledge before in America. In America, in the United States, that you have all of these, an entire armed guard system out there under the authority of the president of the United States, in the states, in our cities."
"It’s like they are spending tax dollars to hire a private army to terrorize, assault, kneel on, spray 'chemical irritants' on, arrest, and yes, kill the citizens of this country, including Renee Nicole Good."
"The Department of Homeland Security is seeking to hire 10,000 new ICE agents and 3,000 new Border Patrol agents. Their training and salaries and benefits, such as fully-paid health care and retirement benefits – will be paid with our tax dollars out of the $170 billion dictator budget."
This week, our president announced that he would like the nation’s defense budget, which already stands at $1 trillion, to be increased by $500 billion, or $600 billion.
"But what we've done now with this creation of ICE is create an authority that doesn't seem to abide by rules. It doesn't seem to have good training. Even its mission is unclear. We're told originally, and that's why people voted for Trump, those who did, that it would target criminals and get them out of the country. Well, it's not doing that."
"These are police state tactics. What makes a police state? It's basically the excessive use and the excessive threatening of violence. In our society, people are allowed to use violence. The state is allowed to use violence under certain circumstances. And we have set up rules and laws and norms for the employment of violence, right? That cops and military people and others can use."
![Screenshot of a tweet by a user named "Janel Comeau" with a profile photo of a woman. The tweet reads: “[my French boyfriend, watching American news]: I don’t understand??? Things are so bad??? And they set nothing on fire??? How do they expect to fix???](https://inne.city/photo/preview/640/2608883 "Screenshot of a tweet by a user named \"Janel Comeau\" with a profile photo of a woman. The tweet reads: “[my French boyfriend, watching American news]: I don’t understand??? Things are so bad??? And they set nothing on fire??? How do they expect to fix???")
