I Really Don’t Know Why I Keep Thinking These People are Fascists…
Todd Lyons, acting Director of ICE provides the latest example.
I get it. The word “fascist” is fraught. It is a contested term, and most people see it as deeply rooted in a very specific history. It has long been used solely as an epithet, making it harder to deploy as an analytic term.
And yet, when I read things like the following from the Michigan Advance, that is certainly where my mind goes: ICE director envisions Amazon-like mass deportation system: ‘Prime, but with human beings’.
The leader of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that his dream for the agency is squads of trucks rounding up immigrants for deportation the same way that Amazon trucks crisscross American cities delivering packages.
“We need to get better at treating this like a business,” Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said, explaining he wants to see a deportation process “like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings.”
This is wrong on a number of levels. The most obvious being that no, we should not want squads of trucks rounding up and deporting people. This smacks of a police state, not the rule of law. This is especially frightening in the context of the federal government shipping people to El Salvador to be imprisoned indefinitely without due process of law. Add in that the White House Press Secretary acknowledged that the White House is exploring ways to do the same to American citizens, and we have a recipe for some truly awful things happening.
Allow me to underscore, also, no, this is NOT something that should be run like a business.
Law enforcement is not a business.
But there’s more.
Several speakers, including [Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar”], told the military industrial complex representatives in the crowd that the Trump administration is depending on the private sector to implement its mass deportation agenda.
“We need to buy more beds, we need more airplane flights and I know a lot of you are here for that reason,” Homan told the crowd in his keynote speech, which kicked off the expo.
“Let the badge and guns do the badge and gun stuff, everything else, let’s contract out,” he said.
It may seem like a small thing, but when law enforcement representatives speak about their role in glib terms like “badge and gun stuff,” it makes me uncomfortable. It is a red flag when people with the power to arrest and use violence in their jobs act like they are in an action movie or playing a video game.
Act like a professional, not a child.
But Homan always makes me uncomfortable. Trump likes his appointees out of central casting, and Homan is well cast as the thuggish fascist asshole* in charge of a law enforcement agency in movie about law enforcement abuse.
Homan defended the controversial use of the Alien Enemies Act, the 1798 law that was last used during World War II to intern Japanese Americans.
“That is a law enacted by Congress, and we are using that,” Homan said, adding that it “bothers him” when judges or politicians attempt to prevent him from using it. Shortly before Homan spoke, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration can use it for now.
He also said that family detention is still “on the table” as a policy, claiming that it is about ensuring that “families are families” and preventing human smuggling.
Nothing fascistic about any of that, no sir. Those mean courts won’t let him do his badge and gun stuff the way he wants!
Back to Lyon.
Lyons said that he hopes that they can infuse artificial intelligence into the process to “free up bed space” and “fill up airplanes” taking immigrants back to their home countries at a faster rate.
Much like Homan, Lyons also shared that he supports the use of the Alien Enemies Act, calling it “amazing” to be able to speed up the process of deportations. He also said that he has been working with billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. Department of Government Efficiency to get social security numbers to look for “voter fraud.”
What could go wrong using AI to decide who to send to prison in El Salvador? (And I will leave alone the non sequitur about voter fraud, as this post already is making my blood pressure go up).
*I know I have been getting increasingly less academic in some of my language of late, although usually I am trying to do so more in comments than in posts. But I try to use the most useful and descriptive language that I can when I write and this is just the most honest and accurate description that I’ve got.
I saw that bit of insane news on The Guardian earlier today. I decided not to click on it, because I do have more than enough anger and aggravation in my life. I was right.
If it were ti run like a business, wouldn’t they have to pay the immigrants for supplying themselves, and hold them until other countries decide to pay for their delivery?
As I have said before I work with international students. My job has become a nightmare. International students around the country are getting their visas revoked over the most trivial matters (littering, parking tickets, accusations proven false in court). Students come to my office terrified. I’m dreading the possibility of having to tell an otherwise good student they need to leave the country ASAP over some trivial mishap in their distant past. They are ruining peoples’ lives for no other reason than they can. Not sure how I can survive this for another four years…
@Paine: Truly awful.
@Paine:
I wish I had something good to tell you.
It’s not getting better for four years.
Perhaps El Salvador could raise some cash by imposing a tariff on US deportees…
We may be returning to the days when groups like the Black Panthers used to engage in grass roots police reform.
Retirement means having much fewer Fwaks to give with regards to language used. Eventually you get to the point where you have no Fwaks to give.
As I’ve been known to say, “yeah, I’m crazy. Ain’t it great?”
ETA wrt your title,
“feathers, bill, waddle, waddle, quack quack?”
We are so fucked up as a country. The first push back on Trump was because the stock market was tanking. No other Trump atrocity really bothered most of the country. People are always discussing the best way for Democrats to send out their message. It’s important, even vital, but no message beats hate, at least in this country. DEI/woke is all about hate. Illegal immigration is an actual issue, but the only facet the Republicans really care about is how much they can fearmonger so half the country would deport all immigrants regardless of status. And the trans issue? There is no way to win because they have turned 1% of the population into the “other”.
Actually talking about issues really doesn’t work. That anybody seriously believes after listening to Trump discuss any issue that he is qualified to serve in any role in the government can’t be changed.
“Allow me to underscore, also, no, this is NOT something that should be run like a business.
Law enforcement is not a business.”
Agreed. In fact, I tell my students that the notion of running a government like a business misunderstands both.
Yet …
Recognizing the point of your prefatory paragraph, I still think it’s incumbent upon you (and others here) to define the central and/or essential tenets of fascism if you’re going to ascribe that term to someone or some policy. Having taught the history of ideology, it’s the “ism” that seems most difficult and elusive to define—but currently it’s the most frequently used as self-evident vis-a-vis the current administration. Yet it’s never “taxonomized” as a category for analysis and I think it merits discussion.
(I realize that I’m kind of asking for a separate post and I always hated when commentators did that in my blogspot days, so I apologize in advance for the presumption on your time)
@Meh: Some places to start:
Trump and Fascism
Defining and Discussing Fascism (Part I)
Defining and Discussing Fascism, Part II
@Steven L. Taylor: and note the first post is almost 10 years old and my views have evolved. The second two posts are far more recent.
Let me add in: A Reminder About Hitler Comparisons.
@Meh:
What books did you assign for that course?
—
There have been some more in-depth posts about fascism here.
Setting aside whether fascism is an appropriate/accurate label, I’m not sure it matters that much in terms of our political culture. Though, I do think we should be wary of misapplying that particular term, and think it may be best to draw parallels to authoritarianism or autocracy. But they are likely no less ill-defined among the broader public.
A nontrivial portion of the country thinks that Nazis were leftists and that Democrats, as a whole, are both historically linked to them and their present-day ideological descendants.
Americans, as a whole, have a woeful, paltry understanding of even the broadest descriptions of the Enlightenment, classical liberalism, and the definitions of socialism and communism; a peculiar definition of left and right; and a center-point well to the right of peer countries in Western Europe.*
It is exceedingly easy to get lost on these points, because the left has been (often violently) marginalized by the government and private spheres for over a century. Importantly, the center-left has often participated in that repression, in alliance with the right. Whereas the far-right was mostly marginalized by the center-right policing their own. Recall that some on the far-right accused Eisenhower (???) of communist sympathies. That resulted in public condemnation of the Birchers. Of course, center-right politicians often figured out how to earn electoral support from the far-right without having to go that far in terms of actual policy.
Plenty of scholarship has traced the history of the American far-right, because it played a role in defining mainstream politics. But the history of actual Leftism in America is mostly blank. The exceptions—early 20th century, then mid-60s to 70s—occurred in spasms that were violently put down, then remembered as a serious threat to national security. The New Deal, standard-fare mixed-economy policies, was painted as communism. Conspiracies about Cultural Marxism are considered self-evident among many Republicans.
The combination of a vacuum and distortions of the exceptions allow people like Jonah Goldberg** to produce ‘scholarship’ that paints democrats as both fascist and socialist/communist in nature.
I concede that you are correct, we should be careful about rigorously defining our terms. But that well was poisoned so long ago, I fear it does not much matter. Because the American right wing has no corresponding respect for honesty.
*Perhaps part of the problem is that too many do not see Europe, individually or collectively as peers.
**But don’t blame his bullshit for Trump, because he is speaking out against Trumpism while refusing to walkback his ahistorical, polemical treatment of the left.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Didn’t Kingdaddy have a couple front page posts as well?
@Paine:
I mentioned in another post that my daughter’s best friend and roommate in college is Pakistani. We’ve been her unofficial surrogate family as her mother is still in Pakistan. After some effort, she was able to enroll in a summer program (even though the cutoff has passed) to stay in the US, as she was worried that if she went home for the summer, she would not be allowed back in.
The only positive thing that can be said is she has not done any of the known things that would get on the radar for revoking the visa – no law enforcement encounters or anything else. The big issue is her nationality and country of origin.
I know people in your position are extremely busy, as we had difficulty finding professional advice, and I’d just like to say thank you for your efforts.
@Kurtz: He did, yes.
@Kurtz:
This is fascinating to me, given how much of US policy has been explicitly a reaction to the “far left” but how little actual far left has ever been influential in US politics.
Bring it on…
On occasion I have been called out for speech that could be considered “locker room”.
I always tell the whiners “The next time you see me coming, do this.”
Then I cover my ears with my hands.
@DrDaveT:
It’s confounding.
I need to re-read The Big Myth* and revisit some other works, but concentrated wealth has been highly effective and quite clever in their soft strategies and tactics aimed at suppressing leftist movements. Not to mention the use of force, which is well-documented. Some of the latter made it into textbooks in the past, but, ya know, effective soft tactics are effective.
*I listened to the audiobook, so technically just read it. I retain quite a bit of what I hear, but reading is a superior form of engagement, at least for me. Also, a hard copy includes full citations for everything.
Here is a person on Bluesky who has done the homework of finding the emails and contacts for ICE officials:
https://bsky.app/profile/bethwithcats.bsky.social
Here is Todd Lyon’s Linkedin page where you can message him:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-m-lyons-523bbb28a/
Ordinary citizens individually have little power, but we do have the power to call these people out wherever possible, making them social pariahs and outcasts.
It’s not so much the Hitlers, Mussolinis and Stalins as it is the apparatchiks who so willingly (and eagerly) do “the gun and badge stuff” that chills the blood. These asshats – like Homan and Lyon – drool over the prospect of wrecking lives by throwing their weight around and abusing their newfound authority…even when it is based on a false premise – i.e., that the Alien Enemies Act has been legitimately invoked. “How dare any judge cite the Constitution and interfere with our sadistic joy?!” Here lies the Rule of Law, 1789-2025.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Again, at what point is the fascist label allowed to have traction? When can we apply it, speak it, without qualifying our use?
Sure, everybody has a different threshold of tolerance, intolerance, and point of judgment. But meanwhile, these malignant personalities are running around doing radically bad things to our entire society (and global society).
They are remaking our national community into an antithesis of long held moral values, and based on their personal idiosyncratic predilections and pathologies. They can do this because they’ve “hacked” our political/legal system, and they have “hacked” our minds (in a very real sense). Our checks and balances have been trampled and blown through.
Really, this is DEFCON 1 for our liberal democracy, and for some people, they’re still at DEFCON 5 in their minds. Many seem not to have a clue what it means to live in a liberal democracy, and how it has hugely benefitted them personally —- apparently this has been our society’s long hidden Achilles heel, or we would have responded collectively and overwhelmingly to the bad behavior being delivered by this administration.
If our remaining institutional mechanisms in law and politics fail to stop this ongoing destructive rampage by the MAGA horde, we will either finally fight back or we will succumb. No one is coming to the rescue of our democracy. I’ve got no problem calling a fascist a “fascist.” I’m past parsing the term. Generations of my family’s existence (self included) in this country have stood and fought against precisely these evils.
@Rob1:
I engage in the qualifiers because, like it or not, there are a lot of people, including some regulars here at OTB, and especially many within the broader society, will tune you out to one degree or another when you use the term.
They see the term as hyperbole. I am trying to make the case that it isn’t hyperbole, but can only do so if they don’t tune me out.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Understood.
But consider this point: the reason the MAGA/reactionary-billionaire movement has been so effective, is their masterful control of messaging. They’ve deployed the “commie” b.s. hyperbole so long that it finally “landed” —– this, 35 years after the Berlin Wall fell, the USSR dissolved, and China embraced consumer capitalism!!!
We have to regain the narrative, and with many voices. If we see something, say something. I see fascism.
Geez:
Again, individual threshold. What do we say and do, if and when Trump sends troops onto Greenland to force his ambitions? If and when he directs the CIA to begin a covert campaign to undermine Canada’s liberal political party’s hold on power? We’re looking at 4 long years of this kind of toxicity. We should be at DEFCON 5.
@Rob1:
You mean DEFCON 1 😉
ETA: I think. You got it correct in the previous post.
@Rob1:
As far as substance goes, the commie label has been used effectively for a long time. Or at least effectively enough that many Americans unable to define communism and routinely conflate it was socialism.
Also:
I googled the Bill Levitt quote, because I remembered it from Halberstam’s The Fifties. I wanted to get it right without leafing through the book. But this works.
Note a few things:
Not in the piece, but the sales contract for Levitt homes explicitly prohibited resale to Black people.
Segregation=Americanism; integration=communism
The piece doesn’t provide a specific politician or direct quote, but says that some argued public housing=socialism. And noted fun drunk Joesph McCarthy called public housing a breeding ground for communists. (At least he seems to have recognized the existence of a distinction, at least at one time.)
But the last two quotes are more illuminating, imo.
Levitt repurposes the old idle hands aphorism to fight communism. I don’t know why that would not be an argument for some sort of robust, universal housing policy.
Actually, I do. Obviously a robust policy sounded too much like S or C. In the end, there is little reason to try for universal anything, because idea is that they only a certain size middle class—enough that the bulk of that population would vote to protect what they have from uncertainty or Leftists who would abolish private property.
The most important thing beyond ensuring enough people have skin in the game is that those homeowners are too busy (read: docile) to have time for reflection. In my view: idle hands, active mind; busy hands; tired mind.
I was not aware of that Pearl Buck quote. But it fell flat, as far as I can tell. But a comparison to Maoism did not move the needle. I’m sure there are reasons for that. But it does suggest that dueling accusations of communism and socialism may have some effect. Enough that the same likely applies to any other scary -ism.
Last, I recall that GWB response to the woman who claimed to be working three jobs, “That’s uniquely American.” It evolved from, give enough people a shitty, mass produced house and a small plot of land to keep them pacified to make them work 70 hour weeks in unfulfilling jobs so they are too tired to read, think, or cause trouble.
I have no complaint about your use of the word, since you have some research behind it.
I probably won’t use it much, because I seek more interesting and engaging ways to write about such things. “authoritarian” barely passes muster, but I think it maybe doesn’t get people thinking, “but actually…”
Homan’s remarks are all window-dressing. What is far more important is that mask-wearing operatives are grabbing people off the street and “disappearing” them in an effort that seems designed to thwart due process and rule of law. Talking about “badges and guns people” is trivial in comparison. It’s not so much what you say. It’s not who you are inside. It’s what you do.
At least in my book.
@Jay L Gischer: Don’t get me wrong, what one does is far more important than what one says.
It is just that I find that certain kinds of words tend to be reflective of the willingness to engage in certain deeds.
The mouth frequently reveals what is in the heart and mind.
@Kurtz:
In that regard it was mostly Mein Kampf, which I recognize as a poorly-written and non-systematic articulation of fascism (yet still merits reading). I also include Mao but moreover Trotsky—who pretended to be a communist but was (I think) what we’d now call a fascist.
Although there were other primary sources, I did my best to engage with the likes of Hannah Arendt, but I have to admit that I couldn’t always discern what she wrote sometimes. That’s my failing, not hers. Same with Camus, Solzhenitsyn, and many others.
In the end, and I hope that Dr. SLT appreciates (although he likely disagrees) this, I go to Aristotle. Tyranny is rule by decree. Oligarchy is rule by the rich. Sovereignty lies no longer with the people—but the question/fear here is whether sovereignty remains in the law (i.e. a constitutional government). I believe that Dr. Taylor’s fears and mine are similarly rooted even if we disagree on terminology.
For me, tyranny and oligarchy as analytical categories are enough. Not so at OTB, but it’s not my blog. Here it has to be “fascism”.
I am hopeful, whereas SLT is (I think) not. I believe that the S.Ct. will act as a co-equal branch, whereas I think that Dr. Taylor is doubtful at best. His fears are not without merit, yet I don’t share them.
There is, of course, more to say but some point we all have to go to bed. (can I at least get a thumbs up for that?)
@Meh: I am quite a fan of Aristotle, but think his categories are too broad to be the only ones to apply to modern politics.
But, you should at least appreciate this, as Aristotle is discussed at least some: Democracy and Institutional Design I: A Basic Preface on Regime Type
He’s come up a number of times over the years. Indeed, I think that he is foundational as he influences notions like the importance of institutional design.
But I would stress, again, he is starting spot and is wholly inadequate to fully describe modern politics in a modern state.
@Meh:
I would counter that the immunity ruling, coupled with the Court’s clear willingness to slow to the point of stopping all the investigations of Trump prior to his re-election, adds more evidence (unfortunately) to my doubts than to your optimism.
If they manage to force Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return, that will give your position a little juice. As I noted yesterday, I hope that I am wrong.
@Meh:
I can’t help myself, and this is probably a totally dead thread, but let me note that it matters very much what kind of tyranny. Not everyone who rules by decree is the same. It is just too general a category.
Could you clarify as to your exact discipline?