While the most disturbing element of the shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent last week is the needless death of an American citizen, a very close second is the fact that the federal government is actively lying about the events that happened and doing its best to foster divisive views of the event.
It is not hyperbole, in my view, to call it all an attempt at authoritarian gaslighting with the goal of solidifying support of the MAGA base, as well as illicit fear in the general population. I think that fear takes on at least two manifestations. One is aimed at those who can see that the official version (that Good was a domestic terrorist and the action of the ICE agent was a combination of self-defense and heroic protection of his compatriots) is a lie. They want those people to think twice about protesting and to also internalize what the federal government can get away with. The second is the ongoing attempt to paint ICE as protecting the population. Therefore, fostering stories about “domestic terrorists” and assaults on law enforcement are meant to increase support for ICE and increase general fear of crime.
It seems worth noting that there already exists a tried-and-true way for officials to respond to an officer-involved shooting. It consists of promising an investigation, some level of concern for the victim, and usually some general attempt to point out how difficult a job law enforcement is. That route always has pro-law enforcement overtones. I am not defending that route, per se, but it at least has the connotation of some level of professionalism and even-handedness. It can be quite frustrating to watch, I will readily allow, when a video of a given event is available, and we are asked if we are going to believe our lying eyes or not. But that method is superior to outright propaganda.
We saw immediate lies in the aftermath of the killing of Good last week. Noem took to the podium and asserted that a vehicle was stuck in the snow, and made it sound as if that was part of the attack. There were claims by Noem and Trump of injured officers. Yet, if one watches any of the videos of the incident, it is clear that whatever else Good was doing, she was not making it impossible for ICE vehicles to pass, and she was simply sitting in her car until ICE tried to forcibly open the door of her vehicle, at which point she clearly was seeking to leave (note the tired in the screencap above). I cannot stress enough that the ICE operative who shot and killed Good placed himself at the front left of her vehicle while casually videoing with his phone. Good did not aim at him, and the video shows the tires turned away from him (again, see above).
We can have a debate about what appropriate legal conclusions should be reached after a formal investigation, but it is impossible to watch the videos and then reconcile them with Noem’s account.
Any fair-minded person knows that it is impossible to have firm conclusions about such an event in its immediate aftermath, especially at a distance.
Worse, DHS has ramped things up. Here is a propaganda video that feels like it was made for a movie or TV show.* At the barest of minimums, it is irresponsible because it asserts conclusions that could only be ascertained by a formal investigation. Worse, however, it uses voice-overs and edits to create a story that contradicts what can be seen from watching the copious available video of the incident.
It is chilling to have a government-produced video claim that it is fighting fake news by producing its own fake news.
*If anyone remembers the show Babylon 5, there is a fourth-season episode, “The Illusion of Truth,” which is about an authoritarian government using “news” to smear an opponent. It shows the seemingly legitimate gathering of footage and then the way it is cut with voice-overs and other propaganda tools to make real images appear to be something else. I thought of this technique immediately as I watched the DHS video.
And, along those lines, the whole “Defend the Homeland. Protect the American way of life” sloganeering reminds me a bit of Nightwatch from B5 and really any other similar sloganeering from usually hamfisted and heavyhanded TV shows/movies from the Cold War era that were usually supposed to be anti-communist morality tales.
