The very banality of evil is its greatest weapon

In an article posted last Tuesday Oliver Willis of Daily Kos gathered together several mainstream news headlines that say the nasty guy has softened his tone in Minneapolis. Willis says to not trust that. The supposed shift in tone came after the murder of Alex Pretti when the nasty guy had a congenial talk with Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, then pulled out Greg Bovino, the guy running ICE there, replacing him with Tom Homan, the “border czar.” I wrote about all this last Wednesday (before I read Willis’ article), saying the ongoing and huge protests in Minnesota worked. Perhaps I bought into the softened tone as well. Willis wrote:

But the administration’s pullback doesn’t change the main thrust of Trump’s policies and actions: pursuing a mass deportation campaign targeting people because of their race and ethnicity. The mainstream coverage is ignoring or minimizing this reality, even though it is the driving force behind everything that has occurred. ... Characterizing the administration’s spin as a legitimate softening of tone ignores the current situation and Trump’s track record.

Tom Hartmann of the Kos community and an independent pundit also says this is not the dawn of a new era.

Fascist governments don’t rise in one giant arc, nor do they collapse that way. It’s more of what electrical engineers and ham radio operators would call a “sawtooth pattern.” Climb an inch up toward fascism, get pushback from the public so you back down a half-inch until things quiet down, then move up another inch in another step toward the ultimate goal of total tyranny. Learn from your own mistakes, while getting the public used to each step, so Trump and his lickspittles can move onto the next falling domino in the process of ending democracy and replacing it with strongman oligarchic autocracy.

ICE agents still assume complete immunity. They still kick in doors without a legal warrant. They still can kill us without answering for it. And they know it. “We are still on the path to dictatorship.” The steps from democracy to fascism start with steps that people see as reasonable to handle a real problem. It may seem a bit weird, but makes sense. Then the mask drops and we see the true intent. By then the recognition is usually too late. A tyrant learns how far he can go before hitting resistance that can’t be bludgeoned through. Then they work out what messages to get the people to accept the changes.

Fascism doesn’t arrive with jackboots; it arrives with media and voter fatigue. As the political theorist Hannah Arendt warned, the very “banality” and “ordinariness” of such evil is its greatest weapon.

They push. We get used to it. They push some more. We begin to see resistance is pointless. They tell us the situation is so complicated we couldn’t understand, or it is bound by national security (heard that one lately?) and we should defer to their expertise. We assume the good guys will eventually win. If we didn’t resist at Step A, Step C isn’t all that much worse, so why resist Step C? Soon our principles are compromised. We still get a paycheck, socialize with friends. The world around us, the houses, stores, restaurants, cinema, and holidays still look the same. But the look is deceiving because the world is now full of hate and fear, which is so universal it is not recognized or is seen as normal. Stephen Miller mused that habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. That is to lock up immigrants and protesters without a trial. There was little reaction in the news media. If, a decade ago, Obama said that there would be swift hearings and maybe impeachment. Miller’s comments have become normalized. Democrats have shut down part of the government by demanding guardrails be put up around ICE. They may get their demands. But ICE is now so corrupt and has such a toxic culture those guardrails will have little effect. This ICE needs to be shut down and replaced, along with ICE leadership, and Homeland Security leadership. Why aren’t Democrats talking about the leadership?

The antidote to normalization is outrage and resistance. Not just in voting booths, but in the streets, in courtrooms, in classrooms, in boardrooms, in pulpits, and at dinner tables. ... History won’t forgive us for sleepwalking into tyranny. And our children won’t either. ... If we still believe in this republic, in its ideals, and in the sacred value of a free and fair society, then our answer to Trump’s authoritarianism must be more than words. It must be peaceful action.

I had mentioned this idea before, though Kos of Kos says it well. The change in Minneapolis (what little there is) was because of an increase in protests. The protests didn’t surge because of the kidnapping of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, the boy in the hat with bunny ears. He’s brown. It didn’t happen when Renee Good was murdered. She’s a lesbian. It happened when Alex Pretti was murdered.

He was white. He was male. He owned a gun. He worked as an ICU nurse helping veterans. He fit comfortably inside the cultural boundaries conservatives instinctively protect. That made him difficult to erase.

He died doing something humane – protesting injustice. Pretti broke the script. He made denial harder. He exposed the lie that propaganda said “this violence was targeted, controlled, and righteous.”

His death made clear that the machinery of state brutality was not staying neatly confined to its intended victims, and that compliance offered no protection from a system built on brutality and subjugation rather than law. ... His loss is immeasurable. It is also the moment that cracked the narrative armor protecting Trump’s immigration campaign, forcing a public reckoning that a year of evidence alone had failed to trigger.

In Friday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted David French of the New York Times, discussing voter reaction to ICE tactics in Minneapolis:

Voters don’t like the sight of masked officers dragging people out of homes and stores and cars. They don’t like the hype videos on social media in which ICE and the Border Patrol cosplay as low-rent versions of SEAL Team 6. They don’t like it when the administration lies and slanders the very people that it hurts and kills, and they get especially angry when cellphone video immediately debunks the administration’s spin. And to the extent that they pay attention to court proceedings, they definitely don’t like it when the administration is caught lying and defies court orders. … At each and every step along the way, the administration is squandering whatever good will it had and increasing the chances of a blue wave in the midterms. The problem, however, is that the administration is playing a different game. It’s not trying to win hearts and minds, but rather impose its will.

Dan Pfeiffer tweeted:

Here's what people don't like about ICE: - The agents are heavily armed, masked, and poorly trained. - They think the agents are unaccountable and see themselves as above the law. - That their actions are unconstitutional. - That ICE is targeting the wrong people.

George F Will of the Washington Post:

Governments around the world are using myriad technologies, some of them sinister, to surveil their populations. U.S. governments — national, state local — are not impervious to the temptation to overdo this. But today, a salutary effect of the ubiquity of smartphones is the surveillance of the government by citizens. Including those exercising their constitutional right to petition government for redress of grievances, and people watching other people do this.

In today’s roundup Dworkin quoted Politico:

“The big muscular show of force — you invite too much confrontation,” said a second person close to the White House, also granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Let’s try to be quieter about it but deport just as many people. Be a little sneakier. Don’t have the flexing and the machismo part of it. There’s a certain element of that that’s cool but as much as we can, why can’t we be stealthy and pop up all over Minnesota?” “We were almost provoking the reaction,” the person added. “I’m all for the smartest tactics as long as the end result is as many deportations as possible.” But the person warned that any perception of backtracking could depress a base already uneasy about the economy. “Our base is generally not wealthy and they’re not doing well,” the person said. “They’re struggling. If you take away immigration — if they don’t believe he means it — holy cow, that’s not good.”

Adam Klasfeld tweeted about how badly the nasty guy’s attempt of accusing his enemies of crime are going.

Let's speak plainly. In legitimate criminal cases, political appointees don't have to first hollow out U.S. Attorney offices of objecting career prosecutors with integrity; federal judges don't kill the cases at the cradle, and the government doesn't fight tooth and nail to revive them. This happened THREE times with Trump's DOJ to date. NONE of the criminal cases against Trump featured those antics.