Recommended Reading: Origin Stories

Editor’s note: a semi-regular feature, Recommended Reading shares links to, and offers casual commentary on, two or more related news articles in a simple rundown blog. Want more? Click here to subscribe to NIDC today.

 

The Invasion Before the Invasion

In a recently-published journal, I talked about the importance of understanding the situation fascist ICE Gestapo raids and civil rights volitions created on the ground in LA before Swine Emperor Trump deployed National Guard troops to the city, if you want to understand the real story of the Trumpenreich invasion and attempted occupation of Los Angeles. Right now there is a broad, and at times shockingly bipartisan attempt in the US media to invert victim and victimizer, even among news outlets that recognize Trump does not – or at least should not – have the authority to arbitrarily use US military forces to occupy an American city against the expressed wishes of its Governor. Despite the protestations of fascist propagandists, however, and the credulous cop worship of at least a portion of mainstream liberal media, the obvious truth is that nothing happens in a vacuum, and choosing to start the story after the Trump regime provoked Angelinos into nonviolent protests and sporadic incidents of vandalism, is ultimately serving fascism and white supremacy.

Today then, I’d like to share some analysis of two separate stories that occurred on the Friday before the Klepto Kaiser unlawfully commandeered National Guard troops and sent them to LA. Both the coordinated fascist ICE workplace raids conducted all across the greater LA area that day, and the assault, arrest, and smearing of popular local labor leader David Huerta, when combined with widespread anger about federal immigration agents arresting migrant families and detaining them in a makeshift jail in the basement of the federal building downtown, without adequate food, water, or bedding, transformed Los Angeles into a purposely engineered powder keg. Trump’s unofficial minister of nazi shit Stephen Miller, was only too happy to exploit this situation as part of his thinly-concealed war on anyone who isn’t white or a raging fascist.

 

The Racist Reality of Rounding Up Brown People in LA

Folks, would you believe me if I told you a very broad swathe of the American political and media establishment are lying to you about the invasion of LA for reasons that run the whole gamut between pure self interest and ideologically-motivated white supremacy? Well if you survived the shitshow discourse that rose out of the protest against racialized police violence in Ferguson Missouri, and the nationwide protests after the racist murder of George Floyd by a white cop in Minneapolis, the answer to that question is probably yes. In a country locked into an increasingly kinetic culture war between folks who want to establish a white ethnostate, and folks who love cops but hate protestors, it would actually be pretty surprising if motivated actors weren’t trying to distort the truth about what and who actually started the violence on the streets of LA, and why Angelinos were protesting in the first place. These folks are trying to deceive you, or at least poison the discourse against labor class Angelino protestors; I’m not just talking about the Trumpenreich-loyal nazi propagandists on the right either, I’m talking about a broad spectrum of corporate media.

Given these realities, I cannot overemphasize the importance of remembering two widely-reported (at least at first) facts about the Trump regime’s invasion if you want to maintain perspective and understand who and what caused the protests Trump seized on to justify what I believe was a pre-planned occupation of LA. First, the federal invasion of Los Angeles started on Friday, not Saturday, with militarized ICE raids resulting in widespread civil rights violations being committed by the Gestapo, and entirely predictable anger from Angelino communities being targeted by those raids. Second, and I cannot stress this enough, the feds attacked the protestors first on Friday.

Whether cracker supremacists and cop-hugging suburbanites want to admit it or not, those are simply the facts, and to demonstrate as much let’s turn to this June 7th article by Orlando Mayorquín and Jesus Jiménez, writing for the New York Times; a rag that has repeatedly drawn ire for presenting Trump and his administration in a far too favorable light, in service of a broader conservative, capitalist agenda at the paper.

Agents Use Military-Style Force Against Protesters at L.A. Immigration Raid

For readers interested in a blow by blow rundown of how the fascist ICE workplace raids unfolded on Friday, and reporting about the at the time entirely peaceful protests that arose out of those civil rights abuses by the Gestapo, I’d advise simply reading the whole article. For our purposes here however, I’d just like to focus on what the times had to say about Gestapo activities, violence in the streets of LA on Friday, and who perpetrated that violence.

• “Armed agents in tactical gear threw flash-bang grenades to disperse a crowd in Los Angeles’s Fashion District. Later, agents fired less-than-lethal ammunition at protesters outside a detention center.”
• “Federal agents in tactical gear armed with military-style rifles threw flash-bang grenades to disperse an angry crowd near downtown Los Angeles on Friday as they conducted an immigration raid on a clothing wholesaler, the latest sign of tensions between protesters and law enforcement over raids carried out at stores, restaurants and court buildings.”
• “It was an extraordinary show of force. Dozens of federal agents wearing helmets and green camouflage arrived in two hulking armored trucks and other unmarked vehicles, and were soon approached by a crowd of immigrant activists and supporters. Some agents carried riot shields and others held rifles, as well as shotguns that appeared to be loaded with less-than-lethal ammunition.
• Agents cleared a path for two white passenger vans that exited the area. A short time later, as officers boarded their vehicles to leave, a few agents lobbed flash-bang grenades at groups of people who chased alongside the slow-moving convoy.”
• “Hours after the raid, a second clash between protesters and federal agents broke out outside a federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles, where those who were detained were taken. At one of the entrances, protesters chanted and approached the building as officers fired less-than-lethal projectiles and squirted what appeared to be pepper spray.”
• “They started throwing flash-bangs and blew everybody up with it,” the man, David McDaniel, said as he held his bloody foot. “I got shrapnel all over my body,” he added. Mr. McDaniel said he was not part of the protest and was just trying to get by.”

I realize that’s a lot of quotes, but I want to give readers a sense of what a news outlet with little sympathy for brown people or protestors was reporting about the ICE raids on Friday that started the invasion of LA, and the language they were willing to use. What the Times is cataloguing here, is an invasion before the invasion Very Serious People TM in our discourse are willing to admit happened, and federal agents unloading “nonlethal” weaponry on entirely nonviolent protestors. The article also goes on to describe the tactics Gestapo agents used once they had “corralled” suspected migrants, which if reports from at least one US citizen targeted by those tactics are to be believed, are in fact clear civil rights violations.

“Omar Diaz, 26, was working inside when several agents entered the building and corralled the roughly 20 to 30 workers inside and lined them up against a wall.

“They interviewed us one by one,” Mr. Diaz said. “They would take us separately, ask us where we were born, and then they wanted our ID and our information.”

It may surprise the nazis running our immigration policy to learn this, but ICE needs grounds beyond “this person is brown and working in LA” to detain people; to say nothing of the fascist police state tactic of swarming businesses and “corralling” all the people who fit the description. So, the feds were all decked out for war in Los Angeles, California, a sanctuary city with a large nonwhite population, in a sanctuary state led by a Dem Governor Trump seems to regard as his chief political rival, terrorizing brown people, openly violating the civil rights of Angelinos, and dropping flash bang grenades and non-lethal rounds on the streets of LA to clear a path for migrant paddy-wagons; all before anyone in Trumpworld had even uttered the words “National Guard.”

Now before we move on, I want you to ask yourself how you would feel and how you would respond, if this was happening in your community. Do you think you might protest? Spray a little graffiti? Might you even consider throwing an egg at the Gestapo? Folks every narrative being pushed by fascist propagandists and cop-loving centrists about the entire invasion of LA story hinges on the idea that the greater crime here is obstructing fascist mass deportations, and not the mass deportations themselves. Don’t let a cop-hugging white supremacist establishment convince you to take your eye off the ball because of some grafitti and some burning robo-taxis.

 

Lighting the Fuse

If, as many local officials in California have suggested, the Trump regime’s goal was to create a powder keg that justifies even more authoritarian repression in LA, it’s abundantly clear the regime and its Gestapo were working to create that power keg long before the Swine Emperor illegally deployed what is now 4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 US Marines to the extremely diverse sanctuary city. Immediately on Friday, there were dozens of widely shared news reports about outrageous provocations, civil rights violations, and physical confrontations openly and shamelessly initiated by federal immigration agents with the full backing of the Trump administration. Take for example the assault, arrest, and smearing of Service Employees International Union President David Huerta during the Friday ICE raids in densely populated portions of LA and the surrounding area.

Although ICE’s racist Gestapo tactics inspired multiple protests around the greater Los Angeles area, I believe it was the violent carceral detainment of Huerta that ultimately pushed LA past the boiling point and ensured Trump would get his excuse to launch Stephen Miller’s clearly pre-planned invasion of his hometown. Whether the Gestapo pigs who assaulted Huerta on camera while the extremely popular labor leader was merely observing an unlawful ICE raid targeting workers in his city knew it or not, their fascist piggery was almost certainly the inciting moment for widespread nonviolent protests that broke out across the greater LA area; a day and a half later, Trump would be illegally deploying National Guard troops on the streets of downtown Los Angeles.

‘This Is What Fascism Looks Like’: Beloved Labor Leader David Huerta Arrested

“The union included remarks from Huertas, who said, “We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice.”

“This is about something much bigger” than his own arrest, said Huertas. “This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice.”

According to a statement released by the Department of Homeland Security, approximately 44 individuals were “administratively arrested” in a series of raids at retail stores in the Los Angeles area, while one individual, identified as Huertas, was arrested “for obstruction” of federal officers.

“This is what fascism looks like,” said California State Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat. “Secret police raids. Injuring protesters. Arresting labor leaders.”

As the article notes, Huerta is the president of the 750,000 member-strong Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in California; which is an organization that represents an absolutely massive number of Latinex workers in the state, and has a vested interest in halting Gestapo workplace raids on behalf of its card-holders. In other words, if the feds were looking to avoid protests, this was the absolute last guy they wanted to assault in broad daylight with cellphone cameras recording the entire incident. Which makes the fact that the Gestapo did so anyway without any real hesitation, and then tried to lie about Huerta later to justify assaulting and arresting him, all the more revealing. From a Guardian update posted after Huerta was released on bond:

“In an affidavit supporting the criminal complaint against Huerta, an officer alleged that the union leader was arrested after another officer tried to push him out of the way of a law enforcement vehicle being blocked by protesters on a sidewalk. The officer who witnessed the incident claimed that he saw Huerta “push back, and in response, the officer pushed HUERTA to the ground. The officer and I then handcuffed HUERTA and arrested him.”

However, video of the arrest shared on social media by US attorney Bill Essayli seems to show that the officer shoved Huerta to the ground without being pushed by the labor leader. Huerta’s head was knocked into a concrete curb by the officers and he was hospitalized on Friday.”

If you watch the video Trump’s own US attorney shared, it becomes utterly impossible for the regime to credibly argue that Heurta is a violent protestor or criminal element; he is literally just standing there talking to the feds and one of the murderpigs gives him a two handed shove to the concrete. Frankly, even the government’s argument that Huerta is guilty of “obstructing” federal agents seems to revolve around his refusal to quickly step out the way for a truck full of kidnapped Angelino workers to be driven through; yet Bill Essayli is trying this bullshit anyway, and publishing the video you need to know he’s bald-face lying. This behavior may seem odd, but I believe it’s because the facts in this case don’t matter to Trump; the arrest of Huerta and the outrage it produced in particular merely provided him with the excuse he needed to declare war on LA and by extension, Governor Gavin Newsom.

Please keep in mind that as far as I know, David Huerta was the only person in LA arrested by immigration officials for obstructing the ICE raids on Friday. Which means the government’s entire basis for calling protests in Los Angeles and “open insurrection” against federal authority is a union leader being attacked by a Gestapo thug for standing too close to a van. If that isn’t enough to make you realize this is all propaganda designed to justify a coordinated plan to invade Los Angeles, I don’t know what will.

—

If it seems like I’m laser focused on the Gestapo raids broadly targeting brown workers in LA on Friday, it’s because these were unquestionably the inciting incidents that lead to the Trump regime’s ongoing fascist invasion of LA, and contrary to Downmarket Mussolini and his minion’s lies, the Trump administration was completely responsible for these inciting incidents. It was Kristi Noem who demanded vastly more migrant arrests. It was Stephen Miller who gave the order to target retail businesses and public districts. It was ICE officials who told the Gestapo to violate civil rights and start snatching people up for being brown. It was the Trump regime who targeted a sanctuary city in a sanctuary state run by the current 2028 Democrat nomination frontrunner for this spectacle. And it was Trumpenreich officials who responded to nonviolent protests by declaring a violent insurrection was occurring in LA to pave the way for Trump’s deployment of US military forces to the city.

They had the means, they created the opportunity, and the motives are transparently fascist; once the fascists provoked even a nonviolent response from Angelinos, Trump snatched it up as an excuse to declare war on his perceived opposition immediately. The Swine Emperor and his regime behaved as if this was all planned from the beginning, because it was.

 

 

– Nina Illingworth

 

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.

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