The Skinny: Staggering On Fumes
Sometimes You Lose: June 21st – July 10th
Climate Crisis, Extractivism, and the Pig Empire
One of the major reasons I write about capitalism, politics, and the ongoing installation of fascist police states across the Pig Empire like I’m talking about an apocalyptic death cult, is because if you spend any time at all diving into the data on climate catastrophe it becomes almost impossible to reach any other conclusion. We know without a shadow of a doubt that climate crisis is real, it is caused by capitalist extractivism and a Pig Empire economy that is inseparable from fossil fuels, and if we don’t do something about it billions of people are going to die.
Yet if we examine capitalist governments all across the Pig Empire we find that they are literally doing precisely nothing about this at all, while hardening their borders, curtailing the civil rights of their own citizens, and rapidly expanding authoritarian police states. Meanwhile a political class that has long since surrendered to billionaire nazis, who themselves are more or less in an anti-humanist cult and plan to run to Mars after they’ve devoured this planet like locusts, shifts ever rightward; all to facilitate the type of society where poor people die at bayonet point for the rich to extract even more wealth while the world, and its people, literally burn.
From my perspective? The conclusions one can draw from this are pretty obvious. The ruling classes in what some might call the West, have no intention of surrendering capitalism even if the planet turns to ash and billions of “useless eaters” die. And while that might sound like a very controversial take to you, the reality is that our in-pocket governments wholly owned by the billionaires who benefit from and have their wealth tied into extractivist capitalism, literally keep writing down their intentions to do so. Take for example a recent report that just four wealthy, primarily white, Pig Empire nations are responsible for nearly 70% of the new oil and gas projects our “leaders” have planned for the next decade.
‘Planet Wreckers’: 4 Rich Nations Plotting Nearly 70% of New Oil and Gas Over Next Decade
“Four wealthy nations—the United States, Canada, Norway, and Australia—account for the majority of planned oil and gas expansion over the next decade, according to new data published by Oil Change International on Monday, the first day of the Bonn Climate Change Conference in Germany.
Oil Change’s analysis, titled Planet Wreckers, notes that if those four Global North nations stopped their planned new oil and gas extraction, 32 billion tons of carbon pollution would stay in the ground instead of being burned and released into the atmosphere, where they fuel planetary heating. That’s the equivalent of three times the annual global emissions created by burning coal.
“A handful of the world’s richest nations remain intent on leading us into disaster. This is not just hypocrisy. It is a death sentence for communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis,” Oil Change International global policy lead Romain Ioualalen said in a statement Monday.
“It is sickening that countries with the highest incomes and outsized historical responsibility for causing the climate crisis are planning massive oil and gas expansion with no regard for the lives and livelihoods at stake,” Ioualalen added.”
So, let me just be abundantly clear here: the number of new oil and gas projects anyone, anywhere, should be planning right now is precisely fucking zero and “wise capitalists” are encouraged to spare me any garbage about “we have to drill more now, to drill less later” because it was bullshit when Joe Biden said it too. The scientific reality is that we have already dug up enough fossil fuels to turn the planet into an apocalyptic hellscape likely incapable of supporting human societies, multiple times over. Speaking on a species-level, humans cannot burn all the fossil fuels we’ve already booked and turned into vital planks of a globalized Pig Empire economy, without causing our own destruction; there are absolutely no good reasons to continue extracting more carbon-producing fuels out of the ground at all. This is scientifically indisputable without the presumption of climate technology that simply does not exist today. The solution to this problem therefore is quite obvious: we need to stop burning fossil fuels, even if it tears down the entire capitalist order.
Therein of course lies the problem for the wealthy maggots who own everything in the Pig Empire; if we stop burning fossil fuels, the wealth and thus power tied in to all that (already booked) oil simply vanishes overnight. Fortunes would be lost, power centers fueled by obscene wealth would implode, and the people who own and control our society now, would lose their grip on the ability to dictate the future of humanity from their glass citadels in Western Europe and North America. And so it is that ceasing to dig up, burn, and base our entire economy on fossil fuel production and consumption that is actively going to murder billions of people has not been, and will never be, a serious consideration for the ruling elite in our society. The “wise capitalists” who own and rule our society are therefore, every day, and in so many ways beyond reports like this one, directly telling you they mean to murder you and yours, for the cult of capital.
The Panopticon Sees Us All
Over the past couple of months I’ve written a lot about the rapid expansion of the already-formidable American surveillance state under Trump. Unfortunately, because the regime has cloaked this alarming and extremely dangerous expansion of the police state panopticon primarily inside the machinations of its immigration policies and mass deportation schemes, the vast majority of Very Serious People TM in our discourse are not properly assessing the danger this represents. Some might call that lack of threat recognition a function of “ubiquitous US white supremacy in action,” and those people would be absolutely correct. It is also however, extremely shortsighted because as I’ve noted many times, a dystopian panopticon police state for migrants, is a dystopian panopticon police state for everyone if the government wants it to be; and I think it’s safe to say that Trump indeed desires as much.
To get a better idea of the scope of the problem I’ve been talking about, let’s take a look at this June 2025 Truthout article by Mike Ludwig that explores the extent to which the migrant panopticon is being purposed for all sorts of federal law enforcement and fascist repression purposes.
Trump Is Rapidly Expanding the Surveillance State as Protests Grow
“While mainstream media has framed the issue in terms of surveillance of immigrants, data on all Americans is being sucked into a growing digital dragnet. Guariglia and other privacy advocates are sounding the alarm over efforts by the Trump administration and its Silicon Alley partners to consolidate personal data on millions of people at the Social Security Administration and other federal agencies. As law enforcement increasingly turns to private companies to buy data instead of asking courts for search warrants, a data broker owned by major airlines has sold customer flight records and personal information to Customs and Border Patrol, according to an investigation by 404 Media.
“You are seeing that federal agents working under this current administration are very openly using surveillance technologies to trump our free speech, to completely violate our privacy, and not even giving personal privacy consideration anymore,” Tse said. “That is the thing that I am seeing that is new.”
I think to a degree it’s still very hard for Americans, even cynical Americans raised in a post 9/11, post-Snowden leaks counterterrorism environment, to understand the degree to which technologies like facial recognition software, and so-called “AI” have supercharged a US state panopticon that is now more or less completely under the control of Swine Emperor Trump and his executive branch nazis. Furthermore, agencies like ICE, DHS, and the larger counterterrorism apparatus entwined throughout agencies like the FBI, and NSA, simply do not have the same level of oversight as even notoriously unsupervised local police forces because this entire police state panopticon was installed under the guise of fighting terrorism, which is more or less the President and the executive branch’s purview in US government. These factors have always made the War on Terror panopticon a civil rights nightmare that has lead to numerous abuses by the Bush, Obama, and Biden governments over time; which is part of why giving that same panopticon “counterterrorism” police state to a guy like Trump, who thinks disagreeing with him publicly is tantamount to treason, or supporting terrorism, is an existential crisis in its own right.
Look folks, I know it isn’t exactly news in the year 2025 that the government is spying on you, and we’ve even talked about some of the ways its doing so already. But you have to understand the sheer scope of what the Trump regime is doing here, and what AI-enabled oppression is going to look like. We’re talking about the ability to integrate literally every aspect of your data and living footprint into one all seeing master computer that makes the IBM punch-card computers they used to conduct the Holocaust in Germany look quaint. That means DNA, healthcare data, traffic cameras, tax information, real time tracking technology, full identity theft folders from private data brokers, SSA and tax data, and so on; this is some actual Minority Report shit now. No matter how passé you thinking privacy rights discussions have become after Snowden’s leaks, I cannot stress enough that this is a devil many orders of magnitude more dangerous than the police state we were dealing with a mere 6-8 years ago.
Which of course brings us back to a Trump regime arguing, in court, that being anti-genocide and pro-Palestine is a threat to national security, interfering with racialized Gestapo kidnappings is materially supporting terrorists, and nonviolent protests are actually an insurrection. It does not take a genius to look at the regime’s ongoing war on both dissent and a broadly defined American left, as exemplified by Project Esther, and realize that the rapidly expanding “migrant” panopticon is also a rapidly expanding “anyone Trump doesn’t like” panopticon.
Corporate Collaborators Name Their Price
What price can you place on a commitment to equality, human decency, and resistance to fascism? Well if you’re Verizon, one of the most powerful telecoms in America, the answer is apparently “a twenty billion dollar merger. This story has been kicking around my “to do” folder for a month, but larger events overtook it until now. I wasn’t prepared to let it go however, because I think the tale of Verizon surrendering to Trump’s fascist ‘anti-woke” agenda without being threatened by the regime, exemplifies why I don’t think we can trust corporations to oppose fascism, even if US courts ultimately hold that Trump has no power to punish private sector actors for their apparent ideological positions. Whereas the majority of the Vichy Establishment collaboration we’ve talked about is a question of cowardice and complicity in the face of threats by a fascist regime, the Verizon betrayal story is a much older song and dance about the power of raw, unbridled greed.
Verizon said it was “fiercely committed to diversity and inclusion.” Verizon lied.
“In the letter, Verizon said these changes were required by the “Supreme Court, the President’s Executive Orders, and federal mandates.” This is false; there is no Supreme Court ruling that prohibits using the words “diversity” and “inclusion” on a website or in employee training materials. Similarly, companies are still legally permitted to have “workforce diversity goals” and “supplier diversity programs.” These kinds of initiatives are not inherently discriminatory. Rather, they often involve making sure more candidates and businesses know about opportunities. President Trump signed an executive order declaring DEI programs “illegal,” but presidents are not empowered to create new laws by fiat.
So why did Verizon abruptly abandon its commitment to DEI? Apparently, it was required by the FCC to win approval for Verizon to acquire Frontier Communications, a broadband technology company, for $20 billion. The FCC announced its approval of the acquisition on May 16 — the day after Verizon said it had ended all its DEI programs. In its press release, the FCC said its approval of the acquisition “Ensures that Discriminatory DEI Policies End.”
Verizon’s public commitment to diversity and inclusion was not limited to one statement by its CEO in 2020. It was something that Verizon and its leadership repeatedly and adamantly stressed was central to its values. But when saying “diversity” and “inclusion” put a $20 billion acquisition at risk, it abandoned DEI in a heartbeat.”
I concede that a certain amount of this Popular Information article is “look at the dripping hypocrisy” lib posting, and I apologize if that’s starting to wear you out; if I’m being honest it’s starting to wear me out. Frankly, I think the larger point to be made here about how self-interest and the profit motive interact with a fascist regime like the one Downmarket Mussolini is running, is far and away the most interesting part of this story.
The reality is that whatever you believe about the effectiveness or DEI programs or the motivations for Verizon executives to adopt a firmly supportive stance towards inclusion and diversity, the company incorporated those ideas into their business practices in a foundational way. The pitch for Verizon was in part that “we are a diverse company servicing a diverse customer base” and I think anyone who knows much about the telecommunications industry in America knows this in no way appears to have cost Verizon in the marketplace; they are one of the largest, most profitable corporations in the country. In fact, they’re so large, and so profitable that they can buy another company for a cool twenty billion, and therein lies the source of their betrayal and collaboration.
After applying for the merger, the FCC opened an investigation into Verizon’s “diversity practices” with a clear signal that approval would be dependent on bringing them into line with Trump’s white supremacist executive orders. At this point Verizon could have sued the government, or for that matter just not gone through with the merger. Please keep in mind that the reason the FCC has power over these types of mergers is precisely to reign in the kind of telecom monopoly Verizon was hoping to expand with this merger; this merger is not something the country really needs, nor will the end result help labor class Americans at all. Either decision would however cost the shareholders time, and money, and under the modern corporate ethos, that is a crime far worse than a little fascist collaboration and white supremacist dog-whistling. So Verizon not only scrapped their DEI programs, but they literally erased all evidence of their prior existence on their website, and then sent a letter to the FCC to brag about what good little nazis they are now. The merger was then approved the day after Verizon sent the letter to the FCC.
And there I think, lies the lesson in all this. There is a share price, at which businesses will collaborate with fascism, even if they’ve been genuinely supportive of those targeted by fascists in the past. Fairweather friends are no friends during wartime, and the fascists are in fact at war with the rest of us.
LAPD is Trump’s 5th Column in LA
Although the world has moved on to more exiting news, the reality is that the Trump regime is still occupying the city of Los Angeles, and while the soldiers the regime sent to do so are not involved in widespread civil rights abuses right now, they are acting to effectively intimidate opposition to both federal Gestapo forces and local police departments; murderpigs who most certainly are engaging in widespread civil rights abuses. If you have read anything I’ve written about the fascist Invasion of LA, you know that I believe the architect of this entire shitshow is Trump’s unofficial nazi viceroy, Stephen Miller, and as such the vast majority of the blame for this terrible situation resides with him and the larger Trumpenreich. The “vast majority” however, is not “all of the blame” and as I’ve written many times and in many contexts, one of the major reasons the Swine Emperor’s plot to transform America into an outright fascist dictatorship has been so successful to this point, is that as president he inherited a pre-existing American police state already molded by authoritarianism, US white supremacy, and the embrace of fascist ideology.
It may not be popular to point out now, but the reality is Trump’s deployment of a combined military and militarized law enforcement brute squad to crush protests is not a novel invention, even in a modern, deeply “blue” California. As the author of this piece notes from personal experience, a mere five years ago Gavin Newsom himself send 8,000 National Guardsmen into California communities, primarily in and around Los Angeles, to horrifically suppress the 2020 protests against racialized police violence in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Furthermore, the pro-murderpig, pro-government media coverage of the protests in LA Trump claims are his casus belle for invading an American city, also mirrors the coverage of those 2020 protests nationwide, not just in Los Angeles.
Years of LAPD Impunity Paved Way for Trump’s Repression of Protests Today
“In the years since, the city has paid out nearly $12 million in legal settlements and jury awards stemming from well-documented LAPD abuses at that summer’s protests. An independent report commissioned by the Los Angeles City Council, released in 2021, found that the LAPD had acted chaotically and belligerently — illegally detaining protesters, deploying force on innocent people, and escalating confrontations with nonviolent protesters.
Five years later, the LAPD’s multibillion-dollar budget has only grown, even as the department overspends on police liability payouts. This context is crucial for understanding the events that erupted in Los Angeles last week amid a wave of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. In response to the Trump administration’s violent deportation regime, a coalition of community members, of all ages and backgrounds, have gathered in solidarity with their undocumented neighbors. Most of the demonstrations have been concentrated in just a few blocks downtown, a tiny portion of the sprawling city. “Moms, kids, families, it was truly beautiful to see,” said one friend who attended a protest on June 8. “Even when it got violent from the cops — I got hit with a flashbang that cut my arm — there were volunteer field medics and teens handing out water bottles.”
This reality on the ground is a far cry from the picture painted by President Donald Trump and mainstream media, who have attempted to equate scattered scenes of property destruction with widespread, state-inflicted violence against human beings. I remember this same gulf during the 2020 protests, between lived experience and media spectacle. And time and time again, what a large body of research has shown is that the presence of militarized police and the National Guard at protests is often the real instigator of violence, not its pacifier.”
Look, I’m not psychic and I can’t speak to the author’s intentions with this piece; liberals are probably going to see this as a gotcha targeting Gavin Newsom, remember how much I hate Newsom personally, and assume the worst. The reality however is that this problem is a lot bigger than Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles, or my disdain for the neoliberal authoritarian, cop-humping wing of the Democratic Party. We are effectively in the early stages of a very kinetic version of the American culture war, and you don’t win wars without understanding the nature of the conflict and which side you’re ultimately on.
This isn’t about elections, this is about a pre-existing reactionary police state that already regards marginalized people and protesters as the enemy. Folks who are actively opposing the fascist regime have to understand that when we take to the streets, it’s not going to be “red versus blue” at a law enforcement level and we cannot rely on support from opposition political leaders who built and immunized the police state for precisely the same purpose Trump is using it for now; crushing opposition and suppressing constitutionally-protected protest against the machine. When the shit hits the fans on the streets of Trump’s America, the police aren’t going to protect you from fascism; they’re going to protect fascism from you.
Theocratic Characteristics
In the wake of several appalling decisions handed down by the US Supreme Court, I have begun describing the current American political environment as “an executive branch dictatorship with theocratic characteristics.” Given that I’ve already published an article about the Roberts Court and their enabling of that executive branch dictatorship, so in the meantime let’s talk about those “theocratic characteristics” as exemplified by another SCOTUS ruling that’s an epic disaster for folks who believe in public education and aren’t Christian Nationalists.
Although it didn’t receive nearly as much attention as granting Trump the right to ignore the US Constitution in real time, the reality is that the 6-3 fascist majority also delivered a ruling under the guise of supporting parental religious rights, that will almost certainly act as a de facto ban on teaching LGBTQ material in schools, and is indeed likely to reach much further into our educational system on behalf of people who believe Jesus was white and dinosaurs might be hoax. Let’s turn to this Guardian write up by Robert Tait for more details.
US supreme court rules schools must let kids opt out of LGBTQ+ book readings
“In the ruling, the conservative justice Samuel Alito wrote: “We have long recognized the rights of parents to direct ‘the religious upbringing’ of their children. And we have held that those rights are violated by government policies that substantially interfere with the religious development of children.”
At the end of Alito’s judgment, the ruling stated: “Until all appellate review in this case is completed, the [school] board should be ordered to notify [parents] in advance whenever one of the books in question or any other similar book is to be used in any way and to allow them to have their children excused from that instruction.”
Folks, I’m just spit-balling here but perhaps we should stop putting legislative and judicial power in the hands of people who believe a man in the sky who curiously shares all their bigoted beliefs is directly speaking to them and telling them to purge queer people from American life? Just a thought.
Snark aside, this is precisely the kind of concern-trolling “parental rights” Trojan Horse the religious right intends to use to dismantle public education and force fascist indoctrination by default, on American children. Faced with a spiritually diverse, hand-picked group of religious parents who don’t want their children to even know identities other than cis het fascist exist, the Court ruled (along entirely partisan lines) that “schools must give children the chance to opt out on faith grounds from listening to storybooks being read out loud that feature gay and transgender characters.” Given that in the year 2025 I probably shouldn’t have to explain why “treating the knowledge that queer people exist as if it were pornography your children must be protected from is deeply homophobic,” let’s talk a little bit about why this seemingly narrow decision is likely to have a huge and objectively terrible impact, on American educational life.
The first thing you need to understand is that the American public school system is horrifically underfunded, and as a whole controversy-adverse. In theory, all the SCOTUS judges have ruled here is that schools have to provide advance warning to parents that materials acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ+ people are going to be taught, and allow them to opt their child out of being exposed to objectionable ideas like “queer people are human beings just like you.” In practice however, this is just going to be a straight ban on LGBTQ+ material being taught in public schools because the solution of separating out into two classes is expensive and unworkable for educators who are legally obliged to provide supervision and educational programming for the religious opt-out students simultaneously. Nobody has the time, or money, to deal with a problem like that in our current anti-educator political environment and as someone quite familiar with education system bureaucracy, I can assure you that the majority of school boards are simply going to ban anything even remotely related to the existence of LGBTQ+ people.
This is of course a huge win for fash-friendly fundamentalists, but I would caution cis-het people who believe this is purely a queer community issue to consider for a moment, just how many highly-politicized things in American life politically-empowered Christian Nationalists consider “against their religion.” After all, if parents can opt their kids out of even knowing LGBTQ+ people exist because “God,” what’s to stop them from demanding an opt-out to avoid their kids learning about evolution, women’s suffrage, or say the dark history of American chattel slavery? And why would broke and terrified schoolboards have any more money to provide two separate classes during those lessons?
Buckle up my friends, because this fundie fascist carnival ride is about to get even bumpier than it already is.
Dark Patterns In Global Gulags
I understand that given the sheer volume of horrible fascist shit the Trump regime is doing right now, it can be difficult to keep up with all the specific ways they’re transforming the United States into essentially the Fourth Reich. Even acknowledging that however, I’m having a hard time understanding why the Trump Regime’s machinations to establish a globalized network of concentration camps in countries not subject to American law, isn’t a much bigger story in our media; particularly given the alarming implications of that activity and the fact that the Supreme Court just greenlit the Trump regime’s blatantly illegal migrant trafficking scheme on unrelated procedural grounds. Apparently shipping over 200 migrants to CECOT in El Salvador is an alarming sign of burgeoning Trumpenreich fascism, but planning to illegally ship thousands and thousands migrants to concentration camps just like CECOT, all over the developing world, is now business as usual.
For more details on the most alarming story you’ve heard almost nothing about, let’s turn to this important report by Nick Turse on the Intercept’s investigation into Trump’s global gulag.
Trump’s Global Gulag Search Expands to 53 Nations
“An Intercept investigation finds that the Trump administration has been hard at work trying to expand its global gulag for expelled immigrants, exploring deals with a quarter of the world’s nations to accept so-called third-country nationals — deported persons who are not their citizens.
To create this archipelago of injustice, the U.S. government is employing strong-arm tactics with dozens of smaller, weaker, and economically dependent nations. The deals are being conducted in secret, and neither the State Department nor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will discuss them. With the green light from the Supreme Court, thousands of immigrants are in danger of being disappeared into this network of deportee dumping grounds.
“The Supreme Court’s ruling leaves thousands of people vulnerable to deportation to third countries where they face torture or death, even if the deportations are clearly unlawful,” said Leila Kang, a staff attorney at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, a group that represents immigrants who filed suit.”
So again, I just want to review the situation here so you can understand why I find this story and our broader (lack of) reaction to it so alarming. Right now, as we speak, evidence indicates that various entities in the fascist Trump administration, including in particular the State Department under Marco Rubio, are conducting secret negotiations with over a quarter of the planet, to accept “deported” migrants from completely different countries of origin, on behalf of a white supremacist American government that appears to be actively looking for the most dangerous and inhospitable places to traffic kidnapped migrants to. Furthermore, despite the fact that this is clearly illegal and even the Supreme Court itself has ruled that very similar activities were unconstitutional in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, noted fundie fascist John Roberts and a 6-3 “conservative” SCOTUS majority all but invited the Trump regime to do so until they get around to ruling on whether or not these clearly illegal activities are in fact, illegal. My friends, if this were a story about China, your media would be running round the clock stories about the horrifying acts of ethnic cleansing, reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s efforts to marginalize, criminalize, and ultimately exterminate Jewish people during the Holocaust, obviously about to ensue. Instead? It’s pretty much crickets if you’re not reading The Intercept and Nick Turse.
Folks I’m not trying to be melodramatic here, but the history is the history. The Nazis argued that by their very nature, Jews were a national security risk; just as our government argues that migrants themselves represent a literal fucking invasion of the United States by rarely-identified nefarious actors. The Holocaust didn’t start with mass murders; this process of systemically eliminating a whole culture in Europe started with stripping the rights and citizenship of Jewish people. It started with Gestapo raids, and “concentrating” racialized “prisoners” into camps. It’s not an accident that Auschwitz wasn’t built in Germany, but in occupied Poland, far away from the power of German law. Do you understand what you’re looking at here? Can you recognize the familiar pattern of scaremongering, the de-personing and denaturalization of targeted minorities, the concentration of potentially stateless individuals in zones where there is no law to protect them? Do you think it’s an accident that our clearly fascist, clearly ethnonationalist government, is actively taking all the same steps the Nazi Party took in Germany before they enacted their “final solution” to the “Jewish question?” Do you believe Stephen Miller doesn’t know what you and I know about where this story usually ends?
Gestapo House Raids in Occupied Territory
This very short write up about a federal Gestapo raid on a home in Huntington Park California is almost two weeks old now, but I didn’t want to let it slip through the cracks because I believe it manifestly exposes how the overtly fascist police state I’ve talked about the Trumpenreich creating, actually functions in practice.
In one incident from the larger Invasion of LA saga unfolding right now, we’ve got militarized policing in American neighborhoods, a legally-dubious home invasion by ideologically motivated state security forces, the application of federally-controlled Gestapo goons to engage in domestic policing activities unrelated to immigration, and an ethnonationalist security force apparatus seeking revenge for potentially made up crimes against our slow motion ethnic cleansing project. Given the shocking footage involved, it’s entirely possible you heard about this incident; but near as I can tell, there aren’t many people in the mainstream discourse prepared to talk about what it all means, so let’s give that a try a here.
Federal agents blast way into California home of woman and small children
“The agents told Ramirez that they were searching for her boyfriend, but did not tell her why, according to NBC. Ramirez told the news station that he was involved in a vehicle collision with a truck carrying federal agents last week. She said it was an accident and unintentional.
A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection told NBC: “Jorge Sierra-Hernandez was arrested because he rammed his car into a CBP vehicle, causing significant damage and obstructed the work of our agents and officers during the course of a law enforcement operation.”
The spokesperson said agents were “assaulted” during this incident and “additional rioters threw rocks and other objects at our personnel.”
The first thing I want to talk about here is the video included in this article, which I encourage you to actually watch if you haven’t already; you can find it here. Yes, you just saw twelve, poorly-identified, armed to the teeth federal agents set up outside a woman’s home before using an explosive device to blow open her door, and file in to the home assault rifles ready, like we’re doing house to house insurgent searches in fucking Fallujah. It is unclear exactly which agencies were involved in this outrageous militarized raid but based on the government’s news releases we can surmise that at least some of these goons were Border pigs.
Why does that matter? Well, the woman inside the home, Jenny Ramirez, is an American citizen. Her two young children who were home with their mom when the feds blew the front door open? Also American citizens. So why the fuck is Customs and Border Protection in an LA satellite city, with a 97% Latino population, acting like the Marine Corps tossing houses in occupied territory? If your answer was “because this is an ethnonationalist government conducting a slow motion ethnic cleansing operation in what they consider occupied territory” you can probably skip the rest of my write up.
Naturally however, the immigration pigs couldn’t just admit they’re purposely terrorizing brown people and flexing their power to kick in anyone’s door for any reason they feel like. Officially, CBP said they were there to apprehend the woman’s boyfriend, Jorge Sierra-Hernandez, who they accused of ramming a CBP vehicle and “obstructing” a Gestapo raid of some kind. Actions which they are trying to tie to community protest against, again, racially-motivated Gestapo kidnapping raids in and around Los Angeles. Oh, in case you were wondering, Sierra-Hernandez is also an American citizen.
Would it surprise you to learn Ramirez says it was just a car accident? Who should we trust here? Please keep in mind that this is a fascist Department of Homeland Security we’ve watched repeatedly accuse peaceful protestors and even Democrat government officials of “assault” and “obstruction” even though the events were recorded on video and certainly don’t match the Gestapo’s description of reality. Hell, judging by the scare quotes around “assaulted” I don’t even think the normally pro-pig Guardian believes the government.
The real question remains however; why is Customs and Border Protection plus other immigration agents tooling around a 97% Latino city armed like they’re walking into the Tet Offensive, deploying explosives and drones to force their way into a family’s home like they’re tossing a cartel hideout over a traffic accident? Given that Sierra-Hernandez surrendered later that afternoon and is already out on bail, the police couldn’t have handled that? I’m not a mind reader but it sure feels to me like the Gestapo wanted to scare some brown people and get revenge on a guy who rear-ended their car.
Folks, the truth is that this would be fascism no matter who the Gestapo were terrorizing here or where in the world they were doing it; but this is Huntington Park, California and these people weren’t even migrants. This is exactly the fascist future Trump, Pam Bondi, and the rest of these white nationalist goons want for us all.
Alligators, Concentration Camps, and Theatrical Fascism
I think there is a larger conversation to be had about the crass, ignorant, and dystopian “game show” style of fascism the Trump regime is installing in America; a situation perfectly exemplified by the emergency construction of a migrant concentration camp on an abandoned airfield in the Florida Everglades, affectionately marketed (with actual merchandise) as “Alligator Alcatraz.” It says a lot about what lies at the rotting core of Trumpism that in the implementation of its fascist policies, the regime always finds a way to surpass satirists in Hollywood and the fever dreams of authors like Hunter S. Thompson; at least in terms of theatrical cruelty, open greed, and complete disregard for human decency. As such, I understand why the outrage in response to the construction and implementation of what amounts to a dollar store knock off version of torture prisons like CECOT, has been focused on the outrageous pageantry Downmarket Mussolini, Ronny DeSantis, and the American fascist movement are engaged in to cover up the fact that we’ve just build a domestic “Gitmo” and the guy running it is a former Bush “War on Terror” lawyer with a very checkered past on the subjects of human rights and torture.
The reality however is that “Alligator Alcatrez” (that is the official name of the gulag) is very clearly a concentration camp, designed to torture migrants as part of a slow-motion ethnic cleansing project to whiten the demographics of the USA. Furthermore, the evidence that this is so goes far beyond Trump’s obscene comments about alligators eating escaped migrants, as Florida Republicans have openly touted the idea that exposure to hurricanes might make migrants self-deport to avoid being sent there – statements which a responsible media would recognize as US politicians arguing “death by hurricane” is an acceptable punishment for the civil violation of being in the country without papers. In fact, this alarming idea is literally baked into the second half of the dungeon’s name; Alcatraz was a maximum security federal prison ostensibly designed to house “the worst felons in America,” while Alligator Alcatraz is a giant torture cage for brown people on the wrong side of an imaginary line. Please be assured that this conflation is intentional on the part of the fascist politicians behind this monstrous scheme.
Given the clear ethnonationalist motivations behind opening our very own concentration camp in the Florida Everglades, the men behind the plan, and their open statements about why Alligator Alcatraz was built, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that we’re already getting reports of widespread human rights violations out of the facility.
‘A Form of Torture’: Detainees Allege Mistreatment at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’
“They’re not respecting our human rights,” one detainee told CBS News Miami during a phone interview. “We’re human beings; we’re not dogs. We’re like rats in an experiment.”
“I don’t know their motive for doing this, if it’s a form of torture,” he added. “A lot of us have our residency documents and we don’t understand why we’re here.”
Another inmate, the Cuban reggaeton artist Leamsy La Figura, said guards “only brought a meal once a day and it had maggots.”
“They never take off the lights for 24 hours,” he claimed. “The mosquitoes are as big as elephants,” and “there’s no water to take a bath, it’s been four days since I’ve taken a bath.”
A Colombian detainee said his mental health is breaking down.
“I’m on the edge of losing my mind. I’ve gone three days without taking my medicine,” he said. “It’s impossible to sleep with this white light that’s on all day.”
“They took the Bible I had and they said here there is no right to religion,” the detainee added. “And my Bible is the one thing that keeps my faith, and now I’m losing my faith.”
So, let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. The fascist Florida government purposely built a concentration camp in the middle of a hurricane alley swamp, to facilitate the fascist Trump regime’s ethnic cleansing project. And now, we’re treating people who may be guilty of nothing more than a civil violation like War on Terror prisoners at Gitmo. We’ve had entire hearings about the effects of restricting access to food, shower facilities, and medicine because this is what our government did to suspected terrorists during the one of the darkest moments of modern American history. We know leaving the lights on twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to deny prisons adequate rest and a sense of passing time is a type of torture because we purposely did that “to root out Al-Qaeda.” You know who else knows? Ron fucking DeSantis, the former Bush-era JAG who literally worked at Gitmo while we were torturing Muslims to keep America “safe.”
In other words? We have built a concentration camp for brown people and we are now intentionally torturing them. In the United States of America. While bragging about it and selling T-shirts to celebrate it. Tell me again why it’s wrong to compare Trump’s new America to Nazi Germany?
– Nina Illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.
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