The Skinny: Friends and Enemies
Author’s note: in addition to my work here on NIDC, I also blog about fascism and current affairs on the Fediverse; click here to check it out. Want more? Click here to subscribe to NIDC today.
Marshalling Forces and Defining Threats
A half year into the second Trump presidency, the dividing line been friends and enemies are already being drawn by a fascist regime that has no intention of protecting democratic rights in Trump’s brave new Amerika. As such the regime spent the back half of July steering the entire ship of state into a war against the administration’s ideological enemies; which more or less means anyone to the left of Barry Goldwater at this point. In one week we found out Florida is running more than one concentration camp, DHS wants local police to target critical social media users, and Medicaid is spying on you for the nazis. Along the way the Swine Emperor accidentally undermined his State Department’s pro-genocide rhetoric, which The Skinny suspects might be the beginning of the end for Israel’s blockade of Gaza and maybe even the larger genocide. As always you can follow the links below to check out these stories on my Fediverse blog, or simply read them in their entirety on page two by using the navigation buttons at the bottom of this article.
July 21st – 31st, 2025
Dehumanization and the Process of Genocide
“The presence of one camp in the Everglades doesn’t preclude the transformation of pre-existing migrant cages into more concentration camps. While the Trump regime and DHS are working to restrict access to ICE detention centers, reports leak out about the horrifying conditions and human rights violations going on inside these facilities all the time. The fact that these stories don’t penetrate the discourse the way the DeSantis Dachau facility in the swamp does, probably comes down a society that has normalized the Gestapo, its migrant carceral complex, and the idea that it’s okay to criminalize and brutalize people for the accident of their birth on the wrong side of an imaginary line.”
This Is Already a Constitutional Crisis
“This comes from a larger pool of three hundred and thirty-seven cases against the Trump regime that actually came before a judge; which means you’ve got about a fifty percent change of beating the fascists in court, and at best a two thirds chance of that actually meaning anything even if you do. Does that sound like a legal system capable of protecting Americans and their civil rights from a fascist administration to you? Yeah, me neither.”
Force Multipliers and Gestapo Threats
“Painting resistance to the mass deportation program as inherently criminal, the DHS threat warning conjures up a picture of a coordinated, media-driven conspiracy to turn Americans against the agency; rather than resistance being an obvious consequence of the Gestpo’s blatantly fascist, and often entirely illegal activities on the streets of America. The real purpose of the threat memo becomes clear however when you realize what the Gestapo is advising police to look out for and protect them from, which very obviously includes protestors, observers filming Gestapo activities, and literally people posting online about this fascist bullshit.”
Medicaid Data Now Feeds the Panopticon
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out a fascist government collecting personally-identifying data from healthcare program only US citizens are eligible for, isn’t doing so for the purpose of targeting undocumented migrants. Despite nativist conspiracies about “illegal aliens stealing our healthcare,” Medicaid fraud by migrants its virtually nonexistent; and six months into Trump’s second term in the White House, I’m quite certain the President and all of his nazi minions in the executive branch know that. So the logical conclusion then is that Trump is giving the Gestapo this data, including “names, addresses, birth dates, ethnic and racial information, as well as Social Security numbers” to target Americans.”
CBS News, Skydance, and Trump’s Kulture War
“So far, the majority of the discourse around this situation has focused on Paramount’s willingness to grovel before a fascist dictator and silence dissent on his behalf, but what about the company that’s taking over the Paramount media enterprise now that the FCC has approved this shitshow, Skydance? Well, the early signals are not good, and it’s starting to look like this merger might represent the beginning of a new crusade to establish fascist cultural dominance in America. If recent media reports are to be believed, Paramount has fallen to Trumpenreich allies, who may be acquiring themselves a mainstream media company to spread the gospel of the cult of Trump.”
When NIMBY Reaction Meets Fascist Intentions
“Unhoused people don’t magically find someplace else to live when you clear encampments, or strictly enforce vagrancy laws. Forcing people with substance abuse problems into carceral rehab centers has a laughably poor track record of treating addiction. Institutionalizing people with mental health issues is an unspeakably poor and cruel substitute for funding mental healthcare programs that would allow these folks to lead healthy lives in our communities. If what Trump is proposing here represents some kind of solution, it’s not one for any of the problems the regime says they’re trying to solve.”
Trump Feeling Heat on Genocide in Gaza
“Once the President of the United States essentially admits that Israel is engineering mass starvation in Gaza, it’s hard to argue that they’re not conducting a genocide; the former, directly means the latter. And once you admit Israel is conducting a genocide, the argument that they’re not mass slaughtering Palestinians because they’re Palestinians, but rather “trying to eradicate Hamas” falls apart entirely. How the fuck does Rubio answer the question of why the US continues to arm and support the government of Israel, when the President himself just accused that same government of intentionally starving kids to death in Gaza while every camera in the western hemisphere was rolling?”
Trump, Trafficking Flights, and a Global Gulag
“We’re purposely shipping migrants to unstable third country gulags because we want to disappear them in the cruelest, most harmful way possible. Actually let me rephrase that for accuracy: we are paying countries out own State Department recognizes as human rights violators to vanish people in some of the worst dungeons, and least safe places on Earth because our white nationalist government loves hurting nonwhite people, and is trying to create a white, or at least significantly whiter, American ethnostate.”
– Nina Illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.
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