22 comments

  • daheza42 days ago
    I&#x27;ve been thinking a lot about ICE and how quickly we are escalating. I attend some minor protest and rallies against them but its not enough.<p>I do like how Illinois has setup a commission to track accountability. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ilac.illinois.gov&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ilac.illinois.gov&#x2F;</a><p>I feel like those of us in the technology sector have a obligation to assist in the counter balance to the police state that is rapidly building up. After all the executives of our companies have clearly chosen their side (Musk, Thiel, Ellison, Cook, Zuckerberg).<p>One idea is creating a site to track incidents, collect testimony, video evidence of events as they happen. If we can&#x27;t be physically there to confront them at least we can share evidence and put it in front of as many eyeballs as we can. It wouldn&#x27;t be a pleasant project, being a sin eater has its own costs. It would at least be something though.<p>Does anyone else have projects or ideas that can be contributed to?
    • SimianSci42 days ago
      I see this as a downstream issue of a greater issue needing to be solved.<p>Many American&#x27;s risk homelessness and violence outside of the corporate world. The control over money used for housing and healthcare lies entirely within the hands of corporate intrests driven by these executives. Until a viable alternative can be discovered for addressing housing and healthcare issues, no reasonable resistance amongst tech workers can be organized.<p>Many within the tech world, would love to build and produce technology that competes with the corporate interests you described, but lack secure housing or healthcare to do so.<p>Please note, that this does not require a &#x27;solution&#x27; to the problem, but rather an alternative.
    • Ritewut42 days ago
      Consider joining your local Code For America chapter or contributing to whatever local group handles mutual aid. Civic coding and mutual aid will be vital in the near future.
    • HNisCIS42 days ago
      There are plenty of opportunities but many rely on what are effectively &quot;zero days&quot; (some actually are) that aren&#x27;t suitable for posting on a public forum.<p>Rather, go find leftist groups and get vetted to participate with them. You&#x27;ll find like minded people, including other people working on technical countermeasures.<p>The groups are messy and sometimes incoherent (leftist infighting is a meme) but as of late they&#x27;ve become much more focused on a being pragmatic so nobody is going to make you quote marx or anything.
    • UncleMeat41 days ago
      I am doing a few things that I recommend.<p>Donate to mutual aid organizations that provide legal advice and support. The Trump admin is breaking a ton of laws but they aren&#x27;t breaking all of them. The legal system is more important now than ever. Making sure that people know what they can do to interfere with ICE is important. Funding legal teams for people detained by ICE is important.<p>Donate to mutual aid organizations that provide financial support. Somebody who is afraid to go to work because ICE might be there still needs to pay rent. An organization that funnels money to these people protects people.<p>Agitate for dems that give a shit. The way this ends is if dems win in 2026 and 2028 and actually take steps to punish the people who have committed these crimes and to dismantle the systems that enabled this in the first place. If instead we get the dems doing what Labor is doing and trying to be a just-slightly-less-evil nativist organization then we are fucking doomed. Documentation of these crimes will be important for making the libs unable to just say &quot;well let&#x27;s all move on&quot; like they did in 2021.
    • toomuchtodo42 days ago
      I&#x27;m aware of the below efforts:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.realtimefascism.com&#x2F;ice-sight" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.realtimefascism.com&#x2F;ice-sight</a> (appears to be inactive as of this comment)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.icelist.is&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.icelist.is&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;deportationdata.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;deportationdata.org&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;themarkup.org&#x2F;tools&#x2F;2025&#x2F;04&#x2F;16&#x2F;law-enforcement-ice-cooperation-tracker" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;themarkup.org&#x2F;tools&#x2F;2025&#x2F;04&#x2F;16&#x2F;law-enforcement-ice-c...</a>
    • GavinNewsom42 days ago
      [flagged]
  • SimianSci42 days ago
    Its pretty clear that ICE is being used as a means of forming an industry similar to that of the Military Industrial complex, but focused on law-enforcement and domestic action.<p>What alarms me here is that once a certain level of investment and industry is built, it will necessitate a means of self-sustaining itself and will attempt to find this through political investment. I fully expect a domestic version of the &quot;perpetual foreign wars&quot; concept to appear within my lifetime where we go from one domestic emergency requiring huge policing resources to another, ensuring the industry gets funding.
    • throw-12-1642 days ago
      ICE is MAGA’s analogue to the SS.<p>Diehards specifically recruited for their commitment to the cause.<p>They will be the ones making jokes while digging mass graves.
      • Teever42 days ago
        It is far closer to the SA than the SS. The MAGA equivalent of the SS hasn’t seen the light of day yet.
        • bigbadfeline42 days ago
          &gt; It is far closer to the SA than the SS.<p>False.<p>SA was essentially a militia which functioned manly as the NSDAP&#x27;s <i>non-governmental</i> terror group. As soon as NSDAP took power, Hitler used the SS to take control of the SA and assume its functions. The transition was bloody, the top commander of the SA was executed by Hitler and its leadership purged or killed, see the Night of the Long Knives.<p>The SA was never a government entity with any significant functions or budget.
    • krapp42 days ago
      It&#x27;s actually about white supremacy and turning the US into a Christofascist ethnostate but y&#x27;all aren&#x27;t ready to take that conversation seriously. The militarization of domestic policing and surveillance is just a means to an end.
      • throw-12-1642 days ago
        Most of these people will keep showing up to their cushy jobs at Google and FB while the data they spent decades harvesting is used to oppress their neighbors.
        • toomuchtodo42 days ago
          These people were not ethical before, why would you think they would be ethical or care now?
      • SimianSci42 days ago
        I see the Christofascism as more a flavor of the month than a serious unifying ideology. Religion has always been a tool used by those in power to gain favorability with people at scale. But history tells us it is easily manipulated and twisted to serve the needs of the powerful. (Crusades, Colonialism, Slavery, Conservatism)<p>Whatever Christofascism is today, will be boiled down to its fundamental components the moment it no longer serves the powerful so that it can be remade into whatever they need it to be. Think of it more as the rotting of one religion giving way to the fertile ground of new relgion.
        • pepperball41 days ago
          &gt; I see the Christofascism as more a flavor of the month than a serious unifying ideology.<p>I’ve joked occasionally we should just hand the zealots power as they’d quickly go back to just killing each other over theology.<p>Wouldn’t you know it all the smug religious revival accounts from unemployed zoomers that have recently flooded my social media seem more interested in attacking different Christian sects. My Facebook has been looking like the 30 years war recently.
        • krapp42 days ago
          It has roots going all the way back to the founding of the country. The core of American culture and of many of its issues has always been the tension between the conflicting desires for a Puritan theocracy with a strict racial hierarchy and a secular progressive Republic.<p>Slavery was justified by Christian principles, and manifest destiny. Hitler was inspired by America&#x27;s genocide of native Americans, racial segregation and eugenics (all of which were justified by Christianity.) And after the war, the US carried the torch of Nazism&#x27;s racist ideas after the rest of the world tried to move beyond it.<p>Many conservative ideals are backed by Christian belief. They hate feminism because it undermines the tradition Christian ideal of gender hierarchy. They hate homosexuality because they believe the Bible says it&#x27;s a sin. They hate communists because communism is atheist. And most of all they believe the US was founded as an explicitly Christian nation and should be governed only by Christian principles.<p>9&#x2F;11 happens and Bush declares a new &quot;Crusade&quot; against the evildoers. That language wasn&#x27;t accidental. The connections between the American military industrial complex and Evangelical Christianity run deep.<p>And now we have Trump, whom a significant number of Americans believe to have literally been sent by God to wage spiritual warfare against demonic forces within the government, citing Christianity explicitly as justification for his militarism.<p>And it&#x27;s absolutely not a coincidence that we reached this inflection point and acceleration after electing a Black president. That broke America in ways that I don&#x27;t think that it can ever recover from. It certainly isn&#x27;t a flavor of the month. If anything it&#x27;s the only truly unifying ideology America has ever had.<p>I think you&#x27;re correct that religion can be used as a tool by the powerful, but the typical cynical assumption that no one in power actually believes any of it is I think a mistake. Maybe not Trump, I suspect he&#x27;s too much of a narcissist to believe in anything but himself and <i>is</i> an example of what you&#x27;re referring to, but I think the people around him whispering in his ear and many of his supporters are true believers.
          • pepperball41 days ago
            &gt; They hate communists because communism is atheist.<p>A few years ago before the election, a friend and I often joked that you could probably sell a sizable portion of American right on something of a “five year plan”<p>The MAGA communism meme was going around at the time too. Traditional Cold War era “better dead than red” conservatives I knew were suddenly posting about nationalizing companies that weren’t playing ball with Trump.<p>The other day, I saw an account rambling about “Anglo-Saxon victory over Judeo-Bolshevik Materialism”. I found that a bit odd. I’ve heard the “Judeo-Bolshevik” schtick, and there’s certainly endless negative aspects of communism, but materialism certainly is not one of them.<p>But your connection with Atheism ties things together in a way that makes sense.
            • pandaman41 days ago
              &gt;aspects of communism, but materialism certainly is not one of them.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dialectical_materialism" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dialectical_materialism</a><p>It is one of the important parts. If you lived under communist rule you&#x27;d have to pass exams in &quot;diamat&quot; to get any advanced education.
      • Alex203742 days ago
        [flagged]
        • biophysboy42 days ago
          You should think for yourself instead of using outdated 4chan meme words.
          • throw-12-1642 days ago
            This whole movement of racist dipshits started on 4chan.
            • mikkupikku42 days ago
              Incredible power, weld somehow by basement dwelling otaku NEETs. Are their claims to possess mystic wizard powers real, or perhaps are you falling for their own aggrandizing propaganda?
              • throw-12-1642 days ago
                Where do you think QAnon and the Proud Boys started?
                • mikkupikku42 days ago
                  For every of those, there are a thousand more Trump voters who don&#x27;t have anything to do with them. (Also, AFAIK the Proud Boys were started by an ex founder of Vice, and had little if anything to do with 4chan.)<p>4chan likes to take credit for everything that happens but they don&#x27;t have any real power.
                  • throw-12-1642 days ago
                    Youre right about the Proud Boys, but they were heavily amplified on 4chan.<p>QAnon 100% started on 4chan and was regularly making national headlines.
        • krapp42 days ago
          Trump is just a miserable narcissistic racist (and rapist) consumed with a bitter desire for vengeance against the left, and thus an easily manipulated tool for the people actually setting this up. Anyone with half a brain has been watching the normalization of white nationalism and right-wing extremism escalate and accelerate since 2016 and can see that it isn&#x27;t entirely about Trump.
  • manbart42 days ago
    ICE is being used as the tip of the spear to complete the transition of the USA to a police state
    • Ritewut42 days ago
      This is really the only answer. ICE is a Trojan Horse. It&#x27;s like &quot;protect the children.&quot; It&#x27;s just a justifiable means to get what they really want which is more control. America is desperately trying to turn into China in more ways than one.
      • AnotherGoodName42 days ago
        I cannot comment on whether America is becoming a police state or not because i am a greencard holder subject to cancellation of the greencard at any time at the whims of the current administration.
        • Someone123442 days ago
          Unfortunately even if you naturalize, they&#x27;re now floating the concept of denaturalization for people opposed to the regime. It is wise if you are or were a legal immigrant (or have family members who are), to keep your head down.
          • throw0101c42 days ago
            &gt; <i>Unfortunately even if you naturalize, they&#x27;re now floating the concept of denaturalization for people opposed to the regime.</i><p>They&#x27;re now floating that birthright citizenship under the 14th isn&#x27;t really a birthright:<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.whitehouse.gov&#x2F;presidential-actions&#x2F;2025&#x2F;01&#x2F;protecting-the-meaning-and-value-of-american-citizenship&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.whitehouse.gov&#x2F;presidential-actions&#x2F;2025&#x2F;01&#x2F;prot...</a><p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2025&#x2F;03&#x2F;14&#x2F;nx-s1-5327552&#x2F;trump-takes-birthright-citizenship-to-the-supreme-court" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2025&#x2F;03&#x2F;14&#x2F;nx-s1-5327552&#x2F;trump-takes-bir...</a><p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...</a>
          • morkalork42 days ago
            &gt;It is wise &lt;snip&gt; to keep your head down.<p>Everyone is making the comparison to China but when I see comments like this, I think of countries like Russia where street interviews of the average citizen invariably result in answers like &quot;I&#x27;m not political&quot; and &quot;I have no opinion&quot;
          • expedition3242 days ago
            I would advise people from EU or Canada not to become US citizens. When shit goes bad you always have an exit.<p>Meanwhile Americans who &quot;vote with their feet&quot; will be stopped.
          • shafyy42 days ago
            But that&#x27;s exactly wrong. The people have the power, but only if enough people resist.
            • Someone123442 days ago
              Suggesting that the most legally vulnerable group be careful isn&#x27;t wrong, it is the reality for which they find themselves.<p>66%~ of the US either voted for this, or were indifferent about it, and are a group which cannot be deported&#x2F;denaturalized. Perhaps that group should step up instead of the &lt;1% who are most at risk from legal administrative threats.<p>I think it quite telling hearing born-Americans asking green card and naturalized citizens to be their &quot;resistance&quot; for decisions they themselves made. Reads like looking for cannon fodder, who can just be trivially deported&#x2F;denaturalized while the immune citizenship sits back and points at how bad things are.
              • Ritewut42 days ago
                The group of people who voted for this needs to stand up against it and I don&#x27;t see that happening because it requires admitting you were wrong and got conned and people would rather die than do that.
                • itsdrewmiller42 days ago
                  If true there would be no one term presidents
              • shafyy41 days ago
                FWIW, I am not American and I don&#x27;t live in the US. But yes, you are right of course. For some part of this group. But there are also many immigrants who can afford to speak up, because they are not necessarily refugees who would get deported back to a warzone or similar.<p>In the end though, the targeted and vulnerable group need to stand up for themselves, others won&#x27;t do it. I know it sucks, but it&#x27;s the reality unfortunately. And yes, others from more comfortable groups should also make a stand (and some people are), but history shows that not many will.
              • catlover7642 days ago
                [dead]
        • tomrod42 days ago
          At the rate they are also arresting citizens, I think there is no one truly safe.
      • azinman242 days ago
        “America is desperately trying to turn into China in more ways than one”<p>Except without the long term thinking and investment.
        • CSSer42 days ago
          Oh they&#x27;re thinking long-term about <i>someone</i>. It&#x27;s just not you or I.
    • throw-12-1642 days ago
      The US has been a police state since the Patriot Act was passed.
      • vkou42 days ago
        Oh? Really? Has this madness been happening in the other 23 of the 24 years since its passage? At this scale? Were there a lot of masked men disappearing people in broad daylight?<p>I&#x27;d have figured that if you were looking at historic examples of the US being a police state, the Jim Crow South would have been a better one, or if you were a homosexual, really, any time prior to the 90s.
        • bdangubic42 days ago
          yes, since uniformed people have gained legal rights to touch my junk in order for me to be allowed to board the plane (not to mention that they took my toothpaste twice) - every year since then. we have lost every ounce of freedom after 9&#x2F;11 and this “madness” today is nothing new, we just take for granted now what our own “freedoms” have been reduced to
          • mindslight42 days ago
            &gt; <i>this “madness” today is nothing new</i><p>What is with this tendency to downplay the current drastic escalations? It feels like a kind of hipster denialism - &quot;I was complaining about the US being a police state before it was cool&quot; but also if it&#x27;s this is &quot;nothing new&quot; then there&#x27;s nothing to really earnest worry about, right?<p>How hard is it to acknowledge that we have been gradually losing our rights AND that the Trumpist bonfire is a marked departure into something much more rapid?<p>Surely you can see the difference between a society where occasional flagrant abuses happen but the majority can still speak out about them, versus a society where abuses are routine and anybody who speaks out becomes a target at scale?
            • scarecrowbob42 days ago
              Well, I think the point it is even beyond &quot;how many grains of sand is a pile,&quot; which seems like a legitimate point to me. If we don&#x27;t understand how we got here, it&#x27;s really hard to figure out hat to do, so pretending as if someone flipped a switch in January of 2025 is not helpful.<p>I say this as a person who has been pepper sprayed by DHS while resisting ICE:<p>the conditions to led to the current bonfire have a lot to do with centrist folks piling up wood as if could never be lit.<p>If you ignore how we got here you will be unable to understand where really are.
              • throw-12-1642 days ago
                Many of the people on this forum were the ones piling the wood.<p>The data harvesting of the US surveillance state was 100% enabled by SV.<p>Guys like Zuckerberg, Page, and Brin are modern day Oppenheimers in all the worst ways.
              • bdangubic41 days ago
                &gt; If you ignore how we got here you will be unable to understand where really are.<p>Exactly <i>this</i> is core issue with <i>a lot</i> of people here on HN. The argument goes “oh shit, look what the current 2025 looks like, OMG so bad, we were this amazing bastion of freedom before this and now this administration is doing _____” so shortsighted and un-educated
              • mindslight41 days ago
                I&#x27;d say someone did flip a switch in 2025 - the rejection of the standard norms of good faith execution of all three branches of government. The government has always been authoritarian. But it had been predominately <i>bureaucratic</i> authoritarianism, while now it&#x27;s driven by <i>autocratic</i> authoritarianism.<p>I say this as a libertarian who&#x27;s right there with you on the &quot;piling up wood&quot;.<p>There are many angles from which to analyze how we got here. Yes, the &quot;centrists&quot; supporting lazy authoritarian laws and agencies because they couldn&#x27;t bother thinking one step ahead to how they&#x27;d be abused. The sprawling surveillance industry pointed out by a sibling comment. Narrower issues of destruction of the fairness doctrine and campaign finance limits. Even many of the refrains of the Trumpists point to problems that were slowly allowed to fester until they reached a breaking point (although as usual for Republicans, the answer they&#x27;ve been stage-managed into is completely self-defeating).<p>For all of these things it&#x27;s understandable to want to say &quot;I told you so&quot; - for catharsis, and trying to establish some authority of having a larger context of what direction we need to head in.<p>But none of that justifies downplaying the situation we&#x27;re currently staring down, which is what I take issue with.<p>(also re being pepper sprayed: what&#x27;s left of your country thanks you for your service)
                • scarecrowbob41 days ago
                  &quot;But none of that justifies downplaying the situation we&#x27;re currently staring down, which is what I take issue with.&quot;<p>Maybe we read things differently- I don&#x27;t see folks who say &quot;this is nothing new, the US has always been ethically questionable&quot; as &quot;downplaying&quot; anything.<p>As I&#x27;ve written here before, there is a difference between &quot;hey, welcome to the party&quot; (radicalization) and &quot;hey shut up, this is a thing we&#x27;ve always done&quot; (normalization).<p>I take issue with (and find very frustrating) the idea that somehow things have just now reached a breaking point.<p>I find that incorrect-to-me idea worrisome on two levels.<p>First of all, if Clinton or Harris had been elected we&#x27;d still be walking down this same road but liberals would be at brunch and telling us that nothing is wrong. But Ferguson and Standing Rock both happened while Obama was in office. And we don&#x27;t need to run another experiment to see how it would have run under Harris, as she explicitly was moving to the right from Biden.<p>The flip side of your suspicion that folks in my position are just perversely enjoying some kind of schadenfreude might be that folks who believe this situation to be new and unique is to note that while this violent empire has been violent-empire-ing for far longer than any of us have been alive, the violence hasn&#x27;t been overtly staged within the spectacle confronting the &quot;middle class&quot; folks until very recently.<p>The distinction between &quot;bureaucratic authoritarianism&quot; and &quot;autocratic authoritarianism&quot; only matters if you show up the bureaucracy in a legible way, and the fact that this is a distinction you draw places you in a very specific relationship to the power which &quot;it&#x27;s always been violent&quot; seeks to critique.<p>Or to say the same thing in a different way, for the same reasons you might point to some perverse enjoyment by hipsters, you might look at your own psyche here:<p>to admit that the US has always been violent is to admit that you didn&#x27;t care because it wasn&#x27;t happening to people about whom you care.<p>However, that possible reading of your position is -wholly immaterial- to the folks who are pointing out &quot;it&#x27;s been bad for a long time&quot;.<p>The catharsis you seem to be projecting isn&#x27;t really there for the people who could see there was a problem before it became visible even to middle class liberals. So an aside, nobody cares that folks ignored the problem until we are where we are, so feel your feelings about your blindness and then get to work, and stop projecting.<p>Do, however, consider that the lines of thought which lead people to directly and painfully confront power in a physical way can only come from the idea that the power being confronted is not and has not been legitimate.<p>I only dive into the phrenology of your position because it seems funny to me, but I do think that position is an active and harmful impediment to actually doing anything- if we could just vote our way home, why bother walking?<p>That is, if it really was okay a while ago, why not just do the blue version of making America great again?<p>And that leads to a second level at why I find the idea that &quot;things have just gotten worse this year&quot; to be almost dangerous:<p>the situation can and likely will get more authoritarian.<p>The reality to me is that these systems have been violent in the past- I live on land next to the Southern Ute folks&#x27; reservation, and I have had Navajo roommates, and I can see a former residential school every time I drive to town.<p>There is no amount of being white or tall or &quot;well-educated&quot; that would save me if the ancestors of the folks who built those things decide I am no longer a &quot;citizen&quot; because &quot;reasons&quot; and burn my corpse so it ascends to some gulag in the sky.<p>But if these systems haven&#x27;t been incredibly harmful, abandoning them seems foolish and dumb. Any action to undermine their authority takes on the same character of a &quot;rejection of the standard norms of good faith execution of [the] government&quot;.<p>I wholly understand why anarchists and communists seem stupid and dangerous to the folks who have historically been able to ignore the harms of these systems.<p>For that reason, though, folks are going to have to give up some of their ideological attachments to those systems if they are going to work against them.<p>So from my position, actively being unwilling to admit the past harms cause by those systems is a very easy way to prevent oneself from coming to a position where you actually have to do anything material.<p>Sorry for writing a novel (as an aside I dislike AI because writing things like this is how I think through things and I think the adoption of AI writing says a lot about the willingness of folks to think). But as a person incredibly worried about the very real shift in character of the current political spectacle, I think that &quot;it&#x27;s new and improved&quot; is a harmful idea that you should reconsider.
                  • mindslight39 days ago
                    There is a lot to chew on here and while I generally appreciate that, you completely missed where I am coming from. I had tried to acknowledge enough in my previous comment that you&#x27;d see I wasn&#x27;t fresh to the larger topic, but I guess that didn&#x27;t work.<p>I had never voted for either major party in a national election until 2020, when I consider myself having voted for the <i>conservative</i> option of Biden. In 2016, I completely understood why people voted for Trump - I was the one telling my aghast blue tribe friends that he was speaking to people&#x27;s longstanding frustrations and had a good chance of winning.<p>I do constantly examine whether I&#x27;ve reverted to my latent tribe or have become caught in a filter bubble, but I still do not think so. I&#x27;ve always been allergic to groupthink, and the Trumpist groupthink is still overwhelming at this point, whereas the opposition groupthink is much more narrowly-scoped. (and I hate it as well, as it makes for poor opposition)<p>So back to the main argument -<p><i>I don&#x27;t see folks who say &quot;this is nothing new, the US has always been ethically questionable&quot; as &quot;downplaying&quot; anything.</i><p>To me, it often does comes across this way. Note how the comment I initially responded to put &quot;madness&quot; in square quotes, as if we&#x27;re supposed to believe the concerns are just all in our heads.<p>It&#x27;s adjacent to the Trumpist talking point that everything being done isn&#x27;t any worse than what &quot;the left&quot; already did, which is clearly coming from a place of wanting to downplay. And there is a long pattern of Trumpists abusing appeals to lofty ideals and liberty in general to get people to support the openly fascist agenda [0]. It&#x27;s not a matter of being &quot;<i>unwilling to admit the past harms</i>&quot;, rather it&#x27;s about bringing them up in the appropriate context - Trumpism revolves around a long litany of real grievances and hypocrisies, but then channels that anger into highly destructive &quot;solutions&quot;.<p>And as far as the caricature of &quot;middle-class liberals&quot; that you were addressing? If people are just now waking up, I do not see this as something to condemn! To me the actual concern is preventing them from falling back asleep (eg that &quot;<i>just</i> vote Democrat&quot; fallacy)<p>&gt; <i>The distinction between &quot;bureaucratic authoritarianism&quot; and &quot;autocratic authoritarianism&quot; only matters if you show up the bureaucracy in a legible way, and the fact that this is a distinction you draw places you in a very specific relationship to the power which &quot;it&#x27;s always been violent&quot; seeks to critique.</i><p>Care to elaborate on this? My initial reaction is that we should take such legibility as a universal goal, in the sense that we should aim for everyone to have this legibility. We often shit on the idea of bureaucracy, but if it&#x27;s the best way we&#x27;ve found to neuter autocratic power, then maybe we need to stop taking it for granted? (FWIW me of 15 years ago is screaming at current me for having written that)<p>[0] actually I just glanced at the poster&#x27;s comment history and this is <i>exactly</i> what they&#x27;re doing.
            • throw-12-1642 days ago
              None of that changes the fact that the Patriot Act was the beginning of the militarized US police state.
              • mindslight42 days ago
                DEA? ATF? The fact that the &quot;Patriot&quot; Act was basically written and ready long before it was put up for a vote?<p>But of course now I&#x27;m on the other side of the argument. The point is that even though it&#x27;s a long arc, this doesn&#x27;t invalidate the current urgency. &quot;Slow at first, then all at once&quot;
                • throw-12-1642 days ago
                  “All at once” was 2001 for a lot of people.<p>Latinos are the current targets, but they weren’t the first.
                  • mindslight41 days ago
                    If you set your metric at targeting and marginalizing racial groups, you undermine your point even harder re &quot;Patriot&quot; Act being the start.<p>But also, am I supposed to come away with the conclusion that this is all in line with business as usual and there is nothing to worry about as long as I am white?
                    • throw-12-1641 days ago
                      You are conflating America being racist as hell with the establishment of the surveillance state post-9&#x2F;11, which was largely focused on Arabs.<p>America has been a racist cesspool for hundreds of years, but since 2001 it has also become a highly advanced surveillance state that has militarized its own police force.<p>You may not like it, but this has been developing for 25 years and has just now started to (barely) affect white people.
                      • mindslight41 days ago
                        You&#x27;ve skipped over my two counterexamples of the DEA and the ATF, and their supporting laws criminalizing substances and tools. Those have been around much longer than merely 2001, and had already created some pretty totalitarian spectacles of government attacking the People.<p>Also driving this conversation towards race reeks of race-to-the-bottom &quot;privilege&quot; politics. Which is why I facetiously asked if your intention is to encourage white people to become less concerned.
                        • throw-12-1638 days ago
                          Sorry I saw you self identify as a Libertarian and lost interest.<p>Habit I retained from University.
                          • mindslight32 days ago
                            I did no such thing. I said &quot;libertarian&quot; - note the small &#x27;l&#x27;. The capital-L party has preemptively defeated itself with an over-indulgence in axiomatic rightist thinking. This makes it so its large scale effects will only ever result in a changing of the government to autocratic corporate rule.<p>And FWIW I only threw that out to make a speed bump for the fascists who want to write off everyone disagreeing with them as some blue haired progressive. You can try actually addressing my points, either in this tiny thread or in the more substantial branch above. I promise I will try to not dump knee jerk reflexive dismissals at you the way &quot;Libertarians&quot; often to.
            • bdangubic41 days ago
              Cause what you are doing is sensationalism and exaggeration. “Abuses are routine” - back this up with actual numbers vs. making a crazy blanket statement like that cause you saw 13 clickbait articles in December.<p>You are 100% right, we have been (not so) gradually losing our rights and Trump et al isn’t really lighting any bonfires, the country has been burning for decades… it is just that the current fires are broadcasted to a wider audience with minute-by-minute play-by-play. and while most people are falling for this shit again (see 2016-2020) the current admin is lining their pockets (which is the one and only goal they have…)
          • vkou42 days ago
            Have the TSA disappeared a lot of people? Flown them out to foreign torture prisons, and thrown away the key? Ignored judicial orders to return them?<p>(I&#x27;m also not entirely sure why they are touching your junk, I&#x27;ve not had that happen in any of my security checkpoint experiences.)<p>Look, while I&#x27;m as happy as the next person to bitch about how awful the TSA is, if they are your best example of the US being a police state... It&#x27;s not particularly persuasive. Most police states don&#x27;t limit their capacity for repression to throwing you out of an airport without a refund for your ticket.
            • throw-12-1642 days ago
              Try having an Arab name next time.
              • bdangubic41 days ago
                or try being brown (bonus if you have a beard)
    • billy99k42 days ago
      [flagged]
      • toomuchtodo42 days ago
        ICE has arrested US citizens, violently assaulted them, and have held them even when US citizenship proof was provided.<p><i>We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days.</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.propublica.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;immigration-dhs-american-citizens-arrested-detained-against-will" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.propublica.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;immigration-dhs-american-...</a> - October 16th, 2025
      • tomrod42 days ago
        Yes. Arresting people for civil infractions (such as overstaying a visa, or even citizens caught in drag nets or protests) and taking them to 3rd party nations for detention is definitely a tactic a totalitarian police state would employ.<p>Public health is equivocally one of the few places the constitution is defined for (general welfare of the people). This is something they used to teach in civics classes, I wonder when that stopped?
        • joquarky42 days ago
          Schools can barely teach reading and math. So civics is probably a de facto study hall at this point.
          • tomrod41 days ago
            I&#x27;m not sure this is true. I think schools are forced to pass people they shouldn&#x27;t by policy. But does that mean they barely teach fundamentals?
      • SimianSci42 days ago
        ICE has more funding now as a domestic law-enforcement agency than almost every military on the planet. If we need to fund the &quot;arrest of illigal immigrants&quot; to such an amount as this, can you please explain to me how other countries, as you mention in your comment, can successfully do this with nowhere near that amount of funding?
      • oceansky42 days ago
        It&#x27;s not just illegal immigrants. They&#x27;ve been arresting and deporting legal ones and even citizens. Deporting to countries they never been to and foreign prisons where they cannot get out.<p>I would love to hear how is this similar to COVID at all.
        • mindslight42 days ago
          Well you see before Covid, Aunt Karen could waltz into the Olive Garden for &quot;wine night&quot; whenever she wanted, and could even threaten to leave a bad review and get half the bill comped (she didn&#x27;t need the money but it was a nice power trip). During Covid, she had to make a reservation because half the tables were lOcKeD dOwN and when the hostess had the gall to tell her that she needed to wear something to cover her schnauze, the manager <i>took the hostess&#x27;s side</i>. So you see in many ways it was much more oppressive than being made to tan outside all day at some sunny vacation resort.
      • biophysboy42 days ago
        ICE has detained a few hundred citizens as of September 2025
      • throwway12038542 days ago
        So you&#x27;re totally fine with the police state when it&#x27;s turned against people you don&#x27;t like, but you consider it a bad thing when you disagree with its aims. That&#x27;s a pretty bare display of hypocrisy.
      • throw-12-1642 days ago
        While you were traveling did armed thugs go door to door disappearing people without due process?<p>Defending Nazis makes you a Nazi too.
      • oxqbldpxo42 days ago
        ignorant
  • haritha-j42 days ago
    Wonder what they&#x27;ll get up to with all that tech when they run out of (illegal) immigrants to hunt?
    • thrance42 days ago
      They&#x27;re already mostly going after legal residents, some citizens even. Their goal is to terrorize the out-group, nothing else.
    • theossuary42 days ago
      That&#x27;s the neat trick, they won&#x27;t! They&#x27;ll always define a class of &quot;illegals&quot; to hunt, their job depends on it
  • stevenalowe42 days ago
    “…social-media monitoring tools, facial recognition software, license plate readers and services to find where people live and work.“<p>Pretty easy to switch from targeting “immigrants” to “dissidents“
  • markus_zhang42 days ago
    Asking as a foreigner who wants to travel to Cali to visit the Computer History Museum sometimes in the future: What is the plan for ICE? Is it going to get more manpower and $$$ to expand its responsibility?
    • throw-12-1642 days ago
      ICE has more funding than the USMC.<p>Go to a country that deserves your tourism, US is not worth visiting.
      • pepperball41 days ago
        At least the USMC is staffed by competent alcoholics.
    • xiphias242 days ago
      As a foreigner travelling inside USA: people are super nice here in real life, and I see much less politics in real life than on Hacker News.<p>Be sure to create your ESTA a few workdays before though, as long as you have it you will have a great time.
    • OGEnthusiast42 days ago
      ICE funding is about to 10x at the new year. I would personally recommend against foreigners going to America.
    • vkou42 days ago
      Half the country violently doesn&#x27;t want you here, and you should oblige them by taking your money and attention elsewhere. There are plenty of more deserving locations.
    • thrance42 days ago
      Depends on the color of your skin, I guess. Also, border agents have the right to search your phone and have been known to refuse entry to people speaking ill of Trump on socials.
    • catlover7642 days ago
      [dead]
  • cess1142 days ago
    On the face of it, it looks similar to israeli border guards and cops in the West Bank.<p>Paramilitary, high tech equipment, close to zero accountability. It&#x27;s not far off that the people they&#x27;re snatching don&#x27;t have any legal means to fight it either, similar to how palestinians are held in &#x27;administrative detention&#x27; and only have access to extremely corrupt military courts.<p>I suspect that negotiation is not going to get either states or popular movements very far against this threat.
  • grim_io42 days ago
    Every deportation comes with a complementary surplus Nvidia B200.
  • exe3442 days ago
    Every Reich needs an omnipotent and omniscient secret police. The Turd Reich is no different.
  • api42 days ago
    Remember that the simplest answer for this kind of thing is often: pork for politically connected tech and defense companies.<p>Not saying it couldn’t be for bigger things, just that there does not have to be a rational need other than handing out money.
  • gtirloni42 days ago
    It&#x27;s very simple: follow the money.<p>As usual, something else is being used as the excuse to distract people from what&#x27;s really the end goal: enriching some group.
  • steele42 days ago
    Not a mystery; the tech is to assess capacity to harm upon brown populations before scaling out to suppress dissent from the rest.
  • DetectDefect42 days ago
    Technology is a fundamental political right; asymmetry of power in a polity through a monopoly on technology is the goal of any State, which people have a responsibility to deny.
    • justonceokay42 days ago
      Does this line of thinking make you an anarchist?
      • DetectDefect42 days ago
        I don&#x27;t think so. Anarchy is defined as the absence or non-recognition of authority, whereas I do not reject authority, but reason about controls a free market can meaningfully apply on it, namely through decentralization of technology - the means of its power.<p>I do believe a productive hierarchy of power could naturally emerge if everyone were equally equipped with technology. For example, if all State financial transactions were auditable by anyone (say, via immutable ledger) - would this not lead to favorable outcomes without the necessitating the chaos of anarchy?
      • baobun42 days ago
        Does that line of questioning make you an antichrist?
  • Havoc42 days ago
    Definitely totally for freedom and democracy!
  • Caius-Cosades42 days ago
    I don&#x27;t know, truly a mystery, might have something to do with doing their job or something.
  • therobots92742 days ago
    It’s for the hot class war.
  • throw-12-1642 days ago
    Oppression, what else?
  • throw2481742 days ago
    They should focus on immigrant CEOs and politicians from South Africa and India who currently enrich themselves and deregulate and enshittify the tech industry.<p>Even MAGA didn&#x27;t vote for this.
    • therobots92742 days ago
      Oh yes they did. Don’t let them forget it.
    • Ritewut42 days ago
      They voted for it and you see them in this very thread.
  • thebozz41 days ago
    [dead]
  • thegrim00042 days ago
    Every single story this user submits is political hate. Every comment they make is political hate. And yet they&#x27;re a multi-year power account with over 10,000 karma. What is the justification for allowing such accounts to exist, other than the mods being complicit with it?
    • mindslight42 days ago
      Political hate? But this article seems to be coming from the perspective of someone who loves their country and doesn&#x27;t want it to be taken over by America-hating fascists?