Article Analysis: On Greta, Right Wing Propaganda and "Conspiracies"

Editor's note: this article originally appeared September 26 on Facebook; for my latest piece "On "Left Wing" American Media and Class Tensions in the 2020 Democratic Party Nomination Contest" please click here. All analysis by Nina Illingworth unless otherwise indicated.

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Attacks on Greta Thunberg Are About More Than Anti-Environmentalism

In today's article analysis piece I'd like to take a look at a very important expose that was recently picked up in America by Teen Vogue - I'm sharing the original here out of solidarity for indie and activist media and because DesmogUK has a great graphic that shows all the companies and think tanks they're talking about in the article.

I happened to run across this important piece by Mat Hope while I was writing about the U.S. media's obscenely moronic coverage of Greta Thunberg's visit to the UN myself and I'm including it today so we can discuss it in a much broader perspective than just "stories about Greta."

In regards to Thunberg, I really don't see much point in debating the effectiveness of her activism and I frankly don't care whether or not you "trust her" because I can't really see why it matters.

You can tell me that she's just giving all those corrupt planet-murdering politicians a free photo-op and I'll agree with you readily enough. I will however also counter by asking you precisely what she was supposed to do - stay home? You can say that screaming at politicians on TV isn't going to solve the problem and that's absolutely correct, but I'll say at least she got to scream at them. I'd like to scream at them, wouldn't you? I think at the point that you were expecting a sixteen year old climate activist from Sweden to start the green socialist energy revolution we're going to need to actually save our species; you kind of already jumped the shark.

What I'd like to talk about instead is the network of oil-soaked think tanks, reactionary media organizations and talking head right wing pundits this piece exposes and what you can extrapolate about the larger western media environment from its re-posting on Teen Vogue.

At this point I don't really think it's "breaking news" to most observers on the left that there is a massive, billionaire and corporate funded climate catastrophe disinformation network operating on the right (and even in the center) of the American political class - including donors, politicians and the various corporate media factions. This is now an established fact even in milquetoast mainstream liberal circles - although not necessarily among the "liberal" elite who have a vested interest in climate science denial no matter how much they pretend otherwise.

Okay so why is that? After all, when independent media first exposed the Koch Industries connection to the anti-climate science wing of the larger American "Tea Party" (also a Koch funded astroturf operation, with lots of help from Wall Street oddly enough) it was immediately derided as a "conspiracy theory" by all the usual suspects.

So what's different about this "conspiracy theory" and say the Bernie Sanders media blackout; what makes this now widely-accepted story a proven "conspiracy" while the American left's direct quotation of Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" to explain the Washington Post's bias against grassroots organizing and the larger (and diverse) labor class is merely a "conspiracy theory?" It certainly can't be a question of sources or proof - roughly seventy-five percent of Manufacturing Consent is raw data that demonstrates corporate media really does have an implicit and inescapable bias towards establishment power.

The simple answer is that due to factionalism and divergent interests in the upper classes of American establishment power, this issue was reported on fairly and extensively in the mainstream corporate media; albeit primarily by "liberal" outlets. I could write a whole essay about precisely why the "liberal" media corporations (who are still very much tied into oil, or at least the economy built entirely around it) chose to run with this story instead of all the other stories but the long and short of it is that the Koch network attacks on bog standard center-right Democrats were more painful than losing some fossil fuel executive donors and thus the "liberal" establishment fought back - by letting their in-pocket media lapdogs actually do some journalism for once.

So while the idea that a bunch of right wing nutjob billionaires have brought together political parties, think tanks, media organizations and puppet scientists to lie about murdering the planet for profit is on its face shocking and scandalous - the fact is you can buy books about the subject in mainstream book stores and you'll read about it in mainstream "left-leaning liberal" publications on a fairly regular basis. That in a nutshell is why everyone knows about this "conspiracy" and nobody except disingenuous right wing propagandists calls you "crazy" for talking about it.

If you take a step back and look at the larger political and class warfare picture however, the exposure of this right wing pro-fossil fuel industry propaganda network lying in plain sight does bring up a number of interesting, if not disturbing questions.

If a network of right wing elites can literally up and buy a revolution to protect Wall Street, promote climate science denial and smear left wing activists at will in the public sphere, what else might rich people with ulterior motives be capable of? If the reason the vast majority of people have ever even heard of the Koch Network behind this propaganda machine is pretty much entirely because they broke class solidarity and attacked their "liberal" peers in the media, what happens when the mass murdering billionaire liars *don't* break class solidarity and both "sides" of the mainstream media agree that the proles don't need to know?

If this group of right wing billionaires can deploy a whole disinformation campaign to drown Greta's words out in waves of angry bullsh*t in a matter of days, what might *other* groups of wealthy, powerful and influential people be doing with their time and money that you never, or rarely ever hear about?

Could the Democratic Party, elite donors and dozens of friendly in-pocket media puppets come together to smear the burgeoning American labor class left and rig a nomination contest for a crooked rich white lady? Could the editorial staff at the Washington Post meet and agree they were only going to print stories that portrayed left wing American politicians and activists working against Jeff Bezo's class interests in a negative light? Could an influential "liberal" think tank bring together a coalition of elite party officials, media figures, wealthy donors and even 2020 Dem Primary candidates to plot how to stop a seemingly imminent Bernie Sanders presidency? Could a secret liberal media Slack channel be used to quickly disseminate a fake Iowa poll and create a narrative of inevitability for Liz Warren? Could that same media Slack channel and preexisting relationships with a variety of liberal "activist" organizations be used to recycle a 2008 smear campaign against Obama supporters and widely promote the idea that working class leftists who won't vote for neoliberals are secretly racist, sexist Bernie Bro scum who're really a lot like the fascist right except in some ways worse?

The answer to all of these questions is of course yes and if you've been reading independent media or writers who openly support Sanders, you've heard about every single one of these real stories - even if the vast majority of liberals and labor class folks who aren't plugged into politics have not. This is of course a huge part of the problem but the honest truth here is that it's only the tip of the iceberg because you *can* still read about these demonstrably true, real life plots against left wing, labor class voters *someplace* on the internet.

What should really keep you up at night frankly, is the realization that there are almost certainly thousands if not an infinite number of horrifying and impossible to comprehend plots against the labor class that you have never even heard of - no matter how plugged in you are. After all the only real requirements involved here are money, access to a public megaphone of some type and a seething animus for people who ask you to share some of your ill-gotten wealth with the poorest members of society; and almost every rich person in the western world is all stocked up on those three key ingredients.

In a society where the difference between a conspiracy theory and a conspiracy fact pretty much comes down to whether or not the truth damages the ruling class in some manner, it's the rich man's open conspiracies that you *don't* know about or are never reminded about, that represent the greatest threats to us all.


- nina illingworth





Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog.

Updates available on Twitter, Mastodon and Facebook.

Article Analysis: Portland, Aurn Gupta and How to Write About Fascism

Editor's note: as I mentioned in yesterday's post, a recent throttling of my Facebook account has forced me to re-post some informal media analysis op-eds I published on that site; just to ensure that someone actually gets to read them. For those of you looking for something fresh off the grill, head on over to my main website and check out my latest op-ed "Why I Support Impeachment but Fear Incompetent Democrat Hubris."

Today's piece originally appeared online during the evening of September 23, 2019. All analysis by Nina Illingworth unless otherwise indicated.

Getting Andy Ngo and His Fascist Friends Off Our Streets

Continuing with the theme of sharing and analyzing articles I actually *like* for once, today I'd like to examine and offer some well deserved praise for this longer piece about fighting fascism by Arun Gupta over at Jacobin magazine.

First and foremost I'd like to note that with a few minor exceptions I'll talk about a little later, this essay is a picture perfect model of how to proactively write about opposing modern Americanized fascism without ending up on an FBI watch-list. 

In his analysis, Gupta wastes precisely zero ounces of energy on an objectively false "both sides" narrative and you won't find any homages to "dapper white nationalists" in this essay. The author refuses to either normalize or glamorize far right thugs disguised as free speech activists and while that's pretty easy when you're blogging from your living room, it's actually quite the accomplishment when you're directly quoting the violent fascists themselves. 

Despite including plenty of direct and unaltered quotations from various violent fascist agitators in Portland, Gupta never once allows the neo-nazis to claim hold of a "false balance" by presenting the reactionary right's arguments without context as is so terrifyingly common in mainstream corporate media. 

This is accomplished by counterbalancing each claim and accusation made by the fascists, with numerous mainstream media accounts of the violence they've undertaken during thinly-disguised exercises of reactionary right-wing terrorism and intimidation. In particular, Gupta's use of this "accusation" then "revelation" technique is absurdly effective when employed against fascist provocateur and fake journalist Andy Ngo's selectively edited videos of "antifa terrorist violence" - by posting the larger contextual counter-evidence that reveals the violence was actually initiated by far right reactionary "protestors", Gupta essentially exposes and de-fangs Ngo's entire narrative as highly-lucrative fascist agitprop; which it is! 

Furthermore, this finely-sourced piece represents a literal wealth of knowledge about not only the neo-fascist "free speech" rallies in Portland, but the contours of the battle against rising, street-level fascism in America as a whole. In one single essay Gupta exposes the modern "MAGA free speech" movement as a ruthless roving neo-nazi street gang looking to cow political opposition with violence, puts flame to the lie that Andy Ngo is a journalist, excoriates corporate media for lending credibility to fascist provocateurs, exposes the direct connection between right wing street gangs and the Trump administration, and shatters the argument that anti-fascist activists are "the *real* terrorists" - all thoroughly supported by a variety of links referencing the full spectrum of primarily mainstream media websites.

It is however in the final third of the article under the heading "Stemming the Tide" in which Gupta both rises to his highest moment and yet tragically still stumbles in that unfortunate way most liberal or liberal-adjacent media figures are so incentivized to do.

First the author rises to the challenge by taking a sledgehammer to the infantile argument that "if no opposition were to show up when the far right marches, then there would be no violence, hence no story for the media, which would in turn deprive the far right of the visuals they need to recruit. They would thus flounder and dissipate." 

As Gupta rightfully notes however these "far-right rallies are neither discrete nor static events. Like Trumpism, they are part of a dynamic of extremism, benefiting both from polarization and the disruption of norms." Naturally the purpose of these rallies is to draw attention to, fortify and recruit for a white nationalist, anti-migrant, anti-left wing neo-fascist movement that is already killing people all over the country - simply allowing that to happen unmolested represents a crime of negligence against society as a whole, no matter what the law books say.

In what is undoubtedly the author's finest moment in the essay, Gupta once and for all shatters the idea that simply ignoring the violent nazis and hoping they'll go away is an effective strategy by pointing out that the fascist street-gangs have already gone on the offensive against even milquetoast liberal organizing:

"Patriot Prayer, Proud Boys, and their allies shifted strategy in 2018, says O’Banion. “They began showing up in small, well-armed groups at places like the IWW [Wobblies] Hall. They threatened the Occupy ICE encampment last summer. They went to Planned Parenthood in Olympia and harassed people. They harassed people at an immigrant solidarity event shortly before August 17.” Patriot Prayer has also tried to disrupt a general meeting of the Portland DSA, the Women’s March in 2018, and LGBT Pride, and they threatened a climate change event at a local college, which was canceled by the administration. And they attacked the Cider Riot bar on May Day.

In effect, the far right is using the big rallies to recruit, stoke more violence, and disrupt peaceful left, labor, and liberal organizing."

The above quoted paragraph is in and itself quite amazing because while I know every single person reading this analysis has heard about the "horrifying attacks on Andy Ngo" there's a pretty good chance you've heard nothing at all from the national media about any of the above *right* wing attacks on regular people organizing for political purposes the far right deems unacceptable. Why do you think that is? 

All of which brings us to unfortunate ebb where I think Gupta's work falls short as he ends the article by talking about harnessing the anti-fascist energy of a soccer game "in the streets." This continues an unfortunately sour note of ivory tower liberalism that runs throughout the entire piece. While noting that direct and sometimes violent action has been the only method even the fascists acknowledge has hampered their efforts to organize, Gupta riddles this piece with observations like:

"There was no justification for the attack, if no other reason than that Ngo was cast as the victim in a story that became national news and was exploited by Trump in trying to label Antifa terrorists."

"Some antifascists were eager to rumble, as well. But others jumped in to defuse the violence every time. No doubt dumb acts are committed in the name of antifascism. But that’s true of any movement, and dumb is not deadly."

 "The mainstream media are failing as well, by starving reporters of the time and resources needed to expose the unsavory characters and ideas lurking on the far right."

Most of this is ultimately the same type of liberal "both sides" nonsense that Gupta himself decries in the early portion of his own article. 

For starters the widely-publicized justification for the assault on Andy Ngo is that he publicly broadcast the names and addresses of anti-fascist protestors arrested at a previous rally, apparently with the help of a sympathetic police officer. This action put lives in danger and whether or not you agree that this justification is sufficient to give Andy Ngo a decidedly non-lethal shiner for his trouble, it is not non-existent. If Gupta was unaware of these facts, he's failed his readers and he's helped Andy Ngo hide the fascist violence behind his actions - actions that then lead to the assault; please keep in mind that nobody punched Andy in the face during the numerous *previous* rallies he attended and filmed, after all.

Additionally, it's pretty ridiculous for Gupta to blather on about soccer games attended primarily by affluent white liberals and scold, however mildly, "some antifacists" for being "eager to rumble" in an article where he points out that the key to stopping fascist organization is anti-fascist counter protesting. Why exactly does Gupta think the right is trying to target smaller groups and avoid massive hordes of antifascists? It's because they'll get their butt whupped by those hordes, in a very physical sense, obviously.

Of course as Gutpa reveals in the third quote above, all of this is further colored by his largely liberal (and disastrously incorrect) opinion that the answer is "more journalism" - uttered with an apparently straight face, as if the mainstream corporate media wasn't actively prepared to side with fascists over left wing protestors for both economic and class warfare reasons.

At this point I might be inclined to say something snarky about entrusting a labor class left wing revolution to self-aggrandizing trust fund babies who own a magazine but I'll save it for another day. Despite its few (and deeply annoying) flaws, this is an excellent article and if the mainstream media put half as much effort into covering these stories properly as Gupta and Jacobin have done here, the fascist menace that looms over the 2020 election might already be receding. 

Alas as many reading this already know - most liberals in the media, deep in their heart of hearts would prefer fascism to sharing with poor people and the marginalized."

- Nina Illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog.

Updates available on Twitter, Mastodon and Facebook.

Article Analysis: Fake Polls & the Anti Bernie Narrative in the Media

Editor's note: over the past few years I've done literally everything in my power not to duplicate content across multiple websites but I've finally reached the point where social media censorship is forcing my hand. The following informal article analysis essay originally appeared on Facebook, but since that company is currently (and obviously) throttling how many views my account gets until I give them money - I'm forced to re-post it here:

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The vast majority of the time I post a focused article analysis piece on Facebook it's because I'm looking to highlight glaringly obvious mistakes in the mainstream media's coverage. Today I thought I'd switch gears and take a look at this delightful piece of low budget independent journalism by Ashok Koyi on his website which appears to be called "the Kalinga" - Koyi drills deeper into a recent Iowa 2020 Democratic Party primary poll that got a lot of mainstream media play and discovers that not all is what it seems.

You can find the article here: 

https://thekalinga.in/2019/09/20/manufatucturing-consent/ 

With the important note that Ashok's article appears to be the result of multiple Twitter sleuths (two of which he credits at the bottom of the piece) I'd like to start by noting that I agree with almost everything the author states in this piece. Furthermore the investigative methodology is sound and the conclusion Koyi draws from his investigation of the people behind this poll is completely inarguable - namely that this isn't so much a "poll" as a mainstream liberal Frankenstein memo designed to manufacture the narrative that Iowa is going for Biden or Warren and Sanders is doomed.

In particular I encourage readers to please note the following paragraph taken from Koyi's report:

"The most important aspect being

"Binder specializes in qualitative rather than quantitative research. His focus is on assessing subjective factors such as language, emotion, and attitudes."

To me, all this word salad means only one thing. It means he mind-reads potential voters when conducting his polling. In simple terms the polls capture his feelings of voter’s feelings about politicians

I have never heard a worse way to describe a pollster than this. Given that only the memo is published without the underlying dataset, I am assuming that this poll is based on the feelings of David Binder staff about which democratic candidate gets what percentage of votes in Iowa in the upcoming democratic primary election"

This analysis is dead-bang on and although the author is generous enough to allow for the possibility that this isn't a mockery of traditional polling, I am not so kind - the poll in question is clearly paid for propaganda designed to discourage Sanders supporters and hopefully keep them from voting for Bernie in the primary.

This of course brings up the larger issue of the rise in paid polling outfits that operate like public relations and marketing firms over roughly the past decade. As anyone familiar with the Koch-backed climate change denial industry can attest, it is now possible for literally anyone at all to hire a polling company to produce a poll that manufactures whatever specific narrative you like. Typically this will be accomplished with some combination of leading or ambiguous questions or carefully targeting polling by a region's average annual income - who can forget the CNN poll upon which Biden's case as an "unassailable front-runner" was built up in the media, including in particular and to the surprise of no one, CNN! What was only mentioned on Right Wing News sites however is the fact that the polling company somehow managed not to sample a "statistically significant" number of 18-49 year olds who probably wouldn't have been all that jazzed about Biden.

The simple truth is that "he who pays the piper, calls the tune" and while political campaigns demand accuracy from their internal polling contractors, they are not above hiring what amounts to PR firms like Focus on Rural America and the company of its founder, Link Strategies, to manufacture a specific narrative in the media. These results are then fed to influential figures in the public discourse and you've essentially created the idea that Bernie is finished and Warren is ascendant out of nothing. Now traditionally, the mainstream media has been considered a safeguard against spurious polling because they not only sponsor a number of polls that are in theory designed to be accurate, but they also publish the methodology behind those polls when they release him. What happens however when the mainstream corporate media itself is now controlled by politically active billionaire titans of industry like say, Jeff Bezos? What happens when massive American corporate media companies are the ones paying the piper, and the tune they want to hear is that Bernie loses? Well, in this case what clearly happened is a B.S. poll designed to suppress pro-Sanders turnout in Iowa got treated seriously in the mainstream media for a few days; whether or not it actually stops Iowans from voting Sanders in five months is less clear - but that is certainly the intent of the exercise.

Look, this is big business and these folks will go to any length to rig even meaningless internet polls - good examples include Trump fixer Michael Cohen hiring an IT firm to try and rig a GOP nomination contest Drudge Poll or the weirdo Pelosi fanboys over at Daily Kos rigging weekly forum polls against Sanders by banning almost every Bernie supporter during the 2016 election. Obviously there is a certain amount of value in using rigged polls to suggest a political narrative and clearly it's fairly effective.

Who watches the watchmen when the watchmen have all been bought?

Go back and read Koyi's report at the top of this article again and ask yourself how many people are going to bother to take the roughly ten steps it takes Ashok to figure out this "poll" is utter nonsense, before they decide to believe it or not?

Right, the answer is "almost nobody."

As I've written numerous times since the real Democratic Party 2020 nomination fight kicked off just before Christmas in 2018, the mainstream corporate media, the Democratic Party and rich liberal elites are prepared to do anything, say anything and push any narrative to prevent Bernie Sanders from winning the Dem nomination - precisely *because* they know that he will beat Trump.

Since that time, the Manhattan Island media and Beltway Think Tank glitterati have rotated through a seemingly never ending cast of "Bernie Slayer" ascendant candidates who had supposedly already rendered Sanders and his revolution irrelevant. One by one Lock Em Up Kamala, Trapper Keeper, Skateboard Jesus and Dollar Store Macron have fallen by the wayside only moments after the establishment media told you they were in the driver's seat. Now Palooka Joe Biden is in the act of falling on his sword and a newly conciliatory Liz Warren is hanging out with Wall Street executives and Hillary Clinton - you'd have to be a complete idiot not to see what's going on here at this point.

The narrative that the Bernie Sanders political revolution is already dead will never die, so long as the Bernie Sanders political revolution continues to live - the fact that they're still paying media minions and fake pollster gurus to tell you Sanders doesn't stand a chance is all the evidence you need to demonstrate he's still in the race and the fight is not over.

As always in life, it's important to "consider the source" and the source of all this anti-Bernie mainstream media coverage are companies owned by rich people who'd rather lose to a fascist like Trump, than share with the labor class under a Democratic Socialist like Sanders.

- Nina Illingworth

Screamsheets: America Gestapo Edition

Editor's Note: obviously I've been away from this website for the past couple months and while most of that time was spent feeling mopey and angsty, the past couple weeks have been more "exciting" in the thoroughly ironic sense of the word. 

First up - owing to a recent and permanent suspension from Twitter, I've now migrated my online presence to Mastodon and Facebook, while simultaneously opening up a new Discord Chat (the Pavlichenko Appreciation Society) which you can find here. There's no password so anyone is free to join but please be advised that reasonable human behavior is expected; no nazis and no cops, thanks.

Additionally I recently published a medium-length letter on my Patreon Blog that talks about why I haven't been writing the past couple of months and what I'm trying to do to rectify the situation; the condensed version is that I'm frustrated and a little burnt out, so I'm trying to work my way back with shorter posts that are decidedly not essays - like this one, and this one. Please be assured that as soon as I can get back to my normal style of writing, I most certainly will do so.

Which brings me to today's post; for the past couple of years I've tried and failed to get in the habit of writing the sort of quasi-regular "link dump" articles other blogs use to help maintain daily traffic. A big part of the problem has been that while I'm busy working on long-form essays, I don't always have time to collect links to all the good articles I've read recently and offer some brief thoughts on each of them. At the moment however, I'm struggling with the necessary focus and endurance required to perform my regular sort of compositions, so I figured I might as well try my hand at another links article feature. 

I don't know how often, or for how long I'm going to publish this kind of post but for now I'd rather stay busy and keep sharing than sit around "waiting for the magic to happen" again. In light of the fact that this blog is called "Media Madness" you can rest assured that the links will be horrifying and make you want to invest in guillotine shares.

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From an opening day Trump administration policy of mass deportations to the expansion of a preexisting concentration camp system on U.S. soil, I've spent a lot of time these past three years talking about why ICE is, and has always been the American Gestapo of our modern times. Although many have foolishly dismissed such concerning comparisons as hyperbolic, there now exists a growing body of evidence even in the pitifully myopic mainstream corporate media that indeed, something quite obviously fascist "this way comes." Let's take a quick look at some recent and extremely alarming headlines:

ICE Fails To Properly Redact Document, Reveals Location Of Future 'Urban Warfare' Training Facility - while much of the American corporate media has been ignoring this ongoing story, Newsweek (an otherwise terrible media company) has recently made it an important part of their surprisingly critical ICE coverage. For those who aren't interested in disabling their ad blocker, the long and short of it is that ICE is spending millions of dollars to construct "urban warfare" training facilities in Fort Benning, Georgia, modeled after real life locations in Arizona and the far-right's "black on black violence" bête noire, Chicago. Although Newsweek itself seems regrettably focused on the "gotcha" moment of ICE's failed redaction, local coverage in both Chicago and Arizona is a little more sober, if still largely inadequate. As Eoin Higgins over at Common Dreams notes however, the real question you should be asking is "what the hell does ICE need a "hyper-realistic" urban warfare training facility for?" As you'll see in our next few links, the answer appears unlikely to be "good things."

ICE Agents Shot An Immigrant Trying To Flee. Now The FBI Is Investigating - this is another story about militant ICE violence that is largely being ignored, or reported far too credulously and dishonestly framed by extremely police-friendly outlets in the mainstream media. Even the Buzzfeed article above wastes several paragraphs presenting a he said/she said tale of an ICE traffic stop gone wrong in which a suspect escapes by aiming his truck like a weapon at a brave law enforcement officer and is thereby wounded in self-defense; indeed, it's noted that ICE called in the FBI to investigate a possible assault - on, not by, the officer that shot a guy. The problem of course, as demonstrated by the embedded video in Buzzfeed's own article and this piece by David Boddiger over at Splinter, is that almost none of ICE's story appears to be true: "video shows that the truck was stopped at the time of the confrontation, and the plainclothes ICE officers appear to approach it in two separate vehicles. As the truck pulls away moments later, the officers do not appear to be in danger of being struck, and one is seen raising his arm as if to fire a weapon." As this article at Latino Rebels points out however, the fact that the ICE agent is clearly lying isn't even the most disturbing part of this story - the shooting victim was under no legal obligation to turn over the requested identification without a judicial warrant and being in the country "illegally" is typically either a federal misdemeanor or a civil offense; it sure as hell doesn't justify the use of deadly force!

ERO Letter to the American Public - this of course brings us to a terrifying bit of fascist self-pitying doublespeak released by ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations. While I won't bore you with lies about providing "safe, humane and appropriate conditions of confinement" or pedantic quibbles about the difference between "targeted arrests" and "raids" let's focus in on the important point, here:

Arguably the most disturbing part of this statement from a moral perspective is that much of it is true in the strictest sense of the word; however the staggering amount of information left out of this explainer makes it a clear lie by omission. It makes no mention of the probable cause required before an ICE officer can even ask to see your identification, or the fact that you are not legally compelled to provide it unless you actually aren't an American citizen. Indeed, this propaganda explainer makes no mention at all of the difference between the rights of an American citizen, a documented migrant and an undocumented migrant. Nor does ICE explain that they do in fact still require a judicial warrant to enter or search a home, business or a private space, like say, your box truck. The ERO letter then goes on to hide behind the civil nature of an immigration violation and seeks purposely conflate ICE officers with police (despite claiming powers far beyond the purview of any local police force) - all before strongly suggesting via the word "jeopardy" that they might kill you for interfering in what is once again a civil enforcement matter, not a violent and dangerous crime. This is objectively a fascist fantasy; after all even cracker pigs in the deep south aren't allowed to put a cap in your ass for jaywalking - at least in theory. 

The overall effect here is clearly intended to imply that ICE is free to do whatever fascist police state crap it wants to do in the pursuit of "rounding up illegals" with no additional authority or oversight required and you're probably a pinko traitor if you don't agree with the department's extremely "liberal" interpretation of its own purview. This is especially true if you don't read the underlying text and just focus on the bold-type, objectively terrifying headline - as the ICE Twitter account so helpfully allowed you to do.  

ICE Keeps Arresting Prominent Immigration Activists. They Think They’re Being Targeted - further cementing the disturbing and decidedly fascist direction US immigration enforcement agencies are taking is this August 24th story about the apparent open ICE targeting of immigration activists at Vice by Gaby Del Valle. Although apologists, reactionaries and bigots will seek to treat each incident as a random occurrence in isolation, any reasonable observer can look at both the number (twenty and counting) as well as the circumstances involved in each of these cases and see what appears to be a clear pattern of retaliation against migrant activists for the mere exercise of free speech and the right to protest. This conclusion is of course further supported by the rapidly growing body of evidence that the US government is actively spying on journalists, lawyers and immigration activists along the U.S.-Mexican border. Finally of course it should be noted that this is not the only time people tied to the Trump administration have been found using ICE to persecute political enemies; a very alarming picture of a truly functional American Gestapo is indeed beginning to emerge from the chaos.

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After more than a decade of watching and multiple years of writing about ICE, it is in the aggregate results of the agency's actions, and not the media's consistent portrayal of "a few bad apples" that don't represent the whole, in which I find the true nature of the beast we now find ourselves facing in earnest. 

These stories cannot be fully understood as isolated incidents but must be recognized in the context of a white nationalist immigration policy and a revanchist, objectively racist yearning for a return to dog-whistle "law and order" politics. They must be considered in relation to a country that is rapidly expanding its already repugnant concentration camp system - a country lead by a wholly fascist political party and its reality TV show bigot president; who are at once the architects of, and slaves to, a hard-line anti-immigration policy openly forged in xenophobia and hate. 

Finally, these events must also be understood in the uncompromising light of history. There is a name by which society has previously identified a militant, secretive, racist and largely unaccountable police force trained to fight its own populace and bent on enforcing malevolently racist laws - we called them the Gestapo; even if it hurt their feelings.

- Nina Illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog.

Updates available on Twitter, Mastodon and Facebook.