• Enfors@ttrpg.network
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    7 days ago

    Is it legal in the US to shoot people who are trying to kidnap you?

    I mean, anyone can go around claiming to be law enforcement or ICE or whatever, but with no badge or ID, how are people supposed to know that this isn’t a gang trying to trafic them?

    • Nalivai@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      In vast majority of states there is a stand-your-ground law in place, which means you’re explicitly allowed to use deadly force if you reasonably believe that you’re defending yourself from a violent crime, and in minority there is a duty to retreat while outside of your home or workplace, which means that you still are allowed to use deadly force, but you have to try to retreat first, and only use force if you are reasonably sure that you can’t run away.
      Kidnapping by a group of people in plain clothes in an unmarked van is explicitly stated as an example of a case where use of deadly force is permitted by law.

    • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I’m pretty sure self defence doesn’t apply against law enforcement, even if you don’t know they are law enforcement.

      • jimjam5@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        It may not, but imo you do what you have to do to protect yourself against aggravated kidnapping, and then hope you/your lawyer can articulate how/why you did what you did later in court.

        • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          Oh, totally, no dispute there.

          As Legaleagle put it in their most recent video: At that point it becomes logical to resist arrest, to run or to fight.

  • shirro@aussie.zone
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    6 days ago

    I would say the US has an executive with aspirations to implement aspects of a fascist state. As long as millions of people are protesting in the streets, the courts are ruling against the executive on points of law and people are standing their ground it is still a long road for the executive to get where they want to go. If the country really was full fascist you would be totally fucked and being shipped with your family to a concentration camp for disloyalty to great leader right now.

    Unlike some other countries where law enforcement and prisons might be state run on principle, the US has a history of privatizing such functions. They had the union busting Pinkerton thugs, for profit prisons and bounty hunters. A society that didn’t cry out when the Pinkertons were busting the heads of working people or kids were being railroaded into for profit prison slavery shouldn’t be surprised when thugs are clearing the streets of immigrants. That is just America sadly. That nastiness has always been there.

  • jimjam5@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    For Texas at least, under penal code 9.31(a)(1-3) it’s presumed to be reasonable self defense to use force (it specifically does not mention what kind of force, but it is assumed that deadly force is included, I think) against a person who “was committing or attempting to commit aggravated kidnapping, murder, sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, robbery, or aggravated robbery.”

  • WhatsTheHoldup@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    Are people in denial? It just seems like a commonly understood thing. I’ve talked to straight CNN consuming boomers and even they see it for what it is.

    For the record I’m in Canada so maybe it’s just hard to see from the inside.

  • Hazel@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    7 days ago

    Is your goal that we should just… not say this is illegal? Not argue that it’s not okay? Literally fold and accept fascism?

    Because that seems to be the narrative you’re pushing, which is the polar opposite of constructive in this situation.

    Super weird and suspect that every thread seems to be full of people saying this is normal. That this is just how it is, that it’s been going on forever, and that anyone who has an issue with it is being unrealistic. Really, really weird. Almost like they’re cryptofascists.

    HMMMMMMMM.

  • chris@lemmy.zip
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    7 days ago

    What strikes me about the covid epidemic was how obedient people were. It showed that it was possible to shut down whole societies on a global scale. It was a real crisis that provided an unexpected opportunity for mass propaganda. Political strategists surely took notice. It must have looked possible then to submit a whole population into fascism and that’s what we’re seeing now. Real power is with the people though. It lays dormant and it merely needs to be awakened by a timely spark.

    • AlexLost@lemm.ee
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      7 days ago

      What? The fact people are willing to protect themselves from a harmful disease is evidence we can be brainwashed? Brains got washed, but they are not the ones you think that got “cleaned”. You think it is strange that people followed guidelines put out by professionals in their fields as some form of brainwashing? That’s funny, and sad. It’s why we put those people in those positions, unlike now, where you have people going against experts and governing by “feelings”. This is such a fucking terrible timeline…

      • chris@lemmy.zip
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        I wrote that it was a real crisis and I didn’t use the term “brainwash”. The fact that people complied to official guidelines is of course a good thing in the event of a pandemic. But there was also overshooting. Not everything made sense. And there was definitely a lack of critical thinking and an absence of open debate. But my point is that it was apparently possible to create a high degree of conformity from above, a useful insight when you’re trying to eradicate democracy and supplant it by fascism. How else would you explain the ease of what has been described as a coup for the past 5 months?

        • drhodl@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          A life threatening, highly contagious epidemic, is NOT the time for “open debate”! Sheesh, this wins today’s “Stupidest comment on the Internet” award.

          • chris@lemmy.zip
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            6 days ago

            A life threatening, highly contagious epidemic, is NOT the time for “open debate”!

            Of course it is, unless you advocate authoritarianism

            Sheesh, this wins today’s “Stupidest comment on the Internet” award.

            I didn’t realize it’s ok here to insult people

            • theluckyone@discuss.online
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              7 days ago

              My gf at the time spent a month in bed as a result of COVID. She was hallucinating about dead family members for a week in the middle. Fuck off with your “fat or had pre-existing conditions, most of which are fully controlled by diet or exercise.” She’s certainly not overweight and had no pre-existing conditons, nor was she elderly. Go fuck yourself until you have worn your fuck stick down to a nub and have no more fucks to give, you ignorant piece of shit of a person.

            • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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              7 days ago

              You just proved why “an open debate” and “critical thinking” among people who have no clue at all are pretty bad ideas during a pandemic.

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              7 days ago

              Early on, when the disease was just starting to spread, an absolutely critical time during a pandemic, nobody knew whether any of the crap you just spouted, was applicable. Just the people who gained their medical qualifications from Fox News, and thought they knew more than the actual experts, were excreting your kind of argument. NOBODY had been “exposed and recovered” at that time, fool. Conspiracy theorists have NO place in public health discourse. You, and your ignorant ilk, are the reason so many people died unnecessarily.

            • petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              7 days ago

              Oh my god, do we get to bully a covid denier in the year of our lord, 2025? That shit is old news, man. You’re like 4 years out of date.

              Getting the vaccine if you are able is your civic duty. Not to your country, but to your fellow people. Your grandmother. The fact that you’re scared of a needle I think just kinda makes you a coward. Where is your bravery? You’re not getting any more apple tarts if you let your grandma die.

    • Ferrous@lemmy.ml
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      7 days ago

      You must have not experienced covid in the United States. All I saw here was a hectic shitshow full of scores of people utterly rejecting any semblance of disease guidance - going so far as doing the opposite of whatever the institutions recommended. Then there were a few redeeming groups who decided to play ball - not out of obedience, but out of love and respect for vulnerable groups.

      • chris@lemmy.zip
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        7 days ago

        I am indeed from Europe, where streets were at times completely empty and at other times you had to walk in designated lanes. Mask mandates everywhere and unvaccinated people were ostracized.

        • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          If such a tiny thing like wearing a mask is too much to ask from you, your opinion is not worth shit in this debate.

          It means you can’t even accept minor inconveniences to save the lives of yourself or others.

          If you are so incredibly egotistic, and so incredibly short sighted that you can’t even do that, your opinion is obviously garbage and not worth listening to.

  • peteyestee@feddit.org
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    8 days ago

    It’s not even new. They did this to people during 2020 protests. They drove up in mini vans jumped out, grabbed people and pulled them into the mini van and drove off.

    There used to be footage of it but I haven’t been able to find it. I think it was happening in Portland and Seattle. At the time there was live stream footage. And it usually happened later in the night as people were cooling off and dispersing.

    America hasn’t been what it preaches for half century at least.

    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/evelyn-bassi-illegal-abudction-portland-protests-1357279/

    https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/feds-unmarked-vans-portland/

    The video snopes talks about I saw. Possibly even live streaming at the time because I was hooked on watching all that. Iirc it was a bronze gold colored minivan and the sliding door opened and 1 or two guys got out masked and just grabbed the person and pulled the protestor in and drove off.

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 days ago

      Am from Seattle.

      Yep, this happened in Seattle and Portland multiple times, just basically black bagging people into unmarked vans by… presumably, plain clothes / “off duty” / half kitted out, face obscured, no visible ID cops.

      They typically did this black bagging to people who had not actually broken any laws, but were so effective at keeping protester morale high, and/or were simply causing overwhelming masses of people to defend them from, in many cases, literally entirely unprovoked police assault/brutality.

      Most of these were the people they wanted to removr but knew that no charges would actually stick because they had nothing, and then release them 24-72 hours later.

      Sometimes they’d black bag / white van people who had actually crossed the threshold into doing something they could actually charge you for, but most of the time, nope.

      I know that in Portland the cops actively decided to act as body guards for fascists, and look the other way when they attacked people.

      In Seattle, … the cops intentionally started so much shit, assaulting nonviolent people, well we uh… we literally forced them to abandon their major police office in Capitol Hill.

      As in, we seiged them. Surrounded the building for days. Eventually they burned a bunch of records and made a stealthy withdrawal in the dead of night.

      That police center is only a few blocks from where the ‘CHAZ’ would be set up.

      Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.

      As in, we literally drove out the local police and are thus now autonomous.

      … We’ve still never seen the all the actual communications between the police chief and mayor, other internal police records… because the police destroyed them. They destroyed them because they almost certainly outlined numerous violations of the law in terms of orders issued, tactics used, illegal arrests/detainments, bullshit ‘overtime’ overpayments and other financial shenanigans, crimes committed by the police and probably all the way up to the police chief and mayor engaging in a criminal conspiracy.

    • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip
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      8 days ago

      I was in Seattle during this. Word was people got snatched here but I don’t recall seeing hard evidence myself. Portland though they for sure got caught kidnapping protesters

    • Yeather@lemmy.ca
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      8 days ago

      There were a bunch of theories the people they black bagged were undercover / plainclothes cops. Every video I saw were of younger white guys in good shape getting taken off the streets.

    • witten@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      THIS. Everyone who’s feeling hopeless needs to get out of the Lemmy echo chamber and find people building the resistance in the real world. It’s actually not hard to do. Go to a protest and talk to people. Look online for a local resistance organization and show up at a meeting. Spend your money at companies that don’t support fascists. Whatever you do, just don’t give up because that’s exactly what the fascists want.

    • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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      8 days ago

      Yep, a higher percentage of Americans support trump than weimar republic Germans ever supported Hitler. Fascist don’t have to engage in electoralism once they securely seize the power of the pulpit.

      I’m done caring about America as a whole, I’m creating my mutual defense/support networks with friends and family and preparing for the worse. Democrats are still stuck in thirdway politics as the Reichstag burns to the ground.

      • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        The way Hitler took over with such a small support was by dividing the remaining citizens into smaller groups. Unity is our most powerful asset in resistance.

        Trump has also failed to obtain abject loyalty of the military, which will prevent him from control by force.

        • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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          8 days ago

          Trump has also failed to obtain abject loyalty of the military, which will prevent him from control by force.

          The problem is that also mimics hitler’s ascent to totalitarian control. Even at the height of his power lots of career soldiers and especially sailors were never really ideologically aligned with Hitler. Unfortunately, at the end of the day people in the military follow orders.

          • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            That’s not accurate. Germany had a strict top-down chain of military command, hence the Nuremberg trials defense of “just following orders.” After the trials, the US military was redesigned with a break above the Commanding Officer. The CO must verify the legality and constitutionality of orders before giving orders to the troops, just as it’s the responsibility of the troops to refuse to follow illegal or unconstitutional orders. CO’s have the JAGs, or Judge Advocate General Corps, who are legal advisors at the CO’s disposal to ensure they have the resources needed to remain accountable to the law and Constitution.

            https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-armed-forces-high-command

            • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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              8 days ago

              That’s not accurate. Germany had a strict top-down chain of military command, hence the Nuremberg trials defense of “just following orders.”

              The Nuremberg trials, like most international laws were an invention of convenience. If someone attempted to apply them to US action in a foreign intervention today, they would not be successful. In fact the US has stated that they would sooner invade a system like the ICC than allow them to prosecute anyone in the military.

              After the trials, the US military was redesigned with a break above the Commanding Officer. The CO must verify the legality and constitutionality of orders before giving orders to the troops, just as it’s the responsibility of the troops to refuse to follow illegal or unconstitutional orders.

              This may be a fact in doctrine, but in practice the military has historically has failed to fulfill this particular commitment. There have been several examples of US troops committing illegal actions commanded by officers without legal retribution.

              You can refuse to follow orders you think are illegal, but more often than not it’s a career ending action or punishable offense if not proven in court…and military court is not exactly a non biased apparatus of justice.

              This system depends on young soldiers with minimal educations and rights to stand up to a system that has an immencse amount of control over their lives. A system that has proven to defend higher command and officers in most cases, and to defend its overall image over anything.

              Even higher commands ability to stand up to the commander in chief is limited, we can see this in the news today with active duty military members being deployed state side to conduct what is fairly obvious policing actions in LA and on the US border in a direct violation of posse comitatus.

              • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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                8 days ago

                You’re using an argument for the exceptions as the rule. It’s wildly sensationalist.

                Out of 4,100 National Guard members and 700 Marines dispatched to LA, there has been one detainment of a US citizen, and no arrests. Detainment is currently being debated as a possible violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-marines-carry-out-first-known-detention-civilian-los-angeles-video-shows-2025-06-13/

                There are also many instances of the National Guard laying down their riot shields, and even taking a knee to support citizens in peaceful protest. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/06/02/tennessee-national-guard-troops-lay-down-riot-shields-at-protesters-request/

                The US has not signed the Rome Statute, and is therefore not beholden to the laws of the ICC unless in a nation that has signed said agreement.

                • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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                  8 days ago

                  Out of 4,100 National Guard members and 700 Marines dispatched to LA, there has been one detainment of a US citizen, and no arrests. Detainment is currently being debated as a possible violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-marines-carry-out-first-known-detention-civilian-los-angeles-video-shows-2025-06-13/

                  My entire point was that the rules that are supposed to protect the general population are often interpreted to serve those in power. Posse Comitatus is supposed to negate the use of military members from being used for policing on US soil.

                  Meaning that the definition of policing is being semantically interpreted as “arresting people” when in reality policing is defined as prevention and detection of crime and the maintenance of public order.

                  What other purpose can the military be utilized against the general public other than to maintain public order?

                  There are also many instances of the National Guard laying down their riot shields, and even taking a knee to support citizens in peaceful protest. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/06/02/tennessee-national-guard-troops-lay-down-riot-shields-at-protesters-request/

                  First of all, the national guard are not active duty military personnel and can and are utilized in state policing actions. Secondly, laying down shields is not disobeying a direct order. Lastly we have historic examples of national guard members committing massacares against non violent protestors.

                  The US has not signed the Rome Statute, and is therefore not beholden to the laws of the ICC unless in a nation that has signed said agreement.

                  My point was that international law a kin to those laid down by the Nuremberg trials do not protect us from fascist utilizing the military against us.

                  Your claim was that we were granted protections via the establishment of the Nuremberg principals…the Nuremberg principals are now moderated by the ICC via the 1999 Rome statute.

                  You are just proving my point for me. Internal laws are subject to interpretation via those who currently hold power (fascist), and external laws are inventions of convenience that we do not and have never allowed to truly moderate our countries behavior. My original claim stands, that we are not really in a much different scenario than in Hitler’s Germany.

        • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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          8 days ago

          Yep, my faith in any established political party has been worn thin since the bush era. Right now I’m just working on teaching my LGBT friends how to maintain and shoot a rifle and how to properly stock a go bag.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      8 days ago

      And make sure you protest in ways the fascists approve of: no violence (the facists wouldn’t like that) and make sure you’re waving American flags (the fascists like to see American flags).

      • Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        But remember you also gotta protest in ways the Dems would like too. So nothing too aggressive, and if your idea is anything less than perfect we should just not do it anyways.

        (Actually we should protest like the French with fire bombs and guillotines)

  • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    If you see Ice agents covering their faces, call 911 and report a masked man with a gun.

  • minorkeys@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    What is anyone supposed to do? All the checks and balances that are supposed to safeguard against this are non-functional, by choice. The only option is censored from even being mentioned and it means possibly fucking dying.

    • ftbd@feddit.org
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      8 days ago

      Aren’t there a lot more civilian gun owners than law enforcement? I thought that was the idea behind the second amendment

      • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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        8 days ago

        I thought that was the idea behind the second amendment

        No, the idea was that a good militia is all you need to keep a country safe, and that a federal army is a tool for government oppression. That’s what the writers saw all over Europe at the time, so they made sure the fix that in their new country.

        And then everyone pretended that wasn’t the case

      • Wren@lemmy.worldM
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        It’s laughable that anyone in their right mind could think civilians have any chance to stop this with violence. Any attempt even hinting in that direction will shut down the country and martial law will be enacted- and trust me when I say this-

        Trump WANTS that to happen. This is the desired outcome for him. I’d imagine the man salivated over footage of Tiananmen Square.

        And it should probably be contrast… Trump could read the headline of a newspaper over your shoulder… FROM SPACE, should he so much as want to. What exactly do you think some folks with a few assault rifles is going to do against a military that has the capability to turn entire cities into a fine pink mist?

        No. In abject complacency, this bed was made decades ago. And there’s no turning that clock back now. It’s done. This is how shit is going to be.

        The only thing to stop this regime from doing what it does, is for another regime to do what it does. So… That’s where we are now.

        And frankly, if you think about it- there little worth saving anyway. It’s not like shit was prosperous prior to Trump’s rule. America is a shit-show. Has been for a while now.

        • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org
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          8 days ago

          Technically you only need one bullet. A lot of this support for Maga in the US hinges on just one guy. Who would replace him? There is no one who will gain as much traction. And remember: as long as dictators die, liberty will never perish.

          • Wren@lemmy.worldM
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            There’s an unending line of people just as in corrupt as he is just waiting for their turn. In a pit such as theirs, there’s no feeling where one snake ends, and the next one begins- so there’s no cutting of the head of it here.

          • Next in line is JD “Couchfucker” Vance, which is like Trump, but with more brains (and totally onboard with project 2025); and even if you get him too, the next in line is Christofascist Mike Johnson, who would probably go the shortest route to Gilead if both his predecessors got assassinated.

            That’s more shooting luck than anyone will ever get, even if the Secret Service didn’t look too hot when Trump got shot at.

        • ftbd@feddit.org
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          I know it’s not feasible, but that is the argument that second amendment proponents make all the time. I would have expected to see them try, at least

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          Trump WANTS that to happen. This is the desired outcome for him.

          Trump wants people to not resist him at all. He’s still trying to retaliate against places where the “No Kings” protests took place and those were completely peaceful.

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          This is the insidious thing about authoritarianism. Once they have power, they can crush any dissent no matter what the dissenters do.

          Peaceful protest? Crush it. If it gains any actual traction, just pretend it’s violent to justify violent oppression. Facts don’t matter and words can casually justify any action, no matter how heinous.

          But violent opposition? The authoritarians dream of this, because it’s justification to bring everything they have to bear with zero accountability or justification. And since they are in power, they will have much greater force at their disposal. This is why Americas founders originally opposed the very idea of a professional standing army.

      • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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        Only moderated on reddit. The censorship is everywhere because we’re being watched everywhere - if you post concrete plans on Lemmy, you’ll get a knock on the door.

    • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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      Doing nothing means possibly fucking dying as well.

      Might as well go out being Player 2.

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      All the checks and balances that are supposed to safeguard against this are non-functional, by choice.

      Follow the money.

      • minorkeys@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        So there was no check or balance against money. Well, there was, taxes. But that stopped working mid century.

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          7 days ago

          Citizens United is widely seen as the last wall preventing the rich from buying control of the country.

    • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca
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      8 days ago

      it’s america. if a masked random person attempts to abduct you, you fight for your life. and you do the same if you see it happening to someone else

      • minorkeys@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        And if it turns out to be a cop or ice agent, can you be charged, imprisoned or legally killed for doing so? There are laws for declaring that you’re an officer, that was a safeguard so people could reasonably defend themselves. How strongly is that being protected right now under Trump?

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    8 days ago

    We aren’t supposed to accept that law enforcement just does as it pleases, ignoring our civil rights and protections and donning standard identification markers so that each officer can be uniquely identified. But this is not all that new.

    Most of the time we don’t know we’re being kidnapped by g-goons or the police are ignoring our rights until they’re doing it, and we can only hope we get our day in court to challenge the arrest.

    Since the development of DEA, the US courts have been carving out more and more exceptions to the fourth and fifth amendments of the Constitution of the United States, and by even the 90s (with some big thanks to RICO laws / rulings) we are no longer policed by consent, but by force, because there’s no one around with more firepower to stop them.

    This was only noticed by minorities, especially in the 1990s with the crackdowns against street gangs and feral youths. At that point we were seeing ur-fascism feature #8 ( The enemy is both too strong and too weak ) where street gangs are described as feral youths who can’t be negotiated with, while the same gang is an international organized-crime syndicate.

    Then the 9/11 attacks happened, and the PATRIOT act was signed, and DHS was formed, and we noticed that some Americans, typically Muslim Arab-Americans, but sometimes Persian-Americans, sometimes Sikhs…really anyone who looked too middle-eastern, got disappeared by LGMs (dudes who look like cops but without personal or department identification, sometimes without the yellow POLICE plates), and rendered abroad to black sites to get tortured. But much of the US overlooked it because we were sore about WTC1 and WTC2.

    (some of us screamed like Cassandra that this was a big move towards fascist autocracy, but I digress)

    When Obama took over FBI was searching hard for terrorists in US borders but couldn’t find many, and had to invent some (Remember Kellyanne Conway’s Bowling Green Massacre? In the actual Bowling Green event no-one died but two refugees were gaslighted by FBI with a budget into doing some inoffensive para-terrorist work, and entrapped into terrorism charges. They’re still serving time.)

    By then, our massive surveillance state was in operation and all of the US’ internet traffic went through NSA, and when there were Islamist militants who were thinking about a plot to suicide bomb an American asset, we’d send a predator drone to literally burn his village down: the CIA drone program killed 50 civilians – including grandmothers and children-- for every person-of-interest neutralized. We learned that while video games don’t make kids violent, making real-world warfare like a video game still meant the operator squeezing the trigger got PTSD. US drone programs had a turnover rate about as bad as German einsatzgruppen (death squads who mass executed villages for betrayal or harboring Jews).

    So in 2016 when Trump won, Cassandra over here screamed about the Obama administration disabling all the mass intelligence state and surveillance state assets before Trump could get a hold of them.

    We got a break, as Trump pissed off CIA and the rest of the intelligence community, so they weren’t talking for a while, but then, somehow, when he had a Heritage Foundation plan and staffers who knew what structures were in place, we elected him President of the United States for a second time. Even despite his insurrection charges (which were stalled until moot).

    So yeah, the previous administrations, knowing this was going to be a problem gave the Trump regime is very own SS / Brownshirt secret police (who behave a lot like the Sicherheitsdienst under Reinhard Heydrich) complete with a concentration camp system that is overflowing due to purge quotas.

    During the 2020 George Floyd protests, there was a move to abolish ICE who had been hunting undocumented folk and were sent in to brutalize the demonstrations, which only pissed off more Americans, and there was a movement to Abolish ICE (what was always just a paramilitary department to serve the will and interests of the current administration, id est, a secret police).

    We are now suffering the consequences of having failed to follow through.

  • 474D@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    The recipe has been in play for over a decade, probably more. People can’t stand up if they have nothing to stand on. Everyone is struggling. What the fuck is fascism if you have to concentrate on just surviving. That’s the whole play. They give us just enough to get by so we can live with no time to think. It’s not denial, it’s an orchestrated structure. The system isn’t flawed, it’s working as intended

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      8 days ago

      Add to that several decades of constant far right propaganda disguised as news, and a massive rightward shift of the Overton Window, and you end up with brainwashed citizens willing to cheer this shit on.

      Add to that the systematic dismantling of our public education system to ensure that people don’t have the historical and political context to understand the implications of any of it.

      They (The Heritage Foundation and their ilk, I guess) really learned a lot of lessons from the Third Reich… This is the culmination of decades of work for these people, and it is working as designed for the most part.

      It’s a very difficult trap to escape from. If not impossible.