I think focusing on Alex Pretti's actions is a very human defense mechanism. We tell ourselves that X happened because of Y, so if we avoid X we can avoid Y. In Saturday's New York Times [ gift link ] Masha Gessen has an opinion piece on why this is based on a false premise.
But that’s not how state terror works.
In the 1990s, when I talked to people in the former Soviet Union about their families’ experiences of Stalinist terror, I was repeatedly struck by how much people seemed to know about their circumstances. Time and time again, people would tell me exactly what had led to their family members’ arrests or executions. Jealous neighbors had reported them to the authorities, or colleagues who had been arrested named them under duress. These stories had been passed on from generation to generation. How could they come to know so much, I wondered. They couldn’t. People crafted narratives out of suspicions, rumors and hints, to fill a desperate need for an explanation.
My favorite book about state terror is Lydia Chukovskaya’s “Sofia Petrovna,” a short Russian novel that has been translated into English. The protagonist, a middle-aged woman loyal to Stalin’s Communist Party, loses her mind trying to make sense of her son’s arrest. My own family history contains a corollary. After the secret police arrested most of the senior staff at the newspaper where my grandfather was a deputy editor, he waited for the knock on his door. When the secret police failed to show up night after night, week after week, he became so distressed that he checked himself into a mental institution. It could be that was how he avoided arrest. Or it could be that the secret police had filled their quota of arrests for that month.
For this was the secret about the secret police that became clear when the K.G.B. archives were opened (briefly) in the 1990s: They were ruled by quotas. Local squadrons had to arrest a certain number of citizens so they could be designated enemies of the people. That the officers often swept up groups of colleagues, friends and family members was probably a matter of convenience more than anything else. Fundamentally, the terror was random. That is, in fact, how state terror works.
The randomness is the difference between a regime based on terror and a regime that is plainly repressive. Even in brutally repressive regimes, including those of the Soviet colonies in Eastern Europe, one knew where the boundaries of acceptable behavior lay. Open protest would get one arrested; kitchen conversation would not. Writing subversive essays or novels or editing underground journals would get one arrested; reading these banned works and quietly passing them on to friends probably would not. A regime based on terror, on the other hand, deploys violence precisely to reinforce the message that anyone can be subjected to it.
At some point we have to ask whether random killings of civilians are the desired outcome. According to Greg Bovino the agents involved in the shooting of Pretti are not on administrative leave and have been re-assigned to other cities. This sends a pretty clear message to ICE and CBP that shooting American citizens is going to be a regular part of their duties and that the agency will protect them from any consequences.
It's a big mistake, though, for those around him who want an authoritarian take-over of the US, because to do that successfully, they can't just other a minority within the population -- they need to buy off the rest of the population. There have been no bread and circuses, no carrot, just the stick, or jackboot really.
Do authoritarians always need the carrot? Sometimes propaganda can fill the gap. "Guns not butter" is the slogan that springs to mind.
I've always heard it as "guns AND butter". And used by outside observers of the regime to describe its policies, not by the regime itself.
There was an interesting conversation on the New Yorker Radio Hour yesterday about the type of people that are being recruited as ICE/Border Patrol agents. Homeland security is basically appealing to gun owners and--hate to say it--white supremacists. They will give out recruiting information at gun shows and they are using fascist slogans. The person that was being interviewed has written rather negatively about ICE recruitment in the past. She decided to see what would happen if she applied through an online app. She said ICE called her for a six minute interview. A short time later, she got an email directing her to get a drug test. She ignored that direction, but about a week later she got a list of those recently hired and her name was on that list. She claims there was no real background check. No eyes on interview at all. Of course, she did not accept the job.
I wonder if there is any mileage in painting the idea of shooting people like Renee Good, Alex Pretti and the 30 so others they’ve killed recently as weakness - if that’s what puts them in fear of their life they must be cowards, weak, losers etc. Turning the Trumpest belief that the worst vice is weakness against them ?
Bret Devereaux has a Bluesky thread about the distinction Hannah Arendt made between violence and power.
For those unfamiliar, in On Violence, Arendt points out that the ability to dish out violence is often confused for power - the ability to get compliance without violence.
Successful governance relies almost entirely on power, because violence is expensive and limited.
We're seeing this very clearly in Minneapolis and other cities 'raided' by DHS: they do not have enough agents, enough sources of violence, to hold even a medium-sized city by force of arms.
They rely on the cooperation of the populace (power); when that is gone, they're cooked.
In other words, the resort to violence is a clear indication that power has failed. Read the rest.
NBC News cited a Trump administration official and a law enforcement official who said Customs and Border Patrol is planning to reduce the number of Border Patrol agents in the Twin Cities "sometime this week."
CNN cited an official who said Bovino's departure was a "mutual decision." According to CNN's reporting, administration officials were "deeply frustrated" with Bovino and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's handling of the shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents on Saturday, with Bovino alleging that Pretti was planning to "massacre" federal agents.
The reported development comes following a shift in strategy by the Trump Administration on Monday. President Trump posted on social media that he would be sending Border Czar Tom Homan to manage the ICE operations in Minnesota.
It's a big mistake, though, for those around him who want an authoritarian take-over of the US, because to do that successfully, they can't just other a minority within the population -- they need to buy off the rest of the population. There have been no bread and circuses, no carrot, just the stick, or jackboot really.
Do authoritarians always need the carrot? Sometimes propaganda can fill the gap. "Guns not butter" is the slogan that springs to mind.
I've always heard it as "guns AND butter". And used by outside observers of the regime to describe its policies, not by the regime itself.
The term first appeared in American politics when Williams Jennings Byran coined it in opposition to Woodrow Wilsons shift to arms production leading up to WWI.
I believe Lyndon Baines Johnson also used it as he was promoting the welfare program he was envisioning in his Great Society while he was building up or involvement in Vietnam.
Goring said "Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat."
I would counter every gun we make takes food away from the poor. (to paraphrase Ike Eisenhower).
There's a big difference between "guns or butter" and "bread and circuses"; they're not describing the same thing. In Satire X, Juvenal discusses the degradation of the Roman people under the empire in the early second century CE:
They shed their sense of responsibility
Long ago, when they lost their votes, and the bribes; the mob
That used to grant power, high office, the legions, everything,
Curtails its desires, and reveals its anxiety for two things only,
Bread and circuses. From poetryintranslation.com
He's not writing a handbook for politicians; he's making an observation, a biting criticism of the people who have allowed themselves to be bought off with the grain dole and the spectacles and thus given up their power.
William Jennings Bryan was talking about a real choice the Wilson administration made in 1915 while he was Secretary of State: should the finite supply of nitrates go to producing agricultural fertilizer or munitions? (Wilson went with munitions and Bryan, an advocate for US neutrality, resigned.) So "guns or butter" has become a shorthand term for an economic choice between military spending and social spending (it's even in Investopedia). It's not about what you do to effect authoritarian consolidation, despite Goering's use of the term. He was speaking in 1936, in the middle of the Depression and when the Nazis had already locked everything down; he was using the economic choice as a piece of propaganda to justify the skyrocketing military budget.
Do authoritarians always need the carrot? Sometimes propaganda can fill the gap.
So leaving guns and butter aside, yes, sometimes propaganda can fill the gap, but carrots are usually offered:
Traditionally autocratic regimes expand social services for supporters as a way to buy loyalty, while stripping away their political rights, Ben-Ghiat said: “That’s how they get so many people to go along and look the other way.” But Trump, she said, has diverged from that model: rather than shoring up the social safety net, his administration, abetted by congressional Republicans, has moved to “kneecap” public health and social programs, including childcare benefits – cuts Democrats plan to foreground in this year’s midterm elections. From The Guardian, last Wednesday -- Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a NY University professor who studies authoritarian and fascism.
I think in the case of the US, carrots are especially important to consolidating authoritarianism, for several reasons.
Despite its deep flaws and the manifold exceptions to the case, American democracy is old and established. This isn't Russia, Hungary, or China, where dictators have essentially replaced monarchs -- this is one of the few instances where the oft-heard protestation "this is not who we are!" seems somewhat appropriate. We only became a full democracy after 1965, but origin stories matter. Our origin story is that we revolted against one-person rule and formed a democracy. It's not that we won't sell that out (the illiberal strain in the US is older than the country itself), but authoritarians need to give us something in return.
The US is both very affluent and has huge income/wealth inequality -- the bread and butter here are abundant and on view to everyone, so the people who don't have enough can see what they don't have. It's not a great idea to run roughshod over the people on the upside of the K-shaped economy; we have a good life, don't fuck with it. It's not a great idea to run roughshod over the people on the downside; they know the good life is right there, just out of reach, so making things worse in any way just pisses them off. So give us all carrots.
The othered group is immigrants, and the new regime already had as many citizens hating immigrants as they were likely to ever get under circumstances current at the outset of Trump 2.0 -- so how do they get more citizens to dis-identify with immigrants, or just overlook what's happening to them? Carrots. They could have given broad access to affordable healthcare to citizens, pacifiying a lot of people and taking away one of the Democrats' best issues. Or done other social spending. Instead, but federal agents are turning on citizens. They took away from citizens in Minneapolis the freedom to walk down the street unmolested way too fast for this to work well for the would-be regime. This narrative is horrible for them. They could have begun the Trump term by continuing what feds were already doing -- arresting "the worst of the worst" -- but made a bigger show of it, thus arguing that they're making citizens' lives better (carrots). And then they could have worked their way along the spectrum of immigrants, from felons here illegally to people who overstayed their visas 30 years ago. This would have cost less money (the guns vs butter curve) and lulled more people into not paying attention to the horrors.
Thank you for further clarification on the Guns or butter issue @Ruth. It was late at night when I posted about where the term came from. Did not fully explain it, though.
I am wondering how Tom Holman will be any different than Bovino or Noem, but I see they are being replaced, and Holman will answer directly to Trump.
In other news about ICE, I see Vance and Rubio are going to use ICE bodyguards at the Winter Olympics in Milan. The Italian population is none to happy about it. They point to what is happening in Minneapolis and do not want those murderous thugs on their soil.
And I see the acting head of ICE has to appear in court on Friday to answer to contempt charges. Think he will go to jail?
I appreciate the extra context of "guns not butter"; I had only previously only encountered the phrase when studying Nazi Germany (something the history curriculum in England comes back to with considerable regularity). Seeing the longer quote from Göring, I was intrigued to realise (having recently listened to the audiobook) that Pratchett in The Fifth Elephant paraphrased it and turned it, in the mouth of the Low King of the Dwarfs, into something completely benign. In the story, of course, Ankh Morpork chooses not "iron" but "fat, lots of fat".
I’m in the US and in my 40’s and the only reference to “guns and butter” I had known of was LBJ’s use of the term from the Vietnam War/Great Society era. I didn’t know it went back to WWII and even WWI.
Goring said "Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat."
It's worth pointing out how that turned out for the Nazis. They were soundly destroyed after less than fifteen years in power (after doing a horrific amount of damage - but on their own terms they were a complete and utter failure).
@Ruth - I'm intrigued by your comment that this might be an enormous turning point - a white guy disarmed and shot 10 times when restrained and clearly not resisting arrest.
How do you see things panning out from here on in?
Are you suggesting there could be a backlash against Trump's policies and tactics from those who previously supported them?
Or that this could lead to further escalation?
Throughout my adult life, I've felt like I could frequently, not always, make reasonable predictions about the range of possibilities of what would happen next in American politics. Not what would happen exactly, but the options and likely choices and possibilities. Anyone paying attention to the news could tell you this kind of thing; it's not special. Not that there aren't surprises -- I couldn't have told you 9/11 was going to happen -- but how things played out after that weren't surprising (though they were maddening).
But not anymore. Over the last couple of years I've been thinking more and more frequently that the US is at an historical inflection point, one of those times when it seems anything can happen, and when the things that do happen can make an extraordinary difference in the general direction of events. We won't know for sure till it's in the past and we can see whether things really changed -- maybe this will be a weird period of history and we'll get back on the road we were on, maybe it will be a moderate course correction (the safe bet?), maybe we'll slide completely in authoritarianism, maybe we'll get stuck in competitive authoritarianism, or maybe we'll boomerang back to full democracy. Democratic reaction to autocratization is more common than I used to think ("When autocratization is reversed: episodes of U-Turns since 1900").
The range of possibilities is huge now. There are too many variables and the stakes are too high -- everything seems more than usually consequential -- to make predictions. Will Trump die? Will he become so obviously disabled that the VP and Cabinet are forced to invoke the 25th Amendment? Will they be able to Weekend at Bernies him through the end of his term? Will they calculate that they only want to do that to a point, and then get him out of there so Vance can run as the incumbent President in 2028? Will the Democrats in Congress wuss out and waste the opportunity Alex Pretti's murder has given them? Or will they press the point and claw back the DHS funding? Or do something halfway in between? And then what happens? The ACLU had 100,000 people on their training call yesterday evening, telling people how to safely and legally observe and record federal agents' actions; what will those people do, both individually and collectively?
They've started this whole bullshit in Maine now -- four of the five most-read articles on the Portland Press Herald site today have to do with ICE activities. Gun ownership overall in Maine is only a bit higher than in Minnesota, but my guess that the guns in Minnesota are not in the Twin Cities area; so maybe ICE/CBP are more likely to come across armed Mainers? Especially since the administration now appears to be treading on 2nd Amendment rights as well as 1st. Mainers are doing what Minnesotans have been doing, observing and documenting the feds' activities, and federal officials are coming to their homes and threatening them.
Other possibilities: Will one of the ICE and Border Patrol officers who were already on the job before Trump took office and reportedly are horrified at the chaos spill the beans on something so awful and stupid that a complete tear down and rebuild of that whole edifice becomes a possibility? Will Chuck Schumer and/or Hakeem Jeffries say or do something so unbelievably tone deaf that the Congressional Dems replace their leadership?
This is just scratching the surface of what could happen here. So here's my one prediction: because the midterms in November will have existential consequences for everyone on both sides of this struggle, things will get worse before they get better, if they get better at all.
I have been following this thread and the story behind it with horror, but have hitherto, as a foreigner in another country, been reluctant to comment.
The term first appeared in American politics when Williams Jennings Byran coined it in opposition to Woodrow Wilsons shift to arms production leading up to WWI.
I believe Lyndon Baines Johnson also used it as he was promoting the welfare program he was envisioning in his Great Society while he was building up or involvement in Vietnam.
Goring said "Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat."
I would counter every gun we make takes food away from the poor. (to paraphrase Ike Eisenhower).
I had not realised that 'guns or butter' had a history before or since Göring's famous use of the phrase.
Could I, though, check on two other relatively collateral things that have arisen in the reporting of this?
The first is that much has been made in reports that both Renee Good and Alex Pretti were US citizens. I have noticed this before in reports of foreign interventions by US military expeditions, where there have been US casualties among those targetted. Is this rhetoric or is it generally assumed in the USA that there is a fundamental difference between organs of government or law enforcement killing people who have or are entitled to have US passports, and their killing foreigners, tourists or whatever, whether legally or illegally present? Are foreigners regarded as fair game?
The second, is that there have also been one or two references that have referred to their being 'executed'. By any standards it was utterly wrong and inexcusable that an organ of the state killed them, but is 'execute' the right word to describe the misuse of force by government officers running amok.
The first is that much has been made in reports that both Renee Good and Alex Pretti were US citizens. I have noticed this before in reports of foreign interventions by US military expeditions, where there have been US casualties among those targetted. Is this rhetoric or is it generally assumed in the USA that there is a fundamental difference between organs of government or law enforcement killing people who have or are entitled to have US passports, and their killing foreigners, tourists or whatever, whether legally or illegally present? Are foreigners regarded as fair game?
No, it is not generally assumed in the US that there is a fundamental difference between organs of government or law enforcement killing people who have or are entitled to have US passports, and their killing foreigners, tourists or whatever, whether legally or illegally present. Nor is it just rhetoric in this instance.
It is a description of the actions a federal agency, the purpose of which is supposed to be enforcement of immigration and customs laws, that is instead killing, without justification citizens, who by definition cannot be illegal immigrants. The point of noting that those killed are citizens, in the wider context of supposed immigration enforcement, is to show just how far off the rails ICE and ICE agents have gone.
And before you ask, no, there is no assumption that it is somehow more justified to shoot illegal immigrants or other non-citizens either.
@Enoch By now, I think you have had the chance to read Ruth's expansion on the terms regards guns and butter.
Now to your questions. Is there a difference between killing those who are entitled to a US passport and foreigners? For myself, no. But the reaction of the nation seems to be centered on Good and Pretti I think because we have so many videos of the shootings. The death of foreigners at the hands of ICE that have been ruled as homicide should be investigated as such. But the breakdown is would it be a state or federal investigation. @Nick can better explain it than I can. I can tell you if we leave it in the hands of the feds, it is not likely to happen until we have a regime change.
To the question of whether the term "execution" is the proper term for what happened to Good and Pretti--and the others who have died at the hands of ICE: looking at my abbreviated Merrium-Webster which pretty much defines American use of the word, it is the third definition of the word--"the killing of someone as a political act."
From what I can see in the online Cambridge Dictionary, that definition is not actually there, though I think it would allow for the "unlawful execution of a person."
I’m in the US and in my 40’s and the only reference to “guns and butter” I had known of was LBJ’s use of the term from the Vietnam War/Great Society era. I didn’t know it went back to WWII and even WWI.
Libertarians fired-up against an empowered state refer to that combination of policies(eg. Great Society/Vietnam War) as "the welfare/warfare state".
Separate from any value judgements, I'll observe that the 20th Century, at least, provides a few examples which buttress that analysis, eg. WW2 preceded by the New Deal in the USA, and followed by the NHS etc in the UK. The theory kinda runs aground on neutral Sweden, however.
Florida has 1.5 million undocumented aliens.
Texas has 2.5 million undocumented aliens.
Minnesota has 180,000 undocuoumented aliens
It is not about undocumented aliens.
Could it be ICE cannot make their monthly goals because they are in the wrong place? Speaking as an old fisherman, I would want to go where I know there are the most fish. Not that I support the current ICE administration.
Those stats are telling, but do you happen to know their origin? By their very nature, surely they can't be easy to authenticate.
Thank you for further clarification on the Guns or butter issue @Ruth. It was late at night when I posted about where the term came from. Did not fully explain it, though.
I am wondering how Tom Holman will be any different than Bovino or Noem, but I see they are being replaced, and Holman will answer directly to Trump.
In other news about ICE, I see Vance and Rubio are going to use ICE bodyguards at the Winter Olympics in Milan. The Italian population is none to happy about it. They point to what is happening in Minneapolis and do not want those murderous thugs on their soil.
And I see the acting head of ICE has to appear in court on Friday to answer to contempt charges. Think he will go to jail?
It feels a bit rich for Italians to be unhappy about this given the current Italian love affair with fascism. Italian cities might not be overrun with immigration enforcement, but it's not like racism isn't currently being celebrated in Italy.
Florida has 1.5 million undocumented aliens.
Texas has 2.5 million undocumented aliens.
Minnesota has 180,000 undocuoumented aliens
It is not about undocumented aliens.
Could it be ICE cannot make their monthly goals because they are in the wrong place? Speaking as an old fisherman, I would want to go where I know there are the most fish. Not that I support the current ICE administration.
Those stats are telling, but do you happen to know their origin? By their very nature, surely they can't be easy to authenticate.
As I said, it is based on what I remembered from a meme circulating on Facebook. I did find an article from Snopes that addresses the validity of that meme, though with slightly lower numbers.
@Ruth, thanks for your very detailed and thoughtful analysis.
And thanks too, @Nick Tamen for your response to @Enoch's question. FWIW I'd anticipated that the emphasis on the US citizenship of Good and Pretti was made for the reasons you state not to imply that the shooting of tourists or foreign nationals was regarded as a lesser evil.
That doesn't mean that I always anticipate things correctly. I do make egregious assumptions at times.
As for ICE providing Vance's bodyguard for his Italian visit, yes, there has been an upsurge on the extreme right in Italy. The current Italian President is a big pal of Trump's. I can't speak for the Italians but whether any European country is right, left or centre leaning I'd imagine eye-brows would be raised if ICE agents formed a bodyguard for a visit by senior US politicians.
After all, aren't they supposed to deal with domestic customs and immigration issues?
Since when have they been expected to act like a private bodyguard for US dignitaries overseas?
I'm not convinced the Italians or anyone else would expect ICE agents to go on an ill-disciplined and murderous rampage during their time in Italy, but it seems very odd for them to operate there in the first place.
There has been speculation in British media - and I'd imagine elsewhere as well, particularly in the US - that ICE are becoming Trump's 'private army' to be deployed in whatever way he sees fit.
Their deployment in the Vance visit to Italy would appear to fuel this speculation.
Why ICE? Why not whichever federal agents are normally detailed for such duties?
Is there any possible explanation other than that for all their indiscipline and lack of training - or perhaps because of it? - they are becoming the personal 'go-to' security service for the current administration for ideological reasons?
I do not see anything surprising or subtle about the Italian objection to the US proposal to bring ICE thugs to Italy to help police the Olympics. Virtually every country in the world would feel extremely uncomfortable and touchy about any foreign police or law enforcement organisation claiming to be entitled to come and be active within its territory, even if well behaved, respectful and respected, yet alone the ICE with its reputation.
Ask yourself, what would be the reaction of the US public or media if the Italians took it for granted they were entitled to bring their own police or law enforcement staff to operate in New York, Washington or Salt Lake City?
Ahem, @Enoch, it's standard practice for senior politicians and heads of state to take security personnel from their own country with them on overseas visits.
The British Royal Family and Prime Ministers take Special Branch teams with them when they go abroad. Nobody would object in the US if these teams operated in New York, Washington or Salt Lake City.
The issue isn't federal security personnel accompanying a US Vice President on a foreign visit - that's standard practice. They generally come from the US secret service from what I can gather and conduct advance reconnoitres as well as entourage duties.
They can number in their hundreds.
The issue isn't US security personnel accompanying Vance on his Italian visit, the issue is that ICE seem to be fulfilling that role.
I don't think anyone is seriously expecting ICE agents to run amok in Italy but it's the principle of the thing. Why not agents from the US units and services from which security is usually drawn?
Why ICE? I can only conclude that this has been done to convey a political message. These are our guys. We trust them implicitly. They have our full backing. Look, we are even entrusting them with the security of our Vice President on his Italian trip.
The issue isn't that US law-enforcement officers are involved - and as has been pointed out ICE aren't law-enforcement officers as such.
The issue is that ICE is involved. And the Italians are right to be concerned about that, not only on the grounds of competence, although Trump and Vance appear to overlook that, but the message it sends.
These guys kill with impunity and we don't care about that. We endorse it.
I did some research on the use of ICE being used as bodyguards for Vance and Rubio. Technically, Homeland Security Investigations which includes ICE handles the protection details for US dignitaries oversees. It is not part of ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations which we see happening in Minnesota. HSI handles human trafficking, child exploitation, drug trafficking, money laundering, cybercrime, weapons trafficking, trade fraud and counterterrorism in addition to providing VIP protection. Ideally, they are not the goons we have been seeing on the streets in Minnesota.
The point of noting that those killed are citizens, in the wider context of supposed immigration enforcement, is to show just how far off the rails ICE and ICE agents have gone.
I think it also expresses the emotional shock at the violation of the sense of safety and security that we as citizens enjoy and take for granted. It's not supposed to matter more if the feds kill citizens, but it does shock us more. Also, while everyone on US soil is supposed to have access to the same due process of law no matter who they are or what they might have done, this is far from what actually happens. I don't for a moment think the average American cares as much about the deaths of people who aren't citizens as they do about the deaths of citizens. I can't tell you the names of the non-citizens ICE has killed outright or through medical neglect in DHS facilities; the press has only now started feeling bad about not making a big deal about those deaths sooner.
And it matters which citizens they kill and how it all goes down. It matters a lot.
The first citizen ICE killed was Keith Porter, a Black man in Los Angeles shooting an AK-15 rifle into the air to celebrate New Year's Eve (not a good idea, but not weird here). Witnesses say an off-duty ICE officer living in the same apartment building confronted him and shot him when he wouldn't put the gun down; LAPD says Porter shot at the ICE officer -- LAPD responded after the shooting but didn't see it, so I assume they're just repeating what the ICE guy said. There's no video, the NRA isn't going to come out in defense of Black people's gun rights, Porter was shooting off a rifle, and the news was so full of other stuff like Venezuela and the Epstein files that the death of a Black man in Los Angeles wasn't going to break through. It was covered in the LA Times, but I probably wouldn't have heard anything about it if I didn't live in LA County.
Then a white woman got killed, and I figured, okay, a nice white woman, that'll get people's attention. And it did, there were large protests. But she was a lesbian, and we weren't all quite there yet.
Then they kill a white man, and sure enough, that's the thing that puts the whole thing over the edge.
Now, if Good had been killed by a black ICE agent...
Do they even have black agents--no need to answer that.
I am thinking the biggest difference between the Good killing and the Pretti killing is the number of videos we have of the Pretti killing, to the point of showing the ICE agent drawing his gun and shooting Pretti in the back of the head even as Pretti is disarmed. The videos of Good's shooting were from a distance and relatively few.
Both killings are heinous. We lost two good people. Their families are suffering greatly.
Ahem, @Enoch, it's standard practice for senior politicians and heads of state to take security personnel from their own country with them on overseas visits. ...
Yes, I was to some extent aware of this, but have always assumed that this is with the consent of the home authorities in the country where they are operating and conditional on the foreign security staff acknowledging that they are obliged to accept that they co-operate with the home authorities, liaise with them at all times and fit in with their requirements. And no state would work on the basis that this permission gave the guest security staff a warrant to roam freely delivering enforcement on their own terms in the territory of another.
I think I've said this before, but Our Place's website - and we're a little backstreet Anglo-Catholic parish in a deprived urban area in SE England - includes requests for prayer for Minnesota, as well as Iran, Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, and 'other war zones world-wide'.
Whether it does any good is not for me to say, but you are not forgotten.
The point of noting that those killed are citizens, in the wider context of supposed immigration enforcement, is to show just how far off the rails ICE and ICE agents have gone.
I think it also expresses the emotional shock at the violation of the sense of safety and security that we as citizens enjoy and take for granted. It's not supposed to matter more if the feds kill citizens, but it does shock us more. Also, while everyone on US soil is supposed to have access to the same due process of law no matter who they are or what they might have done, this is far from what actually happens. I don't for a moment think the average American cares as much about the deaths of people who aren't citizens as they do about the deaths of citizens. I can't tell you the names of the non-citizens ICE has killed outright or through medical neglect in DHS facilities; the press has only now started feeling bad about not making a big deal about those deaths sooner. . . .
All good points, @Ruth, which I’d probably place under the umbrella of my “how far ICE has gone off the rails” description.
I watched a bit of the CNN Town Hall re Minneapolis. Very worrying to hear the defensive local GOP folks. Blame Waltz, blame the victims. Some telling laughter from the audience re some of their nonsense.
The release of a video clip showing (without any previous footage) Pretti losing it 10 or 11 days before being shot was classic smearing the victim. Pretti could have been arrested (he kicked out the tail light of an ICE vehicle) but he wasn’t. The event had zero to do with the event where he was shot, but that hasn’t stopped GOP representatives from using it.
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At some point we have to ask whether random killings of civilians are the desired outcome. According to Greg Bovino the agents involved in the shooting of Pretti are not on administrative leave and have been re-assigned to other cities. This sends a pretty clear message to ICE and CBP that shooting American citizens is going to be a regular part of their duties and that the agency will protect them from any consequences.
I've always heard it as "guns AND butter". And used by outside observers of the regime to describe its policies, not by the regime itself.
Bret Devereaux has a Bluesky thread about the distinction Hannah Arendt made between violence and power.
In other words, the resort to violence is a clear indication that power has failed. Read the rest.
Remember Minnesota, Homan likes his "gifts" in a Cava takeout bag.
To the point as to whether this could be a turning point, I think Michelle and Barrack Obama said the same in their recent post.
There's this from Göring, which is the context I was thinking of:
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/596608
I believe Lyndon Baines Johnson also used it as he was promoting the welfare program he was envisioning in his Great Society while he was building up or involvement in Vietnam.
Goring said "Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat."
I would counter every gun we make takes food away from the poor. (to paraphrase Ike Eisenhower).
He's not writing a handbook for politicians; he's making an observation, a biting criticism of the people who have allowed themselves to be bought off with the grain dole and the spectacles and thus given up their power.
William Jennings Bryan was talking about a real choice the Wilson administration made in 1915 while he was Secretary of State: should the finite supply of nitrates go to producing agricultural fertilizer or munitions? (Wilson went with munitions and Bryan, an advocate for US neutrality, resigned.) So "guns or butter" has become a shorthand term for an economic choice between military spending and social spending (it's even in Investopedia). It's not about what you do to effect authoritarian consolidation, despite Goering's use of the term. He was speaking in 1936, in the middle of the Depression and when the Nazis had already locked everything down; he was using the economic choice as a piece of propaganda to justify the skyrocketing military budget.
So leaving guns and butter aside, yes, sometimes propaganda can fill the gap, but carrots are usually offered:
I think in the case of the US, carrots are especially important to consolidating authoritarianism, for several reasons.
I am wondering how Tom Holman will be any different than Bovino or Noem, but I see they are being replaced, and Holman will answer directly to Trump.
In other news about ICE, I see Vance and Rubio are going to use ICE bodyguards at the Winter Olympics in Milan. The Italian population is none to happy about it. They point to what is happening in Minneapolis and do not want those murderous thugs on their soil.
And I see the acting head of ICE has to appear in court on Friday to answer to contempt charges. Think he will go to jail?
But not anymore. Over the last couple of years I've been thinking more and more frequently that the US is at an historical inflection point, one of those times when it seems anything can happen, and when the things that do happen can make an extraordinary difference in the general direction of events. We won't know for sure till it's in the past and we can see whether things really changed -- maybe this will be a weird period of history and we'll get back on the road we were on, maybe it will be a moderate course correction (the safe bet?), maybe we'll slide completely in authoritarianism, maybe we'll get stuck in competitive authoritarianism, or maybe we'll boomerang back to full democracy. Democratic reaction to autocratization is more common than I used to think ("When autocratization is reversed: episodes of U-Turns since 1900").
The range of possibilities is huge now. There are too many variables and the stakes are too high -- everything seems more than usually consequential -- to make predictions. Will Trump die? Will he become so obviously disabled that the VP and Cabinet are forced to invoke the 25th Amendment? Will they be able to Weekend at Bernies him through the end of his term? Will they calculate that they only want to do that to a point, and then get him out of there so Vance can run as the incumbent President in 2028? Will the Democrats in Congress wuss out and waste the opportunity Alex Pretti's murder has given them? Or will they press the point and claw back the DHS funding? Or do something halfway in between? And then what happens? The ACLU had 100,000 people on their training call yesterday evening, telling people how to safely and legally observe and record federal agents' actions; what will those people do, both individually and collectively?
They've started this whole bullshit in Maine now -- four of the five most-read articles on the Portland Press Herald site today have to do with ICE activities. Gun ownership overall in Maine is only a bit higher than in Minnesota, but my guess that the guns in Minnesota are not in the Twin Cities area; so maybe ICE/CBP are more likely to come across armed Mainers? Especially since the administration now appears to be treading on 2nd Amendment rights as well as 1st. Mainers are doing what Minnesotans have been doing, observing and documenting the feds' activities, and federal officials are coming to their homes and threatening them.
Other possibilities: Will one of the ICE and Border Patrol officers who were already on the job before Trump took office and reportedly are horrified at the chaos spill the beans on something so awful and stupid that a complete tear down and rebuild of that whole edifice becomes a possibility? Will Chuck Schumer and/or Hakeem Jeffries say or do something so unbelievably tone deaf that the Congressional Dems replace their leadership?
This is just scratching the surface of what could happen here. So here's my one prediction: because the midterms in November will have existential consequences for everyone on both sides of this struggle, things will get worse before they get better, if they get better at all.
I had not realised that 'guns or butter' had a history before or since Göring's famous use of the phrase.
Could I, though, check on two other relatively collateral things that have arisen in the reporting of this?
The first is that much has been made in reports that both Renee Good and Alex Pretti were US citizens. I have noticed this before in reports of foreign interventions by US military expeditions, where there have been US casualties among those targetted. Is this rhetoric or is it generally assumed in the USA that there is a fundamental difference between organs of government or law enforcement killing people who have or are entitled to have US passports, and their killing foreigners, tourists or whatever, whether legally or illegally present? Are foreigners regarded as fair game?
The second, is that there have also been one or two references that have referred to their being 'executed'. By any standards it was utterly wrong and inexcusable that an organ of the state killed them, but is 'execute' the right word to describe the misuse of force by government officers running amok.
It is a description of the actions a federal agency, the purpose of which is supposed to be enforcement of immigration and customs laws, that is instead killing, without justification citizens, who by definition cannot be illegal immigrants. The point of noting that those killed are citizens, in the wider context of supposed immigration enforcement, is to show just how far off the rails ICE and ICE agents have gone.
And before you ask, no, there is no assumption that it is somehow more justified to shoot illegal immigrants or other non-citizens either.
Now to your questions. Is there a difference between killing those who are entitled to a US passport and foreigners? For myself, no. But the reaction of the nation seems to be centered on Good and Pretti I think because we have so many videos of the shootings. The death of foreigners at the hands of ICE that have been ruled as homicide should be investigated as such. But the breakdown is would it be a state or federal investigation. @Nick can better explain it than I can. I can tell you if we leave it in the hands of the feds, it is not likely to happen until we have a regime change.
To the question of whether the term "execution" is the proper term for what happened to Good and Pretti--and the others who have died at the hands of ICE: looking at my abbreviated Merrium-Webster which pretty much defines American use of the word, it is the third definition of the word--"the killing of someone as a political act."
From what I can see in the online Cambridge Dictionary, that definition is not actually there, though I think it would allow for the "unlawful execution of a person."
Libertarians fired-up against an empowered state refer to that combination of policies(eg. Great Society/Vietnam War) as "the welfare/warfare state".
Separate from any value judgements, I'll observe that the 20th Century, at least, provides a few examples which buttress that analysis, eg. WW2 preceded by the New Deal in the USA, and followed by the NHS etc in the UK. The theory kinda runs aground on neutral Sweden, however.
Those stats are telling, but do you happen to know their origin? By their very nature, surely they can't be easy to authenticate.
It feels a bit rich for Italians to be unhappy about this given the current Italian love affair with fascism. Italian cities might not be overrun with immigration enforcement, but it's not like racism isn't currently being celebrated in Italy.
As I said, it is based on what I remembered from a meme circulating on Facebook. I did find an article from Snopes that addresses the validity of that meme, though with slightly lower numbers.
And thanks too, @Nick Tamen for your response to @Enoch's question. FWIW I'd anticipated that the emphasis on the US citizenship of Good and Pretti was made for the reasons you state not to imply that the shooting of tourists or foreign nationals was regarded as a lesser evil.
That doesn't mean that I always anticipate things correctly. I do make egregious assumptions at times.
As for ICE providing Vance's bodyguard for his Italian visit, yes, there has been an upsurge on the extreme right in Italy. The current Italian President is a big pal of Trump's. I can't speak for the Italians but whether any European country is right, left or centre leaning I'd imagine eye-brows would be raised if ICE agents formed a bodyguard for a visit by senior US politicians.
After all, aren't they supposed to deal with domestic customs and immigration issues?
Since when have they been expected to act like a private bodyguard for US dignitaries overseas?
I'm not convinced the Italians or anyone else would expect ICE agents to go on an ill-disciplined and murderous rampage during their time in Italy, but it seems very odd for them to operate there in the first place.
There has been speculation in British media - and I'd imagine elsewhere as well, particularly in the US - that ICE are becoming Trump's 'private army' to be deployed in whatever way he sees fit.
Their deployment in the Vance visit to Italy would appear to fuel this speculation.
Why ICE? Why not whichever federal agents are normally detailed for such duties?
Is there any possible explanation other than that for all their indiscipline and lack of training - or perhaps because of it? - they are becoming the personal 'go-to' security service for the current administration for ideological reasons?
Ask yourself, what would be the reaction of the US public or media if the Italians took it for granted they were entitled to bring their own police or law enforcement staff to operate in New York, Washington or Salt Lake City?
The British Royal Family and Prime Ministers take Special Branch teams with them when they go abroad. Nobody would object in the US if these teams operated in New York, Washington or Salt Lake City.
The issue isn't federal security personnel accompanying a US Vice President on a foreign visit - that's standard practice. They generally come from the US secret service from what I can gather and conduct advance reconnoitres as well as entourage duties.
They can number in their hundreds.
The issue isn't US security personnel accompanying Vance on his Italian visit, the issue is that ICE seem to be fulfilling that role.
I don't think anyone is seriously expecting ICE agents to run amok in Italy but it's the principle of the thing. Why not agents from the US units and services from which security is usually drawn?
Why ICE? I can only conclude that this has been done to convey a political message. These are our guys. We trust them implicitly. They have our full backing. Look, we are even entrusting them with the security of our Vice President on his Italian trip.
The issue isn't that US law-enforcement officers are involved - and as has been pointed out ICE aren't law-enforcement officers as such.
The issue is that ICE is involved. And the Italians are right to be concerned about that, not only on the grounds of competence, although Trump and Vance appear to overlook that, but the message it sends.
These guys kill with impunity and we don't care about that. We endorse it.
I think it also expresses the emotional shock at the violation of the sense of safety and security that we as citizens enjoy and take for granted. It's not supposed to matter more if the feds kill citizens, but it does shock us more. Also, while everyone on US soil is supposed to have access to the same due process of law no matter who they are or what they might have done, this is far from what actually happens. I don't for a moment think the average American cares as much about the deaths of people who aren't citizens as they do about the deaths of citizens. I can't tell you the names of the non-citizens ICE has killed outright or through medical neglect in DHS facilities; the press has only now started feeling bad about not making a big deal about those deaths sooner.
And it matters which citizens they kill and how it all goes down. It matters a lot.
The first citizen ICE killed was Keith Porter, a Black man in Los Angeles shooting an AK-15 rifle into the air to celebrate New Year's Eve (not a good idea, but not weird here). Witnesses say an off-duty ICE officer living in the same apartment building confronted him and shot him when he wouldn't put the gun down; LAPD says Porter shot at the ICE officer -- LAPD responded after the shooting but didn't see it, so I assume they're just repeating what the ICE guy said. There's no video, the NRA isn't going to come out in defense of Black people's gun rights, Porter was shooting off a rifle, and the news was so full of other stuff like Venezuela and the Epstein files that the death of a Black man in Los Angeles wasn't going to break through. It was covered in the LA Times, but I probably wouldn't have heard anything about it if I didn't live in LA County.
Then a white woman got killed, and I figured, okay, a nice white woman, that'll get people's attention. And it did, there were large protests. But she was a lesbian, and we weren't all quite there yet.
Then they kill a white man, and sure enough, that's the thing that puts the whole thing over the edge.
Do they even have black agents--no need to answer that.
I am thinking the biggest difference between the Good killing and the Pretti killing is the number of videos we have of the Pretti killing, to the point of showing the ICE agent drawing his gun and shooting Pretti in the back of the head even as Pretti is disarmed. The videos of Good's shooting were from a distance and relatively few.
Both killings are heinous. We lost two good people. Their families are suffering greatly.
Whether it does any good is not for me to say, but you are not forgotten.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRHxXHZmVAM&list=RDBRHxXHZmVAM&start_radio=1
A poignant rendition. Thanks for sharing it. I have shared it on my FB page.
The release of a video clip showing (without any previous footage) Pretti losing it 10 or 11 days before being shot was classic smearing the victim. Pretti could have been arrested (he kicked out the tail light of an ICE vehicle) but he wasn’t. The event had zero to do with the event where he was shot, but that hasn’t stopped GOP representatives from using it.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-ice-immigration-shutdown-9.7066157