Oh man you must be lucky to not live around these types of people.
I remember the first time I was told I was going to burn in hell for eternity. At my first job at 16 by some coworkers in their 20s and 30s because I wasn't participating in their constant religion talk so it made it clear I wasn't part of "the group".
The story is pretty incredible on its face, so I don't see why some skepticism on the way it's being reported isn't justified, especially in the face of reflexive hysteria over a descent into fascism we're supposedly facing.
Again, if true, it is disgusting, and I'm negatively disposed towards ICE and the CPB in general. But I'd like to know whether this is a case of a really odd situation paired with bad judgement and/or bad advice, or something much worse.
In Italy, would it be in 1919 when Mussolini founded his party? Or 1922 when he marched on Rome? Maybe 1924 when opposition leader Matteotti was murdered? Or 1926 when all other parties were banned?
For Nazi Germany, was January 1933 when Hitler became Chancellor too early to worry? March 1933 when he got emergency powers? 1935 with the Nuremberg Laws? 1938 with Kristallnacht?
By the time it's obvious enough to satisfy skeptics like you, it's usually too late. What we're seeing now...invoking the Alien Enemies Act, mass detention, ideological purges of government workers, demonizing immigrants, these aren't random events. They're recognizable patterns. History doesn't announce itself with a banner saying "THIS IS FASCISM NOW." It creeps in while people like you call concerns "hysteria."
History didn't start in 1918, and if you think the political situation in the US right now is anything like interwar Europe, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
History provides frameworks for recognizing dangerous patterns. If you prefer earlier examples: Consider the Roman Republic's fall where Sulla targeted political enemies, Caesar dismantled institutional checks, or Augustus centralized power while maintaining democratic facades. Or Napoleon's transformation from revolutionary to emperor using emergency powers and populist appeals.
The point isn't perfect historical parallels, it's recognizing warning signs before it's too late. Dismissing valid concerns with sighs and bridge-selling metaphors adds nothing substantive.
They're currently transporting people to slave labor camps in El Salvador.. the analogy seems apt.
We know about the horrors of the Third Reich and the Holocaust in large part a) because of the survivors and their accounts of what they lived through and because b) the Nazis kept meticulous records of everything they were doing.
I find it in very bad taste to reduce this to "propaganda by the victors", apart from the fact that it just reduces to the (incorrect) trope of history being written by the victors: https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/5597/is-history-...