Comment by frob | Hacker News Reader

Comment by frob | Hacker News Reader

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Authoritarian states often function via selective enforcement of laws. We see that here. They will use any angle, any technicality to remove someone. Lived here for almost 50 years and are a productive member of your community but you're on a stayed order of release pending you check in regularly and you do so? Sorry, we changed our minds and are deporting you because legally we can. Please come with us in the unmarked car. [0]

Tried to kill police officers while trying to overturn an election on behalf of the dear leader? We'll pardon you and give you a job on a task force about weaponization of government. [1]

The law will be applied to the harshest extent to those Trump and his ilk see as enemies and will be warped in favor of his current friends.

Or, as a Preuvian facist president put it: "For my friends, anything; for my enemies, the law!"

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/03/ice-iran-don... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/02/january-6-ri...

I agree with the meat of what you say, but is selective enforcement really so unique to authoritarian governments?

In the US, even before recent administrations, we’ve long had evidence of uneven application of laws. Police love power. Criminalizing more stuff gives them more power to decide who to target.

Look how the war on drugs and policies like stop and frisk have targeted black folks. Even innocuous sounding things like seatbelt laws give police the ability to criminalize “driving while black.”

Meanwhile we’ve long ignored white collar crimes like wage theft. You know rich families aren’t going to be affected by anti-abortion laws.

My heavily tattooed White friends and I recently ignored no trespassing to swim in a nice river in TX. We agreed that if the cops came, I (non tattooed, White) would do the talking.

Anyway, the police have never been interested in holding the rich and powerful to account.

The US has been authoritarian from the get-go.

Chattel slavery- direct, constant, and complete control over one's life and death, and the reduction of the person to mere property, is essentially the most authoritarian institution there can be.

Yeah read chomskys Consequences of Capitalism and see how the "always has been" meme is alive and well

Not a huge Chomsky fan. He calls himself an anarchist, but if you pin him down on specifics he turns into a minarchist rhetorically, and a Social Democrat in practical matters.

He's similar to Lenin, imo, in that he advocates using the State to prepare to dismantle the State, all while gassing up the things that the State provides (e.g. social protections). There's never anything more than a vague promise to move on from that in the future, which is exactly the same as the single-party-State USSR.

People mistake Capitalism as the driver for authoritarianism, but Capitalism is just the means to gain power/wealth in our current society, with hierarchical government being the framework within which Capitalism operates. Greed is the driver, and greed is intrinsic to humans. But greed without a framework to amass power (like a State) can only operate on an individual level.

For the reader curious why the woman in [0] didn't get permanent residency via marriage:

> Milne was divorced from the nonimmigrant student she married prior to 1983. She then married a U.S. citizen but we found, in our above-said unpublished opinion, that she had admitted that it was a marriage of convenience. After another divorce, she married her current husband, a marriage that is uncontested as "bona fide." Her request for legal permanent resident status based on this marriage was denied under INA § 204(c) which precludes approval based on even an admittedly good-faith union if the petitioner had previously contracted an improper marriage.

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