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.

To be fair, you're not supposed to accept it. But the fascists sure would like it if you did.

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.

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

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.

How long? My guess is that masked unmarked people that don't even verbally identify themselves will be shot at (and killed?) by someone as they're walking down the street when law enforcement are attempting to take into custody. My guess is that this shooter will either be killed by the unmarked and masked law enforcement or that person will be arrested and charged.

This is the point when all of the "every day carry" gun folks (and there are a lot of these) will then be faced with the question when they could every use their gun to defend themselves and not be facing charges themselves through no fault of their own.

I think thats when it finally tips enough people into the category to be against trump's actions.

In context it looks like a goon squad kidnapping a man.

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

denial isn't something you can "fix" for people. they have to make that decision themselves. and people are very attached to their own "fascism 100% impossible in america" fantasy

I mean America is a fascist regime. And you know who support fascism? Fascists. So I guess most fascists are kinda OK with what's happening.

That's not denial, that's full endorsement.

The same way they have been in denial until now. Why did you wait for trump to comes to terms with it?

What may have been the largest organized protests in American history were just a few days back, the president has record-breakingly low approval, even his own party's talking heads are turning against him. If you're not going to be satisfied by anything short of armed uprising then at least be brave enough to say as much, but pretending that Americans just don't see anything wrong and aren't doing anything is an act of wilful and blatant ignorance.

Now? You think this happens at the drop of a hat? The entire system is built that way since decades.

There's gotta be ~~criminals~~ non-ICE who exploit this. Like it must be so easy now for ransomers to kidnap somebody.

What pic are they referencing?

There are still people here who still make the excuse that Harris is just as bad as Trump, you guys are fucked as a country

It’s not out of context, that’s exactly what is happening.

It's a little funny that the Dumpies will ask "What rights did ICE ignore?" like due process isn't the rule of law. Those people are online everyday threatening death and violence to just about anything. Their own internet post history is going to lead to them to the same fate if the coup is successful.

Third term? I'd be glad if we came to terms with it by his 6th term.

We did just have the largest protest in the history of the nation... I think some of us are aware.