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.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.
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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
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.
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.
I feel like this isn’t talked about enough… You guys are badasses for that shit.
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.
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You’re pretty much already there, bucko. I know it’s a silly image but if you’re only starting to worry now then you got a lot of catching up to do.
That’s the joke though… the picture is from a sketch where one Nazi officer tells another that he’s starting to worry that they’re the baddies, after he realizes that their hats have skulls on them.
I am aware, yes, it’s just I’m completely out of patience for anything that sounds even remotely like the setup for “who could have seen this coming?!”
Like, the alarms have been blaring and nothing is being particularly well hidden and even right now there are way too many people who zero clue what’s going on at all.
Falls asleep … someone sharpies ‘I’M A BIG FAT FASCIST’ across their forehead.
Goes about their life for a month without ever noticing … even when using a mirror.
If you see Ice agents covering their faces, call 911 and report a masked man with a gun.
Please forgive my ignorance but isn’t the police force in USA known for its violence and profiling? Wouldn’t they be “in” on it, too?
ICE isn’t alerting local law enforcement of what’s happening. They get a call about a masked gunman and they’ll show up.
Doubt. Lotta local pd at some of these raids.
Can the police do anything when they show up? Aren’t ICE federal agents and above the local police’s jurisdiction?
From what I’ve seen (admittedly completely online anecdotes), the ICE agents flee before the local pd show up because theyre cowards
When local police show up, they’ll make the ICE agents identify themselves.
Shoot first, ask questions later
Finally, some thing they are good for!
And get hauled away anyway.
You don’t have to be the one being targeted to act against them. If I see gestapo going after someone, I’ll make the call even though I don’t fit the profile of who they’re targeting today.
Cops are there in minutes when seconds count.
You must live in a nice neighborhood. In my experience when seconds count cops show up in hours.
Lie and say they looked black so police show up faster and use their guns before asking to identify.
Police are more likely to show up and open fire on the civilians
There’s gotta be
criminalsnon-ICE who exploit this. Like it must be so easy now for ransomers to kidnap somebody.Thanks. Since moving from Reddit to Lemmy, I’ve become way more aware of what I’m clicking on. I’m pretty sure the amp project links are just for mobile phones n stuff, but it’s good to be aware
Thanks. Google was serving me nothing but slop
as if by design…
Did you not see the security company guy who dressed as a cop and murdered a state senator, her husband, and shot another state senator?
But see, it was the other team, so it’s okay.
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
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.
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.”
In context it looks like a goon squad kidnapping a man.
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
You always like to claim people say that, but no one ever says that. They said they wouldnt vote for anyone in any party who supports genocide. You twist it around to be the words you prefer. I call that lying, but to each their own.
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Potato potato.
Well you have a deranged view of the world so I don’t really care what you think is a lie, when you can’t even be truthful about your own bullshit
That guy is saying it: https://lemmy.world/post/31562244/17770374
(Or actually, they are saying Harris is worse.)
I have heard the same stance often enough to definitely be able to say, “no one ever says that” is not correct. There are more than enough idiots who do say that.
That guy is a republican.
Statistically, there are more than enough people who voted for Biden and then for Trump 2.
That sentence makes no sense.
Let’s put it into math instead:
Let S1 be the set of people who voted for Biden. Let S2 be the set of people who voted for Trump’s second term.
S1 ∩ S2 ≠ {}
If that’s not helpful, let’s try code:
s1 = getPeopleWhoVotedForBiden() s2 = getPeopleWhoVotedForTrumpsSecondTerm() if (x for x in s1 if x in s2 > 0): print("There are more than enough people qualifying for for what I said")And lastly, to reformulate the sentence:
There are lots of people who in 2020 voted for Biden and in 2024 voted for Trump.
hah, you looked up an intersection symbol, nice. And now I just cant help myself since you gave me that response…
So of 152 million votes cast, you’d like to show a sample size of just 1 person or more proves your hypothesis? seems pretty biased against the null hypothesis.
And your restatement of your hypothesis: “There are lots of people who in 2020 voted for Biden and in 2024 voted for Trump.”
You are proving “lots” with > 1? thats just not what “lots” means in english.
And I think we’re done here.
Meanwhile their vote or lack thereof directly empowered someone who actively encourages it, they just don’t want to take responsibility for that part.
It would not have been a problem if you had ranked choice voting.
If Musk sets up his own party that would split the conservative vote so the Republicans would finally be open to ranked choice. Would probably require ⅔ majority in Congress.
But Dems might be too hungry for temporary power to support such a much needed fix.
Ranked choice is nice, but why not just have an actually democratic system with coalitions? No need for a single winner.
Ranked choice allows for coalitions like in AU.
Maybe you mean Multi Member Proportional voting like NZ and DE. That is the best system but complicated. US cannot even deal with converting to metric so MMP would result in exploding heads.
Yes, that was what I was going for. The really big issue with FPTP systems, especially hard ones like the US is that they create two-party systems which are incredibly undemocratic.
Third parties just can’t exist, because they split the vote for your side, so the only choice you have if you are unhappy with your party is to not vote or vote for the other party, and all that does is benefit that other party you’d be even more unhappy with.
You know, kinda like one might think Harris isn’t left enough, so they end up helping Trump to power.
But what’s even worse is that the elected president only ever represents close to 50% of the population, and he’s close to all-mighty and can do whatever he wants without anyone really checking him.
In better systems coalitions between major parties form, and they represent a much bigger slice of the population, and they keep each other in check, having to compromise to not risk blowing up the coalition. And better systems also have a stronger and more living constitution. One that gets updated more frequently, and that has to be updated more frequently because it includes more details. Since constitutional changes then require a larger supermajority (e.g. 2/3 or 3/4), the governing coalition needs to take the needs of the opposition into account as well, because they need their votes when a constitutional change is required.
For example, the US has had 27 constitutional amendments (10 of which happened within a year of the constitution being created, they were basically 0-day-patches) over the last 236 years.
Austria has had about twice as many within the last 70 years.
These coalitions still happen with ranked choice but only if a minor party is popular in a district.
Except for Tasmania in Australia where minor parties have an even better chance. It has only 5 districts for state elections and each district has 5 seats. Greens often get a seat because their candidate is 5th most popular in a district.
In other states they are now winning seats but fewer than Tasmania.
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We did just have the largest protest in the history of the nation… I think some of us are aware.
… I love the protesters… I love the protests… but the mere fact youre coming at me like that meant anything other than we marched in the street on a Saturday tells me youre not taking this seriously.
You have no idea who I am or what I do. Don’t be so arrogant.
If I made you angry, good. Angry people are more likely to act.
Angry people are more likely to act. Yep , that’ how you end up getting punched in the face. Or assassinated.
… who’s being arrogant again?
You just wait until the 2A nuts come out. We all know they hate nothing more than a corrupt government, and the only reason they stockpile guns is to fight the government. Right?
Oops, they actually like tyranny, go figure.
We protect ourselves. I think there are enough examples of how the police and the justice system protects us to reference if you dont believe that yet.
Not nearly enough apparently
The George floydd protests didn’t get nation wide comprehensive justice system reform.
The Iraq war protests didn’t stop the Iraq war.
Occupy wall street didn’t change how the economy functions.
The protests were baked into the Project 2025 plan from its inception. They’ve changed nothing.
Stop being a defeatist.
These people don’t need “The Event” to attempt their stupid fucking plan. It will be 100% fabricated if need be.
I wasn’t even implying they needed it, just that none of the people in power are going to change their minds on anything as a result of the protests.
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.
To avoid armed targets, they have been calling people into court hearings, then they drop charges which allows people to leave. On the way out of the courthouse feds will abduct them.
It’s pretty brilliant. If people become too scared to show up to court, then they get a real judicial warrant which allows them forcibly go into homes.
In a year: “Why are all these people turning their backs on the law and embracing the mob?”
Some truly evil shit.
Now? You think this happens at the drop of a hat? The entire system is built that way since decades.
Right? The fuck these people think Vietnam was?
An international hug, with Agent Orange. That’s a tasty breakfast beverage, right?
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
For some it’ll probably take til his fourth
Cracks me the fuck up the rest of the world thinks this now.
This has been the case since Bush passed Citizens United and it was even happening before that. RIP Rosenbergs.
Not every bad law is fascism.
I would say only in a vacuum.
Both in a vacuum and in an atmosphere, if you call something fascism because of one bad law, you’re doing nothing but deminishing and watering down the term. It means something, you know.
I thought Citizens United was an Obama thing. Are you sure you don’t mean the Patriot Act?
It happened during the Obama administration but it was in response to shit under Bush from people being critical of him/his admin. Obama did not support Citizens United.
I thought it was a Supreme Court thing? What did Obama do?
