Five Things: Democracy and Fascim
It's Sunday. Read this now.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things!
This week I drove down to Brussels to pick up our oldest daughter and to drive her home after three months of working as a trainee at the European Parliament. She learned a ton about how politics work, how there is a process in place to consider different sides and different starkeholders and come up with new laws and regulations that somehow try to achieve a sort of balance between everyone involve. This doesn’t always work, but it is the best model we have to govern free people. She has seen democracy in action. I am so very proud of her that she is so invested in learning to understand how to make the lives of people better.
Quite the opposite is happening in the USA and we are seeing a beautiful and messy democracy slide into fascism before our eyes. My wife asks me everyday what we can do to stop this. It’s up to the people of the United States to stand up and defend their constitution and their democracy. We are rooting for them and we let all of our friends know that they have our support and we offer our solidarity, but there is not much we can do from across the pond. The trans-atlantic relationship is strong and we see this in countless debates on- and offline about our biggest ally - we are deeply concerned, yet we remain hopeful that the pendelum swings back quickly and swiftly soon.
Enjoy these Five Things! 🕺
The People Are Winning the Battle Against ICE
What’s happening in Minnesota is not some kind of weird inversion of the normal order of things. It’s not strange that the people are ahead of the law. This is usually how change happens: The law is a lagging indicator of social justice. The law is not now nor ever has been a leader in reversing fascism, authoritarianism, or atrocity. Movements start in the streets and later, often years later, the law tries to catch up and codify what movements have already made a reality. We celebrate legal and legislative victories—like Brown v. Board of Education or the Civil Rights Act—as bloodless acts of social change, but we forget that these victories are not possible without the toil and blood of people who take to the streets, willing to risk it all for progress and justice.
I sure hope that Minneapolis is the beginning of the end of MAGA.
It Was Mocked as Cringe Resistance Liberalism. A New Generation of Activists Has Embraced It as an Anti-ICE Symbol.
Something strange is happening in yarn stores across the U.S. Eat Sleep Knit, a yarn store in Dallas, Georgia, posted on Tuesday of plastic tubs overflowing with skeins of scarlet and crimson and magenta—all from orders it had received over the past few days. Other yarn stores, like Starlight Knitting Society, in Portland, Oregon, for worried customers: Yes, we have red yarn. But , the yarn store in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, that had started all this, had only 10 skeins of red left when I called them on Wednesday, just days after the store had posted a little-known hat pattern that’s since activated knitters throughout the country, and the world.
This is so wonderful. My wife knitted one for our friend in Minneapolis and I think it is such a beautiful way to help and take a stand.
How Minnesota became the center of a political crisis
During a visit to Minneapolis on Thursday, Vice President Vance tried to lower the temperature and redirect frustrations away from federal officials.
“We’re seeing this level of chaos only in Minneapolis,” Vance said, arguing that the administration has not encountered as much pushback when deploying agents to other liberal cities and states.
“Maybe the problem is unique to Minneapolis, and we believe that it is,” Vance added. “It’s a lack of cooperation between state and local law enforcement and federal law enforcement.”
Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell protests in the city, and the Pentagon has put up to 1,500 troops on standby in case of deployment. Vance told reporters the move wasn’t needed at the moment, but added that “the president could change his mind.”
Local lawmakers, notably Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, have likened the administration’s efforts in the city to an invasion.
It’s more than revenge on Tim Walz, they hate all the liberal and social policies in Minnesota.
I’ve Covered Police Abuse for 20 Years. What ICE Is Doing Is Different.
Instilling fear is a drawback only if your goal is public safety. This administration has made clear that it doesn’t want marginalized communities — immigrants, Somali U.S. citizens, residents of Latino neighborhoods and so on — to feel safe. It wants them living in fear. This is why they mask. It’s why they shatter car windows. It’s why Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda, went on cable news to assure federal immigration officers, incorrectly, that they have complete immunity from criminal or civil liability and why, after Ms. Good’s death, Department of Homeland Security social media accounts reiterated Mr. Miller’s claim.
It is a systematic approach to destroy the cohesion of society.
Yes, It’s Fascism
Over Trump’s past year, what originally looked like an effort to make the government his personal plaything has drifted distinctly toward doctrinal and operational fascism. Trump’s appetite for lebensraum, his claim of unlimited power, his support for the global far right, his politicization of the justice system, his deployment of performative brutality, his ostentatious violation of rights, his creation of a national paramilitary police—all of those developments bespeak something more purposeful and sinister than run-of-the-mill greed or gangsterism.
When the facts change, I change my mind. Recent events have brought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. Fascist best describes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become perverse. That is not because of any one or two things he and his administration have done but because of the totality. Fascism is not a territory with clearly marked boundaries but a constellation of characteristics. When you view the stars together, the constellation plainly appears.
Yes, it is fascism. We should call it that. And fight back as much and as hard as possible.
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
— Nico