Let me start out with the punchline.
Whatever you think "good Germans" should have done in the 1930s is exactly what you should be doing right now.
Two days ago, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, mother of a six-year-old child, was murdered, shot three times in the face by a member of ICE, who have proven themselves to be nothing less than the American Gestapo. This was immediately followed up by a barrage of falsehoods from Donald Trump, Kristi Noem, and others, claiming that the victim -- Renée Nicole Good -- was a "professional agitator" and a "domestic terrorist," had "weaponized her car" and rammed the agent before he fired in self-defense. The agent, Trump said, was in the hospital because of his injuries.
These are all lies.
See, the problem is, there's video footage which by now most of us have seen. The agent wasn't struck by the car. Good was driving the other way, apparently trying to comply with his orders to move her car. In response, he shot her three times in the face, then fled the scene on his own feet.
It was a cold-blooded murder.
Then, when it became obvious that the video evidence showed exactly the opposite of what Trump and Noem were claiming, the deflection started. The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, held a press conference in which he said to ICE, "get the fuck out of Minneapolis," and Fox News chastised him for "promoting violence," claiming that if he and the other Democratic leaders would just cooperate with ICE then everything would be just hunky-dory.
A few pearl-clutchers even said that it was a serious problem that he publicly used the f-word.
Like Hitler's cronies on Kristallnacht, we have a regime that actively promotes violence, sends in angry goons to stir things up, and then when the inevitable happens, blames the victims and anyone who speaks up for them. Any attempt to hold accountable those who pulled the trigger, or (even more) those who gave the orders, is met with "the shooter felt threatened," "the victim should have complied better/faster/more quietly," and -- best of all -- "get out of our way, we're just trying to Make America Great Again."
"Thank you for your attention to this matter."
If, after watching that video, you still think what the ICE agent did was justified, then you are the person who would have sided with the Stasi in communist East Germany, with the NKVD under Stalin, with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia under Pol Pot -- and with the Nazis in pre-war Germany. And I have nothing to say to you other than that I will fight you in every way I know how.
Oh, and a reminder that "I was just following orders" had a poor track record for success at Nuremberg.
The rest of us? We're kind of spiraling right now.
Look, I get it. Good people are afraid. Hell, I'm afraid writing this, because under this kind of tyranny just speaking up can place a target on your chest. But willingness to accept risk is absolutely critical. If you've ever read the history of the lead-up to some of humanity's worst atrocities, and thought, "Why didn't people put a stop to it?" -- well, we're facing down that road right now.
Why don't you contribute to putting a stop to it?
Donald Trump is an ignorant, petty, vindictive malignant narcissist who will do literally anything to stay in power. Kristi Noem is a cruel and violent woman who seems to have no conscience whatsoever, Karoline Leavitt a propaganda-spewing bald-faced liar, Stephen Miller a twisted, soulless racist, Pete Hegseth a chest-thumping, misogynistic drunkard. I could go on and on down the list. By all rights, Trump should never have won election in the first place, much less re-election; for that, we have the media, Elon Musk, and the corporate capitalist machine to thank.
But it happened, and here we are.
Choosing not to speak up is itself a decision. Silence is complicity. Failing to hold people accountable for their criminal actions, or -- worse -- lying to help them escape accountability, is to actively support evil.
It's not like many of us didn't see this coming. Shortly after Trump's re-election, I posted that putting him back in power had removed the guardrails, and that we would all too soon devolve into right-wing autocracy. I've never been so horrified at being right. But I'll predict one other thing; sitting on your hands now is not the solution. The autocracies I mentioned earlier went way further than Trump has yet gone, so if you think this is the worst it can get, you are sadly mistaken.
We can halt this. It's not too late -- yet. But I can guarantee that if moral people stay silent out of fear or an overabundance of caution, we will find out just what the "good Germans" did in the 1930s; violent tyrannies never self-limit.
They have to be stopped.
