{"id":15396,"date":"2020-07-26T13:17:06","date_gmt":"2020-07-26T20:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=15396"},"modified":"2020-07-26T13:32:02","modified_gmt":"2020-07-26T20:32:02","slug":"opiniontrumps-occupation-of-american-cities-has-begun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2020\/07\/26\/opiniontrumps-occupation-of-american-cities-has-begun\/","title":{"rendered":"OPINION|Trump\u2019s Occupation of American Cities Has Begun"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Protesters are being snatched from the streets without warrants. Can we call it fascism yet?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Michelle<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Michelle Goldberg<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opinion Columnist<\/p>\n\n\n\n

July 20, 2020 (NYTimes.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Federal
Federal agents confronting Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Ore., on Monday.Credit…Noah Berger\/Associated Press<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Leer en espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The month after Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration, the Yale historian Timothy Snyder published the best-selling book \u201cOn Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century.\u201d It was part of a small flood of titles meant to help Americans find their bearings as the new president laid siege to liberal democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of Snyder\u2019s lessons was, \u201cBe wary of paramilitaries.\u201d He wrote, \u201cWhen the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.\u201d In 2017, the idea of unidentified agents in camouflage snatching leftists off the streets without warrants might have seemed like a febrile Resistance fantasy. Now it\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to a lawsuit<\/a> filed by Oregon\u2019s attorney general, Ellen Rosenblum, on Friday, federal agents \u201chave been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland, detain protesters, and place them into the officers\u2019 unmarked vehicles\u201d since at least last Tuesday. The protesters are neither arrested nor told why they\u2019re being held.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s no way to know the affiliation of all the agents \u2014 they\u2019ve been wearing military fatigues with patches that just say \u201cPolice\u201d \u2014 but The Times reported that some of them are part of a specialized Border Patrol group<\/a> \u201cthat normally is tasked with investigating drug smuggling organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration has announced that it intends to send a similar force to other cities<\/a>; on Monday, The Chicago Tribune reported<\/a> on plans to deploy about 150 federal agents to Chicago. \u201cI don\u2019t need invitations by the state,\u201d Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said on Fox News<\/a> Monday, adding, \u201cWe\u2019re going to do that whether they like us there or not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PORTLAND PROTESTS Photos of clashes with federal forces<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Portland, we see what such an occupation looks like. Oregon Public Broadcasting reported on 29-year-old Mark Pettibone<\/a>, who early last Wednesday was grabbed off the street by unidentified men, hustled into an unmarked minivan and taken to a holding cell in the federal courthouse. He was eventually released without learning who had abducted him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A federal agent shot 26-year-old Donavan La Bella in the head with an impact munition; he was hospitalized and needed reconstructive surgery. In a widely circulated video, a 53-year-old Navy veteran was pepper sprayed and beaten<\/a> after approaching federal agents to ask them about their oaths to the Constitution, leaving him with two broken bones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s something particularly terrifying in the use of Border Patrol agents against American dissidents. After the attack on protesters<\/a> near the White House last month, the military pushed back on Trump\u2019s attempts to turn it against the citizenry. Police officers in many cities are willing to brutalize demonstrators, but they\u2019re under local control. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, however, is under federal authority, has leadership that\u2019s fanatically devoted<\/a> to Trump and is saturated with far-right politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t surprise me that Donald Trump picked C.B.P. to be the ones to go over to Portland and do this,\u201d Representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas, told me. \u201cIt has been a very problematic agency in terms of respecting human rights and in terms of respecting the law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is true that C.B.P. is not an extragovernmental militia, and so might not fit precisely into Snyder\u2019s \u201cOn Tyranny\u201d schema. But when I spoke to Snyder on Monday, he suggested the distinction isn\u2019t that significant. \u201cThe state is allowed to use force, but the state is allowed to use force according to rules,\u201d he said. These agents, operating outside their normal roles, are by all appearances behaving lawlessly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Snyder pointed out that the history of autocracy offers several examples of border agents being used against regime enemies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a classic way that violence happens in authoritarian regimes, whether it\u2019s Franco\u2019s Spain or whether it\u2019s the Russian Empire,\u201d said Snyder. \u201cThe people who are getting used to committing violence on the border are then brought in to commit violence against people in the interior.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n