Above is a photo from AP News showing Central American migrant families rounded up and contained by US armed guards. According to the accompanying news story, the federal government is making plans to separate children from their parents (yes, they plan to continue and even increase this horrendous and cruel practice) and house the children in former army barracks. They are also planning to cut off or reduce all supportive services to these children, including English language lessons, recreational programs, legal services (young children as young as two have already been forced to represent themselves in court), and other services such as mental health counseling — at a time when the children are traumatized by family separation and need it most.
Not cruel enough for you? Oh, it gets even worse: border patrol agents are being instructed to confiscate migrant childrens’ medicine.
The cruelty, as it’s been said, is the point. This is what happens when a narcissistic sociopath and his same spectrum sycophants and henchmen consolidate power and inevitably, as they always do, choose scapegoats (always vulnerable or marginalized populations) on which to unleash their hatred.
The photograph shocked me. All the photographs from our southern border are shocking, but this one stood out to me because I was immediately reminded of the old black and white photos from Nazi Germany of SS guards rounding up Jewish families like cattle (and of course separating parents from children, a common practice by the Nazis, which was harrowingly depicted in the movie Sophie’s Choice when the title character played by Meryl Streep was forced to choose between her young daughter being taken away or losing both of her children).
This is fascism, in case there’s any doubt. We are living in a fascist state with a fascist leader, and just as in Nazi Germany, most people are either too afraid or too apathetic to mobilize against it. Or they’re in denial and don’t think it’s that big a threat. Or…they approve of it (usually justifying it with callous comments such as “they shouldn’t have come here” or “it’s a deterrent.”)
Okay, fine. Let’s say you don’t care about the fact these are mostly poor families who walked thousands of miles to escape certain death in their home countries (not the “rapists, drug dealers, and gangs” who find other ways to get in). Even if the parents are culpable (which they aren’t), what about the children? Did they have any choice in the matter?
The Germans were exactly like us. As with Trump, only about a third of the German people actually supported Hitler, while the other two thirds either didn’t believe there was a real threat or saw the threat but didn’t think there was anything they could do. Only a few people, such as Sophie Scholl and her resistance group The White Rose Society, dared to speak truth to power. Hitler and the Nazis would never have been able to rise to power or killed six million Jews (and other marginalized groups such as Gypsies, homosexuals, and the mentally deficient) had the German people believed the threat was real and mobilized to fight back against it. They learned the hard way, and now it looks as if we may have to learn the hard way too, unless we mobilize and fight this evil right now. We are running out of time.
I’m astonished and dismayed by how little mobilization against encroaching fascism there has been in this country. How few protests and marches. People just shrug their shoulders, turn off the news, and go on with their lives as if nothing has changed in the past two and a half years. Even the British turned out by the millions to protest Trump last week during his visit to the UK, and he’s not even their president! We should be ashamed of ourselves. Why are we letting another country do our work for us? Are we really just a bunch of sheep? Are we really going to idly stand by and look the other way while children and their families are being tortured and allowed to languish and die in the American version of Nazi concentration camps?
Below are two groups of photographs, each group containing the above photograph rendered in black and white and placed next to similar photographs from Nazi Germany to emphasize the fact there is literally no difference in the plight of the captives. I can honestly say I had trouble telling which photograph was the recent one.
If these photographs bother you, good. They should.
Can you tell the difference?
Montage credit: Jackie Starke
Credit: Jackie Starke
Montage credit: Jackie Starke
Lucky Otters Haven 
some of us are doing what we can…it is difficult when you are up against a republican senator who follows the lead of 45, and kicks you (and your group) out of the office, then bans you from the building. All the emails, letters, protests in the world won’t help us unless we become truly mobilized..and most are simply too afraid. Afraid of losing their jobs due to absences..afraid of losing what little freedoms we retain. Afraid of being arrested..or getting hate mail or the attention of hate groups.
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Thanks for your comments. It’s very disturbing that he essentially has the judiciary under his complete control now. WIlliam Barr is NOT representing the people or the Constitution: he’s basically another “fixer” for trump and he believes trump is above the law. He needs to be removed.
Congressional orders are being ignored or blatantly disobeyed, the Constitution is being stomped all over and the Dems just wring their hands and talk about how terrible it all is, but do little else.
I do agree with you that in the United States, the fear of losing our jobs is a real issue and unlike in other countries, where people are paid a living wage and get a lot more vacation and sick time, people here can’t afford to take a day off to protest. It’s a sad state of affairs, and I absolutely think “right to work” laws may be by design (to keep us from rising up). I actually wrote about that in another post:
The free press also appears to be compromised now (or are even self censoring). I can only hope that if the time comes, the military decides to uphold the Constitution and not defend the president.
I’m glad you’re doing what you can. I am as well, by writing articles like this and hoping they wake even one person up.
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I agree with your whole post except for the “narcissistic sociopath” remark. 63rd. This is fascism. In addition to the English, I think the French also had a mass protest. The trouble is, the Democratic Party is so anemic and the Left so divided. Code Pink is doing ahh admirable job of resisting. Black Lives Matter also providing leadership. There are some others.
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“Reasonable” people (especially politicians – shout out to Uncle Joe and the DNC) are not going to solve this. Even fear of where this is going, the whole pattern, from migrant children to a living wage, and women’s and LGBTQ rights, and the environmental catastrophe of the administration’s policies — all connected, all intertwined — is not enough. Only sustained and active anger, even rage, will suffice. And waiting to see what happens in the next election will be too late if the fascists win.
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Exactly. 2020 won’t save us. The problem is far deeper than just Trump, and make no mistake, the GOP and Trump will do everything they can to rig the election, suppress our votes, and already are doing so. Putin will help, of course. We may not even have another election, and even should trump lose, he won’t leave the office willingly. Of this I am certain. Many experts have said the same.
There are no saviors. The Democratic House won’t save us. In fact, they may be part of the problem. (Not that they don’t mean well, but I’m suspecting they may also be compromised which is why no real action is being taken against trump or Barr).
Mueller didn’t save us. He refuses to come forward. Nancy Pelosi is unlikely to save us either. No one is coming to save us. We need to stop waiting around for a savior because our only savior is us. We the People. Only we can bring about change.
But we can’t do it sitting on our butts and wringing our hands and fingering our worry beads and fretting about how terrible everything is.
We need to be occupying the streets of every city by the millions and staying there and demanding the removal of this cruel and evil regime. It’s worked in regimes even more authoritarian than this one, such as South Korea. The people, by peacefully gathering by the millions and refusing to leave, successfully ousted their dictator in 2012.
Are we up to the task? I don’t know.
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Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
LuckyOtter can’t see the difference, can you?
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Since when does having good national security qualify as fascism? By the way, border security isn’t taking away migrant children medicine, that is a bias fallacy. What is really happening, is border security agents are not allowing these migrant children to carry any type of “drug” on their person, meaning they still get their needed medicine. This is what happens when you get all of your news information from one pathetic source, in this case yahoo news. Aside from that, you personally are a nonsensical person for even beginning to compare the holocaust to detention camps. During the holocaust, Jews were starved till every bone in their body was visible, how can you even begin to make a logical comparison?
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