The tragic event in which Renee Nicole Good, an American mother, was shot dead in broad daylight, in the middle of the street by the Trump administration’s shock troops, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement known as ICE, after she had just dropped her child off at school, illustrates in the most shocking and eloquent way possible the authoritarian drift that the world’s most famous democracy is going through.
With a swiftness of the speed of light, top officials, led by President Trump, smeared the memory of the dead victim – labeling the young mother a terrorist. At the same time, they practically encouraged ICE police forces to continue along the same line, since in the absence of any investigation, the top authorities also decreed that the hooded officer who was armed to the teeth had acted in self-defense.
ICE’s modus operandi and how their actions are justified and covered by the U.S. government are increasingly aligning Trump’s America with Putin’s Russia.
Because even in Moscow, the violence and abuses of the security forces against civilians is the norm, not an accident. For even in Moscow, the president-dictator, his ministers and propagandists are sentimental to the point of trembling with intelligence agents or ‘ Chekists’ but brutal with their victims.
Regarding what can be considered a state crime, committed on January 7 in Minneapolis which resulted in the death of a 37-year-old mother, there is much to discuss in terms of substance and procedure. But one thing is certain, even if only summarizing the investigation by watching the videos distributed online: a driver who was raising her children and had a passion for poetry was approached in the middle of the street by a small army of hooded men built like tanks.
As a civilian without military training or any familiarity with the world of security, it is easy to panic something that can be interpreted as hostile on the spot as it was later in the propagandistic narratives that aim to spread a so-called alternative truth (a perverse concept, but ultra-exploited by Trumpism and the MAGA universe).
It had become clear since the first raids by the ICE “militiamen”, launched by the Trump administration last year that there is a huge problem with the show of force and aggression they portray.
Not for nothing, ICE raids can easily look like an urban safari, with a full-fledged manhunt. Only the packs of foxes and dogs are missing, possibly the horns as well. Otherwise, all the other ingredients are already there – including the humiliation of captured prey and the ostentatious display of the “trophies” by the 2.0 hunters and hunters unleashed by Trump.
The possibility of a lethal abuse committed against the mother in Minneapolis on January 7 had therefore been planted from the beginning by the approved course of action of ICE troops, and by the incendiary rhetoric constantly used by the American authorities, including the president himself.
Now, once the possibility is translated into fact, it remains interesting and no less scary what could follow. How far will the Trump administration go, how far will the people and the rest of the American political establishment allow it to go?
For it has become obvious that anemic reactions or lack of reaction only fuel the Trumpist engine of the American state machine.
It is also difficult to overlook the similarity between the philosophy, action and results of ICE raids domestically on the one hand and the philosophy, method and results of the new US foreign policy on the global stage. What is predominant on this last level is the whole grotesque spectacle, the excessive aggressiveness and the blowing up of a fine fabric that had maintained an extremely fragile balance in the world.
What is predominant in the Trumpist US, both domestically and abroad, is its inclination to crush and sacrifice the weak, with no regard for decency, demolishing the last barriers that separate the rule of law from the might is right, our world from the world of the jungle.
Ukraine, more recently also the democratic opposition in Venezuela, and in the near future probably even Greenland seem to be treated in Donald Trump’s vision with the same currency with which ICE treats its moving targets on the streets transformed into the hunting grounds of Trump’s America.
Is the new slogan “Make America Kill Again?”
