The Revocation of Due Process has murdered the version of the United States that I Grew up with
For my entire life, I have heard stories about how liberal presidents like Barack Obama and Joe Biden are indeed communist, equivalent to dictators like Joseph Stalin. A propagandist claim largely spread by Fox News, part of me even thought this was true because I heard it so much growing up. This false lie spread by the conservative news media has left Republicans blind to the reality - Donald Trump is America’s Joseph Stalin.
Recently, Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies act to justify indefinitely imprisoning lawful US residents in an extremely cruel and brutal prison in El Salvador. One such resident, Jerce Reyes, was imprisoned simply for having a tattoo with the logo of a soccer team, Real Madrid, and for posting photos on Facebook with “Devil Horns” often seen in use by rock and metal musicians.
The Trump administration claims that this information - along with Jerce Reyes’ ethnic and national heritage - is enough to imprison him in a hellish gulag without any access to lawyers or due process of the law.
I grew up hearing about how America fought against the Nazis, who imprisoned and killed Jews based on a conspiracy theory that people of the Jewish ethnic background conspired to destroy Germany. I was told this could never happen in the United States because we have a right to a trial, a right to a lawyer, and equal rights for all people within the borders of the United States of America. That our system will always allowed the truth to be revealed and ensure that people receive fair and equal treatment under the law. Today that has been revealed to be a lie.
Adolf Hitler’s dismantling of Jewish rights in Nazi Germany was not done overnight. It was a steady process of spreading lies and propaganda until the population was willing to accept that some people were simply not deserving of the rights afforded to others. They were described as poisoning the blood of the Nation, as being inhuman, rats, roaches. They were blamed for all of society’s problems and economic woes. They were blamed for the deaths of children, and in conspiracy theories even accused of engaging in various ritual sacrifices. They were accused of being communists who were plotting to overthrow the state.
These are all accusations thrown against the Jews by the Nazis in Germany. They are also the same accusations thrown against immigrants to the United States by the President and the faction of White Supremacists within his government led by people like Stephen Miller.
During the first Trump Presidency it became clear that Donald Trump would do whatever the people around him told him to do. If he got frustrated with them he would fire them, but he would generally follow the advice of whatever advisors replaced them. The Nazis operating within the United States of America learned this, and have surrounded Donald Trump. People like Stephen Miller, Curtis Yarvin, and Matt Walsh are now running this government and turning this country into everything it once fought against.
In Band of Brothers there is a scene towards the end of the series where the US soldiers who have discovered one of the concentration camps confront the German civilians living nearby, who went about their daily lives as normal as if atrocities were not being committed around them daily. I think it’s a question many of us have been asked to ponder in high school or college essays. Today, it’s become so easy to see how it happened in Nazi Germany, and how close we are to having it happen here if normal people do not stand up against injustice.