By DWIGHT HOBBES
Between masked ICE agents and the Klu Klux Klan, any difference is negligible, if at all, cowardly domestic terrorists hiding from sight in broad daylight. Anonymity is a powerful weapon, license to strike, ruthlessly abuse and violently oppress, sans accountability. Strikes mind numbing panic, blood racing fear.
Make no mistake, just as Mississippi KKK murdered James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, so ICE did murder Renée Nicole Macklin Good and Alex Pretti. In cold blood. Because, they could get away with it. President Donald Trump has accomplished the unthinkable. Reversing civil rights, throwing around the term “domestic terrorism” while that’s what he’s unleashed on any and all Americans who don’t further his supremacist agenda. As PBS reported back in 2024, “Trump seeks a second term vowing to dramatically expand his use of the military at home and suggesting he would use force to go after Americans he considers ‘enemies from within.’” Vanity Fair interviewed his former chief of staff, John Kelly, documenting that “[He]…warned that Trump admires dictators—including Hitler, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un—and that he frequently expressed frustration at the limits the Constitution placed on his own power.” The New Times quoted Kelly, “[Trump] prefers the dictator approach to government”
One thing he does not prefer is defiance. Makes no secret of weaponizing whatever government agency best suits his vengeance against enemies merely perceived or proven. If Donald Trump thought he could get away with repeating Adolf Hitler’s “Night of the Long Knives”, he’d go for it in a heartbeat. Stopping short, he’s nonetheless following his hero’s playbook. He doesn’t realize, though, that unlike Germany, America refuses to roll over and play dead.
South Minneapolis tragically became a turning point with the deaths of Renée Nicole Macklin Good and Alex Pretti. Then, came the subsequent scapegoating of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent quit, washing his hands of the Israel-U.S. war on Iran, denouncing it as he walked out the door. The U.S. Supreme Court, which let the president skate on 34 felony convictions, no longer had his back and ruled against his abuse of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to blackmail the world with tariffs. Whereupon, of course, he had a fit and turned on the justices like he does everyone else who doesn’t grant his way.
ICE, cut from the same cloth as the Klan, simply wearing masks instead of hoods has seen its storm trooping occupation expelled. South Minneapolis, which didn’t sit still for the next Reich, saw to that.
DWIGHT HOBBES, a long-time Twin Cities journalist and essayist, is the author of Let Me Tell You About Al Flowers.
