Not really at this scale. According to history, I’d say that even victims of false allegations to the Gestapo during the war years got more diligent investigation, due process, rule of law, and a genuine attempt to find the truth than the people ICE accuses of being illegal immigrants today. Under the Nazis, some crimes like “listening to foreign radio” were notoriously difficult to determine the truth of and of course miscarriages of justice certainly happened regularly, but depending on what you were accused of as long as you were a loyal Nazi and weren’t actually guilty of serious crimes like “friendship to the jews” (/s) you had little to fear from the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. And this is why people were so keen to regularly and performatively prove they were in fact “loyal Nazis”, they felt it would protect them from retribution.
However we also have to remember that the laws they were following were so deliberately unjust it also has to be understood in that context. The Gestapo and the people didn’t HAVE to do anything other than rigorously and consistently following the laws to be unjust, because the laws themselves were so unjust. The regime had already created the fascist state they wanted, with little resistance from most and thunderous applause by many. They were actually much further along the path of fascism and racism and Naziism by then than the USA is now. It is fascinating to see the parallels with modern day, but also important to see the differences.
This is neither a defense or apologism for ICE, any more than it is for the Nazis; they have both committed horrible violations of fundamental human rights and have done and wish to do great evil, but it is important to understand the different situations and the different stages they are at. Trump and his regime may be acting dictatorial but they are not yet actually dictators. They are misusing and abusing laws and justifications and courts to perform fascist actions but they have not yet created an actually fascist police state they can exist comfortably in. Yet. They are working their way there, but they are weaker than they appear, that’s why they have to keep hiding the resistance and making demonstrations of how strong they want you to believe they are. They are more scared of you than they are letting on. And they should be.
Not really at this scale. According to history, I’d say that even victims of false allegations to the Gestapo during the war years got more diligent investigation, due process, rule of law, and a genuine attempt to find the truth than the people ICE accuses of being illegal immigrants today. Under the Nazis, some crimes like “listening to foreign radio” were notoriously difficult to determine the truth of and of course miscarriages of justice certainly happened regularly, but depending on what you were accused of as long as you were a loyal Nazi and weren’t actually guilty of serious crimes like “friendship to the jews” (/s) you had little to fear from the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. And this is why people were so keen to regularly and performatively prove they were in fact “loyal Nazis”, they felt it would protect them from retribution.
However we also have to remember that the laws they were following were so deliberately unjust it also has to be understood in that context. The Gestapo and the people didn’t HAVE to do anything other than rigorously and consistently following the laws to be unjust, because the laws themselves were so unjust. The regime had already created the fascist state they wanted, with little resistance from most and thunderous applause by many. They were actually much further along the path of fascism and racism and Naziism by then than the USA is now. It is fascinating to see the parallels with modern day, but also important to see the differences.
This is neither a defense or apologism for ICE, any more than it is for the Nazis; they have both committed horrible violations of fundamental human rights and have done and wish to do great evil, but it is important to understand the different situations and the different stages they are at. Trump and his regime may be acting dictatorial but they are not yet actually dictators. They are misusing and abusing laws and justifications and courts to perform fascist actions but they have not yet created an actually fascist police state they can exist comfortably in. Yet. They are working their way there, but they are weaker than they appear, that’s why they have to keep hiding the resistance and making demonstrations of how strong they want you to believe they are. They are more scared of you than they are letting on. And they should be.