Before we start, three small updates about the Nazi stuff.
(1) Yesterday, ICE prosecutor James Rodden returned to the courthouse. Who is James Rodden? Steven Monacelli at the Texas Observer unmasked him last year as the operator of the X account GlomarResponder. Here’s Monacelli’s description of Rodden’s account:
The account has over 17,000 followers and has routinely posted hateful statements, including that “America is a White nation,” that “‘Migrants’ are all criminals,” and that “All blacks are foreign to my people,” in addition to posts with apparent praise of Adolf Hitler.
I encourage you to click through and read the whole story, as well as this earlier Observer report on Rodden. Monacelli snapped a photo of Maj. Arnold Ernst Toht Rodden as he arrived at the courthouse yesterday.
It’s always the ones you most expect.
(2) Speaking of which, over on r/thebulwark someone posted a picture of Greg Bovino from a photo shoot he did with CNN last October. I had never seen this portrait before. Have a look and click through for the hi-res version.
You cannot tell me that the Obergruppenführer look is an accident. On the other hand, great to see that DHS has the money to get Hugo Boss designing formal topcoats.
(3) Last week the DHS X account posted this graphic with a cowboy on the ground and a stealth bomber in the sky. But check out the slogan:
That phrase, “We’ll have our home again,” is the title of an anthem beloved of white supremacist groups. Sample lyrics from the song:
In our own towns, we’re foreigners now
Our names are spat and cursed
The headline smack, of another attack
Not the last, and not the worst
Oh my fathers, they look down on me
I wonder what they feel
To see their noble sons driven down beneath a cowards heelOh by God we’ll have our home again
By God we’ll have our home
By blood or sweat, we’ll get there yet
By God we’ll have our home
Again: None of this is coincidence.
1. Colonialism
Imagine you’re watching a movie about Germany in 1940. In it, an unarmed civilian woman is sitting in a car surrounded by masked, armed agents of the state. They menace her, circling the car and shouting. She tells one of them, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” As one of the agents grabs at her door handle, she tries to drive away. Another of them shoots her three times in the head before remarking, “Fucking bitch.”
In this movie, you would understand instantly who the bad guy was. You would not say, “The woman should have complied with the orders from the Ordnungspolizei. She got what was coming to her.”
In Iran, today, we have stories about police firing on unarmed protesters. Tell me: Is there a single Republican in America willing to say, “Well, if the protesters refused to comply with orders from the Gasht-e Ershad, then they should expect to be killed.”
Or, “If the Iranian police felt as though their lives were in danger from domestic terrorists, then of course they have a right to self-defense.”
This is a paradox. We have a remarkable capacity for moral clarity when things are happening elsewhere, but fall all over ourselves to make excuses when they happen domestically.
And there’s a mirror-image version of this paradox, in which societies rationalize things they do elsewhere, only to have those things later manifest at home. It’s called Foucault’s Boomerang and it suggests there’s a line from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to what we’re seeing in America today.
So let’s talk about Foucault’s Boomerang and how chickens come home to roost.