Young people ... are joining up to save the future

This was originally a writing advice blog. While the advice still exists, nowadays I use this platform to share painful truths about the military. The things I say will make you angry, and that's good. Get angry.

[jay-rayart]

Final week of FLY on Kickstarter. Help us stretch our wings and consider backing on kickstarter! Every pledge brings us closer to sharing stories of empowerment with the world.

FLY : A Magical Black Boy Series - Pilot

A coming of age story about Black kids who finally have power to fight back against systems designed against them.

[marxistlesbianist]

CIA Ran MK-ULTRA Experiments on Prisoners of War in U.S. Custody, Declassified Docs Confirm

For the first time, declassified documents confirm the CIA carried out tests on North Korean POWs and planned for much more invasive experim

Korean prisoners of war in the 1950s were subjected to early MK-ULTRA experiments while in American custody, according to recently declassified CIA documents which confirm these experiments for the first time. The only reporting that previously referenced Koreans being used as guinea pigs for these experiments was journalist John Marks’s landmark 1979 book, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate.” Using CIA documents, Marks traced the now-infamous MK-ULTRA project to its start, when it was known as Project Bluebird. In the book, Marks describes how, in October 1950, 25 unnamed North Korean POWs were chosen as the first test subjects to receive “advanced” interrogation techniques, with the overt goal of “controlling an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation.”

[. . .]

The first reference to “Project Bluebird” in the NSA’s collection is an office memorandum from April 5, 1950. Addressed to CIA Director Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, the document lays out the project’s goals, required training, and budget, all while emphasizing that knowledge of Project Bluebird “should be restricted to the absolute minimum number of persons.” The memo includes detailed plans for interrogation teams trained to utilize the polygraph, various drugs, and hypnotism “for personality control purposes.” These teams were to be made up of three people: a doctor (ideally a psychiatrist), a hypnotist, and a polygraph technician. The memo clarifies that while the doctor and technician would need to undergo approximately five months of training, the Inspection and Security Staff’s own department hypnotist could be made available immediately. In a later memo from February 2, 1951, there are inquiries into acquiring six “hypospray” devices: experimental instruments designed to covertly inject sedatives through the skin via “jet injection.” There’s a request to investigate modification of a “tear gas pencil” and other “devices of unestablished action,” such as the “German ‘Scheintot’ [sic] (appearance of death) pistol.”

[. . .]

[W]hile the actual offshore locations are redacted, a write-up of a CIA meeting held one year later specifically notes a “project in Japan and Korea in which the Army had used a polygraph operator along with a team of psychiatrists and psychologists on Korean POWs.” Although the initial proposal for Project Bluebird mostly emphasized the potential for “personality control,” it’s clear that CIA officials were also interested in broader, more ambitious outcomes. One document summarizing a “special meeting” between U.S., British, and Canadian intelligence services notes the CIA’s desire to research “the psychological factors causing the human mind to accept certain political beliefs” and “determining means for combatting communism,” “‘selling’ democracy,” and preventing the “penetration of communism into trade unions.” Another meeting held on May 9, 1950, called for “the Surgeon General of the Army to place on the search list of the Nuremberg Trials papers request for information on drugs, narcoanalysis, and special interrogation techniques.”

[. . .]

Notably absent from these declassified documents is any proof that similar experiments were undertaken by enemies of the U.S. The central animating myth behind MK-ULTRA and Project Bluebird is the narrative of the American soldier who returned home after months of imprisonment by enemy forces, only to be revealed as a hypnotized double agent. Throughout the Korean War, American moviegoers were screened films starring and narrated by future president Ronald Reagan. These films showed American troops being psychologically tortured by Chinese and North Korean soldiers until dangerous, anti-democratic ideals were implanted in their minds without their knowledge.

[. . .]

In a 1983 witness testimony from CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb, who led the MK-ULTRA experiments, he recalls receiving confirmation that, after thorough investigation, there was no evidence any American POWs were subjected to drug-induced hypnosis at any point during the Korean War. “As I remember it,” Gottlieb said, “[The report] basically said that they felt that the techniques the Chinese and/or the Koreans used were not esoteric. … [They] didn’t depend upon sophisticated techniques used in drugs and other more technical means.” Additionally, a 1952 memo to Allen Dulles reinforces the CIA’s willingness to fund these experiments without any proof that enemy countries were undergoing similar research: “We cannot accept this lack of evidence as proof.” In one of the more revealing moments from the entire collection of documents, the CIA’s Morse Allen recounts a conversation with an agency employee about the effectiveness of interrogating individuals through hypnosis. “Individuals under hypnotism will give information,” Allen writes, “but … it could not always be regarded as accurate, since fantasy and even hallucinations are present in certain hypnotic states.” Reading the lengthy budgetary sheets for drugs, syringes, polygraph machines, and hypnotists, paired with the details of Marks’s book, one’s imagination begins trying to fill in the gaps, drifting into fantasy. It’s an experience uniquely fitting for research into the CIA’s pursuit of technology aimed at erasing facts, experiences, and memories. Throughout these declassified documents are numerous reminders that the Korean War’s label as “The Forgotten War” serves, in part, as intentional obfuscation. People, histories, and crimes are rarely forgotten on accident, and what these disclosures clearly demonstrate is that there remains a world of difference between the forgetting of history and its swift, coordinated erasure.

[timetravellingkitty]

now I know westerners actively go out of their way to refuse to see north koreans as humans but I think fear mongering about a child who went with her dad for what was essentiallt bring your daughter to work day is just another kind of deplorable

[kodex1919]

The Telegraph released that article one day prior to a huge revelation by the New York Times, who reported that in 2019 the Trump administration launched a covert SEAL Team 6 mission into the DPRK to plant listening devices meant to spy on Kim Jong Un. The mission failed, and they killed multiple civilians in cold blood to cover their tracks.

The Trump administration never disclosed this mission to the Congress committees tasked with overseeing military and intelligence operations. The article also points out that many of those involved in that mission were promoted.

North Korea isn't the bad guy. They are trying to defend themselves from a belligerent empire that has already killed 20% of its population at one time and has have been trying to recolonize them ever since. Do not fall for these attempt by the West to manufacture consent for further violence against the people of Korea. The North Korean government isn't the oppressor of the Korean people, the United States and the imperialist bloc are.

[d-954]

North Korea are the bad guys actually.

Like, yes that mission was deplorable. No those civilans didnt deserve to die. But acting like North Korea is not a brutal warmongering dictatorship ruled by martial law is dangerously ignorant. We know what life is like, we have testimonies from refugees and from South Korean/our own monitering.

North Korea is, quite obviously, the oppressor of the North Korean people.

[timetravellingkitty]

no

A Lot of What You Know About North Korea Is Racist Nonsense

Pyongyang is not crazy

Anna Louise Strong, communism, North Korea, Kim Il Sung

Why do North Korean defector testimonies so often fall apart?

Cash incentives and the western media’s endless appetite for shocking stories encourage refugees to exaggerate, Jiyoung Song argues

South Korea boosts reward for defectors from North to $860,000

Defectors can expect to receive the sum if they cross the border with intelligence or weapons.

the country that bombed and sanctioned north korea to the ground is undoubtedly the oppressor of north koreans. former US president jimmy carter has bragged about this very thing himself. you are not being brave by repeating US state department atrocity propaganda generated from their inability to conquer north korea.

[victusinveritas]

There's worse to come, folks. Strap in and stay strapped.

[xerserise]

Stop asking 'but without police, how will we address crime?'

Crime is a social construct. We could eliminate all crime right now, simply by making everything legal. And cops don't stop crime (typically). They don't protect people (typically). They show up, after the fact, and put people into the prison system, where, if found guilty (or coerced into taking a plea bargain, even if innocent), they can be legally enslaved (in the US, at least).

So, um, maybe don't ask the equivalent of 'how will we enforce the laws that the state enacts, if we don't have armed thugs threatening people with death and enslavement?' It kind of makes you look like a bootlicker.

.

[Based on conversations that were had, I must edit this post to point out that I did not suggest that we end 'crime' by legalizing everything. I pointed out that 'crime' is a social construct, and, as evidence, pointed out that the decriminalization of everything would eliminate 'crime'. So, um, maybe don't ask the equivalent of "how will we deal with this one particular form of 'crime', if we don't have armed thugs threatening people with death and enslavement if they break any of the laws that the state has deemed worthy of enforcement by armed thugs?" It kind of makes you look like a bootlicker.]

[xerserise]

"Crime" is a social construct.

[xerserise]

[xerserise]

More...

And here's an entire zine dedicated to the abolitionist topic of 'what about the rapists'.

https://www.interruptingcriminalization.com/resources-all/what-about-the-rapists (click the download button for the full PDF)

Basically, what we have doesn't work (most rapes aren't reported, most rapists aren't prosecuted, many rape victims are further traumatized by the cops or even arrested, etc.) And that's why we need something different.

.

Here's a slightly longer read, dealing with both rapists and murderers, explaining what we actually do about them now (not much, none of it particularly helpful, but loaded with harms), sharing some ideas about how we could approach things instead, and offering some starting points for learning more about other options.

https://transformharm.org/ab_resource/what-about-the-rapists-and-murderers/

[xerserise]

And here's a Prison Abolition 101 booklet.

https://issuu.com/projectnia/docs/policeabolition101_zine_digital_singlepages

And here's the full "What's Next" report that's mentioned in the 101 document.

https://bit.ly/WhatsNextIC3

[funkyfeefee]

One thing that deeply irritates me is the way some American leftists talk about U.S veterans and imperial violence, because beneath all the Marxist language there is often this unspoken assumption that the rest of the world is supposed to emotionally process American empire in a way that is convenient for Americans. It's specifically the discourse surrounding the tactical necessity of American military veterans and it represents a profound distortion of both historical Marxist theory and contemporary material realities.

This argument typically manifests as a defense of U.S. service members against the "unprincipled" or "moralistic" anger of Global South populations, who are frequently chastised for alienating a demographic that American leftists claim will provide vital "military expertise" when "the revolution" inevitably arrives.

The argument usually goes something like this:

1. Veterans are working class.

2. Lenin argued communists must organize among soldiers.

3. Therefore hostility toward U.S veterans is politically immature, “moralistic,” or anti-materialist and "un-marxist" because soldiers can become revolutionary subjects and their military expertise will be necessary “when the revolution comes.”

To legitimize this position, chauvinistic elements within the Western left frequently weaponize Vladimir Lenin’s writings on the radicalization of Tsarist soldiers during the Russian Revolution. However, this theoretical transposition collapses under rigorous analysis, relying on a false equivalence that ignores the vastly different class structures, material incentives, and geopolitical positions of the 20th-century Russian conscript versus the 21st-century American volunteer soldier.

​When Lenin wrote about the necessity of agitating among Tsarist soldiers, he was analyzing a peasant army composed of millions of intensely exploited, involuntarily conscripted laborers who were being meat-grinded in a catastrophic imperialist war. For the Tsarist soldier, "peace, land, and bread" were immediate, existential class demands that aligned perfectly with the Bolshevik platform. The Tsarist soldier was not a beneficiary of empire; he was its victim, forced at gunpoint to die for a monarchy that denied his family basic agrarian rights.

This distinction matters enormously.

Lenin’s argument was not:

“soldiers are inherently progressive.”

Nor was it:

“colonized people must suppress hostility toward occupying forces.”

Nor even:

“all criticism of soldiers alienates the masses.”

The Bolshevik position was that communist movements cannot afford to abandon armed sections of the population entirely to reactionary politics, especially during periods where state legitimacy is weakening.

​In stark contrast, the contemporary U.S. military is a highly professionalized, all-volunteer force that functions as the enforcement arm of global capital. The American soldier is not a peasant conscript but a contractual employee of the imperial core. While the "poverty draft" is often cited to argue that enlistment is entirely coercive, this framing obscures the specific class character of the U.S. veteran. Enlistment in the U.S. military is fundamentally an investment in upward class mobility within the imperial system. It is a transaction where individuals trade a period of service to the empire in exchange for a highly coveted bundle of social democracy: guaranteed healthcare, fully funded higher education, housing subsidies, and preferential hiring in state apparatuses.

​Consequently, the political consciousness of the American veteran class is not defined by revolutionary potential, but by a perpetual cycle of grievance rooted in unfulfilled imperial promises. The material reality of the veteran experience is a chronic struggle against the bureaucratic failures of the state; such as the inefficiencies of the Department of Veterans Affairs, rather than an awakening to the systemic evils of imperialism. Their radicalism, when it exists, is almost exclusively reactionary; it is an anger that the state has broken its contract with them, demanding the compensation they feel they rightfully earned by subjugating the Global South. This grievance-based politics does not threaten the capitalist state; it is entirely siphoned back into the existing political apparatus. The veteran class is ritualistically invoked every four years by both bourgeois political parties as a symbolic prop to legitimize American nationalism, promised reform, and then promptly discarded until the next election cycle. Their primary collective orientation is the preservation of their unique benefits, which are directly funded by the value extracted from the very Global South populations American leftists order them not to alienate.

​Furthermore, the leftist claim that the domestic movement requires the "military expertise" of veterans for a looming revolution is a fantasy untethered from material conditions.

What revolution exactly?

Where is this revolution supposed to occur?

Under what conditions?

Emerging from what mass base?

Against what degree of state legitimacy?

Following what economic rupture?

With what organizational infrastructure?

With what relationship to organized labor, racialized surplus populations, migrants, or the global south?

Under what conceivable circumstances is a synchronized, armed proletarian uprising manifesting within the heavily militarized, heavily surveilled heart of the global hegemon?

The United States lacks both the vanguard organization and the broad-based class consciousness required to orchestrate a structural overthrow of capital. By centering the veteran as an indispensable tactical asset, American leftists reveal a deeply romanticized, militaristic understanding of revolutionary change that prioritizes combat aesthetics over actual mass organizing.

​The ultimate irony of this position lies in its profound historical and ongoing betrayal of internationalism. The very "military expertise" that Western leftists fetishize is a euphemism for the operational knowledge acquired by executing counter-insurgency warfare, drone strikes, and resource theft across the Global South. The American veteran class is expertly trained not to launch revolutions, but to systematically crush them wherever they emerge in the periphery. To demand that victims of U.S. imperialism suppress their rage under the guise of "Marxist discipline" so that Western leftists can hoard imperial managers for a hypothetical domestic uprising is a textbook display of social-chauvinism. It subordinates the real, material suffering of the global proletariat to the theoretical convenience of leftists residing safely within the metropole.

[solsticelosthermind]

I know this is a deeply American thing to say but I am begging everyone to stay the fuck away from military recruiters. Especially high school kids. You are going to be seeing an unholy amount of them in schools or around schools or literally anywhere kids are known to congregate. THIS INCLUDES ALL FORMS OF ROTC. Stay the fuck away from military recruiters. As someone who’s familiar with entirely too many branches through entirely too many friends and family, including my partner, recruiters are authorized to say literally any fucking thing they think will make you sign on that line. They cannot and will not deliver on those promises. They need bodies for the war they’re pretending is only now starting up again. That’s all you are. A body. Stay the FUCK away from the military.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

RECRUITERS LIE

[gulyas069]

[gulyas069]

hmmm

[lovehael]

One of their last Tweets before the account got suspended:

With an update since getting it back:

[transcriptroopers]

Veteran here, can confirm that you can get "failure to adapt"ed practically just by asking for it. It's even easier if you're still in basic or AIT. You may face some harassment, but that's leagues better than being a killing tool.

Happy to talk if anyone needs guidance.

[thedreadvampy]

Whenever America starts a war with a nuclear power everyone starts yelling about WW3 and it's only just occurred to me that when Americans say 'WW3' they are at least partially expressing an anxiety that this time their government's blind aggression might have hit somebody who'll actually hit back.

I was gonna say 'like WW2' but then rapidly remembered that neither of the existing world wars involved like. much of any direct damage to civilian populations either because America's eternal wars haven't touched its own soil since like the 1860s. except for Pearl Harbour, which was literally One Attack in the whole of WW2 (and which was also primarily targeting a military base. and was in a colonized nation far from the mainland USA). I am not kidding if you look up 'attacks on American soil' every single thing since 1900 except individual attacks (Pearl Harbour and 9/11, basically plus a couple of border skirmishes with Mexico) is like 'America was attacked In The Gulf States' or 'America was attacked In Asia'. like mate where is the US? you can't count attacks on military bases as 'attacks on US soil' unless you need to bulk out the list which. look at the history.

Like imo one of the reasons the US is so comfortable being leisurely belligerent against Literally Any Country In The World is that it's been literally well over a century since the fight actually came to them. why WOULD the US government stop being blindly aggressive when the only costs are financial?

and instead of being primarily concerned about like. the actual thousands of people who are actually gonna die in these strikes. every time the US's unprovoked aggression hits a nuclear state of a state with a measure of international heft, the loudest concern from Americans is OH NO WHAT IF THIS ONE'S WW3

because. war is so abstract and foreign. because it's spent 150 years constantly happening Over There and only involving Americans who are in the military. foreign wars don't register as a threat because they're NOT a threat to Americans (the only Real People) and the way in which they're frightening is the abstract possibility that the other party might at some point bring America actually into the war. which has basically never happened so it's this vast unknown threat.

(the UK btw is also not immune to this but it's a wee bit different. our economy was permanently crippled by direct damage in WW2 and the Irish republicans got a lot of hits in so there's still some memory that War Has Consequences. but by and large we still approach war as something that Happens Elsewhere and are scandalised by the idea it might directly affect us at home. this is still a fairly abstracted and fictionalised threat to us which we treat as More Worrying than the actual bombings currently happening, but I just don't think it's as completely abstracted as the American relationship to foreign wars)

[ralfmaximus]

The Black Tom explosion in 1916 was a German terrorist attack on US soil and resulted in 7 deaths, hundreds of injuries, about half a billion dollars in adjusted damages, and complete annihilation of an island in New Jersey.

Also, WWII was a nuclear war.

[thedreadvampy]

SEVEN. SEVEN DEATHS. A CENTURY AGO. is the 'war has come to US soil' you wanted to pull?

Preliminary figures today (4 March) is 787 Iranians killed since 28 February. so forgive me if I say you're proving my point pretty effectively.

similarly yes you are correct WWII was a nuclear war. so far the only one. a war in which the US made the decision to kill over 200,000 people Over There on a different continent and then spent the next 80 years making sure nobody else would be able to either retaliate or do anything similar. And the American (and Western) relationship to nuclear arms remains primarily not 'Jesus Christ I cannot believe America killed close to a quarter of a million people in a civilian centre with one set of orders' but 'oh noooooo what if this means we have to mitigate our aggression in case they do something like this BACK TO US'.

so. again. my point. war in the American cultural imagination remains an abstract thing that THEY do to OTHER PEOPLE where the concept of any enemy action reaching people in civilian centres is so completely abstracted it just becomes a boogeyman and apparently we should still be talking about the 7 American civilians that were killed in a war that claimed in the region of 6-13 million civilian lives in Europe, Africa and Asia.

Seven. Fuck me. I thought I was being needlessly shitty when I wrote this post but you have really helped clarify that this actually is how warped American perspectives on civilian casualties are.

[writeswrongs]

I was supposed to give a speech to over a thousand people today at a labor rally, but the rally was planned mostly around white union organizers who have not been to ICE recently or maybe ever. I say this because they planned this as follows: a Rally, with a march to ICE, followed by a second half of a Rally, the second half of which was to include my speech, which seemingly was the only speech to include a Salvadoran migrant speaker.

I was not originally invited to speak, but heard last minute that someone else had fallen ill and was giving up their slot, and begged white organizers through the grape vine to let me speak as a Salvadoran migrant and union steward who came to the US at age 7.

I have long been soured of going to so many rallies and felt alienated that they were allegedly for or about my people, but that no one had thought people /like/ me exist - we are still here! There are migrants in your work spaces and neighborhoods and organizations, we have stories and labor songs and speeches to share, we are marxists and labor organizers and have reasons to speak out too.

But seldom if ever do you hear our music or faces or voices near the banners. Instead of Tigres Del Norte we heard Bella Ciao, and none of the singers knew the Italian words or bothered to even translate them, so they sang nanananananana, instead of the powerful lyrics that maybe meant something once to someone somewhere. Instead of Somos Más Americanos we heard Don’t Worry, Be Happy.

Instead of a Salvadoran woman who wanted to speak to the American union workers about the Banana workers unions, we heard from a dozen white people about democracy, and justice, and the constitution, and no one was warned about what would happen if they marched down the street from the park to the ICE facility. They fully expected everyone to come back and complete the second half of the rally.

Instead, marchers with their dogs and children were tear-gassed to hell and back the second they dared get close to the facility, maybe at best 1/3rd of the marchers returned while the rest were bottlenecked towards ICE. There was little to no water to treat the untrained protestors. I returned to the rally quickly realizing I could not get caught up at ICE, knowing who I am and what awaits me.

When I got back a chorus of smiling white faces sang a silly song like a Christmas carol with their heads bobbling, reading the lyrics from some handed out papers. White people with upside down flags cheered. Then a black woman in overalls abruptly got on the mic and said “Well thank you everyone but we have to close the program early because people are getting tear-gassed, please get home to safety righty away,” - and I swore I couldn’t believe my ears.

They had brought us all here, marched all these people down to the ICE facility, and expected us all to march back without encountering teargas? And then when some people had made it back they had them sing a little jingle but turned the one migrant away? I begged them to let me speak for the three minutes I had allotted, noting that I had put myself in serious danger to come out here today. That I needed to be heard just this once, and that all the white people had their fair turn to say many unrelated things, and to sing many unrelated songs.

She said, “you don’t understand, there are children down here,” and I had to say “you don’t understand, there are children in the camps.”

And she tried again, “yes but the gas is spreading,” and I said “yes we have been down here being gassed for six months, don’t you understand?”

She blinked twice and told me they just had to break down. I watched from the sidelines as they continued to blare Caribbean Blue and smooth jazz while people filtered out, stood around talking, chatting - finally I said, “please let me speak, you still have speakers going, it’s been 20 minutes,” and the DJ, a white elderly man in a sweater vest who had a strict “only the classics” policy that seems to actually mean “no hip hop and no curse words,” - barked at me that he had to break down and to help him take down his canopy. I am no maid, so I did not listen. He then turned to my comrades and told them to take his canopy down, which they did not. Then turned to his two other labor organizers who were not paying attention, and they took a leg of the canopy and moved it somewhere without breaking it down.

And one looked at me and said quietly, “it’s okay, take that bullhorn no one will notice,” and we took it and ran.

And we ran to a firetruck which I climbed, and I gave the speech, which was in fact more than 3 minutes, sorry not sorry, to a crowd of workers who were slowly pouring out from the ice facility, some stopping, some going, some who heard me, some who didn’t. And I gave it there and it was the only speech most of these people will ever hear from a migrant in all of this, and I think that is tragic. But I firmly believe that had I not given it, had I not climbed the truck, had I not taken the mic, some people would have never heard this story at all. And I think very much you should hear it. And I hope you will share it, if you have the chance. And I hope I get to tell it again, someday, to people who actually listen, to the masses who came to actually support immigrants, and not just to the dredges after they’ve been gassed and are running for shelter while I’m coughing myself.

This is what I had to say.

[transcriptroopers]

Transcribed for accessibility + added links for context, but please still watch/listen to the speech if possible. A live speech really resonates. Begin transcription.

Olivia: I came to the United States when I was 7 years old. And I became a citizen when I was 20. But I am on this stage to ask: if you will give me 3 minutes of your time, *cough* I will give you 300 years of American History that has been taken from you.

There are five crops that changed the world as we know it. Bananas. Coffee. Tobacco. Sugar. And Cotton.

First grown by slaves in the New World, these crops all happened to also grow in a little bean-shaped country that my parents lived in near the Caribbean called Cuzcatlan, ‘The Land of Precious Things.’ It would be renamed El Salvador in the 1800’s. 

But the precious things remained after the name changed. And the people were captured, and they were forced to work for pennies on the dollar to dredge the precious things from the soil, and the sea, and the mountains, and the sand. Cuzcatlan was not precious just to us, you see. It was coveted by the Americans. And once they saw our jewels, they would never be satisfied again. 

The people suffered. And how we suffered! Dying in the fields, raped by their masters, buried in the shining black volcanic sands, their blood fertilizing the crops.

Of Bananas. Coffee. Sugar. Cotton. And Tobacco.

Until one day, the people of Cuzcatlan said, ‘We can bear it no more.’ And they broke their shovels in half, and they plunged the stems into their masters, and they rode through the streets on their masters’ Spanish horses, and they cried out that Cuzcatlan would no longer belong to the American companies that demanded their precious things without paying precious prices. Perhaps, soon, those business leaders would learn to negotiate for the labor and crops they so needed.

And the Americans? The Americans could not stand it! They would not abide such a story be told. And so you never heard it! The American companies, and all of their corporate masters came down on Cuzcatlan, with a fury seldom seen before. They killed everyone.

Instead, you heard a story about “Communists” and “Terrorists” in Central America, spreading a disease that would destroy your country and families. You heard a story that we have no good will towards you. That we wanted you to starve, that we were lazy, and formed gangs, and were lawless, and wore weapons to sell you drugs and fund terrorism. 

But you never heard the story of Cuzcatlan, because it was a sad story, and sad stories do not sell fruit, and coffee, and cigarettes!

No, they came to my country, and they wiped out entire villages. The Archbishop, Don Remar - er, Don Romero, himself, was shot by the military during his Sunday Mass, for having dared to wonder whether the workers deserved some mercy. Assassinated for having dared to wonder, and he was left bleeding on the pulpit, even as worshipers bowed their heads. 

EVERYBODY was KILLED. 

EVERYBODY! The women, with their children still in their arms. Anyone looking for cover; people who found cover, people who didn’t. People who worked, and people who had no jobs. Communists. Catholics. Those who didn’t know how to read, those who didn’t know what labor rights were. Simple folks. Smart folks. 

And they didn’t stop there. They went through the countryside, and they killed everyone they thought was hiding labor organizers or communists sympathizers. Banana union men and women, who they labeled terrorists. And in one village, we still only speak about in whispers, called “El Mozote.” The Americans tied women and children to trees, and they threw their babies in the air, and they shot them. Everyone was killed, to send one message, and that is: “A union is a threat to the American Empire. Not one union man or woman will hide in your village, or any other. And if you hid one here, now or ever, you will never breathe to hide one again."

And I tell you this because I am you from the future. You and I, all of you, are very much alike. You worked very hard to ply the precious things you have from the ground, the sky, the water, and the aether. You all wrote stories, you filed insurance policies, you taught children, you rung people up, you made sure whatever sorry system they had worked, not because you believed in it, not because you wanted it, but because it was all you could do. 

And in exchange, they offered you cheap bananas. Coffee. Sugar. Tobacco. Bananas.

But I will tell you a secret. They were never cheap. They were precious. And so are you. 

And they stole you, and they stole us, and they stole it all, and they told you: if you look the other way, you get to be satisfied and at least well-fed. But who can afford the luxuries of cigarettes or vapes or groceries anymore? Even that is being taken from you. And even if you have them, your food or your small pleasures won’t satisfy you. Not more than knowing the truth about Cuzcatlan, not more than knowing the truth about El Salvador. Today, where our precious land once stood, they built a concentration camp called CECOT. And not just for our precious things, our people, but yours. Your citizens, your dissenters, your unwanted disappeared into the hole that America built. 

And what will we do when they start building incinerators at the camps? What will you do when they open up mass graves? 

For our people, the most precious gift of all: do not take my warning lightly. The story of Cuzcatlan is not just from the past. It is from the future. The workers face the same enemy, and the enemy never had your interest in mind. From the moment they had you, the plan was to have a worker. From the moment you existed, it was to create another soldier against the people of Cuzcatlan and the rest of the world. You were a commodity to them. 

But we have written you a new future. One in which we no longer point guns at each other. One in which our billionaires fear the land of precious people from learning they are no longer precious things. 

Turn to me now! And tell me you will not forget the last three minutes. You will never again be ignorant of this story. And you will not let it happen here. You will close the camps. You will destroy ICE.

Spectator: Yeah! Olivia: You would rather have seasonal bananas or never see one again than have it covered in blood. 

Spectators: That’s right! Yeah! 

Olivia: You would rather trade fairly with other union workers than kill your fellow man, wouldn’t you? 

Spectators: Yes! Olivia: Tell me you love me, and that our fates are tied! Tell me you’ll stop them from dragging me down from this place, and I’ll never let them do to you what they did to us. I promise. El pueblo unido…

Spectator: JAMÀS SERÀ VENCIDO!

Olivia: Nunca será vencido. Amen.

End Transcription.

[apricops]

Stranger Things season 1: beneath the superficial image of “peace and prosperity” in 1980s small-town America, there was the painful legacy of countless atrocities committed by the American government in the name of ‘freedom.’

Stranger Things season 4: evil Russians (not Soviets) have sent our All-American Hero to the gulags which apparently still exist in the 1980s and it’s up to us to save him 🇺🇸🦅🫡

[apricops]

There’s probably a term that already exists for this but if there isn’t I’m gonna call it ‘Rambofication’ in honor of its probably most well known instance: Rambo First Blood was about a soldier, John Rambo (that’s his actual name I’m not doing a bit), returning home from the Vietnam war, so traumatized by war that he brought the war home with him to a small town, unable to adapt to life without strict military discipline and hierarchy. Subsequent Rambo movies were about how John Rambo was the only supersoldier tough enough and patriotic enough to kill faceless hordes of dastardly foreign commies.

Ergo, ‘Rambofication’ is the process of a series starting with a relatively nuanced or subversive narrative before its sequels become a shallow embrace of the very narrative it originally subverted. It happens surprisingly often!

[coralei]

Folding Ideas has a video about this happening to the movie Jarhead and it's sequels

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5m-RHS1fU0

[inqorporeal]

You’ve Heard About Who ICE Is Recruiting. The Truth Is Far Worse. I’m the Proof.

What happens when you do minimal screening before hiring agents, arming them, and sending them into the streets? We're all finding out.

(This article is behind a paywall, so hit yon readmore for the full text)

January 13, 2026

The plan was never to become an ICE agent.

The plan, when I went to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Career Expo in Texas last August, was to learn what it was like to apply to be an ICE agent. Who wouldn’t be curious? The event promised on-the-spot hiring for would-be deportation officers: Walk in unemployed, walk out with a sweet $50k signing bonus, a retirement account, and a license to brutalize the country’s most vulnerable residents without consequence—all while wrapped in the warm glow of patriotism.

At first glance, my résumé has enough to tantalize a recruiter for America’s Gestapo-in-waiting: I enlisted in the Army straight out of high school and deployed to Afghanistan twice with the 82nd Airborne Division. After I got out, I spent a few years doing civilian analyst work. With a carefully arranged, skills-based résumé—one which omitted my current occupation—I figured I could maybe get through an initial interview.

The catch, however, is that there’s only one “Laura Jedeed” with an internet presence, and it takes about five seconds of Googling to figure out how I feel about ICE, the Trump administration, and the country’s general right-wing project. My social media pops up immediately, usually with a preview of my latest posts condemning Trump’s unconstitutional, authoritarian power grab. Scroll down and you’ll find articles with titles like “What I Saw in LA Wasn’t an Insurrection; It Was a Police Riot” and “Inside Mike Johnson’s Ties to a Far-Right Movement to Gut the Constitution.” Keep going for long enough and you might even find my dossier on AntifaWatch, a right-wing website that lists alleged members of the supposed domestic terror organization. I am, to put it mildly, a less-than-ideal recruit.

In short, I figured—at least back then—that my military background would be enough to get me in the door for a good look around ICE’s application process, and then even the most cursory background check would get me shown that same door with great haste.

The ICE expo in the Dallas area, where my application journey began, required attendees to register for a specific time slot, presumably to prevent throngs of eager patriots from flooding the event and overwhelming the recruiters. But when I showed up at 9 a.m., the flood was notably absent: there was no line to check in and no line to go through security. I walked down nearly empty hallways, past a nearly empty drug testing station, and into the event proper, where a man directed me to a line to wait in for an interview. I took my spot at the end; there were only six people ahead of me.

While I waited, I looked around the ESports Stadium Arlington—an enormous blacked-out event space optimized for video game tournaments that has a capacity of 2,500. During my visit, there couldn’t have been more than 150 people there.

Hopeful hires stood in tiny groups or found seats in the endless rows of cheap folding chairs that faced a stage ripped straight from Tron. Everything was bright-blue and lit-up and sci-fi-future angular. Above the monolithic platform hung three large monitors. The side monitors displayed static propaganda posters that urged the viewer to DEFEND THE HOMELAND and JOIN ICE TODAY, while the large central monitor played two short videos on loop: about 10 minutes of propaganda footage, again and again and again.

After about 15 minutes of waiting, an extraordinarily normal-looking middle-aged woman waved me forward. I sat across the black folding table from her on one of the uncomfortable black chairs. She asked for my name and date of birth, then whether I am over 40 (I am 38). Did I have law enforcement experience? No. Military experience? Yes. Did I retire from the military at 20+ years, or leave once my enlistment was up? The latter, I told her, then repeated my carefully rehearsed, completely true explanation for why the résumé I’d submitted had a large gap. “I had a little bit of a quarter-life crisis. Ended up going to college for part of that time, and since then I’ve been kind of—gig economy stuff.”

She was spectacularly uninterested: “OK. And what location is your preference?”

After some dithering, I settled on my home state of New York. That was the last question; the entire process took less than six minutes. The woman took my résumé and placed the form she’d been filling out on top. “They are prioritizing current law enforcement first. They’re going to adjudicate your résumé,” she told me. If my application passed muster, I’d receive an email about next steps, which could arrive in the next few hours but would likely take a few days. I left, thanked her for her time, and prepared to hear back never.

The expo event was part of ICE’s massive recruitment campaign for the foot soldiers it needs to execute the administration’s dream of a deportation campaign large enough to shift America’s demographic balance back whiteward. You’ve probably seen evidence of it yourself: ICE’s “Defend the homeland” propaganda is ubiquitous enough to be the Uncle Sam “I Want You” poster of our day, though somewhere in there our nation lost the plot about the correct posture toward Nazis.

When Donald Trump took office, ICE numbered approximately 10,000. Despite this event’s lackluster attendance, their recruitment push is reportedly going well; the agency reported 12,000 new recruits in 2025, which means the agency has more new recruits than old hands. That’s the kind of growth that changes the culture of an agency.

Many of ICE’s critics worry that the agency is hoovering up pro-Trump thugs—Jan. 6 insurrectionists, white nationalists, etc.—for a domestic security force loyal to the president. The truth, my experience suggests, is perhaps even scarier: ICE’s recruitment push is so sloppy that the administration effectively has no idea who’s joining the agency’s ranks. We’re all, collectively, in the dark about whom the state is arming, tasking with the most sensitive of law enforcement work, and then sending into America’s streets. And we are all, collectively, discovering just how deadly of an arrangement that really is.

At the end of my brief interview, the recruiter mentioned I could talk to a current deportation officer about what the job would be like. There was no line to talk to a deportation officer (did I mention how empty the place was?) and so I walked up, introduced myself to one of them, and asked about day-to-day duties.

I shouldn’t expect to hit the streets right away, the agent told me. Odds were good I’d get a support position first—something like the Criminal Alien Program office. “Let’s say a local police officer arrests someone out in the field for a DUI. Extremely common. Or beating their wife or whatever—all the typical crimes they commit,” he said. (The “they” here being “undocumented immigrants,” and while it’s extremely difficult to measure, evidence suggests that “they” actually commit crimes at a lower rate than U.S.-born citizens.)

If the cops suspect they’re dealing with an immigrant who doesn’t have permanent legal status, they alert ICE, whose agents conduct interviews and run record checks. If this preliminary investigation suggests that status, the person ends up in the Criminal Alien Program office for processing—which is where I would come in. “What you see on TV, with us arresting people and doing all kinds of crazy things, that’s maybe 10 percent. The other 90 percent is essentially doing a bunch of paperwork,” the agent said. “It takes a lot to remove somebody from the United States. Some people are subject to due process.”

The officer ran down other departments I might end up in: Prosecutions, Removal Coordination Unit, or Detention. The point being that I should not expect to be a badass street officer on Day 1. “I have so many guys that come over to me, they’re like, ‘I’m gonna put cuffs on somebody. I’m gonna arrest somebody.’ Well, you need to master this first and then we’ll see about getting you on the field.”

I told him that I was fine with office work—with my analyst background, it seemed like a better fit for my skill set anyway. His attitude shift was subtle, but instant and unmistakable; this was the wrong attitude and the wrong answer. “Just to be upfront, the goal is to put as many guns and badges out in the field as possible,” he said.

The agent then told me a bit about his own background. Like me, he enlisted straight out of high school, then got out and vowed to get as far away from the violence of the military as possible. Like a lot of veterans, he had trouble assimilating into the civilian world. “After about six months, I was like, ‘These people aren’t like me. I want to be around like-minded people.’ ” He found his way into law enforcement. That was well over a decade ago—he’s on his way to a very comfortable retirement, and he enjoys the work. “I like that instant gratification of Hey, that guy committed this crime, these X, Y, and Z, he’s not even supposed to be here,” he said.

I do not agree with his framing, but have no trouble understanding the appeal. Hell, it’s why I enlisted in the first place. Thankfully, Afghanistan beat it out of me. If I believed what he believed, I would surely do the same thing he’s doing.

I thanked him for the information and time, shook his hand, and took a seat on one of those uncomfortable folding chairs. I had a few hours before my flight back to New York City, and it made more sense to hang out than to flee the building and get good and airport drunk, regardless of how desperately I would have preferred the latter. Instead, I settled in to do what everyone does at the DMV: check my phone and people-watch. The aspiring officers fall broadly into three categories: thick-necked law enforcement types who look like they do steroids but don’t know how to work out, bearded spec-ops wannabes who look like they take steroids and do know how to work out, and dorks. Pencil-necked misfits. I couldn’t tell whether there were more white or Hispanic people waiting for their email, but it was close. A few Black applicants rounded out the overwhelmingly male group.

I’d been sitting around for about an hour when the video suddenly stopped and a bearded man in a black suit stepped onto the stage. He did not introduce himself—we were, I gathered, supposed to already know who he was—but it became clear he’s a senior agent of some sort. “I figured it would be best if I break up the same video you’ve been watching for the last four hours,” he said, and offered to answer any questions we might have.

One person asked about work/life balance, which the agent said is possible but not the route he’s chosen. Someone else wanted to know about travel opportunities and he talked about the many places he’s gone as part of the job.

Every other question during the 45 minutes the agent stood onstage pertained to the hiring process or what we could expect in training. Law enforcement types seemed especially concerned about the painful parts: Would they have to get pepper sprayed again? Would they have to get shot with a taser if they’d already qualified? Yes and probably not, respectively. The agent took the opportunity to gush about ICE’s new state-of-the-art semi-automatic tasers and brand-new pepper-ball guns. “It’s mostly very liberal cities—San Francisco, Los Angeles—where groups will come and try to stop ICE officers from arresting somebody. They’re like, ‘We’re going to form a human wall against you,’ ” he said. “When they do that, you can just pop ‘em up. Let them disperse and cry about it.”

When, during a moment of protracted silence, the agent threatened to put the video back on if no one had questions, I asked about harassment and doxing. “We will prosecute people to the fullest extent of the law,” he assured me, “and then people like myself will go on TV and publicly talk about how that person is now in prison to dissuade other people from doing it.”

As empty as the place had been when I’d arrived, it was even emptier by the time the senior agent ended the Q&A. Somebody vastly overestimated the number of Americans willing to take a job brutalizing and disappearing hard-working men and women—even with a potential $50K bonus, even in this economy.

That may have something to do with what happened to me next.

I completely missed the email when it came. I’d kept an eye on my inbox for the next few days, but I’d grown lax when nothing came through. But then, on Sept. 3, it popped up.

“Please note that this is a TENTATIVE offer only, therefore do not end your current employment,” the email instructed me. It then listed a series of steps I’d need to quickly take. I had 48 hours to log onto USAJobs and fill out my Declaration for Federal Employment, then five additional days to return the forms attached to the email. Among these forms: driver’s license information, an affidavit that I’ve never received a domestic violence conviction, and consent for a background check. And it said: “If you are declining the position, it is not necessary to complete the action items listed below.”

As I mentioned, I’d missed the email, so I did exactly none of these things.

And that might have been where this all ended—an unread message sinking to the bottom of my inbox—if not for an email LabCorp sent three weeks later. “Thank you for confirming that you wish to continue with the hiring process,” it read. (To be clear, I had confirmed no such thing.) “Please complete your required pre-employment drug test.”

The timing was unfortunate. Cannabis is legal in the state of New York, and I had partaken six days before my scheduled test. Then again, I hadn’t smoked much; perhaps with hydration I could get to the next stage. Worst-case scenario, I’d waste a small piece of ICE’s gargantuan budget. I traveled to my local LabCorp, peed in a cup, and waited for a call telling me I’d failed.

Nine days later, impatience got the best of me. For the first time, I logged into USAJobs and checked my application to see if my drug test had come through. What I actually saw was so implausible, so impossible, that at first I did not understand what I was looking at.

Somehow, despite never submitting any of the paperwork they sent me—not the background check or identification info, not the domestic violence affidavit, none of it—ICE had apparently offered me a job.

According to the application portal, my pre-employment activities remained pending. And yet, it also showed that I had accepted a final job offer and that my onboarding status was “EOD”—Entered On Duty, the start of an enlistment period. I moused over the exclamation mark next to “Onboarding” and a helpful pop-up appeared. “Your EOD has occurred. Welcome to ICE!”

I clicked through to my application tracking page. They’d sent my final offer on Sept. 30, it said, and I had allegedly accepted. “Welcome to Ice. … Your duty location is New York, New York. Your EOD was on Tuesday, September 30th, 2025.”

By all appearances, I was a deportation officer. Without a single signature on agency paperwork, ICE had officially hired me.

Perhaps, if I’d accepted, they would have demanded my pre-employment paperwork, done a basic screening, realized their mistake, and fired me immediately. And yet, the pending and upcoming tasks list suggested a very different outcome. My physical fitness test had been initiated on Oct. 6, it said: three days in the future. My medical check had apparently been completed on Oct. 6.

The portal also listed my background check as completed on Oct. 6. Had I preemptively passed? Was ICE seriously going to let me start training without finding out the first thing about me? I reached out to ICE for an explanation, but never heard back.

The only thing left for me to do was press the green “Accept” button on the home page. And maybe I should have. Maybe no one would have ever checked my name and I could have written the story of a lifetime. Or maybe the agency infamous for brutalizing and disappearing people with no regard for the law or basic human rights would have figured out exactly who I am while I was in one of their facilities with no way to escape. I’m not actually a domestic terrorist sent straight from Antifa headquarters, but to a paranoid fascist regime increasingly high on their own supply, I sure look like one on paper. Self-preservation won out.

I hit “Decline,” closed my browser, and took a long, deep breath.

What are we to make of all this? To be clear, I barely applied to ICE. I skipped the steps of the application process that would have clued the agency in on my lack of fitness for the position. I made no effort to hide my public loathing of the agency, what it stands for, and the administration that runs it. And they offered me the job anyway.

It’s possible that I’m an aberration—perhaps I experienced some kind of computer glitch that affected my application and no one else’s. But given all of the above, it seems far more likely that ICE is running an extremely leaky ship when it comes to recruitment.

With no oversight and with ICE concealing its agents’ identities, it’ll be extremely difficult for us to know.

There’s a temptation to take some comfort in ICE’s sloppiness. There’s a real argument here that an agency so inept in its recruitment will also be inept at training people and carrying out its mission. We’re seeing some very sloppy police work from ICE, including an inability to do basic things like throw someone down and cuff them. On some level, all of this is a reminder that their takeover is neither total nor inevitable.

But if they missed the fact that I was an anti-ICE journalist who didn’t fill out her paperwork, what else might they be missing? How many convicted domestic abusers are being given guns and sent into other people’s homes? How many people with ties to white supremacist organizations are indiscriminately targeting minorities on principle, regardless of immigration status? How many rapists and pedophiles are working in ICE detention centers with direct and unsupervised access to a population that will be neither believed nor missed? How are we to trust ICE’s allegedly thorough investigations of the people they detain and deport when they can’t even keep their HR paperwork straight?

And if they’re not going to screen me out, what hope is there of figuring out which recruit might one day turn into a trigger-happy agent who would forget that law enforcement officers are trained not to stand in front of vehicles, get jumpy, and shoot a 37-year-old woman to death on the streets of Minneapolis? That’s exactly what happened last week, and why Renee Good will never have a 38th birthday, and why her children will never again be hugged by their mother.

By all appearances, the only thing ICE is screening for is a desire to work for ICE: a very specific kind of person perfectly suited for the kind of mission creep we are currently seeing. Good’s murder is not an isolated incident; the American Civil Liberties Union reports a nationwide trend of ICE pointing guns at, brutalizing, and even detaining citizens who stop to film them. A Minneapolis pastor who protested ICE by chanting “We are not afraid” was detained at gunpoint by an agent who reportedly asked him: “Are you afraid now?”

I am. We all should be.

[luulapants]

Might fuck around and paper my town with these. Feel free to join me.

[c4bl3fl4m3]

Would you be willing to post the files for these so we can have the best quality copy for printing purposes?

[luulapants]

Here's a folder with the files! I couldn't get the last one to PDF correctly with the image, so it's still text.

[girl-debord]

jfc the US hasn't been at war 10 minutes and braindead american lefties are wheeling out the support our troops shit. read the fucking room

no one knows better than the soldiers-turned-commies ive known that there is no hope in expecting class consciousness to develop among US military personnel, you all have no idea just how much these ppl are reactionaries among the reactionary. if there's any hope for armed communist struggle in the US it's going to have to be self-taught militias, these men are the fucking wehrmacht

[evil-space-empress]

It's simply vomit inducing to learn that the "the US military is the largest polluter in the world" factoid only refers to the on-paper oil purchases of the US military and does not take into account all the myriad of other ways it pollutes, poisons, and actively destroys the Earth. It is polluting far past the point of it even being quantifiable. There is truly no greater threat to the whole globe, no greater evil, than the USA and its military.

[rui-cifer]

It is year 2001. I see on the news that the local Seoul municipal government had to spend its own money cleaning up the oil spill at the Yongan Army Garrison. It was known for 10 years, apprently. When I was entering middle school in 2006, the United States forces in Korea claimed that it was fixed, but the pollution worsened. My parents protested against the base's presence in 2002 after the US military killed two high school students walking home from school and the killers were acquitted. In 2025, you will see people on websites like Reddit that so badly wants to acquit the two civilian murderers while painting the Korean people rising up to protest against the occupiers as "political hijacking of a tragedy."

In december 2012, fresh off my first semester off from a university in the USA, I am visiting my grand aunt in Niigata. On the TV, there's a panel show discussing the US proposed military's removal of 9,000 marines, an agreement that was reached in april. As of 2024, it hasn't fully happened. In 2024, however, I do see on the TV that the presidential hopeful Kamala Harris secured the release of a yank soldier that ran over 2 Japanese civilians with his car from jail. One of the leading news casters in the mainstream USA network TV calls this a great victory for justice.

In 2019, I am starting my second MA in Oʻahu in Hawaiʻi. I lived 20 minutes by drive (45 minutes with traffic but let's not get into that) away from University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in Aiea, but only 5 minutes from a military base, at a distant relative's basement-garage-apartment. There were some weeks where I was unable to use the tap water because the US military base would have its fuel leak directly into the springs where we got our water. In 2025, the only people ever indicted were 2 civilians for 1 of such incidents.

Starting my PhD program in Upstate New York in 2022, I am talking to one of my PhD advisors. She got into academia because she was from Guam and her people, despite the land being owned by the USA, has no political say in what goes on on the island. She talks about the fuel dumping that happens in Guam. We both share a sigh and a knowing nod.

Everywhere the United States' military goes, it leaves behind a trail of suffering that it will simply not address. It leaves a deep scar in every local community and the only people that the military ever demands responsibility from are the civilians they're occupying, not ever themselves.

[transcriptroopers]

It would be great if people would watch the whole video and form their own opinions, but since I'm seeing a lot of sharing of just this sort of thing

I thought I'd give some extra context.

This video takes place immediately after Trump and Mamdani have had a private discussion. I'm unaware of the contents of that discussion. Around 3:04 in the above video:

Reporter: Mr. Mamdani, it sounds like you've had a productive discussion. But just days ago, you referred to President Trump as a "despot who had betrayed the country." You said that you'd be his worst nightmare, and accused him of having a fascist agenda. Are you planning to retract any of these remarks in order to improve your relationship?

Mamdani: I think both President Trump and I... we are clear about our positions and our views. And what I really appreciate about the president is that the meeting that we had focused not on places of disagreement - which there are many - and also focused on the shared purpose that we had in serving New Yorkers. And frankly, that is something that could transform the lives of 8 and a half million people who are currently struggling under a Cost of Living crisis with one in four living in poverty. And the meeting came back, again and again, to what it could look like to lift those New Yorkers out of struggle, and start to deliver them a city that they could do more than just struggle to afford it, but actually start to live in it. Trump: And I've been called much worse than a despot, so, it's not that insulting. I think he'll change his mind after we get to work.

After Trump's quip is a series of unrelated questions. Mamdani neither confirms his previous statements nor makes any accusations. If Mamdani does believe that Trump is a despot or a fascist, he shows nothing but willingness to work with him at this point in the video. After a few more questions, we reach 11:27.

Reporter: I want to ask the Mayor Elect about a House Resolution which has passed overwhelmingly to condemn socialism. Including 86 Democrats, all of House Dem leadership, and the minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, despite his endorsement of you. What's your reaction to that? Mamdani: I have to be honest with you: I focus very little on resolutions. Frankly, I've been focusing on - The reporter's interruption is muffled. The YouTube CC claims it's "On socialism." I hear: "Do you condemn socialism?" (11:47-11:48) Mamdani: I understand. I think the focus is on the work at hand. I can tell you that I am someone who is a Democratic Socialist. I've been very open about that. And I know there might be differences about ideology, but the place of agreement is the work that needs to be done to make New York City affordable. Same reporter: And I want to clarify your answer to Steven Nelson when he asked about your comment calling the president "a fascist," and your answer was, "Both President Trump and I have been clear about our positions and our views." Are you affirming that you think President Trump is a fascist? (12:17) Mamdani: I've spoken about - Trump, interrupting: That's okay. You can just say yes. Okay? Mamdani, smiling and nodding, causing others to begin laughing: Okay, alright. Yeah. Trump: It's easier. It's easier than explaining. I don't mind. (00:12:24, when Trump taps Mamdani on the shoulder.)

After this, nothing is said and the topic shifts to Ukraine.

However - and this is only tangentially related, but I think important ...

21:29 Same reporter as previously transcribed segment: Mr. President, I was wondering if you could clear up some confusion around a Washington Post report. There was this explosive report that the Coast Guard is no longer going to characterize swastikas and nooses as hate symbols. DHS called that a "lie," and "fake news," can you clear up...?" Trump: I don't know anything about it. When was this written? Reporter: I think yesterday.

Quick interruption. This is the article she's referencing in question. It's referring to what appeared to be a proposed update in Coast Guard policy regarding hate symbols. It would have read: "Potentially divisive symbols and flags include, but are not limited to, the following: a noose, a swastika..." and so on. The sticking point was the phrasing "potentially divisive," leaving room for interpretation rather than clearly designating these things as hate symbols. Recently the Trump administration began rolling back "DEI" language and the various branches began reevaluating their policies in favor of weeding out "overly general language." in doing so, they created a drafted policy that contained overly general language. Time reports:

Copp, the Post reporter, added in another X post later Thursday that “the Coast Guard published a new policy, dated Nov. 20, that re-establishes that it specifically sees swastikas and nooses as hate symbols - not as just ‘potentially divisive’ and states that they are expressly prohibited. Importantly, it says the new guidance published tonight would supersede any other policies out there."

Back to the video.

21:49 Trump: Well, look, the Coast Guard's an incredible group of people. I know them very well. We just ordered a lot of new coast guard cutters. Beautiful. The most magnificent ship. They look like yachts with lots of guns on them. So, I don't know. I haven't seen any report like that. But certainly we want them to remain a great force, and they are.

End transcript and enter my thoughts. I don't like the way Mamdani handled this at all. He's eager to work with the man he calls a tyrannical fascist if it means potentially giving the people he personally cares about a marginally better standard of living. Couldn't make even one genuine criticism standing next to the man. Everyone asks why Trump likes Mamdani so much; it's because Zohran Mamdani is the highest profile socialist in American politics right now, and he will calmly stand next to Trump, smile, laugh, and say that they had a very productive discussion wherein they discovered they actually "have a lot of things in common." Then he'll redirect a question about Israel to being about making New York affordable.

This video, this reaction, this climate... it's all quite a lot right now. I hope people remember to dig deeper. i'm still thinking.

[bloglikeanegyptian]

at the beginning of the genocide i used to make a lot of posts encouraging people to speak up and thanking people for speaking up, because i know a lot of people were intimidated by manufactured complexity about the middle east, and a lot of people were scared of repercussions. and then i stopped, because it started to feel really dehumanizing to be thanking allies for the bare minimum, and because i was tired, and because i was distracted by the scope of loss

but now i've noticed that as things have gotten worse, as so many of the things we asked you to speak up before they happened have come to pass, people are actually less likely to talk about palestine than they were ten months ago. now that it's palestine and lebanon, now that it's genocide and carnage, now that it's clear that the rule of law really doesn't apply equally no matter how much people protest and how much evidence they compile, now that people are criminalizing free speech and actively inviting authoritarianism simply to curb protest on palestine, i've noticed a withdrawal that isn't just exhaustion, but also disillusionment. and unfortunately this has left the onus on the most vulnerable to continue to be the most visible

so let me get back to it. yes, it is the bare minimum and it is small. yes, it can be more complicated now with an election you care about coming up soon. yes, things are very bleak. but i've said it before. this isn't a short term process. this is the long haul. there is no button that ends a genocide, there is only a lever we are all collectively pulling together.

the least and most you can do is speak up. i will give you concrete examples: when you see a post that dehumanizes arabs, a post that ignores genocide, a post that justifies massacres, you actually should object to that. it's not nothing. this is the rhetoric that allows these wars to continue, as poisonous as overt warmongering is covert normalizing with warmongering, is ignoring the genocide in gaza and the massacres in lebanon, and all the other overreaches of the US war machine. when you see people being unfairly targeted for being pro-palestine, you should still support them. when you see the things you love—movies, celebrities, literature, publishers, companies—supporting genocide, normalizing israeli war crimes, ignoring the sheer amount of suffering in the world, ignoring the wars happening with your taxes, you should still speak up against them. this isn't something you stop doing. this is now something you live with, the way you live with every other principle you hold dear, whether it comes to racism, to homophobia, to kindness, to cruelty, to keeping libraries open, to keeping children alive.

if you remember that this is injustice, then you have a role. your role is to remind people. they haven't forgotten that they are committing injustice, they're hoping you have. and the least you can do, the very least you can do, is remind them that you haven't.