Are we witnessing “The Battle for Minneapolis” as The New Yorker claimed or “Our Gettysburg Moment” as The Bulwark had it, or are progressives simply so far gone they see no danger in taunting men they described as poorly trained thugs with guns?
To hear Democrats and their progressive allies tell it, President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy is being carried out on American streets by a modern day Gestapo staffed by masked, bloodthirsty, trigger-happy yet poorly-trained men with guns. Pick a Democrat, almost any Democrat, and they have used this language, nor is the comparison seem to be purely figurative, metaphorical, or rhetorical. Last weekend, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal made an explicit reference to his own family’s experience with actual Nazis. “My father escaped Germany in 1935 and came to America after seeing what was to come in those same Gestapo-type tactics in Germany,” he said. If his father had stayed, however, “He would have seen paramilitary force going door to door, rounding up people just like him — exactly the kinds of tactics we now see unfolding. ICE, as a paramilitary force … seizing people, dragging them out of their cars or homes.” On the same day, Michael Tomasky, writing for The Daily Beast claimed, “We’re Nearing the Day When ICE Thugs Just Open Fire on Crowds” suggesting the agency might just start shooting people on sight for no real reason, Arnold Schwarzenegger Running Man style, then presumably dump their rotting bodies in shallow mass graves. As he put it, “what makes what’s happening in this country today different” is “The state is the perp. The government is beyond the law. The United States is now closer to Bashar Al Assad’s Syria, or perhaps even today’s Iran, than to anything we recognize as fitting within the understood norms of American history. That’s a pretty big statement, I realize, but it is not an exaggeration…Until Minneapolis, I would have told you that as bad as Trump is, he’s not capable of ordering ICE agents to shoot people (citizens or not) at random, and that as bad as ICE is, they’d refuse such orders. Now I no longer believe either of those things. This man and his government are clearly capable of mass violence against immigrants and all who support them. It seems only a matter of time now before some of these thuggish ICE agents, under orders from the thug president, shoot some people down.” Simultaneously, progressives have been insisting that ICE agents are poorly trained, perhaps not even capable of carrying out these hypothetical orders to commit mass murder on our streets. Late last year, The Chicago Sun Times decried the hiring of new agents mandated by the Big Beautiful Bill, claiming “These ICE and Border Patrol officers are inexperienced, minimally trained and subject to a reporting hierarchy designed for the unique legal challenges of border interdiction. Now these new recruits assume an air of invincibility to go with their masked anonymity. Pepper-spraying civilians after a car crash with ICE agents or brandishing loaded weapons against unarmed civilians are not the techniques of law enforcement under normal constitutional constraints.”
If we were to take these statements at face value, anyone with a sound mind would consider it a toxic mix, something to stay far, far away from for their own protection. After all, who with half a brain would seek out armed men with orders to shoot you dead for no almost reason? To me at least, this makes it rather unusual that progressives haven’t been urging people to remain clear of these supposed bands of killers. Instead, they have been actively training and championing protesters as agitators with the express purpose of interfering and obstructing the operations of an organization they consider to be poorly trained, masked thugs. Earlier this month, The New York Post and other outlets detailed the workings of ICE Watch, a group organized via a dedicated mobile app of which Renee Good, who was killed after driving into an ICE agent, was a member, described by her friends as a “warrior.” According to the Post, ICE Watch is “dedicated to tracking and ‘resisting’ immigration enforcement operations through apps and a rapid response hotline.” The group – which operates in multiple states – encourages “tips and sightings” of ICE agents 24/7, including reporting “how many agents are present,” if “they are detaining/ kidnapping someone,” “what weapons” they are carrying, and “what vehicles are they present with,” even packaging it up in a catchy little acronym, SALUTE, for Size, Activity, Location, Units, Time, and Equipment. Though the group doesn’t openly instruct individuals to directly interfere with arrests, it has promoted posts on Instagram to “de-arrest” someone, that is “physically removing an arrestee from a law enforcement officer’s grips, opening the door of a car or pressuring law enforcement officers to release an arrestee,” and is clearly organized around resistance in general. While much of the attention has been given to resisting ICE, they have a broader mission that includes all of law enforcement. In Minnesota, ICE Watch describes itself as “an autonomous collective documenting, archiving, and resisting against ICE, Police, and all Colonial Militarized Regimes,” which promotes training on “how to stand with…neighbors and assert their rights against these illegal injustices across MN and the rest of the Midwest!” Other chapters follow similar missions. For example, the New York State Youth Leadership Council, dedicated to “an inclusive society where currently- and formerly-undocumented youth belong, thrive, and are unafraid” and “the collective power of undocumented youth in NYC through our Organizing Team, Advocacy Team, and Dream Team Network. Dream Teams are advocacy hubs led by undocumented students, based in high schools and colleges” promotes its own incarnation using the ICE Watch Name and the SALUTE method. Their “Cop & ICE Watch Training” materials propose a “Hate Free Zone” in Queens, NY, urging people to “deter,” “de-escalate,” and “document.”
More recently, the Post reported on a private Signal Chat that appears to be being used to organize members of ICE Watch, enabling them to respond to the motions of the agency in Minneapolis and presumably other areas. As they described it, “A coordinated web of encrypted chats, street alerts and tracking of ICE ‘Abductors’ in a sophisticated database reviewed by Fox News Digital shows that agitators were already mobilized at the scene where 37-year-old Alex Pretti was killed minutes before any shots were fired.” After Mr. Pretti was killed, “a national network of socialist, communist and Marxist-Leninist cells in the United States leveraged the tragic fatality into a nationwide protest operation. While grief and outrage over Pretti’s death is genuine, the network’s real-time rapid response, using short sensational video clips and emojis as weapons of propaganda, offers a window into the disciplined logistics, messaging and coordination of far-left warriors fomenting insurgency-like confrontation with authorities.” They continued, “The encrypted Signal messages obtained by Fox News Digital in real time show that anti-ICE ‘rapid responders’ were actively tracking, broadcasting and summoning ‘backup’ around federal agents outside Glam Doll Donuts on Nicollet Avenue, where the shooting happened. Local ‘rapid responders’ made at least 26 entries into a database called ‘MN ICE Plates’ in the critical hours before and after the killing, documenting the license plate numbers and details of alleged ICE vehicles they claimed to see around Nicollet Avenue.” “Backup needed at the Black Forest Inn parking lot on Nicollet Ave just south of 26th Street,” one of the messages read. “Multiple vehicles with many agents appear to be staging there,” it continued. “One confirmed ICE vehicle seen was a maroon Dodge Durango [plate number], but it has driven away northbound on Nicollet.” From there, the killing incident went national, marking “the beginning of an almost instantaneous weekend surge by far-left organizations, including hardened socialist and communist groups operating in an ecosystem that national security experts describe as an insurgent-style operation designed to exploit tragedy to wage a domestic political war.” Further there is some indication that individuals connected to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz have participated in these chats including Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, though she has denied involvement.
To me at least, there are two possible explanations for this behavior. Either progressives have collectively gone insane and do not realize the obvious danger in confronting what they describe as armed, poorly trained thugs, even when packing a weapon of their own as in Mr. Pretti’s sad case, behavior that many would describe as suicidal in most circumstances, or they truly believe they are at war with the Trump Administration and are willing to lay down their lives for the cause. According to what passes for the intelligentsia at least, this is indeed a war. On Sunday, Emily Witt, writing for The New Yorker described it as “The Battle for Minneapolis” and claimed outright that ICE Watch was a “vigilante system,” a response to a “a paramilitary force in our city acting beyond the Constitution consistently” according to one of the members she spoke to. Similarly, Jonathan V. Last, writing for The Bulwark described the overall situation as “Our Gettysburg Moment,” referencing the famous Civil War battle that left 7,000 dead by noting that neither “the Union nor the Confederate army planned to engage at Gettysburg. ” In his view, “It’s important to understand that no one understood the stakes at Gettysburg. Neither army intended to have a major showdown at that time or in that place. Once begun, the conflict escalated by its own logic until neither side had any choice but to go all-in. Even after the battle was finished, neither side understood that it had just fought the defining engagement of the war. This last bit is crucial. The Union understood it had won a victory, but saw the escape of Lee’s army as failure. The Confederates believed they had suffered a setback, but did not understand the strategic implications of what had just happened.” From there, Mr. Last asserted that it’s “not clear why the Trump regime chose to invade Minneapolis. Maybe it was animus toward the city’s Somali population. Maybe it was because Gov. Tim Walz had run against Trump and Vance. Maybe it was because they believed the state’s welfare fraud investigations made Minneapolis favorable terrain on which to fight. But when the regime’s forces occupied the city they were surprised by the resistance they encountered. Not from Democratic politicians, or institutions, or the legal establishment. From ordinary people. The people of Minneapolis organized to protect their neighbors and provide oversight of the regime’s forces that the local government either could not, or would not, perform,” but “Once begun, these engagements have a logic of their own. Maybe Minneapolis will prove to be a hinge point in the battle against American fascism. You can never tell from inside the crucible.”
While both are likely to claim that they were merely being figurative, making allusions to make their writing more impactful, one thing is clear: Despite two people shot dead in less than a month, they specifically chose to position the situation on the ground as a battle in an ongoing war, rather than do anything resembling defusing the tensions or easing the rhetoric. It’s also an open question what those on the ground actually think, especially when they themselves describe ICE as a “paramilitary organization,” and that alone says a lot about the modern progressive mind. Perhaps the answer is a bit of both, that they are insane enough to think they’re fighting a way they can win?
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 