At this point, we've now watched so many elected Democrat officials arrested or detained by regime-loyal security forces for nonviolently opposing Trump's fascist mass deportation project, that I could probably transform posts like this into a form letter. In case you hadn't heard, the Gestapo arrested NYC Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander on Tuesday, and briefly attempted to charge him with obstruction and assaulting a federal agent. Would you be surprised to learn that the Gestapo lied and Lander, a vaguely-progressive Democrat didn't assault anyone, it's unclear if he was even breaking a law, and the entire incident was captured on video? Well after the last three times the Gestapo or Trumenreich representatives lied about filmed political intimidation tactics against Democratic Mayor Ras Baraka, Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver, or Democratic US Senator Alex Padilla, you probably shouldn't be.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/nyc-ice-brad-lander

'This Is Fascism': NYC Comptroller Brad Lander Arrested by ICE at an Immigration Court

"A video shared on Lander's nongovernment X account shows him holding on to a man and asking multiple times for officials to furnish a warrant. "I will let go when you show me the judicial warrant," Lander says in the video.

Lander is then separated from the man and pushed toward a wall and handcuffed. "You don't have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens," Lander says in the video. The video shows Lander then being escorted into an elevator."

As I alluded to at the top of this post, Lander has been released from custody, and the charges against him have been dropped. Apparently not even a crooked fascist Attorney General like Pam Bondi wants to argue that ICE agents manhandling a NYC Comptroller on film is actually assault *against* the Gestapo. It is however important to ask here if, had what I can only describe as the assault and confinement of Brad Lander not been captured on film, would the regime have continued to insist he assaulted an ICE pig? Who knows, but given how bullshit the charge was in the first place, I'm not willing to bet against it.

Now, there are those who will argue that Lander isn't legally in the right to have tried to warrant-check the Gestapo, because the law allows ICE pigs to kidnap migrants in public places without one, and Trump's unhinged DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has ended what was only a guideline to not consider courthouses a valid place to abduct brown people for (potentially) not having papers. This is unfortunately true, but there is a vast discrepancy between asking to see a judicial warrant because you don't understand our recently-altered fascist immigration guidelines, and accusations that refusing to let go of someone the Gestapo wanted to kidnap, amounts to assaulting a federal officer. Furthermore, there is a difference between legally right, and morally right; I'd be willing to wager that not one person who has ever cast a vote for Brad Lander at any level of government cares that nazi games of Simon Says allow the Gestapo to do this, and they almost certainly support Lander's opposition to Trump's mass deportation tactics, and the Comptroller's willingness to put his body on the line to try and stop this nazi bullshit. Regardless of what Noem's guidelines say, everyone who isn't a literal fucking fascist knows that Brad Lander is not the criminal in this story.

So all's well that ends well? Absolutely not. As I've discussed in the past, the fascist Trumpenreich regime is actively working to criminalize its political opposition, and acclimatize the American public to images of Democratic officials being led away in handcuffs for opposing the mighty God Emperor Trump or his fascist agenda. This isn't about conviction rates, or whether or not any of these cases go to trial; although I should point out that the absurd assault charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver are still outstanding. This is about sending a message to both Democrat politicians opposing the fascist mass deportation program, and the American people, and that message is "do not cross the Swine Emperor, and anyone who does is definitely a criminal."

A fascist dictatorship is not birthed from even a faux democracy like ours overnight. There is an installation process that involves acclimatizing the people to the logic and methodology of your authoritarian rule in advance, before you finally pull the string and shatter even the illusion of democracy. The Trump regime is clearly making a grand spectacle of slapping their Democrat opponents in handcuffs as part of that acclimatization process. And in that regard, they got what they wanted the moment the cuffs were slapped on Lander, even if everyone watching at home already knew the charges were bullshit.

#Fascism #Trump #ICE #PamBondi #BradLander #Gestapo #Migrants #Immigration #MassDeporation #CourthouseArrests #DemocraticParty #PoliceState