If you are taking about Portland, it really was mostly peaceful protest. It probably would have been completely peaceful if trump hadn’t sent in his fascist anonymous SS shock troops (against the express wishes of both the city and state governments).
Can you try again without going full Godwin's Law on your first post in the thread? How can we have any hope of productive conversation with rhetoric like this? (I'm far from a Trump supporter, but there's valid Trump criticism--and plenty of it--and then there's absurd hyperbole).
I'm not who you're responding to, but I'm not sure how else to reasonably characterize unmarked, unidentified armed and armored personnel snatching people off the streets into unmarked vehicles.
I don't believe those were US Marshalls, iirc they were volunteers from a collection of federal agencies that were the most loyal to Trump.
However, they way they acted, in refusing to identify themselves, the agency for which they worked, where they were taking their abductees, etc makes me inclined to liken them more to a notorious fascist unit than a legitimate law enforcement agency.
Per NPR (a solidly left-leaning source) they were US Marshals and they used unmarked vehicles to avoid the violent protesters who were allegedly targeting police. They didn't arrest anyone, but transported them to a safe location for questioning and immediately released them. Certainly not a good look but obviously this is nothing like SS troopers kidnapping people for death camps, torture, imprisonment, etc.
I am a vocal critic of Trump, but I don't understand the impulse to invoke absurd comparisons between the US and Nazi Germany. Trump gives us plenty of legitimate stuff to criticize on a regular basis, why discredit yourself like this?
“They didn’t arrest anyone.” Please. What is arrest other than losing freedom movement and then being moved to a location. It doesn’t make sense to me that you’re choosing to die on this hill. There is no excuse for using unmarked vehicles and police with no insignia. This is the US government, they’re doing it because they’re afraid of protestors? Sounds like BS. I’m tired of the government playing the victim during protests.
What if there really were fascist shock-troopers and when people tried to express their outrage, anyone who wasn’t there says “whoa whoa, tone down the hyperbole”
There’s no real threat of fascism in America and people who use the term to characterize American politics are either ignorant or disingenuous or both.
I’d say Trump was definitely toeing the line. Taking all his actions as a whole
1) sending federal police to Portland and randomly kidnapping people
2) literally spewing lies every other word to the point you don’t know what’s real
3) wanting a military parade with tanks saluting him
4) inciting a mob to storm a democratically elected legislative assembly
5) expecting Supreme Court picks to be loyal to him specifically
6) undermining the integrity of an election which his own government and party often admitted was secure
…
