When Even the German Far-Right Thinks You’ve Gone Too Far . . .
Der Führer, upon learning that things are not going as he would like.
From Politico.eu:
Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has long sought close ties to the Trump administration in its quest for powerful international allies and an end to its political isolation at home.
But as public sentiment in Germany increasingly turns against U.S. President Donald Trump and his foreign interventionism — in particular his talk of taking control of Greenland and his seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — AfD leaders are recalibrating, putting distance between their party and a U.S. president they previously embraced.
“He has violated a fundamental election promise, namely not to interfere in other countries, and he has to explain that to his own voters,” Alice Weidel, one of the AfD’s national leaders, said earlier this week.
Hmm . . . I don’t recall Weidel complaining when Trump, Vance, and Musk were stumping for the Afd in the last national elections in Germany.
With that as background, it’s that much more impressive that Weidel now is throwing Trump under the bus. Think about that for a minute: a would-be Führer who is underbussed by the neo-Nazi AfD is no Führer at all. And for it to be the German far-right . . . that’s really gotta leave a mark. Stephen Miller must be so sad.
Or emboldened. “These AfD folks are so soft, so lacking in strength . . . Looks like it is up to us to remind Germans of their own heritage and strength.”
The AfD is the second-largest party in the Bundestag, much to the horror of Germany’s conservatives and liberals alike, and the AfD seems to support everything Miller and Trump embrace: Islamophobia, anti-immigration, and historical revisionism, just to name a few. Even so, the AfD looks at Trump’s comments about Greenland (following his actions in Venezuela) and says “no thanks – that’s too extreme, even for us.”
Enter Mike Godwin, of Godwin’s Law fame, speaking with Politico two years ago:
So to be clear — do you think comparing Trump’s rhetoric to Hitler or Nazi ideology is fair?
I would go further than that. I think that it would be fair to say that Trump knows what he’s doing. I think he chose that rhetoric on purpose. But yeah, there are some real similarities. If you’ve read Hitler’s own writing — which I don’t recommend to anyone, by the way — you see a dehumanizing dimension throughout, but the speeches are an even more interesting case.
What we have of Hitler’s speeches are mostly recorded, and they’re not always particularly coherent. What you see in efforts to compile his speeches are scholars trying to piece together what they sounded like. So, it’s a little bit like going to watch a standup comedian who’s hitting all of his great lines. You see again and again Hitler repeating himself. He’ll repeat the same lines or the same sentiment on different occasions.
With Trump, whatever else you might say about him, he knows what kinds of lines generate the kinds of reactions that he wants. The purpose of the rallies is to have applause lines, because that creates good media, that creates video. And if he repeats his lines again and again, it increases the likelihood that a particular line will be repeated in media reporting. So that’s right out of the playbook.
And now the lines aren’t hitting in quite the same way, as the AfD (of all people!) has noticed. Nothing hurts worse that being the open-mic comedian who throws out what they think is a great punchline, only to hear the sounds of silence.
Godwin ends his interview like this:
When I was growing up and being taught the American system of government, we would always be taught that the U.S. government has checks and balances in its design, so you can’t take it over with a sentiment of the moment. But I think what we’ve learned is that the institutions that protect us are fragile. History suggests that all democracies are fragile. So we have to be on the alert for political movements that want to undermine democratic institutions, because the purpose of democratic institutions is not to put the best people in power, it’s to maintain democracy even when the worst people are in power. That’s a big lift.
“Even when the worst people are in power.”
Godwin said that two years ago, but damned it if doesn’t sound like he said it yesterday. And we are finding out now just how big a lift it is to maintain democracy with folks like that in power.
The parallels between the Nazis and what Trump’s goons are doing right here in Minnesota, United States of America, are becoming undeniable. This is a story from Minnesota Public Radio with a few anecdotes:
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/01/16/ice-tactics-in-twin-cities-turn-toward-intimidation
A snip from that story:
“Videos shared with MPR News show agents outside the bakery dragging a handcuffed Brauch — a 40-year-old artist who stands a slight 5 feet 4 inches tall — across the road. Agents attempted to stuff her into the backseat of an SUV . . .
Brauch described a terrifying drive to the detention center. She said one of the agents strangled her and then painfully groped her breasts as they forced her into the vehicle. In the car, Brauch said agents never put on her seat belt and were driving erratically. She said the agent in the passenger seat was ranting and insulting her in what Brauch described as an ‘uncontrollable rage.’
At one point, she said he reached into the back seat, grabbed her by the handcuffs, and used all his strength to yank her repeatedly around the back of the car. She told him: ‘You’re breaking my hands, you’re breaking my hands.’ He told her: ‘I don’t f–ing care. Shut the f– up. Shut the f– up.’”
She now has braces on both hands, with nerve and tissue damage and a possible fracture.
Speaking as a resident of the Minneapolis metro, I can tell you that this kind of thing, and much worse is happening multiple times a day all over the metro. In addition, of course, to the indiscriminate use of chemical munitions and “less lethal” weapons, door-to-door searches, abduction of people off the streets and from their homes without any kind of warrant or probable cause, and high speed chases and deliberate wrecking of vehicles on the highways and streets. Recently, ICE agents tossed flash bangs and chemical munitions under and inside a vehicle causing a six-month old baby to require CPR from the parents. They had done nothing, other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We had better find a way to stop these people. Soon.
Most of the country will be engaged in the “bread and circuses” routine today, while the modified Mein Kampf playbook gets further cemented. I will have to say that one must “admire” the way this is being implemented as the “guard rails” left seem to be a few Democrat Governors that cannot act collectively. Picking them off one by one is far more important than any short term hiccups with the Afd. They will either come back around or be expendable, only time will tell.
I was at a planning meeting yesterday that was designed to educate the Wyoming people about the “animal cruelty” culture that is legally protected in this State. I sat in this session thinking that I had recently learned that one of the most lethal and brutal units of the Waffen SS was constructed from pardoned animal poachers, but they only pardoned the poachers that used guns. The mass killing of animals is legalized in Wyoming so no need to pardon them, just provide a structure and an excuse to unleash them on the left. Weimar 2.0 is where we are and we are further down the road than most think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirlewanger_Brigade
My history podcast producer, Alexander von Sternberg, returned to his Muslim Nazi series on Christmas Day 2025 to tell about the SS poacher brigade and their relation to the Muslim Brigade.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/muslim-nazis-146620448
Bearing witness to the atrocities is one way to fight back.
Thanks for the link!
Yes, thanks Snowdog. It’s ALL so infuriating.
Gov. Walz needs help to “create a database of atrocities against Minnesotans”:
https://bsky.app/profile/krassenstein.bsky.social/post/3mcgh7wkm3s2k
8:39 PM · Jan 14, 2026
Ballroom or bunker?
Perhaps the location of the coup de grace of our national reality TV sorry saga.
Considering that the East Wing previously included a bunker, and the current site captures a lot of that Berlin/late April 1945 aesthetic…
“To control a territory you must be able to defend it.”
–Steven Miller on Greenland
That ranks up there with “she did not resist enough.”
Stephen Miller talks as if he were an abusive husband, about to rape his estranged wife, saying, “To keep marriage sacrosanct, you have to be able to defend it.”
Oh, that must be my cue to say to all the MAGA out there who are beginning to have 2nd thoughts (just as important as the 2nd Amendment,) here’s a heartfelt song about being deceived by a cruel con man and finally seeing what is really going on. I’ve referred to this in the past, but I think it’s worth revisiting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6ozopSOf7M
“Eydie Gorme sings ‘How Could I Be So Wrong’ on The Hollywood Palace – 1967”
Miller added that that’s been the law for 500 years.
Is Miller displaying his ignorance of history or does he just not care what nonsense he spouts.
Or is it part of fhe “Empire creates its own reality” nonsense.
“In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue . . .”
. . . and thus began the European colonization of the Americas. The only laws involved were agreements the Europeans made with each other, not with the places they colonized.
And in Miller’s eyes, those places don’t matter anyway, because they couldn’t
keep their legs crosseddefend themselves.Big Brother is Authoritative
Great replies, everyone. I knew you would not disappoint!
All these stories from Minneapolis are heart breaking. The citizens bravely document the abuses, but there is only so much that can be done in this manner. “We” (all of us who think that his cannot continue like this) must appeal to those who hold some modicum of political and formal power to oppose, obstruct, and even slow down, these abuses. Who hold some modicum of formal power? The Governor of Minnesota, the Attorney General, who currently have a lawsuit in the deployment of ICE. They should also bring in Jonathan Ross for interrogation as part of the investigation into a deadly shooting by a federal agent. If he doesn’t come, emit an arrest warrant. They have the power to do it. It’s a long shot, but it must be done.
And there are also the Democrats in Congress. Yes, Congress is currently in the middle of a high-stakes, mid-January 2026 sprint to pass a new funding package before a January 30, 2026 deadline. The Democrats (and perhaps a few Republicans) must force a shutdown of the government unless ICE and all federal officers abide by the DHS rules of engagements (no masks, no cursing, no arrest without warrants, no excessive violence). This is no time for B.S. talks about affordability when all civil liberties are under attack like this. Public sentiment is high that ICE is committing abuses (53% think Jonathan Ross should be indicting for murder). Ride with the public sentiment!
Call or write to your congressman and senators and demand that they act. You can throw in also the Epstein Files which must be all released (it’s the law).
It may be about to hit the fan in Minneapolis in a few minutes. There are “competing protests” in downtown Minneapolis starting at 12:30 CST.
https://www.startribune.com/ice-raids-minnesota/601546426
One, starting at 1:00, is led by Jake Lang, a pardoned J6’er who was sent to prison for beating a police officer with a baseball bat. He vows to burn a Quran at his event. The other starting a half hour earlier is a counter-protest across the street.
Kash Patel is here in person, adding his special brand of incitement to the mix, already bad mouthing local officials. Cross your fingers and pray for us.
Phew. Looks like the Nazis aren’t going to win today.
It appears that only a handful of nazis showed up and were quickly run off by a crowd of hundreds. Lang was ‘super soakered’ with water balloons and retreated inside a hotel.
Very creative, those Minnesotans
Here’s a THREAD of short VIDEOs of that:
https://bsky.app/profile/unraveledpress.com/post/3mcn6zhzivk2d
1:01 PM · Jan 17, 2026
I liked the clever call and response cheers from the counterprotesters. Not a whiff of “Hey hey, ho ho . . .” to be heard. Well played.
The high today in my part of Minnesota was 12 degrees, so unleashing water balloons, leaving any part of a person wet, would certainly create complications.
Kash must be feeling left out, what with all the publicity that DHS and ICE are getting.
If Kash feels left out, maybe he should reconsider killing the investigation into Renee Good’s slaughter on a public street. He could put himself back in the spotlight by focusing on that in spite of Noem and Trump.
Patel didn’t kill that investigation; Noem, Blanche, and Bondi did, with Stephen Miller gleefully wringing his hands in the background.
An interesting project would be for people in Minneapolis and other invaded cities to keep diaries of their dreams,
have them collected and sorted, and then compare the results with The Third Reich of Dreams.
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691243511/the-third-reich-of-dreams
Thanks for sharing the link! The dreams were collected by Charlotte Beradt (1901-1986). Wikipedia has a long entry on Beradt, who could escape Nazi Germany and arrived in New York in 1940, and several paragraphs on the collection and publiction history of the dreams.
#te
This is tasty. From the Guardian:
As John Lewis would have put it, he’s making good trouble. Keep it up, Mark.
Then there’s this bit from later in the piece:
Funny, that sounds like a certain German politician in the early 1930s, as he campaigned against the establishment politicians. “I’m just trying to save my country from the folks who gave it away to the folks with big money, who signed away our rights in international agreements, who left us defenseless against everybody.”
Comedy writer vows to spoof Trump-Kennedy Center after buying websites
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2025/12/21/toby-morton-trump-kennedy-center-websites/87873190007/
Peterr, I first read Mark Davis’s domain name as “nazis.r.us.” It just made sense. I need to up the brightness on my screen…but it still makes sense.
We really need to make April 9 a national holiday: Surrender at Appomattox Day.
Years ago I lived in purple Asheville, NC. Friend sent her kid to “the best private school in town.” He was in high school, 11th grade. American History. Asked how they taught the Civil War. He said they call it the War of Northern Aggression. And that was “the best private high school” in Asheville.
Similar story from North Texas ten years earlier. The War of Northern Aggression is just how they see it, especially in Texas textbooks edited by the likes of Lynne Cheney, which become the norm throughout the South.
Oh, please. I grew up and was educated in public schools in the Deep South, and we always were taught it as the Civil War. Not the war between the states, and certainly not the war of northern aggression, which was something said on Saturday morning cartoons by Foghorn Leghorn.
And by the way, at Appomattox Courthouse (where the surrender took place, April 9 is commemorated as a good thing. “Where our country came back together”, etc.
Unless you want to alienate the allies you have in the south, please refrain from repeating canards out of Saturday morning cartoons.
Have you been to Appomattox Courthouse? The Lost Cause myth was incubated on the grounds of that National Park by the Ladies Memorial Auxiliary before the Lee’s signature was dry. The racist women kept the ember of the myth aflame until the men could come out of the shadows and take the lead in oppressing in US Citizen’s rights in 1872. The “quaint” name of the Ladies Memorial Auxiliaries was replaced with the United Daughters of the Confederacy as their Lost Cause myth took hold in the South. The women of the south were as racist as the men, but due to their gender, were overlooked as they fought their racist war during Reconstruction.
It took my second time walking around Appomattox to identify the competing narratives that are presented at the place. Once I understood the competing narratives, I could see what was being said at that Park, who was saying it at what time and who actually owned the land which blends in with NPS land at Appomattox.
I suggest reading the book I reference and then going back again for a more critical look at what is presented at Appomattox.
Caroline E. Janney. Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause. (Civil War America.)Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2008. Pp. xiii, 290
Long overdue, plenty long enough for the United Daughters of the Confederacy to have so successfully sold the bill of goods known as the Lost Cause, from which those propaganda-ridden textbooks evolved. Germany has come far further since 1945 than the USA since 1865, though the AfD could set Germany back as much as Scrotum-Throat and his slithering minions have set us back.
Thank you for the book recommendation, Greg Hunter – – yes, I have been to Appomattox Courthouse several times (though it’s been many years now) and bought a number of books about slavery in Virginia at their bookshop. What most impressed me was the house itself where the surrender took place. Ulysses Grant is one of our most under-appreciated presidents (I know he wasn’t yet president at the time) and I would love to see April 9 as a national holiday.
I’m also well aware of the activities of the UDF, not only in Virginia but especially around Atlanta. But those statues are coming down and those monument inscriptions are being taped over and defaced. The Jeff Davis statue on Monument Avenue in Richmond was melted down and you can see the new, quite different equestrian statue that replaced it (hint: it’s not Jeff Davis anymore) by the Fine Arts Museum. In Charlottesville, the old R.E. Lee statue whose removal ignited the Unite the Right invasion on August 11-12, 2017 (culminating in the killing of Heather Heyer, protesting the UTR thugs) is now in the hands of the Jefferson School of African-American History and Culture in C’ville, where there is currently a competition for the best proposal of what to do with the melted remains. In Decatur, Georgia, the old UDF monument on the courthouse grounds (which had been taped over for months) was removed in the middle of the night in 2020 after a judge ruled that it was a danger to the public.
Things have changed mightily and I appeal to you to recognize that. The South is no longer the UDF and Massive Resistance, it is Stacey Abrams and Abigail Spanberger and a whole host of Democratic leaders.
I hope your view of the changing South is a correct one. With that said, all of my income, for the past 15 years, has been derived from a little company in Anniston, Alabama. Based on my observations and interactions, with the youth they send my way to learn my niche: I would side with the people that posit most are taught or absorb that the Civil War was one of states rights and northern aggression. Once that Rubicon is crossed, Holocaust denial is an easy leap it seems.
I will say that the ones that hold these views are not with the company anymore as they usually fail or quit. One kid claimed to my benefactor that he was quitting because he thought I was going to get him killed. We went to The Pancake Shop in Hot Springs and I mused to him, in an elevated voice, about doing this job during “Loserfest”. I was astounded at the amount of Stars and Bars regalia on most of the patrons, but unbeknownst to me, the Sons of the Confederacy were in town for their annual hate fest.
There are plenty of places where the South is indeed the UDF and the Lost Cause. Here in Missouri, there are towns and counties that all but put out signs declaring themselves sundown towns, and where the Stars and Bars on display outnumber the Stars and Stripes.
Things may be better, but the Old South is still out there. If it wasn’t, then the Unite the Right folks wouldn’t be around. If it wasn’t, then the judge you mention wouldn’t have had to rule the UDF monument was a “danger to the public” and it simply would have come down through a simple bureaucratic process.
I will offer one more thought about observing the Sons of the Confederacy and the UDC. Instead of celebrating April 9th, an idea I like, why are there no organized protests at the locations and times when these hate groups meet?
The 133rd Convention of the UDC is over Halloween weekend in Williamsburg, VA. Even if you don’t go, book a room at the Colonial Williamsburg Lodge and eat the no show costs.
If you cannot make that one the 131st Sons of the Confederate Veterans meet in Lexington at the Griffin Gate Hotel – July 15-19, 2026.
Notice the different anniversary dates, as racist women provided cover for racist men, which was the main point of Caroline Janney’s work.
GEORGIA VIRGINIA – Thanks for your comments. I grew up in Richmond, went to HS for one year in GA, and now live in Charlottesville. My schools in Richmond taught that it truly was a Civil War, and it was fought over slavery. At Gordon HS in Decatur, GA the Civil War was fought over “state’s rights” and occasionally called it “The War Between the States.”
I was not at all political then, but when my boyfriend (whom I married 52 years later!) went to Vietnam I became enlightened about the raft of excuses I heard every night on the news about “Domino Theory” and other such BS that made us send our young to fight and die over what seemed to me to be just a hideous abuse of my contemporaries.
I was glad to see the Lee statue go from CVille even though the horse part was just beautiful; but the Unite the Right took away all local objections to the idea of replacing it with grass and stone seats.
Why anyone worships that hideous rebel flag is beyond me, but MAGAs are beyond me as well. The MAGAs seem incapable of complex thought, and perhaps that is why they are the ones who cherish the fake cause of white superiority, coupled nowadays by the also fake white subjugation by liberals and all people of color and their weird paranoia of government.
You don’t have to drive far from this town to see the confederate flags flying right next to TRUMP ones. I really thought that if and when Democrats got elected and started delivering on health care, clean air, equal protections for all, and real attention to infrastructure among so much more; it would become obvious that we are the ones who should get the votes.
Oh, well…
Slightly OT, but could you try always using default black as font color for everything except embedded links? Some of us have a real problem seeing medium green(?) fonts on a light tan background.
[Welcome back to emptywheel. Try using Reader Mode or Reader View in your browser to reduce formatting elements.
Chrome: Customize and control > More Tools > Reading Mode.
Firefox (and LibreWolf): click on the icon to the left of the Bookmark icon in URL bar, or click Fn-F9 to launch Reader View.
Appearance in Chrome’s Reading Mode can be adjusted using tools at top of reading pane; appearance in Firefox/LibreWolf can be adjusted using pop-up icons at the left inside reader view window. /~Rayne]
/~Rayne]
The AfD is distancing itself from Trump over acts, not rhetoric. Who knew Nazis could be sincere isolationists?
It’s both. Venezuela was certainly the act, and the AfD doesn’t want the same to happen in Greenland.
Maybe that’s what separates Trump from the AfD. Trump campaigned as an isolationist (see MoDo’s “Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk” column – yeah, that’s aged well.) has governed as the opposite.
Donald Trump, the insincere isolationist.
The AfD is also only isolationist for now.
As the Germans have long been taught (but some have evidently since forgotten), fascists don’t come as enemies, but as “helpful friends”. It’s only when in power that their real nature and motives become plain to the aggrieved and gullible. After it’s too late.
Why Putin in particular funds these sinister people is beyond foolish. For short-term gain, he buys long-term risk.
“Donald Trump, the insincere isolationist.”
The lengths he will go to keep his Epstein connections out of the news cycle.
Headline, “Ivana claims Trump kept Hitler quotes by bed in resurfaced interview.” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-hitler-speeches-ivana-poisoning-blood-b2466500.html — That sounds right to me.
You want this article from Vanity Fair’s archives: After the Gold Rush, published September 1990, written by Marie Brenner.
What a pity Ivana is no longer with us so we can ask her questions, or gossip columnist Liz Smith to whom Ivana told a lot about her marriage to Trump.
I have a hard time believing Trump read these speeches. I’m not saying Ivana is lying, but Trump seems so averse to reading *anything* that this seems like a stretch.
Maybe he read this:
https://www.truby.com/xzq/f_for_d.png
I agree he’s adverse to reading, but he made a point of keeping this book. Was it a way to maintain his father’s approval, given Fred Trump’s history of racism and adjacency to white supremacy?
Trump seems to hold onto things as trophies or symbols of power. When I think about the whole Mar-a-Lago classified documents mess, I vacillate between Trump gathering and holding these documents in order to somehow monetize them on the one hand, or hanging onto them as reminders of his power. I think this book of speeches falls into the latter. I can easily see Trump looking his MAGA rallies and loving that folks see him with the same kind of admiration as the 1930s Germans had for Hitler during his rallies.
I think you may be onto something with seeking Fred’s approval, and hanging onto his German heritage. Given his admiration of German generals and wanting his generals to act more like them (despite not realizing that some of them tried to kill Hitler!), that certainly fits here. But honestly, there are plenty of other things Trump could have latched onto if he wanted to honor his German heritage. OK, good beer is off the list as Trump doesn’t drink, but still . . . surely he could have found something other than fascism to admire.
As with the Twilight Zone’s, To Serve Man, you can read Mein Kampf as a warning, as an attempt to know your enemy, or as a guidebook.
1990 TRUMP, [long after he knew better]:
1/16/26 TRUMP, [long after he knew better?]:
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mckgxay2to2h
10:45 AM · Jan 16, 2026 [VIDEO]
Peterr; January 17, 2026 at 3:53 pm
“Trump seems to hold onto things as trophies or symbols of power. When I think about the whole Mar-a-Lago classified documents mess, I vacillate between Trump gathering and holding these documents in order to somehow monetize them on the one hand, or hanging onto them as reminders of his power.”
Thanks Peterr.
Those of us who foresee the future of what likely will be our dementia, look now for what we believe we will find comforting to us then. For Ronald Reagan it was a ceramic model of the White House—something that he kept in his office, which he would (figuratively), and did later in his dementia (literally), hold tightly, leading to speculation that he could foresee, in his early dementia (though he was formally diagnosed years later), that the ceramic model would provide for him some measure of comfort by way of memories of when he was president; a comfort in the memories of his otherwise forgotten, but once distinguished, past. DJT’s now increasingly craving the gold, the marble, the prizes, and the previous hiding of the classified documents, may for him be fodder for what he hopes to have, of memories to come, of who he was “back then”. Signs of loneliness, desperation, and emptiness.
I would have bet any amount that trump had not read Hitler’s speeches or anything else by or about him. For one thing, at least until recently, trump has operated much more like a Mussolini than a Hitler, and I am certain he nor anybody else in Bannonland has delved into the 35 volumes of Opera Omnia.
it seemed more likely that similar attitudes generated similar approaches.
Of late, I am less sure. I am still certain trump himself has never read anything — he gets all his input aurally or visually, in scraps and pieces — but it may be that Miller or someone else who really does openly embrace Naziism and has read the books and listened to the speeches is whispering the essence into trump’s ears.
Because everything seemed ad hoc in trump 1.0 but — despite Professor Wheeler’s evaluation of Bondi’s clumsiness — things seem more planned now.
Maybe more than one plan operating at once and at cross purposes, since, as with Hitler or Mussolini, a lot of small barons are working to enlarge their fiefs. But I don’t see any overall political direction.
“. . . it may be that Miller . . . who has read the books and listened to the speeches is whispering the essence into Trump’s ears.”
I think the words “may be” in your comment should be “absolutely is a fact”.
The more I hear Miller, the more I hear Goebbels, Himmler, and Hitler himself in my head.
Gosh, I wonder how Miller will solve the problem of him being Jewish, without getting wet.
Combine that with all the advice he got from his dad and Roy Cohn and his entire mindset is revealed. If that man ever had an original thought it would probably kill him.
It’s being documented, not just on phones, but in court. This is a pdf of the Minneapolis citizen lawsuit against ICE (and more) that resulted in a TRO against ICE tactics, yesterday (Friday, 16 Jan, 2026)
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26491067-tinchertro011626pdf/
What is not so apparent, not so extreme. I’ve heard from two Twin Cities friends. Since non-white people are not feeling safe to leave their homes, Minnesotans are working to support families too frightened to show their faces. Donating food. Collecting diapers. Arranging deliveries.
Part of the reason for the support of regular Minnesotans is that they have a loooonnnng history of welcoming immigrants. Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services and Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota welcomed thousands of European refugees after WWII, thousands of southeast Asian refugees after the Vietnam War, thousands of Central American refugees in the 1980s, and I don’t know how many African refugees in the last 15 years.
You want to know about Minnesota nice? Ask the immigrants who have found a warm welcome in the land of 10,000 (frozen) lakes.
During WW2, German POWs were brought to south central Minnesota and northern Iowa and were put to work helping on farms. These were areas that had been settled by many German immigrants. They were paid for their farm work, and each night were returned to a kind of barracks (now in a state park). Minnesota nice? When the war ended, and the POWs were returned to Germany, some of them left war-torn Germany and came back to the area and became citizens.
Knew one of those prisoners myself. Remember, the first soldiers captured were the cream of the German army. He was assigned to farm work, and then bank work, but came back to Poulsbo, and raised delicious ras-, and blue-berries. Employed my wife in her teen years.
Norway, in the 19th century, and people from Canada, including French Canada. And Swedes, and and and…
Baja Minnesota (Iowa) was the only state to set up a resettlment office for Hmong and other Montagnards after the US skedaddled from Vietnam. That was Gov. Robert Ray, my nominee for most decent Republican of my lifetime.
For time, Iowa had a higher proportion of Montagnard refugees than any other state except California, but they tended to migrate toward the big city. There were some rough moments, some involving Montagnard marriage rituals that looked to Minnesotans like kidnapping. Some community outreach seems to have settled that.
Similarly, when Somalis first showed up in the Twin Cities, there was some passionate turmoil regarding Somalis, who hate dogs, and advocates of the disabled, who clashed over guide dogs in taxicabs.
Elsewhere, that might well have created a permanent Somali outcaste, but again it seems that the Minnesota Nice approach worked, combined with a degree of adaptability on the part of Somalis that some of my ancestors never managed.
Lest anyone think the photograph atop this post is a historical image, it should be noted that it depicts Bruno Ganz in the role of Hitler for Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Oscar-nominated 2004 film “The Downfall”.
Thank you, Patrick, for your comment. Bruno Ganz was a wonderful actor, both on stage and in films. Though mostly known in the German-speaking countries (he was Swiss), he played in many an international film. He passed away in 2019, at age 77.
Whenever I see a picture of Steven Miller my mind goes to a mash-up of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, and “The Happy Wanderer” by the Obernkirchen Children’s Choir.
I also think of Hitler’s henchmen every time I see a picture of Steven Miller. Its creepy how much he reminds me of some Nazis, especially Albert Speer. All that springs to mind is the word, “evil”.
I do think its very fair to compare Trumps, “rehtoric” to Hitlers. During Trump’s first attempt at looking like Hitler with his detaining adults and children in detention centers , I thought, upp this is a NAZI action. People and children were forced to sleep on floors, food and health care was very bad, some children just disappeared into a system without oversight. My concern was if he won a second term it would be a full on revival of Nazi actions and here we are today. People are taken off the streets and good luck finding them, they are moved out of their home area to camps which remind me of the Nazi slave labour camps and the detention and concentration camps. I don’t make these judgements based on any history books. Its based on what I heard the parental units and their friends discuss when I was a kid in the 1950s/60s. Young men would be picked up by “police” and shipped to labour camps. “police” would enter homes, search them, make a mess and leave. Jews were required to wear stars on their sleeves.
When we were young our Mother used to say, its not never again, its when its going to happen again.
The Americans who are standing up to Trump’s Nazi inspired activities, good on them. They are defending their country and democracy. To those who are just sitting by watching, check history books about what happens once a country is occupied by Nazis.
Currently Americans are experiencing a rising cost for food, and its impacting people. Now think of what it would be like if regardless of money food just wasn’t available because it was all controlled by Nazis who used if for the military, etc. People died of starvation.
Every time I see Trump and his storm troopers on t.v. my stomach gets really quizzy.
Trump’s expansion dreams, he will move forward just as Hitler did. Its not just about wanting the land, its about his ego and his need to feel important and insist the world pay attention. His comments such as, “we can do it the easy way or the hard way” makes him sound like a second rate mobster from a movie from back in the day and that is what trump is, a throw back with no class, no morality, no taste
I just want to live long enough to watch trump and his henchmen stand trial for their crimes. If they complain they won’t get a fair trial in the U.S.A. they can always ask the Court of the Hague to take care of the trials. Trump and his friends might like that better. The jails in the Netherlands are much nicer than the American prisons.
I am so happy the parental units choose to immigrate to Canada after the war and not the U.S.A. (no offense intended to the American citizens–its just I couldn’t imagine having to live through what they are currently going through.)