The return of fascism

"The same is true of the concept of genocide; once used, there is no turning back. It's an avalanche of a word: once you utter it, it just keeps growing, said David Grossman in an interview with the Italian journalist Francesca Caferri when the Israeli writer first defined what was taking place in Gaza as genocide."

"Since the beginning of Donald Trump's second presidency a year ago, but especially since the brutal deployment in Minneapolis of federal paramilitaries from ICE and the Border Patrol, the impression that fascism has taken hold in the United States has only grown among writers, commentators, historians, and citizens."

"Images of heavily armed, unidentified, and masked individuals beating people protesting their presence a right protected by the First Amendment, which generously guarantees freedom of speech in the U.S. and arresting citizens solely because of their accent or skin color including children like little Liam Conejo Ramos are incompatible with a fully democratic society."

"The shooting deaths of two civilians, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, with images that appear to show an extrajudicial execution in the latter case, sparked global outrage and a wave of references to what happened in Europe in the last century, when Mussolini's Blackshirts and Hitler's Brownshirts took over the streets of Italy and Germany."

Federal paramilitary forces from ICE and the Border Patrol were deployed in Minneapolis, using heavily armed, masked personnel who beat protesters and arrested people, including children, sometimes based on accent or skin color. Those actions have intensified perceptions that a fascist or totalitarian movement has strengthened in the United States since the start of the second Trump presidency. Two civilian shooting deaths, with imagery suggesting an extrajudicial execution, provoked global outrage and comparisons to 20th-century European paramilitary violence. The concept of genocide is described as an expanding, irreversible label once invoked. Such images and arrests are incompatible with full democracy.

Read at english.elpais.com