From: fedora@fea.st   
      
   On Sun, 8 Feb 2026 09:56:16 -0800, Dude  wrote:   
      
   >On 2/8/2026 6:40 AM, Noah Sombrero wrote:   
   >>   
   >> Using what you fear as the excuse to do what you fear, wilson.   
   >>   
   >>   
   >Who is this "wilson" of whom you speak? You mean, the former Prime   
   >Minister of Great Britain?   
   > > > After years spent documenting state terror, I know it when I see it.   
   >> And I see it now in the US and Israel   
   >>   
   >Nothing can compare to the Holocaust. You can't make this stuff up!   
   >   
   >The systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately   
   >six million European Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.   
   >   
   >This genocide occurred between 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power in   
   >Germany, and 1945, when the Allies defeated Nazi Germany in World War   
   >II, while Democrats in the US voted against going to war.   
   >   
   >So, let's not be hypo critical, di Giovanni!   
      
   That's interesting, she does not mention the holocaust, but you do,   
   and then you accuse her of comparing this to that.   
      
   There are many examples, as she gives, without even mentioning the big   
   nasty.   
   > >   
   >> Janine di Giovanni   
   >>   
   >> It’s chilling to watch as Trump and Netanyahu adopt the methods of   
   >> regimes their countries once condemned   
   >>   
   >>   
   >> In Syria, where I worked during the years of Bashar al-Assad’s terror,   
   >> people were often taken away to torture cells before dawn by masked   
   >> men. The timing was deliberate. It disoriented them at their most   
   >> vulnerable, ensuring the torture to come would be even more agonising.   
   >> The testimonies I recorded from survivors almost always contained the   
   >> same phrase: “The morning they came for me.” One young woman,   
   >> shattered by rape and violence, later told me that her life had split   
   >> in two – before and after the masked men came for her.   
   >>   
   >> In Iraq, those who spoke against Saddam Hussein – even abroad, even   
   >> casually – were punished in cruel ways by a vengeful leader determined   
   >> to crush any hint of dissent.   
   >>   
   >> In Egypt in 2016, Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old Italian academic   
   >> researching labour unions, was abducted, beaten and tortured to death,   
   >> it is thought, by president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi’s security services.   
   >> His own mother had difficulty recognising his mutilated body.   
   >>   
   >>   
   >> During the second Chechen war, I met the journalist Anna Politkovskaya   
   >> in Chechnya. She repeatedly attacked Vladimir Putin’s policies,   
   >> documenting human rights abuses during Russia’s military campaigns. To   
   >> punish her, a bullet was put in her brain on Putin’s birthday – a   
   >> warning to other truth-seekers. Stay silent or die.   
   >>   
   >> In the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli soldiers, masked and unmasked,   
   >> kill, torture and imprison Palestinian doctors, journalists, teachers,   
   >> activists and scholars not for what they have done – but because of   
   >> who they are.   
   >>   
   >> After decades of documenting state terror, I know how it starts.   
   >> Governments begin to use words like security, order, deterrence. Every   
   >> excuse for Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct in Gaza is framed as   
   >> “security”. ICE agents are trained in a language of order in which   
   >> violence becomes procedure.   
   >>   
   >> What happens when democratic states adopt the methods of the regimes   
   >> they once condemned? Terror is not only masked men and arbitrary   
   >> detention. It also operates through fear. Policies are designed to   
   >> make people more compliant, more submissive. As the historian Timothy   
   >> Snyder warned in his 2017 book, On Tyranny, this is how societies   
   >> slide into danger: people obey in advance.   
   >>   
   >>   
   >> In Donald Trump’s US, I have watched CEOs, academics, journalists and   
   >> government officials allow fear to override decency and moral   
   >> authority. I have seen this pattern before. It begins with claims that   
   >> certain people are dangerous. That ordinary legal safeguards should   
   >> not apply to them. It ends with a society diminished – more compliant,   
   >> more cynical, more brutal. State terror is rarely announced. In my   
   >> experience, it becomes normalised. It seeps quietly into the machinery   
   >> of government.   
   >>   
   >> Authoritarian regimes make no serious claim to moral legitimacy. Their   
   >> violence is explicit. Saddam did not apologise when he killed 182,000   
   >> Kurds during the Anfal campaign. Sisi did not apologise when about   
   >> 1,000 Muslim Brotherhood supporters were mowed down in Rabaa and   
   >> al-Nahda squares in central Cairo. Hafez al-Assad never acknowledged   
   >> the tens of thousands killed in Hama in 1982. (To this day, the exact   
   >> numbers remain unknown and the disappeared unaccounted for. The regime   
   >> cynically built hotels over mass graves).   
   >>   
   >> Democracies operate in an entirely different way. Their actions are   
   >> often technically above the law. Constitutions are invoked and obscure   
   >> laws brought back to defend aggressive policies. Governments talk of   
   >> “necessary action”. They point to courts that still function, a press   
   >> that is still somewhat free, elections that still take place – even as   
   >> all of these institutions disintegrate. This is how democracies begin   
   >> to resemble the regimes they once condemned. It is a subtle,   
   >> devastating shift.   
   >>   
   >> The tools are familiar. A journalist whose reporting aligns closely   
   >> with the political interests of the US president and the Israeli prime   
   >> minister is installed to lead CBS, once one of the most respected   
   >> networks in the US. On university campuses, surveillance now includes   
   >> photographing students who attend or lead pro-Palestinian   
   >> demonstrations, and are deemed troublemakers. I was told by one   
   >> student at an Ivy League university that some are quietly warned they   
   >> will never find work on Wall Street, at the best law firms, or in   
   >> government offices if they continue. Other student activists are   
   >> removed from their homes, illegally detained, and threatened with   
   >> deportation.   
   >>   
   >> Academic deans face threats of punitive funding cuts unless they   
   >> impose requirements that constrain academic freedom. At Northwestern   
   >> University in Chicago, students were forced to complete antisemitism   
   >> training that they said was inaccurate and biased in favour of Israel   
   >> before they could enrol in classes.   
   >>   
   >> Instructors are quietly told to toe the line. Journalists are   
   >> disciplined through language that is carefully crafted as editorial   
   >> policy – then some of them are arrested. Those who resist are   
   >> increasingly labelled enemies of the state.   
   >>   
   >> ICE tactics themselves are not new. They have long been used   
   >> disproportionately against political radicals, Muslims, Black   
   >> Americans and migrants. What has changed is their visibility – and   
   >> increasingly, their acceptance. Today, ICE mirrors the same patterns   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)