If the jackboot fits

I said it, I meant it, I'm here to represent it

Hey, looks like inscribed bullets are back in the news:

FBI Director Kash Patel posted a photo of unspent bullets from the deadly Dallas ICE facility shooting to social media, providing new details about the attack. FBI Director Kash Patel posted a photo of unspent bullets from the deadly Dallas ICE facility shooting to social media, providing new details about the attack.

One of the bullets has “ANTI-ICE” scrawled on it in what looks like Magic Marker. Smells like bullshit, but who knows. One thing’s certain: Patel thinks the guy shot ICE’s captives (who are the only ones who got shot here) because somebody — God knows not ICE themselves — made him mad at ICE:

In a statement, Patel said the attack was part of a pattern of violence. “These despicable, politically motivated attacks against law enforcement are not a one-off,” he said.

“We are only miles from Prairieland, Texas, where just two months ago an individual ambushed a separate ICE facility targeting their officers,” Patel said. “It has to end and the FBI and our partners will lead these investigative efforts to see to it that those who target our law enforcement are pursued and brought to the fullest extent of justice.”

Other top Republicans suggested calling Republicans Nazis precipitated this violent crime against the victims of their violent, criminal agency:

“This violence is the result of the Radical Left Democrats constantly demonizing Law Enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to ‘Nazis,’” Trump wrote on Wednesday afternoon. “I AM CALLING ON ALL DEMOCRATS TO STOP THIS RHETORIC AGAINST ICE AND AMERICA’S LAW ENFORCEMENT, RIGHT NOW!”

I know not what course others may take, but fuck that shit, I say they’re Nazis and I say the hell with it.

In the above-referenced Roy Edroso Breaks It Down edition — which first appeared exactly one year ago today — I talked about how we had previously been told not to call Tubby and his mob “fascists,” either, until it became apparent that fascism was indeed what they had in mind for us.

Since that time Trump has reassumed office and tried to speed run all those classic fash features Umberto Eco and others warned us about: Illegal seizure of powers in defiance of legal opposition; naked corruption in service thereof; state censorship (my God, just this week!); masked thugs seizing people who haven’t committed crimes and putting them in concentration camps; conspiracy theories that appeal to a distant past and classify opponents of the Leader as de facto enemies of the state, etc.

Again, fascism is what they believe and what they’re doing.

At that time I also said that you might as well also say these obvious fascists are Nazis — which I guess according to Tubby and JD Vance makes me Public Enemy #1. Here’s that passage:

And oh, yeah, speaking of that: I’d go ahead and call them Nazis too. What the hell, at least one of their major candidates has already declared himself a Black Nazi. And Tubby’s obviously a Führer fan — check this from December 2023:

“They said Hitler said that,” Trump said Tuesday after he again told the crowd in Iowa that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America.

After insisting Hitler used the words “in a much different way,” Trump went on to make the “blood” reference again. “It’s true. They’re destroying the blood of the country, they’re destroying the fabric of our country, and we’re going to have to get them out.”

Maybe you’re reading that and thinking: Whoa, that’s some fucked-up Nazi shit, why have I not heard of it before? And the most likely answer is: You probably did hear it before — it’s just that, for one thing, he does it all the time so eventually you stop noticing; and, for another, cable news and big newspapers keep talking about him, even when he says shit like this, as if he and his followers are normal people.

But they’re not. They’re Nazis. Go ahead and say so. If nothing else you might shock a couple of people awake.

There have been many fascist cults and some of them, like the Nazis, have managed to get themselves installed in power. So you could just as well call the GOP the new Partito Nazionale Fascista or Falange Americano, and Tubby Il Duce or the Caudillo, rather than Nazis and the “Führer” — same diff.

But if it’s OK for Trump to call, just to give one recent example, Zohran Mamdani a communist (on far less convincing categorical evidence), I don’t see how calling Trump a Nazi is more dangerous or offensive (especially since conservatives seem to hate communists far worse than Nazis, possibly for reasons of ancestral memory).

I would love to see them play that logic out, and tell us how their beliefs as expressed by their leader and their actions are legit, but classifying those beliefs and actions is not. How can you brag about Alligator Alley and then cry at being called a Nazi? I mean these guys just tried to Horst Wessel a midlist podcaster.

People have been calling them names all year — but now, suddenly, they’re crying about it. Maybe what’s really bugging them about being called Nazis is not that it’ll get people killed, but that it’ll get people to notice.