In this thread I've written a lot about the importance of keeping track of what the regime says surrounding the fascist shitshow that is the Trumpenreich invasion of LA. Speaking frankly, I think everyone living in a capitalist police state should keep close track of what their "leaders" say at all times, but in this case it's important because the Trump regime uses propaganda to create space for action. In talking about and justifying their fascist activities, including the invasion of LA, regime officials frequently reveal a great deal about their methods of operation and future intentions.

To go deeper into what I mean by this sort of tea leaf reading and how it pertains to the Trump regime's statements about Los Angeles, let's take a look at this June 10th Guardian article discussing a very similar issue with some help from NYU history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/j…

‘The language of authoritarianism’: how Trump and allies cast LA as a lawless city needing military intervention

"As a pretext to this action, the Trump administration had characterized the protests as a broader threat to the nation. On X, White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, called LA “occupied territory”. “We’ve been saying for years this is a fight to save civilization. Anyone with eyes can see that now.”

Trump posted on Truth Social: “A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals. Now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations – But these lawless riots only strengthen our resolve.”

FBI director, Kash Patel, wrote on X that LA was “under siege by marauding criminals”.

If I'm being honest, this entire article is basically one huge "They Said It" post, so you'll forgive me for centering Trumpenreich official's comments over Ben-Ghiat's analysis. If you read on however, she confirms that the regime's language is designed to create an 'existential sense of fear," paint LA as a warzone, and justify putting soldiers in the streets to enforce Trump's fascist rule. Ben-Ghiat also points to a statement made by Trump's crusader fascist Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, for a perfect encapsulation of how this narrative building then translates to implied justification for very specific authoritarian regime actions.

"The violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement are designed to prevent the removal of Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil,” Hegseth wrote. “A dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels (aka Foreign Terrorist Organizations) and a huge NATIONAL SECURITY RISK.”

Ben-Ghiat said Hegseth employed “the classic authoritarian thing, of setting up an excuse, which is that the internal enemy, illegal criminal aliens, is working together with an external enemy, the cartels and foreign terrorists, and using that to go after a third party, of protesters, regular people, who came out to show solidarity”.

All of which brings us to the same, familiar, gnawing question that defines so much of the second Trump era; are these guys fucking serious? As I mentioned elsewhere, the fact is a fascist regime really only gets one shot at going for the full Third Reich dictatorship experience; if Trump and his minions go for it, but fail, everyone who doesn't have SCOTUS-granted immunity from prosecution is probably fucked. Is Downmarket Mussolini willing to risk the tremendous power and privilege he has now to make himself the true master of all he surveys? I'm not sure anyone, even Trump's unofficial minister of nazi shit Stephen Miller, actually knows the answer to that question.

What I can tell you however, is what I told you earlier on this blog today; at some point the idea that Trump is just accidentally falling into all the steps he'd need to take to install a permanent fascist dictatorship in America, ceases to hold water. This guy is either the world's luckiest accidental authoritarian, or the Trump regime is planning to go the full nine yards and what we're talking about now is a question of courage, not will. Take a look at what this article quotes Miller as saying, and then tell me you're sure I'm wrong.

“Simply put, the government of the State of California aided, abetted and conspired to facilitate the invasion of the United States,” Stephen Miller wrote on X."

Folks, it's hard to say that the Trump regime is "preparing for war," when they've clearly already started one. But almost everything the regime does and says, especially in regards to the Los Angeles protests, strongly implies we haven't remotely hit rock bottom here. Trump is running out of shiny things to distract the public with and it's increasingly becoming clear the Trumpenreich is building a dictatorship brick by brick; you don't do that because you want to admire the shine on your Gestapo's riot helmets.

#Fascism #Trump #USPol #LA #InvasionOfLA #Propaganda #Dictatorship #StephenMiller

‘The language of authoritarianism’: how Trump and allies cast LA as a lawless city needing military intervention

As a pretext to sending in the national guard, the White House marked the Ice protests as a broader threat to the US

^{Tess Owen (The Guardian)}

If, as many local officials in California have suggested, Trump's goal was to create a powder keg that justifies even more authoritarian repression in LA, it's abundantly clear the regime and its Gestapo were working to create that power keg long before Trump illegally deployed what is now 4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 US Marines to the extremely diverse sanctuary city. Take for example the assault, arrest, and smearing of Service Employees International Union President David Huerta during the Friday ICE raids in densely populated portions of LA and the surrounding area.

Whether the Gestapo pigs who assaulted Huerta on camera while the extremely popular labor leader was merely observing the unlawful Gestapo raids targeting workers in his city knew it or not, their fascist piggery was almost certainly the inciting moment for widespread nonviolent protests that broke out across the greater LA area; a day and a half later, Trump would be illegally deploying National Guard troops on the streets of downtown Los Angeles.

commondreams.org/news/david-hu…

'This Is What Fascism Looks Like': Beloved Labor Leader David Huerta Arrested

"The union included remarks from Huertas, who said, "We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice."

"This is about something much bigger" than his own arrest, said Huertas. "This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice."

According to a statement released by the Department of Homeland Security, approximately 44 individuals were "administratively arrested" in a series of raids at retail stores in the Los Angeles area, while one individual, identified as Huertas, was arrested "for obstruction" of federal officers.

"This is what fascism looks like," said California State Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat. "Secret police raids. Injuring protesters. Arresting labor leaders."

As the article notes, Huertas is the president of a 750,000 member strong union in California that represents an absolutely massive number of Latinex workers in the state; if the feds were looking to avoid protests, this was the last guy they wanted to assault. Which makes the fact that they did so on camera, and then tried to lie about it later all the more revealing. This is from a Guardian update posted after Huertas was released on bond:

theguardian.com/us-news/live/2…

"In an affidavit supporting the criminal complaint against Huerta, an officer alleged that the union leader was arrested after another officer tried to push him out of the way of a law enforcement vehicle being blocked by protesters on a sidewalk. The officer who witnessed the incident claimed that he saw Huerta “push back, and in response, the officer pushed HUERTA to the ground. The officer and I then handcuffed HUERTA and arrested him.”

However, video of the arrest shared on social media by US attorney Bill Essayli seems to show that the officer shoved Huerta to the ground without being pushed by the labor leader. Huerta’s head was knocked into a concrete curb by the officers and he was hospitalized on Friday."

If you watch the video the government's own attorney shared, it is utterly impossible for the regime to credibly argue that Heurta is a violent protestor or criminal element, and even the regime's argument about "obstruction" seems to revolve around not stepping out the way for a truck full of kidnapped Angelino workers to be driven through; yet they're trying anyway. I believe that's because the facts don't matter to Trump, this arrest in particular merely provided him with the excuse he needed to declare war on LA and by extension, Governor Gavin Newsom.

If it seems like I'm laser focused on the Gestapo raids broadly targeting brown workers in LA on Friday, it's because this is unquestionably the inciting incident that lead to the Trump regime's ongoing fascist invasion of LA and contrary to Downmarket Mussolini and his minion's lies, the Trump administration was completely responsible for these inciting incidents. It was Kristi Noem who demanded vastly more migrant arrests, it was Stephen Miller who gave the order to target retail businesses and public districts, it was ICE officials who told the Gestapo to violate civil rights and start snatching people up for being brown, it was the Trump regime who targeted a sanctuary city in a sanctuary state run by the current 2028 Democrat nomination frontrunner for this spectacle, and it was Trumpenreich officials who responded to nonviolent protests by declaring a violent insurrection was occurring in LA to pave the way for Trump's deployment of US military forces to the city. They had the means, they created the opportunity, and the motives are transparently fascist; Trump snatched it up as an excuse to declare war on his perceived opposition immediately, as if it was planned that way, because it was.

#Fascism #LA #ICE #Trump #KristiNoem #StephenMiller #DHS #Invasion #USPol #Gestapo #Newsom #PoliceState #Nazis

Mayor says Los Angeles being used as ‘test case’ by federal government – as it happened

Mayor says ‘nothing warranted’ the intervention and that cannot ‘emphasize enough the level of fear and terror that is in Angelenos right now’ due to Ice raids

^{Kate Lamb (The Guardian)}

In the thread above, I've made the argument that the entire Trump regime's invasion of LA, from the original Gestapo raids on Friday, all the way through to this very moment, is a carefully orchestrated authoritarian political project stapled to an engineered bit of fascist theater. To my eye, this conclusion seems pretty obvious, particularly given how quickly after protests broke out the entire Trump regime, including noted nazis Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, produced clearly-coordinated sound bites about a "violent insurrection" in LA that literally was not happening. Proving it beyond a shadow of a doubt however, is an evolving process that's going to take time and evidence; so I'm going to intersperse that evidence throughout this thread as we go along.

First up, did you know the regime brought noted anti-migrant, pro-Trump fascist propagandist Dr. Phil to LA for an exclusive "before and after" raid interview with border Czar Tom Homan?

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/j…

Talkshow host Dr Phil joined Ice agents for Los Angeles immigration raids

"Phil, whose full name is Phil McGraw, was with Ice before and after its agents conducted a series of raids on multiple locations across LA on Friday. Immigration advocates said at least 45 people were arrested, and the action was condemned by California’s governor and LA’s mayor.

It was the second time McGraw, a former practising psychologist who hosted a TV talkshow for two decades, has been embedded with Ice this year. In January, he joined the US border czar, Tom Homan, in a choreographed immigration raid in Chicago, in a stunt that was criticized at the time."

First of all The Guardian, I think describing Phil McGraw as a "talk show host" and "television personality" in this year of our discontent 2025, is a bold move; Dr. Phil is now a fascist propagandist trading on his personal relationships inside the Trump administration to push an aging conservative audience further into the Klepto Kaiser's cult of personality. He isn't on my TV anymore; he's on a fake TV network for fascists and bigot Boomers and he's actively working with the Trump regime to produce anti-migrant, pro-ICE propaganda because his career prospects at this point are virtually nonexistent otherwise.

Which is of course why I'm sharing this article at all. We already know that the regime brought in Dr. Phil to create highly-choreographed propaganda to support fascist ICE raids after he was embedded with Gestapo agents led by Tom Homan himself back in January; it's not like this is a hobby for McGraw or anything, it's his job now. What then does it say that Homan once against tapped McGraw to provide the theatrical component to fascist ICE raids, using new tactics officials knew would result in outrage and resistance, while clearly preparing to justify the deployment of US military forces to LA against then entirely peaceful protests?

It says the regime was putting on a show; and if there's one thing we know about Trump and putting on a show, it's that Downmarket Mussolini likes to go big, or go home.

#Fascism #Trump #USPol #LA #MartialLaw #Insurrection #Propaganda #Nazis #DrPhil #WhiteNationalism #ICE #Gestapo #InvasionOfLA #TomHoman #StephenMiller

Talkshow host Dr Phil joined Ice agents for Los Angeles immigration raids

Conservative channel MeritTV says psychologist and TV host was there to get ‘first-hand look at targeted operations’

^{Adam Gabbatt (The Guardian)}

In order to understand the true story of the Trump regime's invasion of LA, and broad resistance to the regime's white nationalist agenda by labor class Angelinos, you have to start with a story I briefly touched on last week about a change in ICE enforcement strategy mandated right from the top of the Trump administration. In response to direct pressure from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to massively increase the number of migrants arrested per day, and instructions from unofficial director of nazi shit Stephen Miller to target commercial businesses and public locations, ICE officials ordered agents to engage in acts that all but ensured widespread racial profiling, a massive number of civil rights violations, and militarized abductions in American communities; including, crucially, no warrant arrests that aren't strictly illegal, but immigration officials know aren't allowed to be used the way they're instructing Gestapo goons to use them right now, either.

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/j…

US immigration officers ordered to arrest more people even without warrants

"If it involves handcuffs on wrists, it’s probably worth pursuing,” another message said.

The instructions not only mark a further harshening of attitude and language by the Trump administration in its efforts to fulfill election promises of “mass deportation” but also indicate another escalation in efforts, by being on the lookout for undocumented people whom officials may happen to encounter – here termed “collaterals” – while serving arrest warrants for others.

The emails, sent by two top Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials this past Saturday, instructed officers around the country to increase arrest numbers over the weekend. This followed the Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, and the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, pressing immigration officials last month to jack up immigration-related arrests to at least 3,000 people a day."

Okay so please keep in mind that this article was published on June 4th, which is two days before fascist ICE raids touched off what will then eventually become the Trumpenreich invasion of LA. A significant portion of this article is devoted to talking about ICE's hypothetical but still quite illegal sounding efforts to meet the regime's Nazi-esque migrant arrest quotas, and the circumstantial legality of collateral immigration arrests. It's an illuminating discussion for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that every legal observer quoted in the article warns that warrantless arrests can be abused in precisely the unlawful ways ICE would use them in LA later that week; it is however irrelevant to our larger discussion except in to note that ICE swarming businesses and arresting all the brown people because they might be "illegals" is not how this power is supposed to be used, and doing so is a clear violation of civil rights.

What's important here is that the article provides a comprehensive picture of an agency desperate to meet a fascist mass deportation quota, whose leadership then directly instructs its Gestapo agents to engage in activities they know will result in unlawful arrests and civil rights violations; because the agency was already sanctioned for doing these same things which surprise, resulted in unlawful arrests and civil rights violations. This, when combined with the increased migrant arrest quotas, and Miller's instructions to stop focusing on actual criminals and get directly into communities to snatch up foreign-looking people, inevitably resulted in the fascist outrages that touched off the battle for LA, with heavily armed and armored Gestapo goons storming businesses in the fashion district of Downtown LA and other high traffic urban areas to round up anyone brown enough to fit the description, in broad daylight. Indeed, the combination of instructions given to both ICE officials and Gestapo foot soldiers could not have resulted in any other outcome and the regime was prepared to capitalize on the outrage it would cause; that's why they were so quick to respond to completely justified popular pushback with cries of insurrection and orders to send in the national guard. Furthermore, given the national scope of DHS and ICE's authority what we just saw happen in LA is clearly an outcome they intend to replicate all across the country; seemingly targeting sanctuary cities in blue states in particular out of political reasoning and ideological spite.

The invasion of LA wasn't spontaneous, it was engineered; and that engineering started at the very top of the Trump regime. This shitshow wasn't ever about public safety; it's a reproduceable battleplan for a war the regime just chose to start at a time, and in a place of its choosing - and they chose LA.

#Fascism #DHS #ICE #Gestapo #Trump #MassDeporatations #CivilRights #Migrants #HumanRights #LA #WhiteNationalism #EthnoState #StephenMiller #KristiNoem #ArrestQuotas #Racism

US immigration officers ordered to arrest more people even without warrants

Exclusive: Ice officers told to get ‘creative’ with arrests, including of undocumented people encountered by chance

^{José Olivares (The Guardian)}