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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAre Trump's masked thugs the new Ku Klux Klan?
Are Trump's masked thugs the new Ku Klux Klan? - an op ed by Thom Hartmann - RawstoryIn this era, we call them Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. In the late 19th and early to mid-20th centuries they called themselves the Klu Klux Klan. They often operated with the blessing of both federal and state governments, often deputized and given badges and guns, and enforced the law while wearing their famous white hoods to conceal their individual identities.
ICE operates today with a level of anonymity, impunity, and intimidation that closely parallels the Ku Klux Klans tactics as masked, semi-official enforcers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Both used legal or quasi-legal authority, masked identities, and violent or coercive tactics to carry out their missions, all without individual accountability while targeting vulnerable minorities and subverting legal norms to do so.

DET
(2,251 posts)Personally, I think of ICE as the Nazi SS without the organization and brains, but your analogy works at least as well if not better. The underlying hatred is the same. The primary difference is that ICE seems to be motivated as much by financial gain as ideological purity. But the end result is the same.
B.See
(6,963 posts)imo, they're all birds of the same feather.
SamuelTheThird
(327 posts)It's well known that several in the KKK we're involved in law enforcement. It's why they would have "trouble" finding the perp if the victim was one of color. And I imagine, it's still true today in a number of rural areas.
Gravitating to ICE just seems like a "natural" progression, but on a larger scale. They never went away (but laid low for awhile), just morphed into a different arena.
pecosbob
(8,121 posts)until the night of long knives.