The all-out Nazi purge has come to Louisiana in spades.
First, it was Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University who was deported despite no real evidence that he was a terrorist of any description.
The ICE brownshirts seized him from his New York City apartment on March 8.
But hey, that was way up there in New York. No problem for us, right?
Then, on March 25, masked ICE SS stormtroopers abducted Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk off the street and shipped her off to Pine Prairie, Louisiana.
Why Pine Prairie? Well, it’s remote. So remote, in fact, that any character witnesses in Somerville, Massachusetts, might find it a tad difficult to travel all the way to Jena to testify on her behalf at deportation hearings. It also makes obtaining legal counsel an almost insurmountable task and if they do get an attorney, the lawyer is usually located hours away. Convenient for The Party. Not so much for the Ampleforth-like victim.
Then, the ICE palace guards swooped down upon University of Alabama student Alreza Doroudi. They said he posed “significant national security concerns,” but refused to provide further details or any evidence to that effect.
He, too, was hustled off to Jena, a privately-run prison that has had issues in the past with treatment of prisoners. It’s a black hole where detainees are allegedly abused or, at best, neglected and is every bit as remote as Pine Prairie. See a trend here?
Suddenly, the encroachment of ICE had crept closer to our daily lives.
And now…they’re here.
We mentioned in a previous post that there were engineering students at Louisiana Tech and LSU who were foreign nationals who might be walking on eggshells these days in the legitimate fear that ICE might come calling.
Well, it wasn’t at either of those schools, but that’s not to say they’re being overlooked. Fourteen international students in Louisiana have had their visas revoked, nullifying their permission to continue their studies at four Louisiana universities.
No reasons were given for the action.
Seven of those were students at Southern University in Baton Rouge. Three were from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and two each were students at University of New Orleans and Tulane University.
The Trump administration has launched his own terror campaign against anyone with dark skin or an accent. Due process is not even an afterthought for these people. In fact, U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Indiana) even said incredulously at a town hall meeting that people in America are not guaranteed the constitutional right to due process. “You break the law, you don’t have due process,” she said, apparently having been absent the day her high school civics class learned that that is literally what due process is for.
But such is the crop of Republicans we seem to have in Congress these days. It seems that the era of Everett Dirkson, Dwight Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller is of another age.
Today, we live in the age of the new Machtergreifung and we’re all subject to its wrath.
Louisiana Voice 
Thomas Erroll,
Of course you sent me to my Funk and Wagnalls over your use of the word/term Machtergreifung. But now that I understand it, your choice is excellent. You never cease to amaze me with the breadth of your intellect and grasp of language. For that I give you a resounding ATTABOY!
Your Arkansas Dolt friend!
Well of course the brown, foreign university students are a threat to uneducated conservatives, who are convinced that university students of any flavor are radical leftist lunatic america-hating socialist commies. Now that a pack of nazis is running the country, the brown ones can be easily disposed of; can the “home grown” ones be far behind? The uneducated can live their dream of getting rid of educated people, who are taking the jobs they can’t get anyway because they’re uneducated. Especially the foreign brown ones.
It’s amusing to see the Maga types hate on people with post-secondary education, when they are led by politicians (including our governor and attorney general) and other wealthy oligarchs, who all have one or two college degrees.
This afternoon the Attorney General for the United States of America refused to say the deporting of Americans to foreign prison is unconstitutional and illegal. Instead she defended Trump. Because in MAGA fascist America the rule of law is when it conforms to Trump’s desires. This, of course, is only the most recent example of MAGA fascism and it won’t be the last. I applaud those who say don’t comply, resist, march, vote, speak out. But if you think this ends peacefully please go find a safe place to wait this one out.
Your last sentence sums it up. Sadly, I fear you are right.
A friend just sent me a word for the day: latibulate. A 17th century word meaning to hide in a corner in an attempt to escape reality. I think a lot of people are fearful and are latibulating, then go out to dissent for a while, and head back to their safe place.
Another friend, who is rather high profile politically, recently moved overseas. Others are looking into doing the same.
Isn’t it astonishing that one person with a handful of smarter puppetmasters can overturn our government (and thus society at large) in such a short period of time?
It seems quick because Trump has no subtlety. He breaks things left and right and barrels on ahead. But the right’s slide into fascism began way back. Let’s pick up AFTER Nixon. First they told themselves there were more moral than everyone else, then they told everyone else they were more moral. Then they sold out to heroic capitalism, from which all blessing flow and for the last 45 years that’s the only economic strategy they have had. The first Bush administration was much too practical and real so they abandoned HW, but rolled out the moral superiority again for the Clinton years. The second Bush administration took them down several more notches gaslighting the country about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. During this time Fox became a formidable propaganda machine and a reliable source of disinformation. Then Mitch McConnell let slip some truth they only wanted Obama to be a one term president instead of, you know, talking about the good of the country or other stuff he didn’t believe in. Before he crashed and burned running into the Trump bus he also managed to slime his away around to stacking the Supreme Court – who had made their contribution known with “originalism” where they pretend to know the mind of the founders and deny the existence of words (and, therefore, the ideas) not in the original Constitution. But they only trot that out when they need an excuse to deny someone their rights and they can’t come up with anything else. Then there was all the deliberate propaganda/disinformation such as Obama’s not an American, death panels, sharia law taking over in the US, illegal harvesting of aborted baby body parts, etc. until Trump comes on the scene. So MAGA fascism seems like it happened almost overnight but the right had already sold out the rest of us. They were just waiting for their Adolf.
Amen and Amen. It’s scary times. And now Louisiana has Landry.
Thanks Mr. Spillman!! I have read and understand “Adolph”. Tonight I quoted Toland’s Adolph, page number etc. and my dear friend said, “send me the memo and the books and I will try to read them…..she is a lawyer, very rich and quiet opiniated siding with “liberals” causing all of our problems. I will not give up so I am sending her the memo and reference Tom’s voice and Mr. Mann’s. Some good news, I ran into a wonderful lady at a funeral in Many, who had more dogs than my wife. thanks.