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General poll of opinions here, since I don't see much conversation about it - either because of news bubbles or general disinterest in discussing the ugly side of authoritarianism.
Main query: Are the blackbagging tactics of ICE a necessary evil, a dangerous overstep, or some nuanced in-between?
Genuinely, I don't have a steelman for blackbagging tactics. Right now, ICE is targeting a certain type of "undesirable", namely, allegedly undocumented illegal immigrants, and appear to have carte blanche to apprehend anyone who disrupts that process. But the hallmark of authoritarianism is to expand the definition of "undesirable" to include your political opponents - and if blackbagging undesirables is already palatable, then you can blackbag your political opponents. It's a matter of convenience that political enemies are already attempting to disrupt the blackbagging of undocumented illegal immigrants - it makes that leap that much easier were it to happen. How convenient as well that there's now an entire organizational apparatus gaining valuable experience in how to make people disappear on US soil? They may look like mall cops who are dressed for the paintball arena for now, but if they happened to get any of that DoD money...
Blackbagging by ICE seems to be an extrajudicial process by design, as a flex of the unitary executive theory that the judiciary exists only to serve the will of the executive. The judiciary is viewed as uncooperative and painted as obstructive, despite being intentionally hamstrung by the right wing of congress that has refused for several presidential terms to pass any immigration reform despite bipartisan efforts. One doesn't have to look very hard at all to find red tribe voices foaming at the mouth to declare enemies of the state: official mouthpieces of the current administration, senators, congresspeople. History rhymes, and I know enough of the current admin has read Carl Schmitt to recognize the paths that are available to them at this point if they happen to be hungry for power.
Ending query: Assuming (for the sake of this question) that the end goal of this administration is to establish a type of authoritarianism where people are kidnapped and disappeared because of vocal opposition to the regime, what should be the response by the opposition that would want to prevent that? History buffs, what are the best examples of countries barely recovering from the brink of authoritarianism?
Edit: I appreciate the responses, there was actually quite a bit of variety which was nice to read. I came away with a steelman (which I didn't have originally) which is that the theatrics of ICE is meant to intimidate illegal immigrants. In effect, it would seem like that would select for immigrants who are reckless and fearless (yikes), or immigrants who face such extreme danger in their home country that even Twitter videos of brown people being tackled by men in masks doesn't slow them down (these desperate people would probably be considered "authentic" refugees by most leftists, and not just "economic migrants").
They have all three branches of government and a favorable supreme court. Trump owns the party and can make all the senators and congressmen fall in line. It would be so easy to pass legislation to massively increase state capacity for audits, deportations, expedited court hearings, etc. Well, it would be easy, if the administration had any competency to work with.
But the purpose of this presidency is impotent lashing out at perceived enemies. It's all theatre and grievance politics. There's no intention of executing proper statecraft, of actually doing things. The best you can hope for is wonton destruction. That's what you get when you elect a conman.
So in one sense, no, it isn't necessary -- if they were comptent. But given they aren't, it's the only option they have.
The Tea-Party/MAGA Right isn't trying to expand state capacity because a significant portion of the Tea-Party/MAGA right is opposed to expanding state capacity on general principle.
Why would the "don't tread on me" crowd vote to buy the "We will tread" crowd new boots?
As i tried to explain to Anti-populist down thread, the Republicans don't want to change existing laws they want to enforce them.
The "don't tread on me" crowd is already dead and irrelevant, as if they weren't already 10 years ago.
Laws are tools for power. You don't just get one of them and say "ah, we're done, now let's just enforce it and call it a day." Did liberals stop once they got the Civil Rights Act of of 1957 passed? Civil Rights Act of 1960? Civil Rights Act of 1964? Did they call it a day then? No. Of course not. They packed courts with sympathetic judges and universities with sympathetic admins. They even got Republicans to sign off on amendments.
If you want to win, you keep passing more and more laws that get you more power until you get as much of what you want as you can get. You tear up as many enemy laws as possible. You do all of that and you do everything else you can too. Propaganda, persuasion, institutional capture. Enforcing laws you like, ignoring ones you don't. This is politics.
What you don't do is piss and shit yourself and then have a cry when that doesn't do anything.
If you want your state to do things, you need state capacity. That is reality. You might not want that, but the average MAGA voter has a laundry list of things they want their Daddy to do to their enemies.
They've been weirdly successful for a crowd that's supposed to have been "dead and irrelevant" for close to a decade.
Yes, the popular narrative amongst blue and grey tribers is that the Tea Party was killed and eaten by "establishment" republicans and that the populists are stupid for even trying, but the last 12 years of electoral results, cabinet nominations, etc... tell a different story. If anything the opposite is the case, the establishment as represented by people like Bush, Cheney, Romney, French, Brooks, Et Al. have been utterly routed. They have been exiled to the wilderness while Tea-Party luminaries are getting to dictate national policy
You seem to be conflating the Tea Party and MAGA. They're not the same thing. Plenty of people were involved in both movements. That's just politics.
MAGA doesn't care about deficits. They're about to sign a $2.6T omnibus bill. Take a guess how much of that is going towards capacity for deportations.
The latter grew out of the former. Fact remains that the old "establishment republicans" who shared the left's views on technocratic corporatism have been soundly defeated and the populists are getting to set the agenda.
The populists are leery of expanding state capacity because they are well aware that the deep-state/priestly-caste hate them and will immediately turn that state capacity against the populists the moment a Democrat is back in the oval office. This is why the first order of buisiness was to attack the deep-state/priestly-caste's suppply lines. USAID, the MSM, Academia, etc... theory being that if you break the Democrats' ability to support the rabble-rousers and the rabble will disperse themselves.
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