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Notes -
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").
Honestly, if they weren’t doing that, I don’t think you’d see the blowback. It’s easy to hate things that look and sound like stuff that happens in the movies. If you slam-tackle people in public, throw flashbangs into diners during dinner rush, and so on, you get blowback.
I’m not sure what the end goal actually is here. Is he going to go full president Joker? Very Smart People on the left say so. But then again, if that’s true, those same people are behaving very strangely. They’re attending rallies they pre-register for by giving their full name (50501 does this), filming the entire thing, posting symbols on social media, etc. they also show up in full cosplay — Gilead Girls, Leia, various anime characters. I just, if they’re thinking that Trump is going to mass arrest opposition, they’re not only doing everything possible to make sure they’re on the list, but fighting back in ways that simply don’t make any sense. You think Trump wants to arrest the opposition, so you register in advance, apply with the local police (which likely means giving contact information). When you get there, you stand on sidewalks with signs, dressed as children’s TV and movie characters? I can’t imagine anyone would have thought any of it in other states with the threat of authoritarian takeover. I’m sure the people who protested the Nazis did so for a couple of hours on weekends while dressed as characters from Wizard of Oz or Popeye. So either it’s true that Trump is going Joker and we just happen to have an opposition composed entirely of people who stopped maturing at like 8 years old (in which case, we’re going that way), or the whole thing is a combination of Oppression Fetishized, and being used to drum up support and donations.
As I said I don’t have any special insight into this sort of thing. If the end is to take over and disappear Americans, I don’t know what would look different. On the other hand if that’s not the end goal, it would look the same. I would say it’s maybe 30-40% it escalates.
The goal is to make it impossible to enact the disappear-protesters step of the plan by having too many protesters on the list, most of whom are manifestly not worth the bother of disappearing. The harmlessness of the protests is the point, both in and of itself (in that it'll make a regime that tries to make them out to be dangerous rioters look ridiculous) and because it makes them an attractive position for more and more people to join.
I mean im not sure that works. I’m sure that you’re not going to literally disappear everyone who went to a protest where 50501 is present, however the data gleaned from such events would be extremely useful to bad actors if they wanted to make things interesting.
First, running the list and public profiles of attendees is a treasure trove of information that can be weaponized against them. For example, I can look for common elements in those profiles. Perhaps an interest in art, a type of music, favorite TV shows, etc. I can then use that data to find other people with that profile who are not yet protesting but might. I can perhaps check these names against other databases. Any unpaid parking tickets? Anyone looking for a job I can flag in a background check? I don’t need to go after all of them or even most of them. I can probably get better bang for the buck by targeting random people who are perhaps really well connected on social media. If I arrest 50, but they post about the experience online, and those posts, because of the number of followers goes fairly viral, I can probably discourage people from protesting without having to really waste time and energy trying to brute force the thing.
The beauty of AI in this case is that I can use big data to control people in ways that are pretty invisible until they punish rule breakers. If I can make it hard to get an apartment, or a job, or for you or you kids to get into a good college, I don’t need to body slam you and throw you in jail, I can just reward the good ones with prestige and easier life while punishing the bad by withholding privileges. If protesting means that the only jobs you can get are at Wendy’s, I don’t even need to make it illegal. People won’t do it because they don’t want to get stuck working at Wendy’s and living with cockroaches in a squatter apartment with 6 roommates.
This is true if we're talking about a smart, tech-aware dictator. But your original post wasn't talking about people who expect a smart tech-driven dictatorship. It was talking about people who expect Trump to go President Joker and round up all his enemies in unmarked vans. I think the recent protestors' behavior follows a rational strategy within that framework - whose likelihood relative to "Trump continues to be more bark than bite" or "Trump becomes a smart dictator" is, of course, questionable, but that, again, wasn't the question.
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