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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30540 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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Every White Male In Minnesota is now ICE

First I saw the video of a MSM Cameraman who was accused by a crowd of being ICE due to the car he drove. He himeslf was Anti-ICE and fine with opening his vehicle up and showing that all he had inside was camera equipment. The crowd was not mollified by this, their demands just grew more ridiculous. "Get another car! Rent a car!" They learned no lessons about stereotyping people based on their race and vehicle. It was the victim's fault for looking like the wrong type of person.

Then I saw the video of the tech workers sitting down for lunch together. One of the gentlemen was on an Anti-ICE Signal chat and saw a notification that was accusing him and his friends of being ICE. At first it seemed funny, but then the mob descended. And of course, despite this mob not having any badges, several of them covering up their faces, generally being a threatening bunch, these tech workers were expected to give out details about where they work, where they live, what their occupation is, their politics, etc. lest they face the wrath of the mob.

The videos are abundant once you start looking. The Tree Trimmer who has a caravan of Anti-ICE cars following them around, honking, for the crime of driving a work van with tinted windows. The tall white guy just walking by himself with a warm jacket.

The irony of it all is that this is what anti ICE groups are accusing ICE of doing. Going to places and harassing people based off of stereotypes without any legal authority to do so. Demanding evidence to prove that someone belongs here.

However, that's just not true. ICE goes after specific people who have a final order of dismissal from an Immigration judge. When they do so, they often find other illegal immigrants living in the same area or working at the same business, as that is the nature of these things. Oftentimes these people also have final orders of removal. And so it goes.

From January to October of last year, only 170 US citizens were detained by ICE as reported by ProPublica. Of those 170, many were arrested for interfering with ICE operations. Compare this with 234,211 removals (I don't have data on arrests or detentions, but I can assume the number of arrests/detentions is greater than removals. The "US Citizen arrest rate" is at most 0.07% of the ICE arrestees, probably much smaller due to fact that there are more detentions than removals.

In July 2025, during street arrests and similar activities, ICE arrested some 4,494 persons who had no criminal record and no final order of deportation. If ICE were just arresting people who looked different, this is the statistic that would show it. The vast majority of Black people (96%) and Hispanic people (79%) in this country are citizens, so, if a government dragnet arrests a bunch of Hispanic people just for their skin color, we would expect about four out of five of them to turn out to be U.S. citizens. The ratio would be even higher in this dataset, because we’re already excluding people with final orders of deportation.


Of the 4,494 immigration suspects arrested in July, 209 have been released (<5%). 30 won their cases and received some form of formal relief. The others were released without much detail, but it seems safe to assume that ICE realized that they were likely to win relief in some form and pre-emptively granted it themselves. Zero—I repeat, zero—of those arrested were U.S. citizens.

The narrative of, "ICE is just going to immigrant communities and asking to see papers and then arresting anyone who can't prove without a shadow of a doubt that they're here legally," does not hold up to scrutiny. But it seems like Anti-ICE people are assuming this is their playbook because it's what they would do, and are now doing.

I have two relatives that are passionately anti-ICE and I have found only a limited amount of reasoning in the maintenance of their viewpoint. They have no interest in discussing the possible consequences of high amounts of low IQ migrants on society, how deterrence theory factors into the desire to deport those who arrived as a child, the longterm impact of demographic change, or the actual statistical risk that ICE poses in regards to unjustified use of force. They are stuck on ideological “flashbulb memories” from the media and thoroughly convinced that ICE = totalitarianism = no freedom = very bad = they will come for the women next (and other such statements of catastrophe). I speculate that the motivations behind some of the protesting has a purely psychological etiology: excitement from a sense of purpose + externalizing the problems which plague one’s own life. Toward this latter point, I am reminded of the externalization in Ecclesiastes, where the worries about the breakdown of the human body are writ large symbolically onto the body-politic:

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain, in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed, and the doors on the street are shut—when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low— they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way

Spoiler in case you wish to decipher the metaphors yourself: (The grinders being the teeth, the window’s being the eyes, and so forth.)

Consider the poignant interview from the No King’s Protest: “I'm just so scared. I'm 74 years old. I worry about everything. I just, I just am so scared and upset, and I don't - I don't understand why people voted for this person." Fear, worry, confusion, alienation — is this really all Trump’s doing? Or instead, are these found in one’s own life, and there is a pressing need for communal catharsis, however artificial, which is so difficult to find in our secular and atomized age? A possibility.

I speculate that the motivations behind some of the protesting has a purely psychological etiology: excitement from a sense of purpose + externalizing the problems which plague one’s own life.

I think this is a significant factor. You probably get to feel like a superhero responding to an alert somewhere in the city and hopping onto your rented e-bike like the Batmobile. Then there is the whole psychological aspect of just getting to scream at ICE for as long as you want, any insults you can imagine. In a way it strikes me like a form of those "Scream Clubs" you see in leftist cities, just like the dark/evil version of them. I never understood the appeal of those scream clubs to begin with, but they seem very popular among women. Like the woman pictured in the article basically matches my mental model of what someone screaming at ICE would look like perfectly.

In a way it strikes me like a form of those "Scream Clubs" you see in leftist cities, just like the dark/evil version of them. I never understood the appeal of those scream clubs to begin with, but they seem very popular among women

I dunno, it reminds me of Rage Yoga, which I feel was more popular with men. And I can certainly understand the appeal of "exercise coupled with getting some good hearty shouting in". Sometimes you just want to be that guy from the Highlander: The One meme, ya know?

But what if you end up as that Tom Hanks-looking cowboy screamer in the sky instead?

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