I remember reading an interview with someone looking back on living in Germany during the rise of the Third Reich in the 1930s. The person wasn’t a politician, soldier, or celebrity. He was just a normal, ordinary fellow trying to live his life in a land run amok.
Every day brought some new atrocity, some new outrage. Before regular people were even able to process what had happened, the next day brought another atrocity, another outrage.
The constant barrage overwhelmed the ability to comprehend, let alone fight back against the rising tide of repression and violence.
It feels like we’re in a similar situation today.
At the top of every hour, the radio news opens with the latest insane pronouncement from Trump, the latest horror committed by his agents, or the latest capitulation to his narcissistic whims from members of both corporate political parties.
Over the past year, we’ve seen increasingly out-of-control members of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) wilding in U.S. cities. More agents of chaos than of any sort of law and order, they continually generate new footage for the horror show in which we now live. It’s all too much
During the Arab Spring protests in the early 2010s, Twitter became prominent as a platform for activists to organize direct action and get raw news out to the entire world, effectively bypassing the stranglehold of legacy corporate media on the dissemination of reporting the latest events.
Here in the United States, the Ferguson protests after the killing of Michael Brown by a police officer were a turning point. I repeatedly stayed up late at night, repeatedly refreshing my Twitter feed to watch the latest live streams by the protesters themselves.
Instead of footage carefully curated and framed by cable news, I saw what was happening on the ground as it happened. Whenever I did flip over to the news channels, it was obvious that major events were being unreported or misrepresented.
More than a decade later, even with the takeover of Twitter and its transformation into X by South African billionaire emerald mine heir Elon Musk, this particular social media platform remains a key resource for protestors to get video footage out to the wider world.
To prepare this column, I’ve spent the past month bookmarking videos, posts, threads, and links on Twitter/X that deal with the chaotic violence of ICE forces generally, and in Minneapolis particularly. Like the other writers here at The Wild Hunt, I like to hyperlink to evidence for whatever point I happen to be arguing.
Then I ran into a problem. There’s just too much.
It’s not just radio news headlines at the top of every hour. On social media, the flood of information is a constantly updated and never-ending story.
This is a column, not a news report, so I’ve decided to simply provide some key recent moments for those who may not obsessively doomscroll as much as I do. This collection of happenings should give you some sense of what we’re up against.
All of these incidents occurred within a week in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Click on the dates to watch the videos. A week which will live in infamy
7 January 2026 – U.S. citizen Renée Good tells ICE agent “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you,” is shot three times, is called “fucking bitch” by the agent who shot her, and crashes into a parked car and light pole.
She is pronounced dead within an hour. That evening, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem states that Good had committed “an act of domestic terrorism.” The next day, Vice President JD Vance says that Good had used “domestic terror” techniques. Over three weeks later, killer Jonathan Ross is still in hiding.
9 January 2026 – A man named Ricardo is kneed repeatedly in the face by an ICE agent while being held flat on the ground by multiple officers. The woman making the video recording is threatened with arrest for impeding.
9 and 11 January 2026 – In two separate incidents, two different ICE agents ask individuals if they hadn’t “learned” from the killing of Renée Good before assaulting them.
24 January 2026 – U.S. citizen Alex Pretti comes to the aid of a woman pushed to the ground by an ICE agent and is subsequently pepper-sprayed, wrestled to the ground, surrounded, beaten, disarmed of his lawfully registered and holstered handgun, and shot at least ten times in under five seconds – with the six final shots fired after he is already limp on the ground.
He is declared dead at the scene. The same day, Noem declares that his goal had been to “inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.” Also on the same day, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller calls him a “domestic terrorist.” Fifteen days later, two of the agents involved in the killing have been placed on leave. The others continue working for ICE in other cities.
If these videos make you angry, good. If they make you cry, they should.
If they drive you to start making excuses for the behavior of the agents, attacking the actions of the victims, nitpicking the framing of the shots, or questioning whether these events really took place, I invite you to go to the Google and spend some quality civic engagement time watching the multiple videos from alternative angles and following the detailed analyses that have been made nearly frame-by-frame.
I also invite you to compare the video footage to the claims made by the Trump administration. Ask yourself whether Noem and her colleagues are investigating and discussing the incidents in good faith and with integrity. Loyalty only to the leader
If you’ve ever seen the classic films Das Boot (“The Boat,” West Germany, 1981) or The Keep (1983), you’re familiar with the differences between career military men and the die-heard Nazi ideologues with whom they were thrown together.
In both films, Jürgen Prochnow plays the fundamentally moral soldier compromised by what he is forced to do. In the first film, the thorn in his side is a younger true believer in the Third Reich played by Hubertus Bengsch. In the second, Gabriel Byrne chews the scenery as an anti-Semitic beast of Hitler’s black-shirted S.S. (Schutzstaffel, “Protection Squadron”).
The S.S. were “political soldiers” who began as Hitler’s personal bodyguard and evolved into a sprawling organization that policed racial policies, assaulted supposed enemies of the Nazi Party, and ran extermination camps. Tell me if any of this sounds familiar:
SS men were schooled in racial hatred and admonished to harden their hearts to human suffering. Their chief “virtue” was their absolute obedience and loyalty to the Führer, who gave them their motto: “My honor is loyalty [Meine Ehre heißt Treue].” During World War II the SS carried out massive executions of political opponents, Roma (Gypsies), Jews, Polish leaders, Communist authorities, partisan resisters, and Soviet prisoners of war.
(Encyclopedia Britannica)
Yes, I know that we haven’t gotten that far yet. Give it time.
Or, better yet, don’t.
We know what happens when a small group of violent racists that owes loyalty to a single leader instead of to the law and the nation is actively built up by that leader into a nationwide force. We all learned about this in school, or we should have.
Back during his first term, shortly after the August 2020 killings by Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Trump famously declined to condemn violent white nationalist groups and instead famously declared,
Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem.
We now know that someone is Trump himself, and we know the purpose for which they were standing by.
I’m taking bets that, when this is all over and there’s a great unmasking and prosecution of the anonymous ICE agents, we’ll find out that the reason the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Boogaloo Boys, Asatru Folk Assembly, and similar groups haven’t been in the news so much recently is because many of them have accepted ICE’s $50,000 signing bonus and student loan forgiveness to go and live their fantasies of playing war and assaulting women, liberals, people of color, and everyone else on their hate-list. Sayings of the High One
As goði (priest) of Thor’s Oak Kindred, a progressive Ásatrú organization in Chicago, I must admit that I’ve been shamed by the actions of some of our friends over in the Christian clergy.
In September of last year, Pastor David Black of the First Presbyterian Church in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood was participating in a protest outside the ICE facility in the suburb of Broadview. Phone video shows him openly praying for ICE agents when one of them shoots him in the head with a pepper ball round.
He subsequently joined a federal complaint filed against Trump, Noem, Attorney General Pamela Bondi, and other officials for their deployment of federal agents around the nation to suppress First Amendment rights.
Last week, approximately 250 pastors joined two thousand protesters at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to stand together against ICE. 100 clergy were arrested as they “knelt, prayed, and did not disperse.”
Participant Rev. Paul Wilcox of Hamline United Methodist Church in St. Paul later stated,
“It was a nonviolent protest. But it was not a peaceful protest. We meant to disturb the peace – as peacefully as possible.”
But the clergyman who really got me where I live was an unidentified Catholic priest who made a quiet video in his office addressing the evils committed by ICE here in the first month of 2026. He concludes his two-minute address by asking a question.
“If synodality [1] is to be our future as church, then we need to be brave enough to name evil when we see it. But more than that, we must demand that those causing evil look inward and reflect or, if they cannot, we must replace them.”
The part that caught me up short was the bit about being “brave enough to name evil when we see it.” It immediately reminded me of one of the most important bits of the Old Norse poem Hávamál (“Sayings of the High One”), the major collection of the god Odin’s teachings:
Where you recognize evil, call it evil, and give no truce to your enemies.
(Carolyne Larrington translation)
The same lines can also be translated like this:
Where you know there’s malevolence, call it malevolence – and allow no peace to your enemies.
(Ursula Dronke translation)
The priest didn’t stop there, and he didn’t stop with a Christian call for the violent ICE agents to “look inward and reflect.” No, he went on to conclude that “we must replace them.”
We must replace them. Not merely complain. We must act.
Like the Christian clergy who put themselves in harm’s way to defy ICE and disturb the peace, we who believe in a religious credo claiming that we are our deeds must live up to our own theology by moving from calling out evil to facing it head on and allowing it no peace. Calm people of courage
Yes, we must call the evil what it is. We must be loud and proud in our denunciation of this violent chaos being sown by the administration and carried out by their masked goons.
It is important to not be silent, now more than ever. On social media, with our friends and family, at town halls with politicians, in the streets during protests, and in the face of ICE agents themselves, we must speak out and speak against.
On the continuum from written words through speech acts to physical actions, we must each find those spots where our skills can be most effective and decide how far we are willing to go.
National Public Radio just had an excellent report on constitutional observer training happening right now in Minnesota:
Torres DeSantiago is teaching people how to best witness and document immigration enforcement activity like how to identify vehicles, uniforms and weapons. Their aim is government accountability with a strong emphasis on safety.
DeSantiago himself explains:
The most important thing is the observer’s safety. Be safe. Don’t ever intervene. No matter how much you want to come to my aid, don’t, because I will also be met with high level of violence. What you need to do is take a step back, get a safe distance. Keep recording if you want to record. But don’t get in the way, and make sure that your safety is the most important thing…
Let your documentation stand for itself and be able to document that and give that to the attorneys so they can have a day in court. We also know that people – the moment they interact as an observer with someone being detained, the detained individual also gets heightened, right? And in a rush moment, they may do something that may actually jeopardize their case, and that’s not what we want.
I am embarrassed to admit it, but I know that I am the wrong person for this particular and particularly necessary job.
If I see someone being abused and attacked by ICE agents, I know that I would react like Alex Pretti. I would get involved. I also know that I would shove an ICE officer back, that I would get angry, and that the angry action would lead to getting beaten, arrested, or killed.
We need calm heads. We need calm people of courage. This isn’t for everyone, but it needs to be done for everyone. Protect and serve
In Hávamál, Odin also says,
Two are destroyers of one, the tongue is the head’s slayer, hidden under every fur coat I expect to find a hand.
(Carolyne Larrington translation)
Unfortunately, the Democrats in D.C. are all too often willing to compromise their supposed ideals, to give up the fight even when they have advantage and momentum. The glib words on their tongues slay the heads of their constituents, and there in the sleeves of their expensive coats are hidden hands that will stab us in the back.
In order to remove the ICE agents, to get them out of the streets and into jail cells, we need elected officials who will move from word to deed. We need our representatives to give no truce to our enemies, to stop backing away from confrontation and instead to bring the fight to the floor.
The problem isn’t just in DC. Democratic governors and mayors have shown themselves all too willing to call out the National Guard and deploy militarized police against protesters, but they have been resolutely squeamish about using them to shield any of us from ICE violence. They are as determined to protect property from the people as they are determined to not protect and serve their own constituents in the face of overwhelming force.
Future presidential candidates including California’s Gavin Newsom and Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker obviously have staff writing sternly worded tweets for them, and cheers to all for being willing to initiate legal proceedings after the fact, but we need to replace all of them with leaders who will prioritize action over words, who will use their power to actually stop out-of-control ICE agents from assaulting and murdering us.
So, in the coming primaries, if you vote Democratic, throw the bums out. Retire the incumbents and promote younger, stronger, more committed progressives who actually understand the times we live in and the threats we face.
“It can’t happen here” has already happened. “Never again” is now.
No one is coming to save us except us.
Look at this green fly crawling ’cross my page Look at all the ants in splintered frosted glaze Many are called but few get up Will you?
Such a lot of work that we all can do You can do it all – live, love, move, and do Many are called but few get up Will you?
My eyes are burning My mind is opening
“Many Are Called, But Few Get Up” Man (1971)
[1] Defined by the 2024 Synod on Synodality as “a path of spiritual renewal and structural reform that enables the Church to be more participatory and missionary so that it can walk with every man and woman.”
ChristopherBlackwell
Yes, throw out the elected bums who will use their
National Guard to stand guard of property against their own people protesting in the streets but NOT to protect their own people facing violence from ICE in the streets.
Throw out of office the bums who talk big but then throw away their power to stand against ICE bought and paid for by their people suffering on the streets.
We've seen this movie before. Racism still exists. Greed and gluttony and thirst for gold and glory still exists. Evil still exists.
It's not in his personality to stop. He may back down, like with his tariffs, but he WILL NOT stop. Unless he IS stopped.
Hopefully the Congress will finally step up and do their job. Hopefully they will stop him and stop him for good.
But the real heroes are those like Alex Pretti, Renee Good, and the people of Minnesota who went out in the bitter cold to protest, help, protect, love and support their neighbors... and to protect and support our Constitution. They are the heroes.
Imagine what Jesus would say if he were here right now.... about that little boy and his father.
There is wisdom with age but the brand is specific to the type of control
Wealth, Power, Knowledge, Wisdom all conspire in varied degrees to control the social narrative.
I was going to try and compose some clever dissertation to explain. Social Currency was a main topic I thought about. But then a lyric was brought to mind.
"I watch the ripples change their size But never leave the stream of warm impermanence and So the days float through my eyes But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on As they try to change their worlds Are immune to your consultations They're quite aware of what they're going through"
David Bowie - Changes
It seemed succinct to me.
I know I'm on the younger side for most of active members here. However I once mentioned I grew up with mostly late boomers. My parents were early boomers haha! I'm an early Gen X just past the cusp of the border. :-D
I've been very vocal with friends and family about new blood for years. Government service used to be about civic duty now it's a path to corporate puppetry and not just influence. *If you've never had a stock portfolio run for congress. *snark
I think infusion of new blood keeps a body healthy. (BTW actual science supports it for real blood transfusions etc.)
EDIT: I hope my quote is not misinterpreted. It is more of a reflection than a statement.
A Jack of all trades is master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.
... And many thanks for the masters in skill for setting our standard of work to instill.
on January 30, 2026, 10:17 pm
