Staying silent on America's human rights abuses cannot continue
Bradley Blankenship
Investigators move the body of a man who is reportedly Michael Forest Reinoehl after he was shot and killed by law enforcement on September 3, 2020 in Lacey, Washington. /Getty Images

Investigators move the body of a man who is reportedly Michael Forest Reinoehl after he was shot and killed by law enforcement on September 3, 2020 in Lacey, Washington. /Getty Images

Editor's note: Bradley Blankenship is a Prague-based American journalist, political analyst and freelance reporter. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Horrifying details about the United States' Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities have surfaced after a whistleblower complaint this week claimed a Georgia facility had a high rate of hysterectomies and medical neglect. The complaint claims that many of these Spanish-speaking women were not informed of the procedure they were undergoing, or were given haphazard translations via the internet, which amounts to forced sterilization.  

This is the same ICE that is known to separate families in detention centers, demonstrably neglects the health of detainees – many of them children – to the point of death and continues to terrorize immigrants all over the country. ICE, a direct arm of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, represents the most racist and xenophobic tendencies of American society solidified into a federal agency.

It should be noted, as it is now on American social media, that the racist and xenophobic features of American society, and especially its powerful influence on policy, was the antecedent for Nazi fascism. Lawyer and professor James Q. Whitman articulated this history quite meticulously in his 2017 book, "Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law", that described the connection between American race laws and the Nuremberg Laws.

The totality of events that took place this summer, and are continuing, in the wake of the extrajudicial killing of Black Americans and the administration's refusal to even acknowledge systemic racism is a sign that the U.S. under Trump is poised to continue its historical pioneering of racism. Actions taken by the administration in response to the protests sparked by these very obvious violations of justice have been so hellacious that even General James Mattis, Trump's former defense secretary, denounced the actions.

Mattis even made reference to Nazi ideology in his statements by saying, "Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that 'The Nazi slogan for destroying us … was "Divide and Conquer." Our American answer is "In Union there is Strength."' We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis – confident that we are better than our politics."

Mothers form the front line of a protest march toward Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, July 20, 2020. /Getty Images

Mothers form the front line of a protest march toward Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, July 20, 2020. /Getty Images

Surely Trump is using division as his rallying cry, but if the comparison hasn't stuck by now, there have been other disturbing events surrounding the administration in recent weeks that also show the U.S.'s full descent into fascism. President Trump has endorsed the extrajudicial killing of American citizens who are suspected of being tied to groups that challenge his administration while apologizing for the violent actions of his own supporters.

Michael Reinoehl, an Oregon resident who had apparently been involved in protests against police violence in Portland for several months, shot and killed Aaron Danielson, a member of the far-right militia group, Patriot Prayer. The U.S. Marshals Service, a federal agency, was deployed to arrest Reinoehl but killed him in the process. According to authorities, there is no video of the incident and thus no way to verify the claim made by federal agents.

Trump said during a Fox News interview this week, "I will tell you something, that's the way it has to be. There has to be retribution when you have crime like this."

During a campaign rally, Trump described Reinoehl as "a bad guy" who shot "a very fine young man," referring to Danielson, and claimed to have personally directed federal authorities to arrest him. Trump went on that, "it was taken care of in 15 minutes."

Attorney General William Barr had previously endorsed the action by law enforcement in an official statement. "The streets of our cities are safer with this violent agitator removed, and the actions that led to his location are an unmistakable demonstration that the United States will be governed by law, not violent mobs," the top criminal justice official said.

This can be juxtaposed with the Trump administration's reaction to a shooting perpetrated by Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old Trump supporter and former youth police cadet, that left two dead and one injured at a protest against police violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The president insinuated that Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense and he has since been lionized by far-right commentators and propagandists, including Fox News' Tucker Carlson and the Proud Boys, a well-known neo-fascist group.

The administration's continual appeasement of the radical right is reprehensible enough, but let's also not forget that nearly 200,000 Americans have died due to the president's negligence and self-admitted deceit to the public. Millions are facing joblessness and homeless through clear political choices chiefly by the administration and the Republican-controlled Senate. This is a class war that has slipped into genocide.

These are not just mildly deleterious headlines and abstractions, they are problems creating untold suffering for countless people. But what is extremely frustrating is the total erasure of this information among American allies. If it's not silence, then it's denial or downplaying, and this fundamentally undermines the concept of human rights as a whole.

At the same time, there is a hyper-intense focus on alleged crimes in other places, be it China, Belarus, or elsewhere, that are given so much focus, so much attention and are met with so much action, yet are totally undetectable when compared to the directly observable and self-admitted crimes of Washington just on its own soil and just this year alone.

How any European leader could threaten, for example, Belarus with sanctions over police brutality and political suppression while rolling out the red carpet for Trump diplomats and feel not an ounce of shame is truly beyond me. Unfortunately that seems to be a common theme.

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