Model of the Arc de Trump, Trump wants erected across the Potomac from the Lincoln Memorial. (Still from video posted to X by a CBS White House correspondent.)

In an era of spectacular commodities, Mussolini offered fascism for communal consumption, and his aestheticized notion of politics governed the organization of the show. Mussolini’s solipsism, his aspirations to omnipotence, his moral independence, and his disregard for individuals’ values informed fascism’s orientations and determined its direction.

― Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy

Maria Greeley was on her way to work at the Beach Bar in Chicago when she was accosted by three ICE agents. Fearing she might be targeted by ICE, Greeley, who is Latina, had her passport with her, proving she was an American citizen, born 44 years ago at the Masonic Hospital in Chicago. The Feds looked at Greeley’s passport and said it was fake because she didn’t “look like” her last name. Greeley explained that she was adopted by the Greeley family shortly after birth. “They said this [her passport] isn’t real, they kept telling me I’m lying, I’m a liar,” Maria Greeley told the Chicago Tribune. “I told them to look in the rest of my wallet, I have my credit cards, my insurance.” The agents still didn’t believe her and forced her hands behind her back and cuffed them together with zip ties. Then they interrogated her for more than an hour before releasing her, another American citizen subjected to federal cop abuse based solely on the color of her skin. “I am Latina and I am a service worker,” Greeley said. “I fit the description of what they’re looking for now.”

Maria Greeley is just one of more than 170 American citizens–many of them beaten, tackled, tasered, pepper-sprayed, and forcibly dragged–who have been arrested and detained by ICE and Border Patrol, caught up in Trump’s mass purge of immigrants, according to a report by Pro Publica. Many of the falsely detained have been held in miserable conditions for days. At least 20 of them were children, most of whom were kept from contacting their families or lawyers.

Pro Publica: “At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had........

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