Armin Langer (visiting in UF’s Center for European Studies) argues that it is wrong and dangerous to describe ICE as Nazis and the Gestapo. His argument surpasses any of the arguments I have seen. While I disagree, it is worth responding to. (Langer’s piece is part of a pair of competing arguments in The Forward; I did not think much of the piece that reaches the conclusion I share and the photo they used with that piece would make a great defamation hypo).
Here is the crux of Langer’s argument: While we are experiencing democratic backsliding, we remain a democratic and not “full-fledged” authoritarian state. The press remains free (if supine); people are protesting and organizing; the courts remain independent and have ordered ICE and the Administration to take certain actions and have threatened to hold officials in contempt.
Langer’s argument ignores the possibility that fascist/police-state/authoritarian elements can operate–to greater or lesser success, depending on how the rest of society responds–within a functioning democracy. ICE and others continue to do a lot of unlawful or constitutionally invalid stuff. That the courts have stopped some stuff does not make ICE any less of an authoritarian entity trying to do things analogous to what Nazis/fascists/authoritarians hoped to do. A failed Brownshirt–or a Brownshirt that has not yet achieved its goals–remains a Brownshirt.
And, of course, the courts have not stopped all of it. The courts are unable to stop some stuff (given the difficulty of prospective remedies and the unavailability of retroactive remedies). And the government has, to this point, disobeyed (according to Chief Judge Schlitz) dozens of court orders without consequence. Langer waves away the “sharp disputes over enforcement” that render these court orders and attempts to obtain judicial remedies ineffective, if not worthless. That courts remain open and offer theoretical checks does not mean ICE is not doing (and, for the moment, getting away with) analogous stuff.
I take Langer’s point that we lose something if “Nazi” becomes synonymous with “bad politics.” But ICE is engaging in more than bad politics; their conduct rhymes, if not repeats, albeit with a different target.
Finally, Langer continues the category error that Nazis were not Nazis until they turned murderous. He writes:
Nazism remains historically singular, both because of its eliminationist antisemitism and its state-driven project of industrial genocide. No other political movement has so entirely organized its worldview around the idea that a specific people constitutes a cosmic threat. The Nazis were driven by the belief that the mere existence of Jews endangered humanity, and that Jews therefore had to be physically annihilated everywhere.
But while the Reich regarded Jews as a cosmic threat, for about a decade it was content to strip Jews of rights, status, and property; place them in detention without due process; and incentivize them to self-deport, mixed in with some state-sanctioned violence (sound familiar?). They turned to eliminationism when the “space” prong of their ideology collided with the “race” prong of their ideology. By spring 1941, Germany’s territorial aspirations had compelled them to invade and conquer most of Europe; this brought within the Reich the Jewish populations of those countries, including more than 6 million in Poland and Russia. Deportation/self-deportation ceased to be an option because there was nowhere for them to go. That is when Nazism turned murderous.