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America's Gestapo.

"ICE is checking documents on the subway. ICE is outside New York public libraries that hold English-as-a-second-language classes. ICE agents handcuffed a U.S. citizen who tried to intervene in a detention in Harlem. ICE vehicles are parked outside Columbia. (1/2)
"ICE is coming to your workplace, your street, your building. ICE agents are wearing brown uniforms that resemble those of UPS — don’t open the door for deliveries. Don’t leave the house. The streets in the New York neighborhoods with the highest immigrant populations have emptied out."

Masha Gessen, with knowledge and perspective. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/opinion/trump-ice-immigrants.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8k4.ulht.RdtSADsTRPiO&smid=url-share (2/2)
"ICE agents wearing brown uniforms" is very on the nose
Gestapo ("Secret state police") actually generally did not wear an uniform in the classical sense.
I think the reference is to the Brown Shirts and Black Shirts in the period before the takeover was completed.

There is a degree of conflation, perspective from history.
The party uniform of the NSDAP was brown.

Even after they come into power.

As the party colours of the right-extremist/fascist parties in Austria are blue, they are sometimes called "blaun" an artificial combination of "blau" (blue) and "braun" (brown), to "subtly" point out their fascist tendencies.
The origin of the brown shirts worn by the SA was an accident of history. Not long after the end of WWI, some uniform maker got stuck wirh a huge run of unsold brown uniform shirts. The early Nazi Party (NSDAP) scooped them up on the cheap, and adopted them as part of the SA's uniform.

The SA were full of shit wirh the Stormtroopers name BTW: the name originaly referred to elite "push-men," shock troops kept out of battle until it was time to attempt to storm an opposing trench under a rain of artillery as suppressive fire. Most WWI armies had them under various names, the Italian Arditi were probably the most capable. Germany's stormtroopers managed more than once to force a breach in the stalemated front, only to find the regular army could not exploit the breakthroughs.

This was due to reliance on horse-drawn transport, and meant the war continued until all sides were utterly exhausted. Germany's WWI stormtroopers had a casualty rate of about 25%, not sure if that was total or per battle but the latter seems lilely. On the front they were often treated as rock stars. Imagine Manowar or Sabaton on a front line in Ukraine, that's the kind of attention they got.

Years later the Nazis appropriated the name for street-fighting hooigans who never had to storm anything tougher than a beer hall. Beer halls defended by Communists could put up a good fight, and were nearly a match for the Naziss but not quite. The Beer Hall Putsch proved these so-called "stormtroopers" could not even handle armed police much less fight a serious military unit. A tough antifa-held beer hall was their absolute limit.

Yet when you say "stormtrooper" today people think either of the SA or the white-armored regular troops of the Empire in Star Wars. The "push-men" of all the WWI armies who tried ro break the stalemate and thus stop the meat grinder are all but forgotten.

The second and third meanings both fit ICE, they'd shit their pants trying to take a trench defended by an army wirh cannon and machine guns, say in Ukraine today.

Today's version of the SA would be the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and 3%'ers. Next to even regular troops they look like out of shape reservists or maybe just cosplayers. I've faced them in battle myself several times. They are best compared to fake US Navy SEALs wirh store-bought tridents.
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And Mussolini and Mosley's lot, the latter satirised by P G Wodehouse as Spode's Black Shorts.
An unrelievedly vile collection.
Yes! Now that Trump pardoned the J6 goons and wants to pay them, I'm looking at Oath Keepers and Proud Boys in a Freikorps perspective. Or Wagner group.
I think of those outfits more as Trump's SA (so-called stormtroopers). They are at risk of being replaced by ICE just as the SS replaced the SA.

For what happened next, look at Nazi Germany's "night of the long knives."
The Brown Shirts was the first thing I thought of as well. They aren't even trying to hide that they are true Nazis.
Republicans are also using ICE raids to keep their own in line. Idaho lawmaker was threatened with ICE raids by fellow republicans after she pushed back against rightwing polices. Now she says they followed through and ICE raided her businesses. https://youtu.be/yg4PBvaNeF0?si=nlqUTAPz2Jg9hgra #intimidation #maga #ice #trump
damn:
A private company has launched an app called ICERAID, billed as a “protocol that delegates intelligence-gathering tasks to citizens that would otherwise be undertaken by law enforcement agencies.” The app promises rewards for “capturing and uploading images of criminal illegal alien activity” and possibly even bigger rewards for self-reporting — for adding oneself to the ICERAID registry if one is “an honest, hard-working undocumented immigrant with no criminal history.”
Here in Europe we see history repeat itself and it is scary and unbelievable. If it is not stopped, it will lead to a situation where only white men are safe, provided they support the leader's policies and have the right eyecolour. Not to act =agree with that situation.

About 100 years ago, the ICE had a different name, namely GESTAPO.
What about Mussolini's Brown Shirted, Jackbooted Thugs?