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Red Flag: Is it 1933?

In his weekly column, Nathaniel Flakin looks at the proto-fascist methods of ICE in Minneapolis


04/02/2026

Image: Chad Davis (https://chaddavis.photography/sets/ice-in-minneapolis/)

The brutal terror on the streets of Minneapolis, with masked thugs arresting people for having the wrong accent or the wrong skin color, reminds many people of the Nazis. The podcaster Joe Rogan, after enthusiastically endorsing Trump in 2024, has been wondering: “Are we really going to be the Gestapo? ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?”

Minnesota governor Tim Walz said: “We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody is going to write that children’s story about Minnesota.”

Right-wing actors, including the U.S. Holocaust Museum and the Department of Homeland Security, energetically reject the comparisons. (Even as the DHS account is a constant stream of white nationalist memes). They point out that ICE is merely targeting “illegals” whereas the Gestapo went after German citizens—as if the Nazis didn’t attack Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe for not having proper papers.

Comparisons

Historical comparisons do not claim two things are identical—no two historical phenomena are exactly the same. A comparison highlights both similarities and differences. As the liberal commentator Masha Gessen explained—after they were cancelled in Germany for pointing out parallels between the genocide in Gaza and the liquidation of Jewish ghettos —“comparison is the way we know the world.” Or as Leon Trotsky put it:

To judge the correctness or erroneousness of a historical analogy it is necessary to clearly define its content and its limits. Not to resort to analogies … would mean simply to reject the historical experience of mankind. The present day is always different from the day that has passed. Yet it is impossible to learn from yesterday in any other way except by the method of analogy.

In that spirit, what are the similarities between Minneapolis in 2026 and Germany in 1933? What are the differences?

Fascist Ideas

It’s easy to note the similarities, not just because of the state-sponsored racist violence on the streets, but also because ICE agents are clearly fans of fascism, with Gregory Bovino marching around in an SS-style coat as he mocks the “chosen people” (he’s a classical antisemite).

ICE has absorbed a lot of fascist thugs, which is why the Proud Boys and other far-right gangs are less visible than a few years ago—many have changed their uniforms.

Stephen Miller has had a fascist worldview since he was in high school, and this extreme violence is in the service of a desire to build national strength through racial purity. Miller would clearly love to be at the head of the Gestapo in 1933 (in spite of his Jewish heritage, since national identities are always contradictory).

But just because individuals in the White House have fascist views, it does not mean fascism is in power.

Trump’s Weakness

We also need to look at the limits of this comparison. The Nazis created the Gestapo, short for the Secret State Police, in April 1933, by amalgamating different police agencies and supplementing them with their own fascist militia, the Nazi stormtroopers of the SA. The Gestapo was later put under the control of a different Nazi squad, the SS.

The Gestapo came into being several months after German elites had put Hitler in power on January 30, 1933. The Reichstag had burned and the Nazis had carried out a reign of terror against their opponents, setting up concentration camps across the country and banning the Communist Party.

In early 1933, the Nazis had two million stormtroopers in paramilitary formations—enough to terrorize opponents in every corner of a country of 66 million people. Down to the last village, antifascists were being murdered, tortured, or forced out of the country.

This shows us a crucial difference: ICE, despite a rapid expansion, has something like 22,000 agents in a country of over 340 million. The Border Patrol has several tens of thousands more.

While the Nazis were able to consolidate all German police under their control, we are seeing how the repressive forces in the U.S. are fragmented. (This does not mean that the national guard or the cops can ever be our allies, but they are not part of the ICE campaign either). This is because the U.S. ruling class itself is fragmented and not solidly behind Trump.

The heroic and relentless protests in Minneapolis have forced Trump to make a tactical retreat, recalling the Nazi cosplayer Bovino. The masses in the U.S. have not yet suffered a historic defeat—they are capable of levels of mass resistance that were completely impossible in Germany before the name Gestapo ever appeared.

Despite all the cruel spectacle, Trump is actually rather weak. The majority of people in the U.S. oppose the ICE terror, and Trump’s coalition is showing fractures—his actions are “outside the relation of forces.” The campaign, up to and including multiple public executions, was designed to break the will of people to resist the far-right agenda—but it has backfired.

Bonapartism

What we are seeing in the U.S. is not fascism but rather a weak and unstable Bonapartist government. Bonapartism can be a prelude to fascism—see Brüning, von Papen, and Schleicher, who were Hitler’s immediate predecessors. But Bonapartism does not automatically pave the way for fascism—that is determined by the class struggle. Only if the masses’ independent organizations are crushed can fascism roll over their skulls like a tank. Trump and Miller would obviously love to do that, but they currently lack the power to pull it off.

That’s why a comparison between ICE and the Gestapo, between Trump and Hitler, has important limitations. Trump has more in common with Louis Bonaparte, the “grotesque mediocrity” who proclaimed himself Emperor of the French in 1852. Napoleon III, the nephew of the original emperor, had to precariously balance between opposing classes, relying on a base of lumpenproletarians in the cities and peasants in the countryside. Like Trump, the latter Bonaparte was a buffoon who relied on constant spectacle, and concentrated the entire executive power in his hands. It is no coincidence that both need gold and jewels as signs of their power.

Marx’s analysis of Bonapartism shows how, in a time of great unrest, the ruling class can come to rely on a strongman who appears to make the state independent of society. But such a regime is necessarily unstable. 

Fight

To say we are not under fascism is not to call on people to chill out. It’s the opposite: An authoritarian wave is rolling around the planet, and fascist forces are growing in its wake. Many ICE agents are motivated by fascist ideology, and they use proto-fascist methods against civilians.

It’s precisely because we do not live in fascism that we can and must organize mass resistance—it is a time for boldness and optimism. As the strikes and grassroots resistance in Minneapolis have shown, the authoritarians are not all-powerful. They can be stopped. With a nationwide general strike, we could derail Trump’s whole agenda and stop figures like Miller from realizing their Nazi dreams. This was no longer possible in Germany by mid-1933, as the Gestapo was founded. 

Red Flag is a weekly opinion column on Berlin politics that Nathaniel has been writing since 2020. After moving through different homes, it now appears at The Left Berlin.

11 February 1990: Release of Nelson Mandela

This week in working class history


On 11th February 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from Victor Verster Prison near Cape Town. Addressing a crowd of 50,000 people, he declared, “Our march to freedom is irreversible.” Millions watched this historic event on television. Mandela’s release marked a significant step toward dismantling apartheid—institutionalized racial segregation—in South Africa in 1994. However, the US government, under Presidents Bush and Clinton, was slow to respond. Mandela was banned from entering the USA until 2008.

Nelson Mandela was born in the Eastern Cape in 1918. He attended his first demonstration in 1943 in Alexandra, outside Johannesburg, successfully opposing a 20% increase in bus fares. He joined the African National Congress (ANC) but later criticized its leader, Alfred Xuma, because “he enjoyed the relationships he had formed with the white establishment and did not want to jeopardize them with political action.” In 1944, Mandela co-founded the more radical ANC Youth League.

In 1956, Mandela was arrested for high treason in a trial that lasted five years. Following the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, where police killed 69 demonstrators, over 18,000 people were detained, and the ANC was banned. Mandela was convicted in another trial in 1962. Resistance continued with strikes in the early 1970s, the Soweto uprising in 1976, and the first openly political strike in 1982, involving 100,000 participants. These actions ultimately led to a series of strikes throughout the 1980s, contributing to the downfall of the apartheid regime.

In response to the Sharpeville Massacre, Mandela began to believe that armed struggle was essential for the liberation of Black South Africans. Although some have portrayed him as a pacifist, he became the central organizer of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC’s armed wing, starting in 1961. By 1985, the apartheid government indicated they would release Mandela if he renounced violence. He responded by stating he would remain in prison until the ban on the ANC was lifted.

Mandela’s release and the dismantling of apartheid did not lead to full equality in South Africa; instead, it instituted what Patrick Bond has termed “class apartheid.” In 1994, South Africa was forced to adopt a neoliberal IMF plan, which included cuts to state spending and public sector wages. Subsequent governments took further actions, such as orchestrating the Marikana massacre of striking miners. Nevertheless, Mandela’s release represented a significant victory, showing that with sufficient mobilisation, it is possible to overcome even the most repressive states.

Bruce Springsteen’s new folk song classic “Streets of Minneapolis”

Hari Kumar from the Marxist-Leninist Research Group on folk music and Trump’s ICE tactics


02/02/2026

Some Leftists in the 1960s disparaged the pop song brigade as a propagandist distraction from the struggle. And maybe large parts of the category were consciously designed to help listeners “tune in, drop out”. However, folk music—the prized fare of the 1950s–80s leftists—was not frozen in the time of the 19th-century rise of the factories. How does a folk song come to be, who “writes” them, and can we have new ones now?

Many of the popular folk songs—even in the 1960s—originally came from the people. As A.L. Loyd wrote in the book Come All Ye Bold Miners:

“Songs that are so close to the heart of the common people may have a functional quality that goes far beyond mere diversion. Many of them were made up not so much to decorate life as to make it bearable … these songs arose spontaneously in working-class communities and in the main were transmitted orally.” (p.13–18)

We don’t know who wrote many of the extraordinary ballads of working-class resistance, such as the ones collected by Lloyd, like “Blackleg Miner“. But we do know who wrote “Streets of Minneapolis“. 

Following the killing of nurse Alex Pretti on the 25th January and mother Renée Good on the 7th January in Minneapolis by ICE agents, Bruce Springsteen—in a fever pitch—wrote this song of memory and resistance.

On Sunday, 25th January, Springsteen recorded the song, and to date, it has had over 2 million views. “Streets of Minneapolis” is already a folk song.

To quote the lyrics of the first two verses: 

Verse 1:
Through the winter’s ice and cold
Down Nicollet Avenue
A city aflame fought fire and ice
‘Neath an occupier’s boots
King Trump’s private army from the DHS
Guns belted to their coats
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law
Or so their story goes

Verse 2:
Against smoke and rubber bullets
In the dawn’s early light
Citizens stood for justice
Their voices ringing through the night
And there were bloody footprints
Where mercy should have stood
And two dead, left to die on snow-filled streets
Alex Pretti and Renee Good

Chorus:
Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
We’ll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
Here in our home, they killed and roamed
In the winter of ’26
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis”

Listen to this new anthem of our class today—but also organise.

We believe it is the agenda of Trump to provoke individual acts of violence. As we wrote when the ICE thugs were launched on Los Angeles workers in June 2025, the Trump regime is trying to provoke individual acts of resistance. In order to justify a military crackdown, Trump and Stephen Miller are using ICE to “provoke and goad”.

The current tactic of the Trump Government is to appear to “de-escalate” in the very short term. As a first step, they removed Border Patrol officer Greg Bovino, whose provocative and inflammatory actions were crucial to ICE’s aggression, and replaced him with Tom Homan. In a New York Times article, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Hamed Aleaziz wrote:

“Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol chief whose tactics in immigration operations in American cities have garnered lawsuits and protests, was pulled out of Minneapolis. But White House officials maintained he was not at risk of losing his position. The White House has directed Tom Homan, the president’s border czar, to replace Mr. Bovino in Minnesota and meet with local authorities to “de-escalate” the situation in Minneapolis, in Mr. Trump’s words.”

The New York Times and the Democratic Party are making it appear that things are going to “settle down” as Trump will somehow “see reason”. Tyler Pager, Katie Rogers, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Hamed Aleaziz reported in an article for the New York Times:

“The president announced on social media that he was sending Mr. Homan to Minneapolis, a tacit acknowledgment that he was losing control of a situation that posed one of the most serious political threats of his second administration.”

But this idea that Trump has suddenly had a change of heart is misleading. As the article goes on to scrutinise, who actually is Trump’s so-called “border czar”, Homan?

“Mr. Homan, a longtime ICE official, is seen among Mr. Trump’s allies as someone who could bring a measure of calm to the chaos in Minnesota, particularly because he has called for targeted arrests instead of sweeping raids. But he is fully on board with Mr. Trump’s mass deportation campaign; in 2018, he, along with two senior officials, recommended a policy that eventually led to families being separated at the southern border.”

Neither Kristi Noem (Secretary of Homeland Security) nor Stephen Miller (“the mastermind of President Trump’s hard-line immigration policy,”) have been removed from authority. Meanwhile, Democratic Party leader Chuck Schumer makes deals with Trump and the New York Times, tries to reassure the public. According to Carl Hulse, Schumer suggested that a Democratic Party agreement would allow Republican legislation to proceed on a “six-bill package” of spending measures, including spending on the military, health programs and other federal agencies. The Senate would then split off funding for Homeland Security (e.g. funding for ICE), where there could be “negotiations” on limiting ICE powers.

But the working class cannot believe that Schumer and Trump would agree to anything of any lasting value for the working class. 

Meanwhile, a threat to do another Venezuela on Iran is unfolding, which will not help the working class oppressed by a theocracy there.

We need mass united actions and a united Marxist-Leninist party. We would like to reiterate what we said on 25th January 2026, that, as a minimum, the demands for this movement should include the following: 

  • The withdrawal of ICE agents from Minneapolis and other cities;
  • The prosecution and public trials of the murderers of both Renée Good and Alex Pretti;
  • The release of those in detention from the ICE raids across the USA
  • A public enquiry with a view to laying criminal charges against the Trump leaders, setting and enabling the ICE attacks on the agenda.

We recognise that the last demand in particular will be difficult to achieve.

Ultimately—given the nature of the capitalist crisis besetting the USA—only a Marxist-Leninist united party can prevent this continuing and deteriorating. Only a socialist solution can stop this societal attack on workers. But the General Strike held in Minnesota is a valuable sign of how the working class can move.

As Lenin said, “strikes are a school of war”, and Minneapolis was one. In these times, we must learn fast.

It is necessary to add that while we are at war, our enemy is much more powerfully armed.

At this stage, our class response must be non-violent, mass demonstrations.

Only mass action and all that this implies can prevent the move towards the cancellation of the mid-term elections, the declaration of the Insurrection Act, and the formal imposition of fascism.

This is a revised version of an article that originally appeared at MLRG.online.

Undocumented, unemployed, criminalized

Berlin’s migrant youth in crisis


A couple of years ago, Lost in Europe published an investigation revealing that tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children have disappeared from Europe’s records. Vanishing from official radars, their whereabouts became nearly impossible to trace, leaving ample cause for wild speculation. 

In Germany, one of the four main countries cited in that report, the situation for many refugees has gotten worse, with an increasing amount being pushed into homelessness. This is starkly visible in the capital, where Berlin’s infamous open drug scene has become home for a large population of undocumented migrants. Hotspots like Görlitzer Park and the nearby Kottbusser Tor (”Kotti”) are among the most obvious examples.

It doesn’t take long when at Kotti to notice the surprisingly young age of the North African boys selling drugs in the area. They are not only young but lack any valid documents or legal status. For me, meeting them was a quick reminder of the missing youth documented by Lost in Europe.

Since asylum applications from North Africans are routinely rejected in the EU, many of these boys deliberately go off the grid to avoid deportation. And those who have accumulated criminal records (due to unpaid fines, or theft, or drug dealing) tend to disappear in order to avoid detention.

These boys are famously known in local dialects as Harraga, which literally means “burners” in reference to burning borders, burning passports, or even burning the past, leaving everything behind to seek what they thought would be their perfect future in Europe. Their dangerous migration journey was meticulously documented by German director Benjamin Rost, who spent years following a group of Moroccan boys heading to Europe for his documentary film titled Harraga.

The film shows boys between 13 and 19 years old attempting to cross land borders from Morocco. Some of them, along with countless others whose journeys go undocumented, reach Spain, where they eventually join other youth who crossed the Mediterranean from other parts of North Africa.

For the Harraga youth who do successfully reach Europe, they become street children in Spain until they apply for asylum. Driven by hope or necessity, some continue their journey to other EU destinations. By the time they reach a final destination like Berlin, they discover that having previously applied in another EU state subjects them to the Dublin Regulation. This leads to a rejected claim and a deportation order back to the first country of application. Additionally, a trail of unresolved criminal cases left behind in transit countries also contribute to the denial of their asylum requests.

All these legal hurdles are often followed by economic struggles due to severe lack of legitimate income sources. This gap is the primary reason for their high tendency to commit crimes. Even those who apply for asylum in a comparatively generous city like Berlin receive only 200-400 Euros in monthly from the state. Formal employment is structurally inaccessible. Most are either ineligible for a work permit or must first secure a job offer, a significant barrier, as many have left school early and some are even functionally illiterate. Even those with certificates find them unrecognized in the EU. These systemic obstacles are compounded by personal challenges like trauma, family separation, and substance abuse, making the sustained routine needed to learn, certify skills, or hold a job nearly impossible.

This reality leaves many with access only to informal labor, such as construction or kitchen work. The far more lucrative and flexible alternative is drug dealing. In Berlin and other German cities, this precarious situation has fueled a sharp rise in the number of Arab youth in detention centers, pre-trial facilities, and prisons. Migrants now constitute nearly half of Berlin’s prison population, a threshold already crossed in Hamburg.

Behind these shocking statistics lie individual stories of young people who came to Europe with hopes and dreams and found nothing but a system that antagonised them. And this is no accidental policy; the criminalisation of these youth is a deliberate mechanism of racism and state violence. When we see these boys selling drugs in Kotti, we must see beyond the stereotypes to recognise the systematic forces that leave them with no legitimate alternatives. This includes the Dublin Regulation, which denies them asylum, the economic barriers that shut them out of formal employment, and the racist policing that targets them disproportionately. This crisis demands both awareness as well as solidarity. And hopefully through these stories, I can bring out the personal stories the statistics, reminding us all that each detention center bed, each prison cell, each street corner where a young person is forced to sell drugs represents the failure not only of society as whole but also of our activist circles that have not until now built structures to support these criminalised youth.

For more information, see White, green, or brown? written by the same author.

Photo Gallery – “Venezuala and US Imperialism in Latin America” meeting

Friday, January 30th 2026 in bUm