It’s not particularly surprising — though always unnerving — to suddenly be confronted by someone like this on the streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg, or virtually anywhere in Russia. They are members of OMON — military special police — and they are not known for their restraint.

But to see masked enforcers — even unarmed — suddenly materializing on the streets of American cities, towns, or college campuses, and whisking people off in unmarked vehicles is, to say the very least, horrifying.

This is what happened during Stalin’s purges in the Soviet Union, and Hitler’s extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany. We just don’t do that here.

Or we didn’t, until this year, when xenophobia became rampant in Washington’s halls of government, and a well-orchestrated roundup of “undesirables” and “idiots” (Secretary of State Rubio’s word for protesters) was begun.

The wholesale deportation of immigrants was well underway when we began hearing of individuals — legally in the U.S. on student visas — being snatched from their daily routines to be sent back to their various countries without notice and without cause, other than being from the “wrong” country, or simply having said something that someone in Washington didn’t like.

In some cases, the people doing the snatching have been masked and otherwise unidentifiable, allegedly for their own protection from retribution.

And if that doesn’t sound like a giant step toward full-out fascism . . .

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/9/25