Before you continue reading, please be advised there are extremely graphic images and video below regarding the murder of Renee Nicole Good by a masked ICE terrorist.
“Happy” New Year everyone. It’s been a long time. Here we go again I guess…
Authoritarianism cannot survive without an enemy. It must create an “other” to justify its existence, because its only real power is the lie that a small group of people are dangerous, and that the state alone can protect the majority from them.
Totalitarianism goes further. It does not merely control behavior. It seeks to control thought itself. What you are allowed to believe is real. What you are told is fiction. What evidence you must reject in order to remain safe.
This is not theoretical. It is historical. And it follows a pattern.
In the United States, right-wing authoritarian movements do not lose steam when they target marginalized people. They lose power when violence becomes impossible for white Americans to abstract away. When the “other” collapses and people see themselves in the victim.
We have seen this before.
In 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin shocked white America not simply because it exposed the brutality of slavery, but because it made white women recognize something they understood intimately. The sale of Eliza’s child shattered the maternal bond in a way that mirrored their own experiences. Many white women in the 1800s had lost children to diseases like cholera and measles. Suddenly, state violence was not an abstraction inflicted on Black families. It was recognizable. Empathy broke through where indifference had long held.
On September 15, 1963, four Black girls were murdered in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. They were not protesting. They were not marching. They were attending church. The blast tore through the building, killing them instantly and injuring more than twenty others. The church was a known civil rights meeting place and a frequent target of threats, but the sheer violence of that moment shattered excuses. Violence against Black Americans could no longer be framed as disorder or provocation. It was naked hatred.
On April 14, 1925, the Ku Klux Klan collapsed almost overnight after its leader, D.C. Stephenson, kidnapped, raped, and murdered a white woman, Madge Oberholtzer. The Klan had terrorized Black Americans, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants for years. That violence was tolerated. When it reached a white woman, public revulsion finally snapped the spell.
On May 4, 1970, the National Guard killed four unarmed college students at Kent State. The U.S. government blamed the victims. But something shifted. World War II veterans, many of whom had supported Nixon and sent their children to college to live the American Dream, recognized state violence directed at their own. Nixon’s base fractured. His approval collapsed.
This is the pattern. Authoritarianism thrives until the lie fails.
trump recently stated that the only thing holding him back was his own morality. That sentence alone should terrify anyone who understands why the United States exists. This country was founded in direct opposition to the rule of a mad king who believed restraint came from within, not from law.
On January 7, 2026, ICE murdered Renee Nicole Good.
*** WARNING FOR SENSITIVE VIWERS ***
That murder has begun to shatter the lie.
Renee was not an activist. She was not a symbol. She was ordinary. A poet. Her life was cluttered and banal in the way most lives are. Stuffed animals poked out of the glove compartment. A cup sat in the cup holder. The car was messy. Normal. The kind of normal that assumes there will be a tomorrow.
The image of her blood splattered seat next to that everyday clutter is not something propaganda can overwrite. Millions of people saw it. I know I will never forget it. We heard neighbors screaming. We heard a doctor begging to check her pulse while ICE agents shouted for him to back up:
We saw the footage from multiple angles. Analysts reviewed it. Independent experts reviewed it.
Renee did not attack an ICE agent with her vehicle.
Video circulated by right-wing media outlet, Alpha “news”, obtained from ICE agent terrorist, Jonathan Ross, shows her reversing, turning her wheel fully to the right to avoid him, then attempting to proceed when Ross opens fire, shooting her multiple times in the face. The video was released to dehumanize and monsterize Renee and her partner. Instead, it further exposes the lie.
Notice at the end how he calls her a “Fucking Bitch” after shooting her. Because that is exactly how this regime treats women. Especially visibly queer women.
Yet, Kristi Noem called Good’s actions “an act of domestic terrorism” and accused her of blocking in federal agents with her vehicle before the lethal shooting, but also indicated that the agent involved had been “dragged” by a vehicle during an enforcement operation last year. It’s the ridiculous fucking cowboy hat for me that really just seals it:
I saw the video. You saw the video.
This could have been me. This could have been you. This could have been any one of us. And we would have been painted as a “domestic terrorist” after being killed by the very government we pay taxes to support. That is why this moment marks a turning point. Many people are finally realizing that they too could be brutalized by a government they always believed would keep them safe. And it must be said clearly that this kind of state violence has long been a daily reality for people of color.
This is what George Orwell warned about:
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
ICE is demanding exactly that. Reject what you saw. Reject what you heard. Reject reality itself.
But this time, the victim looks like trump’s base. White women see themselves in Renee. They recognize her life. Her car. Her neighborhood. Her ordinariness. And that recognition is corrosive to authoritarian power.
Authoritarianism does not collapse all at once. It retreats when pressure becomes unavoidable.
The Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, tells ICE to “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis”:
In the past days, that pressure has begun to show results.
Democrats forced the ACA tax credit extensions to the House floor, where the bill passed with the support of more than a dozen Republicans. It now heads to the Senate.
Republicans now have such a thin House margin they can only afford to lose two votes. That reality has forced them to ever so slightly back off.
In Minnesota, the county district attorney has asserted jurisdiction to charge ICE agent Jonathan Ross for Renee Nicole Good’s killing, regardless of FBI interference. State authority is pushing back against federal obstruction.
After a 10 percent market loss and public backlash, Spotify announced it will no longer run ICE recruitment ads, reversing its earlier decision to double down.
The Senate passed legislation requiring trump to seek congressional approval for further military operations. Trump raged about Republicans backing the war powers resolution stating, “they should never be elected to office again”.
Aww, boo fucking hoo.
And after three years of dishonorable delay, the Senate finally voted to hang the January 6th plaque honoring the officers who defended the Capitol. trump despises that plaque. Hanging it signals that Congress is no longer pretending January 6th was a peaceful protest. It signals a rejection of the lie.
These are not victories. They are pressure points. And between now and May, everything depends on whether that pressure is sustained.
Authoritarianism depends on silence, fatigue, and denial. It collapses when people refuse to unsee what they have already witnessed.
We are not here because the system is functioning. We are here because people are finally recognizing when it is not.
Illinois Rep. Robin Kelly and New Mexico Rep. Melanie Stansbury will be introducing articles of impeachment against Kristi Noem for her absolute lawlessness.
We do this for George Floyd.
We do this for Breonna Taylor.
We do this for Renee Nicole Good.
We do this for everyone brutalized or killed by the United States government while the state demanded we pretend it did not happen.
The lie is cracking. What comes next depends on whether we keep pushing.
Everyone, please stay safe.
01/09/2026
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