Timothy Snyder is a historian at Yale University, where he teaches European history.
He posted this podcast today. It’s only 10 minutes and well worth the time.
He wrote in introduction:
As a historian of forced population movements and as an American, I don’t think we are taking the consequences of the Trump-Vance deportation plan seriously enough. The reality will be much more personal and awful, and the politics more transformative and durable, than we might think.
I will write this up soon; but I was moved to do a recording by the urgency of this, and by the desire to catch the end of Hispanic Heritage Month.
Please listen and please share.
You might find it useful to read my thoughts about the thousands or tens of thousands of detention camps that would be needed in every state.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
During WWII, the United States forcibly relocated and incarcerate about 120,000 people of Japanese descent in TEN concentration camps. About two-thirds were US citizens.
Imagine how many concentration camps it will take to get rid of millions of immigrants, and US citizens the Traitor Trump dictatorship will label as Trump’s enemies, who must lose their citizenship, and be deported to maybe Russia to die in labor camps or be worked-to-death here.
If Traitor Trump lies and cheats his way back into the White House, I suspect I’ll be on one of the Traitor’s lists. I’d rather die fighting when they come for me. If that happens, I’m hoping California and other majority blue states will break away from Traitor Trump’s dictatorship first, forming a smaller United States that keeps the US Constitution and stays allied with NATO, Japan, South Korea, et al.
Those allies would recognize the smaller US and agree to defend it if attacked by Trumpistan, which would soon be allied with Russia and North Korea.
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And that was about 125,000 people . Can you get imagine 11 million?
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Trump’s plan would cause mass chaos and heartbreak for families. If we thought his “kids in cages” and lost children were disgraceful last time, we would be in for a much more disgusting nightmare this time. If Trump deports millions of people, we should just dismantle the Statue of Liberty and sell it for scrap. Trump’s last incarceration of immigrants cost our country more than $4 billion and caused undue hardship and pain. Trump’s cronies would further enrich themselves with this disgraceful policy. What Trump and Miller propose would be so much worse. If Democrats have any power on the purse strings, I would hope they would try to block funds. However, The Supreme Court of Shame would likely shake its 8 ball and come up with some lame nonsense to justify Trump’s actions and hand him billions of our tax dollars.
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Democrats should point out repeatedly to tRump supporters, especially those in red states where minimum wage tends to be lowest, how few American born workers will want the low wage jobs that, historically, many new immigrants are very grateful to get. See this link for state minimum wage rates, though it can also vary by county and/or city: https://www.minimum-wage.org/wage-by-state
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Of course, much of the low minimum wage work consists of grunge jobs, like work as hotel maids and fast food jobs, so some locales, especially red states, have tried to combat increases in minimum wage by lowering child labor law requirements: https://www.epi.org/blog/child-labor-remains-a-key-state-legislative-issue-in-2024-state-lawmakers-must-seize-opportunities-to-strengthen-standards-resist-ongoing-attacks-on-child-labor-laws
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I feel sooo fortunate to be living in a blue city AND state, because I figured out that I can’t afford to move even though both my physical and mental health could never take it if I have to keep living in the US and (G-d forbid!) fRump wins.
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I always felt “safe” in Massachusetts but today we are “scared” — at least the friends I am in contact with… still I am fortunate to live here (even though they tell us it is very expensvie …..
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In addition to all the disruption, mass deportation would cause tremendous damage to the economy, and it would diminish our standing in the world.
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This is a chilling podcast. Yet not sensational in the slightest. It’s a reality-check, translating a proposed policy into its realistic implementation, and how that would effect individuals, communities, law enforcement at every level, community leaders, and our society as a whole.
Every one of Trump’s boneheaded campaign “policy proposals” [fever-dreams] needs to be put through Timothy Snyder’s filter– from there into national headlines/ dissemination.
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it is plain that a mass deportation like this would include people whose families have been in the geographic locations that became US states very late. This would be a new Trail of Tears, if it ever happened. I do not think Trump would ever do the deportations any more than he built the wall. It might call him off the golf course.
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one commentator said “if we make 5% error in rounding up people and deport them, 500,000 persons would be WRONGLY deported; of course this has happened before when citizens were deported “back” to Mexico when they were actually citizens. Trump wants to change the definition of “who is a citizen”…. One of the saddest reports that I ever read was Suite Francaise — what happens when someone doesn’t have the “papers” ….
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Stephen Miller wants to “denaturalize” immigrants who DO have papers
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https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/trumps-deportation-army. we need to know what it would look like and tell a lot of people
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IQ tests are biased and favor those that had an American middle class background. Immigrants come with all kinds of skills, some of which may not be the result of formal education. If given opportunities, they will generally achieve, and many of them will excel.
Trump and Miller simply seek to justify their reprehensible racism.
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retired teacher; Binet tests were devised to see which of the youth would BENEFIT from education and then interpretations were made that they DESERVE it… those who wouldn’t “Benefit” didn’t get much of it …. this is rationing (cf Professor Gilborn in the U.K.)
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ivy league colleges devised tests for a certain purpose “IQ test was developed for colleges to “Keep Jewish students out”… so it was intentionally aimed at discrimination. People thought there were too many Jews applying for the Ivy League colleges — “they study hard, they are ambitious, they are over-achievers”. so let’s build a test that will keep them in their place. (Large -Thorndike test). And, it did what they wanted; the next year there were fewer Jewish students accepted.”
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If IQ tests are biased in favor of American middle class backgrounds, why are the group populations with the highest IQs located in East Asia?
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I am very concerned about this implementation plan (Miller) (Navarro and Bannon are also in the loop). “when you combine Miller’s plan and personal history with Trump’s recent rhetoric portraying immigrants as diseased “animals” turned loose from foreign prisons and mental facilities who “poison the blood” of the country — or his ridiculous descriptions of migrants as “military-aged” — you could be forgiven for noticing that we’re accumulating the necessary ingredients of a genocide.” Michael Tomaxky cited from the balko substack (sorry I am being redundant but people in this neck of the woods are talking about NOT choosing Harris because of the war materials that go to Israel; have they considered their alternative choice trump already has these plans in place ? )
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cx: Michael Tomasky
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this may be the only time in my life I have referred anyone to CATO. https://www.cato.org/commentary/trump-could-do-mass-deportation-weve-done-it
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thanks for this article.
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Here’s quite a useful article from the archives of Harpers, 1941, by Dorothy Thompson.
https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/
Thompson was an American journalist who was expelled from Germany in 1934 for her writings criticizing its government. PBS has a good profile here:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/nazi-town-usa-dorothy-thompson-most-famous-female-journalist/
In the spirit of histroy does not repeat, but it echoes.
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