Even a dummy dictator is still a dictator
Yes, the “No Kings” rallies on Saturday were massive, with millions taking to the streets in the U.S. and abroad. Yes, Donald Trump’s birthday parade was a costly joke. (He fell asleep.) And yes, he made the U.S. Army look like a third-world outfit. But that doesn’t mean he’s done. Not by a long shot.
Trump 2.0 has already put in place a surveillance regime that, while it may not yet rival China’s, is still autocratic by nature and a grave insult to the American spirit. A Bluesky thread from Friday night foreshadowed this story today from The Guardian:
An Australian man who was detained upon arrival at Los Angeles airport and deported back to Melbourne says United States border officials told him it was due to his writing on pro-Palestine protests by university students.
Alistair Kitchen said he left Melbourne on Thursday bound for New York and was detained for 12 hours and interrogated by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials during the stopover in Los Angeles.
The 33-year-old said he was “clearly targeted for politically motivated reasons” and said officials spent more than 30 minutes questioning him about his views on Israel and Palestine including his “thoughts on Hamas”.
That was just the beginning.
“The CBP explicitly said to me, the reason you have been detained is because of your writing on the Columbia student protests,” he told Guardian Australia on Sunday. The US Department of Homeland Security has been contacted for comment.
The creative writing student had live in New York City and was getting his masters at Columbia. He wrote about the strudent protests on his personal blog (including some choice words for Donald Trump’s deportation regime) before returning to Australia in 2024. Cleaning up some of his social media comments was of no use.
“They had already prepared a file on me and already knew everything about me,” he said.
Kitchen said he agreed to give officials the passcode for his phone, which he now regretted.
“I had at that time, the wrong and false hope that once they realised I was, you know, just a Australian writer and not a threat to the US that they would let me in,” he said. “But then they took my phone away and began downloading it and searching it.”
Kitchen said he was “terrified of retribution and reprisal from the US government” for speaking out about his experience but he wanted people to know what had happened.
He urged other Australians who were detained upon arrival into the US to accept “immediate deportation” instead of handing their phones over the border officials.
I did not carry a sign on Saturday, but if I had it would have contained just two words: YOU’RE NEXT.
* * * * *
Have you fought dictatorship today?
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense