It feels like we’re at a turning point now, with many MAGA sympathizers and even MAGA supporters finally realizing that Donald Trump is the straight up fascist his critics have always said he was.

I’m not going to recap the two recent ICE murders because they were captured on multiple videos from different angles which you’ve no doubt seen already. They’re straightforward snuff films, with government agents playing judge, jury and executioner for people who very, very clearly are 100% innocent.

What is there to say, exactly? Between Trump threatening the US’ historical allies, like Canada, Denmark and Greenland, and him launching lethal attacks against American citizens, not to mention the ongoing Epstein cover-up, people who have railed against things like “wokeness” have finally found their red line. Good! That should be welcomed.

In one sense, the ICE murders are a shocking escalation, but they resemble police murders we have been seeing footage of for years. In 2016, Minnesota police murdered Philando Castile, who like Alex Pretti, also had a license for the gun he had on him. During his interaction with the cops, Castile calmly made police aware of the licensed gun he had in his glovebox, and the cops murdered him right in front of his girlfriend and 4-year-old son. We know this because the whole sequence is also on video.

So what’s different about this, ten years later? Trump increased ICE’s budget exponentially last year, from the $10-billion range to about $75 billion. It’s true that Trump is recruiting new ICE members from MAGA gangs like the Proud Boys and other violently deranged anti-woke January-6 militia, but the two agents who killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti were members of ICE for 10 and 8 years, respectively.

Obama increased ICE’s funding and Biden didn’t abolish ICE when he had the chance, so why is this different? Because judging from the way Trump and his sycophants have not just excused the murders but praised them, framing this as Ameican authorities valiantly defending the heartland against terrorism rather than murderous hooligans satiating their bloodlust, this is clearly what Trump wanted to happen. He has been stoking violence for years, from famously attempting a coup and orchestrating an attack on the Capital to praising dozens of his voters for violently attacking democrats and critics.

Minnesota is in a state of siege, with even everyday, non-political residents hunkered down in terror while Trump’s militia goes door to door looking for non-white people. “Ghost cars” are a thing now, empty vehicles on the roads, left stranded there after ICE kidnapped the drivers’ and took them to god knows where. Residents with citizenship are trying to help immigants, who are too scared to leave their home to buy food, by buying the food for them, but ICE are following their movements. ICE are also circling schools, locking up students and even children as young as five, using food as bait to lure hungry people they can then kidnap. Despite what ICE says they’re doing, they’re using facial-recognition Palantir technology, partially to create a database of activists and designate them all “terrorists,” and to hunt non-white people.

Minnesota has been on Trump’s radar for years because it’s a progressive city, whose senator is Democratic rival and 2024 vice president nominee Tim Walz. There’s a community of established anti-MAGA activists, but this is radicalizing people in real time.

ICE is disappearing and murdering people. White Americans. This is important, because while absolutely nobody should be treated this way, it’s very telling that MAGA goons think they can simply kill or kidnap any American they want to. They’re not even pretending to follow their stated beliefs. Trump has given them impunity, and they very clearly want to kill and kidnap people. They don’t show remorse after killing innocent people, they seem proud and threaten to do it again. They’re not following any laws whatsoever. Nobody is safe, and it’s beyond naive, just extremely stupid, to think that MAGA will limit their reign of terror to the people they say they’re pursuing. That’s already been proven false.

People are noting how hypocritical libertarian don’t-tread-on-me types seem right now; their entire persona was based around owning guns to defend themselves from government tyranny. Many are watching their president’s paramilitary hooligans kidnap and kill people and responding, “Comply!” “Be servile!” “Do what the government tells you!”

Whatever your stance on gun ownership is, Alex Pretty, like Philando Castile, broke no laws. Renee Good clearly was unarmed. And they were murdered all the same. That they were murdered by lavishly-paid government agents who say they oppose Big Government and government tyranny would be ironic, but only if you expected the murderers to be coherent and logically consistent. Murderers usually aren’t.

“This is what people voted for!” is one excuse some Republicans are making now. It’s moot and frankly silly: there’s no rule saying that something can’t be fascist if people voted for it! I don’t need to remind you who else was voted in.

And yes, this is Project 2025. This is precisely what Trump critics said was going to happen. Most people criticizing it now criticized it right from the start. Now it’s here and it’s terrifying. Minnesota looks like they’re going to simply respond to this by going on a general strike, with nobody showing up for work until this stops. Because this can’t continue. On Friday, tens of thousands of protesters already braved freezing temperatures to denounce ICE in the streets and this will likely only grow and get worse.

MAGA’s prime directive–their stated support for rights relating to liberty, freedom, and gun ownership–has been shown to be a complete sham. It’s not that I personally think these beliefs were right or that these beliefs are wrong, it’s that all this time MAGA never believed in them. Even if it was extremely obvious that this is where things were heading, written out in Project 2025 and forecast for years by Trump’s words and actions, I hope his supporters can finally accept that he was lying and this can’t continue and they stop supporting him.

ICE needs to be abolished, yesterday, and all the people responsible for this should be held on trial. This is the moderate position.

I worry that, while typing safely on social media from my hometown of Toronto, I will encourage somebody to join the protests, and that person will be murdered by ICE. I want this violence to stop and I want people to stop it, but that’s the whole thing. If unarmed, innocent people can simply be murdered by the state in their own neighbourhoods, what are hopeful words going to achieve?