Mayhem is the point: Trump's politics of terror

What looks like chaos on America’s streets is not a breakdown of authority, but the deliberate use of terror to manufacture fear, obedience and political survival, writes George Grundy.

‘Terrible things are happening outside. Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart. Men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.’

~ Diary of Anne Frank, 13 January 1943.

Anne Frank’s words were written at the height of Hitler’s purge of European Jews, but nearly every word could equally be applied to recent events in Minneapolis, where masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) thugs have attacked and abducted law-abiding citizens in the streets. Two Americans have been shot dead in broad daylight.

For all its horror, this is likely to be just the beginning. I.C.E. is rapidly expanding its workforce, offering signing-up bonuses of up to US$50,000 (AU$71,5000) and has reportedly cut training for new recruits to just 47 days (to “honour” Donald Trump, the 47th president).

I.C.E. now commands a larger budget than all other federal law enforcement agencies (including the FBI, DEA, ATF and U.S. Marshals Service) combined. A vast paramilitary army is being assembled in the United States.

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The killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti have, understandably, made the biggest headlines, but there is much horror just beneath the surface.

I.C.E. detainees have reported savage beatings and sexual abuse. Detention facility conditions are often appalling, without clean drinking water, soap or toilet paper. I.C.E. is holding people at secret sites, lacking normal oversight and legal counsel. At least one person has been reported killed — strangled to death by guards at an I.C.E. detention centre.

I.C.E. has signed extensive contracts with private prison operators to expand or reopen detention facilities. Soon, concentration camps will dot the American landscape.

It all seems redolent of the early days of German Nazism, when Joseph Goebbels’ paramilitary Sturmabteilung (better known as the “brown shirts”) employed violence on the streets to deliberately engender riots and social instability, which in turn could be used as an excuse for yet more draconian crackdowns by Hitler. It is, perhaps, through this lens that we should view current events in Minnesota. Perhaps this isn’t a rogue agency that needs to be reined in. Maybe it’s all part of the plan.

The idea that this is conspiratorial thinking is belied by Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent letter to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, in which Bondi said that only the handing over of state voter rolls could prevent another ‘national tragedy’. The letter could easily be construed as extortion – “hand over the voter rolls or I.C.E. will keep killing your people” – but why would data on local voters be in any way connected to immigration enforcement?

In my view, it is because everything in "Trump World" relates to November’s mid-term elections. Trump is historically unpopular. He’s underwater on nearly every major issue. The economy is flatlining, at best. In times like these, the House of Congress nearly always changes hands and should the Democrats take control in November, Trump’s presidency, as we know it, is over.

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As the midterms approach, Trump’s politics of force are reshaping both foreign policy and domestic policing.

Democrats would take over all the House committees, cutting off budgets for Trump’s worst excesses, impeaching the President a third time, investigating his rogue agencies, his crimes and corruption, and, on one level or another, further exposing Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the north star of Trump’s lifelong malfeasance.

As such, Trump is likely to do anything to avoid free and fair elections taking place in November. He has repeatedly threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, putting the army onto American streets. This month alone, he has twice “joked” that the mid-term elections should be cancelled, at one point saying, “We shouldn’t even have an election” (based on how successful he thought his Administration has been so far).

For a man who lies as easily as he breathes, Trump is also a master of saying the quiet part out loud. He can’t afford to lose the house this November, so voter rolls must be extorted for peace on the streets of Minneapolis.

This will be the first of many such outrages. It is still early 2026 and we are just a year into Trump’s second term. Should I.C.E. continue to kill and maim American citizens in broad daylight, a febrile summer of social unrest might be used by the President to invoke emergency measures. And that might just be the plan. The mayhem is the point.