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justaprogressive

(3,398 posts)
Thu Apr 24, 2025, 07:31 AM 5 hrs ago

History has taught us this lesson repeatedly -- and we ignore it at our peril - AlterNet

People of a certain age will remember the old black-and-white movies, The Twilight Zone, and countless Cold War-era dramas set in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. In scene after chilling scene, people in uniform approach random pedestrians and bark, “Papers, please.”

Those who hesitate — who don’t have their documentation in order, who look “out of place,” or simply fail to comply fast enough — are dragged away. Vanished. Disappeared into the gulag or the prison camps, never to be seen again.

It was always framed as national security. Public order. Protecting the homeland. But what it really was, in both Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s USSR, was authoritarianism dressed up as bureaucracy.

Republicans in the House have passed legislation requiring people to bring their passports to register to vote; increasingly Americans with brown skin are today carrying their citizenship papers, birth certificates, and even passports out of fear of a chance encounter with ICE.


https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/history-has-taught-us-this-lesson-repeatedly-and-we-ignore-it-at-our-peril/?anplus

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History has taught us this lesson repeatedly -- and we ignore it at our peril - AlterNet (Original Post) justaprogressive 5 hrs ago OP
Sometimes History Is About Doom & Gloom gab13by13 5 hrs ago #1
Republicans should timms139 4 hrs ago #2
All we have learned from history ... dedl67 4 hrs ago #3
I am of that Gordcanuck 3 hrs ago #4
Yep. And sometimes paleotn 3 hrs ago #5
Poor people don't have passports. mzmolly 2 hrs ago #6

timms139

(239 posts)
2. Republicans should
Thu Apr 24, 2025, 08:42 AM
4 hrs ago

be required to bring a updated background check by a law enforcement agency to prove they're not convicted felons in order to be allowed to vote .

Gordcanuck

(64 posts)
4. I am of that
Thu Apr 24, 2025, 09:37 AM
3 hrs ago

certain age, and know that fighting back with actions that “out” the oppressors are necessary now, not later when they come for you. Your legislators won’t do it, your judiciary is on the correct side but is toothless, and even your friendly northern neighbour🇨🇦 is sending legitimate asylum seekers back to purgatory.
Yet you are the majority and have the power to stop this madness. Get organized, otherwise it’s “papers, please” and off you go.

paleotn

(20,275 posts)
5. Yep. And sometimes
Thu Apr 24, 2025, 09:56 AM
3 hrs ago

they were told their “papers weren’t in order” when they actually were, just to spread fear and reiterate who’s in charge, or simply to fuck with people. Common in the old Soviet Union.

mzmolly

(52,105 posts)
6. Poor people don't have passports.
Thu Apr 24, 2025, 10:47 AM
2 hrs ago

That nonsense isn’t going to help with white men in Appalachia. It’s more likely that College educated people will have passports. … I do worry about women who have changed their name, or men for that matter. And, the whole idea that we need a passport to vote? I guess at least we’ll have the ability to flee the country.

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