Haunting Similarities

Historian Neal McQueen, in an essay entitled, “When History Starts to Rhyme,” draws out the similarities between the rapid build-up of Nazi stormtroopers in 1933 and the Trump administration’s sudden “wartime recruitment” of thousands of Immigration Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Patrol, and Department of Homeland Security agents in 2025-2026. As a historian, he respects the distinctive dynamics in these two separate situations. However, he notices some haunting similarities that are well worth considering.

• Both the Nazi stormtroopers and the Trump ICE/CBP/DHS federal agents were tasked with confronting “the enemies within.”

• The mechanisms – recruitment surges, relaxed vetting, compressed training, weakened oversight, expanded detentions, and targeted populations as existential threats – are remarkably similar.

• The Sturmabteilung (SA) or “Brown Shirts” required no credentials, only a “willingness to fight”….ICE “lowered the minimum age to eighteen, eliminated the maximum age, dropped college degree requirement” and placed ads on conservative podcasts, “at NASCAR races, near military bases, and at gun shows.”

• Nazi ideology held that Germany had been betrayed by Jews, Marxists, and democrats. Hitler wrote: “Before one defeats external enemies, the enemy within… must first be annihilated.” Trump in 2025 stated “The enemy from within is a bigger threat that any foreign enemy.” Stephen Miller, Deputy White House Chief of Staff for Policy addressed ICE officers: “You have federal immunity…no city official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist can prevent you from fulfilling your duties.”

• There are troubling signs that the definition of the “enemy within” is expanding. This too is a haunting similarity. In 1933 Germany, the definition evolved from “November criminals” to “Jewish Bolsheviks” to “simply Jews.” ICE started out targeting undocumented immigrants, particularly Latinos. But ICE has targeted the Somali population in Minnesota and now Maine. Trump’s rhetoric of the “enemy within” now includes Democrats, federal bureaucrats, and media that criticize him. Citizens who push back against this unconstitutional assault on the rule of law are branded “domestic terrorists.”

Another haunting similarity is ICE and the Israeli military. ICE has an office in Tel Aviv. ICE agents are trained by Israeli Occupation Forces. Take a moment to wrap your mind around that. The Governor of the state of Minnesota, the Attorney General of Minnesota, and the Mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul have all characterized the presence of ICE in their communities as “an invasion.” Angela Conley, Hennipen County Commissioner, who represents many of the Minneapolis neighborhoods where ICE agents have staged, has called it “an occupation.”

• There’s a reason the streets of these communities resemble the Occupied West Bank: the same tactics are being used, the training is identical, and the dehumanizing rhetoric of “the enemy within” guiding their operations is virtually the same.

• The counterinsurgency training both ICE and the Israeli Occupation Forces receive employs illegal chokeholds, pulling people out of their vehicles, putting knees on necks, using excessive force, including beating detainees, attacking citizens with noxious chemical agents, denying them medical attention, and murder.

• The citizens and immigrants in Minneapolis and St. Paul are experiencing the violence and lawlessness Palestinians in the West Bank have endured for decades.

• The Customs and Border Patrol is a racist, misogynist organization filled with white supremacists. They are bringing the violence of the militarized Southern border to the streets of American cities. ICE agents who train in Israel are bringing the violence of the West Bank to American communities.

The point is not that these situations are exactly parallel. They are not. There is no moral equivalence between Israel’s decades-long systematic oppression of the Palestinians and the weeks-long violent invasion by brutal federal agents in Minnesota. Neither are these two situations, different as they are, equivalent to the savagery of the Third Reich and a Holocaust that killed 12 million people. However, there are haunting similarities between all three situations – Germany in 1933, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and multi-racial American cities and immigrant communities under attack from the authoritarian Trump administration. And we dare not look away.

We cordially invite our readers to submit short articles or opinion pieces about Palestine-Israel, human rights, liberation and related freedom and social justice struggles. We will consider all submissions, and publish those that are approved.