this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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Flippanarchy
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What a braindead take.
By calling out ICE as masked thugs you're calling them exactly what they are thereby stripping them of any legitimacy they may have in people's eyes by being part of the government. As for calling them gang members, that's exactly what they are. They're members of the biggest gang - the government.
Only a racist person who believes in race would automatically think of non white people when they hear "masked thugs". Anyone who isn't racist and doesn't believe in race just pictures thugs with masks.
The counter to racism is to realise that race doesn't exist, not joining in believing in this arbitrary social construct. Once you adopt this view you stop seeing race everywhere. If you're anti-racist but you believe race exists and you see it everywhere in everything then you're part of the problem.
100%, thank you. We can not be handwringing every little thing because people like this just want to "be part of the conversation". The only good point here is that this IS just cop shit, but that's the thing, it's on a whole other level where it actually threatens the police themselves, and rhetorically that's useful for once.
Please pick and choose your battles here in 2026 instead of falling for this faux-intellectual college kid bait discourse I'm begging you. ICE are thugs. That term comes from India and refers to a class of dudes who were so hard up under British Imperialism they would just kill people in the road by sneaking up on them. The US govt us debt trapping white supremacist goons into killing for them (no I am not making excuses for them) I'd say it etymologically fits the bill. And if it doesn't okay, I get that you want to make world better and Always Say The Exact Right Thing, but these people are hurting us NOW and when they're down the fucking street taking my neighbors I need everyone to be on the same page with me and not moralize at me about my choice of words! This bullshit is fedposting whether accidentally or intentionally, it's like when CHUDs make fun of us for our best impulses and we can't argue back or else it looks like we're abandoning principles to assholes who are moving the goal posts they control around us to present us as idiots.
"Gang" I more strongly see the argument for... but they ARE that, they ARE organized criminals, and they wouldn't be the first mix-race-yet-white-supremacist-fascist-organized-criminal outfit. See also LAPD and the Proud Boys, etc etc. You cannot just retcon language into being race-based because CNN used it a certain way in the 90s when running urban crime stories. You cannot let the Neoliberal racist world order be the weather vein for what literal words you are and aren't allowed to say, because before those words were forcibly associated with racialized crime reporting THEY WERE REAL WORDS. We cannot do this to all language or we'll be talking like "Orange Man(bad) uses COP ARMY (ACAB, almost forgot heh) to distract us from the fact he grpd and unal*ved Persons of a Younger Persuasion." Please defend our language and our right to express what we're seeing in real time, do not automatically self-censor with no wider consensus based off merely seeing a post. PLEASE.
Did you respond to the wrong person? I fail to see how any of what you said could be directed at me.
lmao pretty sure you can say raped and killed here
I was replying to you but then I went on a whole extended soap box that wasn't all the way directed at you, apologies.The self-censorship is my point.
Haha yeah, I was a bit confused but all good!
Also it's not like there's not plenty of history of white gangs (also Irish, Italian, and Russian) and masked thugs in modern American history. If you think these terms are just for Latinos and blacks maybe stop watching Fox News for a second and read a fucking book.
Ive been calling them goons instead. Not because of any reasoning, its just what me and my friends have been using
ACAB?
i think you're taking the wrong point. I understood it as ice just being cops, and this is a cop problem , not just one specially evil group.
at least that was my reading.
What other meaning does this have? Especially when the OP goes on to call "masked thugs" and "gang members" racialized terms of criminality.
ICE also aren't just cops, they're an escalation past that and calling them just cops is minimising it in my opinion. One of the things stopping there being even more people out protesting or fighting back is that many people see them as just law enforcement acting within their remit.
Yeah? I didn't say that I thought that or that it was correct.
… but you can look both in crossposted 🧵s and live reactions to this outside threadiverse for a wider concensus
OK. I'm not talking about many people here. I'm talking many people in general, in the population.
It is true that "thug" is being used as a racist dog whistle. denying that is just wilful ignore. Although policing language is annoying, especially when meanings change so quickly. That's the euphemism treadmill in action.
and no, they are just acting like cops have always acted. the only difference is that it is now more visible and they treat white people like cops treated minorities.
mass deportations started with Obama, and continued with Trump and Biden. Biden didn't even stop the controversial family separation. And we have to be vigilant that the next Democrat cunt might just normalize all of this rather than making substantial changes and reparations with only some symbolic changes.
if you fail to acknowledge that, then you aren't asking to end this tyranny and violence, you're just asking for it to go back when it only affected minorities and you had the privilege to ignore it. and yes, if that's your attitude you are undeniably as racist as ICE agents, just afraid to acknowledge it. you shouldn't get to pat yourself in the back and call yourself an ally.
My point is exactly the opposite. Whether or not someone is a thug has nothing to do with the colour of their skin.
I agree. All governments = cunts. Trump + Maga = turbo cunts+++.
How you could read my original comment and think I might be racist is just mind-blowing. As for my supposed "privilege", I wasn't born in the USA and I don't live in the USA so...
that's why I started with an "If", I'm dealing with so many white saviours here that I now feel I need to prerespond to the conplaints.
the issue isn't just how you see the word, but how it is seen. I might argue that the R word is harmless and I don't see it as insensitive, but ignoring how everyone else sees it and using it will make me an asshole. Euphemism treadmill is real and Fox news has been using "thug" it as a racist euphemism. so here we are.