Despite the Trump administration’s attempts to brand this abomination as a badass dungeon for evil masterminds, most migrant detainees have no criminal convictions. Almost none of them have violent convictions. They’ve been swept up by masked officers without trial and thrown into a swamp for political effect.
These theatrics are deployed to signal strength by targeting the weak. Unfortunately, they don’t actually resolve the problem at hand. In fact, they tend to make things much, much worse. And it seems they’re only getting stupider.
We’ve seen similar ugly displays here in the UK. We saw it with the Rwanda scheme – a legally dubious, wildly expensive plan designed to fail, as long as it made the right kind of noise on the front pages.
We saw it when Nigel Farage stood on a boat in the Channel, filming desperate asylum seekers in dinghies and calling it an “invasion.” We saw it when he unveiled the infamous “Breaking Point” poster, evoking panic and racial fear with a single, calculated image.
This kind of performance politics get us absolutely nowhere. Real change is hard. Cruelty is easy.
The more we sit by idly and watch this depressing show, the more real democracy fades from view.
