The Nazis relied on a set of post-hoc rationalisations after casual, sanctioned murders, that combined elements of legal manipulation, propaganda, and let’s call it, moral inversion. The aim wasn’t just to excuse violence, but to redefine it as lawful, necessary and virtuous.
For the Night of the Long Knives, Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt argued that the Führer’s will itself constituted law. Where have we heard something similar more recently?
The state cannot commit murder when it is defending itself ergo these killings were not crimes, destroying the idea that the law constrains power instead the law now followed power.
The othering of Jewish communities became both extreme left wing (communist) agitators and all powerful banking elites – all at once – because the propaganda was merely the rationalisation for ending due process, masking unbridled state indifference to murder to achieve Party ends.
Street murders were presented as a RETURN to stability, not a breakdown of it. Violence was normalised with victims smeared and dehumanised. In this fascistic framework, moral rules don’t apply to those they can falsely label as enemies of the State or “the people.”
The regime refused to investigate killings when perpetrators were loyal Nazis, while prosecuting enemies harshly.
The Nazis did not argue that the killings didn’t happen. Instead they argued that murder could be lawful and that Illegality could be patriotic. Morality could be suspended. Truth weaponised to ends justifying means.
Fast forward to the US in 2026 and we see recognisable embryonic patterns emerging. I’m not suggesting that the scale is remotely comparable nor that even the context is identical, but when Kristi Noem posits that Renee Good was to blame for being shot by ICE agents, and when JD Vance insists that “left wing ideology” was to blame for a mother, seemingly picking up her child from school, being shot three times in the face, when there isn’t a scintilla of evidence that any ICE agent was under threat, we’d be remiss not to see the early parallels of victim blaming and “noble lies” being told to protect the totalitarian project.
Even investigation to establish facts is being thwarted at every federal level. Vance’s rhetoric frames Good’s actions as ideological extremism and implies collective blame (“far left,” “lunatic fringe”) rather than focusing on the specifics of the incident. DHS and allies even ridiculously labelled what happened as “domestic terrorism,” an emotive smear loaded with BS stigma and no substance.
When, rather than awaiting investigation, high-level officials publicly assert justifications that pre-empt an independent inquiry, how can we reasonably not see the patterns of emergent fascism? It’s not the final denouement, but it does begin to resemble the first act. Authoritarianism does not begin with mass repression. It begins with a shift in how state violence is tolerated and narrated after the fact.
Once officials begin rationalising lethal force as a default outcome of left wing ideology or disorder, rather than a catastrophic failure demanding scrutiny, you are no longer dealing with isolated misconduct but state capture, a putsch in slow motion. At that point, the state is no longer defending its actions but defending its right not to be questioned.
