today, its Rumeysa Ozturk
What does it take to wake people up to creeping fascism?
Over the last few months, I've been slowly working my way through A Testament of Freedom, a collection of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's writings from across his life. Bonhoeffer is one of my favorite theological thinkers, and I think his voice is incredibly important in our political moment.
In the introduction to one of Bonhoeffer's Christological lectures from summer 1933, the editors provide this snapshot of the climate Bonhoeffer was lecturing in that year:
When Bonhoeffer began his Christology lectures in the University of Berlin's summer session in 1933, Hitler had been chancellor for three months. The arson of the Reichstag had been cunningly staged in February. That and the massive jailing of the Communist leaders were used by Nazi propaganda to manipulate German citizens into thinking they needed protection from the trumped up conspiracy of atheist Bolshevists and non-Aryan Jews alike. The "Enabling Law," granting absolute dictatorial powers to Hitler to deal with these "threats" to state security had been passed in March 1933. In that same month concentration camps had been set up; a month later, Goering officially instituted the Gestapo. The one-day boycott of all Jewish businesses and doctors on April 1 was only a mild phase of an anti-Jewish crescendo marked by the "Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service" passed on April 7, which forced retirement on Jewish officials, including university professors, and through its "Aryan Clause" forbade Jews to old offices in churches - Jews being defined as those having one Jewish parent or grandparent, regardless of church affiliation.
The echoes of this past are being felt today, right here in America, in 2025. The comparison isn't 1-for-1; the actions of the Nazi Party in 1933 can't be read as a blueprint for what to expect in our time. Every attack on democracy and freedoms by authoritarians and fascists has its own playbook and strategy. But the echoes are there, if one cares to look. The scapegoating of a despised Other, the villainizing of the allies and friends of those Others. the veneer of legality laid over unjust actions, the invocation of national security as a blanket justification for acts that would otherwise be deemed extreme: its all there, in the news, every day.
I wrote earlier this week about Columbia student Yunseo Chung, and how the Trump Administration is pursuing her like a dangerous fugitive, for the supposed crime of having a political opinion that hurts the feelings of our Dear Leader and his sycophants. The ante was raised just a day later, with the blatant kidnapping from a quiet Massachusetts streets of Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk. If you haven’t seen it, you should watch this video of her being seized, especially if you are someone who has been downplaying these actions. You shouldn’t be turning yourself away from this:
So what crime was Rumeysa arrested for? Once writing an op-ed in support of the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment movement against Israel.
Read that again: this woman, in the United States legally as a student, was accosted by 6 masked figures, not in uniform, and bundled into the back of an unmarked SUV, all because she wrote an op-ed in a small campus newspaper. And the op-ed in question wasn't even a strident defense of the BDS movement; instead, it was a piece calling on Tufts University President Sunil Kumar to support three resolutions passed by the student senate expressing support for the people of Gaza. That's it.
How do I know that's all Ozturk did? Well, you can read all about it yourself, on the deeply dystopian website of the Canary Mission, a group that describes its mission as documenting "individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond. Canary Mission investigates hatred across the entire political spectrum, including the far right, far left and anti-Israel activists." On their website, you can find a disturbing database of student, professors, and professionals all across the United States and Canada who has run afoul of the dictate "thou shalt never say one even mildly critical thing even vaguely aimed in the direction of the state of Israel." Each database entry has the person's picture, personal information, and links to their private social media, as well as each entries list of supposed crimes against Israel. I can't emphasize this enough: this is deeply, deeply, deepky disturbing and dystopian. Just look at this:
Rumeysa Ozturk has a page on Canary Mission. It includes links to her private LinkedIn, and details about a graduate class she was scheduled to teach at Tufts this spring before she was disappeared by the Trump Administration goons. Here is the detail of the offense she is accused of:
On March 26, 2024, Ozturk co-authored an op-ed published in the Tufts Daily newspaper titled: "Try again, President Kumar: Renewing calls for Tufts to adopt March 4 TCU Senate resolutions." The authors urged "President Kumar and the Tufts administration to meaningfully engage with and actualize the resolutions passed by the Senate."
The op-ed referred to the passing of anti-Israel resolutions by the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate, which demanded the University "...acknowledge the Palestinian genocide, apologize for University President Sunil Kumar’s statements, disclose its investments, and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel."
On March 4, 2024, Tufts President Kumar published a "Message on TCU Senate Resolutions" addressed to Tufts students, faculty, and staff. Kumar wrote: "...the Tufts Community Union Senate...passed three resolutions, initially proposed by the Coalition for Palestinian Liberation..."
President Kumar's message continued: "...we’re disappointed that a majority voted to pass three of the four resolutions. To be clear: as we have done in the past, we reject the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement, we wholeheartedly support academic freedom and all our academic and exchange programs, and we will continue to work with all companies that we engage with and do business with now."
That's it. That is literally all she is accused of, according to the fascists at the Canary Mission. Not violence. Not protesting. Nothing illegal. Simple free speech. Rumeysa Ozturk exercised her First Amendment rights - something she has a right to, whether or not she is a citizen of this country - and for that, our government is now persecuting her and illegally detaining her.
If you still, at this point, cannot comprehend why these acts are bad, then I am beginning to feel you are beyond hope. These actions are terrifying. This is the government - jack-booted government thugs, to use a once-favored phrase on the political right before it went off the MAGA deep end - oppressing and tyrannizing people and violating their rights and their freedoms. These are acts analogous to those taken by the Nazis in 1933 against Jews and Communists and Leftists and academics and liberals and everyone else they disagreed with. These are actions analogous to those taken by the Bolsheviks, in the early 1920s, ad they consolidated power and sent liberals and capitalists and academics and the bourgeoisie and undesirables to the Siberian Gulags. I am asking in all sincerity, can you really not hear the echoes of the past? Does your anger about immigration really blind you to what is happening to real flesh-and-blood human beings?
It's immigrations and legal permanent residents today. But, the warrant of national security is incredibly broad. What is to stop the next step being citizens who share the politics of Rumeysa Ozturk and Yunseo Chung1? What is to stop the next threat to national security being something a little more strict than disagreement with Israel? Once rights start falling in the name of safety and security, it becomes easier and easier and easier to curtail more and more of them. Today, its national security interests around the Gaza crisis that require the suspension of Due Process and Rule of Law. What if next week, economic security requires the Trump Administration to silence critics pointing out the shortcomings of its tariff policy? I'm sure that seems far-fetched and hysterical. But, three months ago, the government seizing people on the streets without a warrant and shipping them to El Salvador in defiance of a direct court order to not do so - and then posting about it like an immature Juul-fueled teenage boy on Twitter - seemed pretty far-fetched. And yet, here we are.
It would be one thing it was just this incident, or a couple of incidents. But, over the course of two months, there has been an escalating intensity of actions by this Administration, seemingly executed in a strategy to push the envelope a little further each day, to test the ground of which democratic bulwark they can push back a bit further. Mahmoud Khalil, military deportations to Venezuela, the defiance of Judge Boasberg in the El Salvador case, Yunseo Chung, the Executive Order against birthright citizenship, attacks on law firms and private universities, Rumeysa Ozturk: this is just a handful, because there have been so many things happening its hard to even remember them all. And they all add up to a sustained and planned-out attack on democratic norms, basic freedoms, and the rights we are entitled to.
You may feel the structures and outlines of American life are universal and immutable, that the way of life you enjoy today is one of the eternal constants of the universe: almost unlimited consumer choice, a dizzying array of media and entertainment, safe and healthy foods on the shelves of a store within easy driving distance, relative price stability, public safety, free movement wherever you want to go, the liberty to worship where and when and how you see fit, the basic ability to shape your life how you want. This is the American way of life. And the thing I think so many Americans, excited and titillated by the latest exploits of Donald Trump, has forgotten is this: these things are the exception in history, not the rule. Our lives are the extreme outlier, not just across all of history, but even today. Our basic freedoms and privileges are so taken for granted, it seems like, that at least half of the country now assumes them to be the law of universe, the structure upon which reality is built, and that nothing we do can every shake them. Further, they seem to think that they don't require on-going maintenance or upkeep, that we can abandon all principle or ethic, and that these things will continue on, like the sun and the sky above.
But, they don't. None of this is natural. It's all something we have built, together, on the back of democratic freedoms and a recognition of basic human and political rights, and most of all, upon a sense that our lives require a healthy dose of forbearance, of the idea that just because we can do something, doesn't mean we should, that democracy requires restraint of our worst impulses and hates and prejudices. Most of all, we must remember: there are powerful groups of people who would love nothing more than to undo this way of life, in order to wield power over other human beings. This Administration is clearly one of those groups. It may be the rights of immigrants today. But, if you think the lust for power and control of men like Donald Trump will ever be sated, then you have a much higher view of human nature, and of politicians, than I do.
Its not too late. We can push back, and we can begin doing the hard work of reclaiming our rights and our democracy. Its not going to be easy. Its not going to bring about a utopia. It will be a difficult battle. But, we have to see beyond the small political fights of today, the immigration debates and culture wars and all those bullshit, in order to have a clearer vision of what is important: democracy, and human rights, and basic freedoms. Because, when we deny them to Rumeysa Ozturk, or Yunseo Chung, or Mahmoud Khalil, we begin to deny them to ourselves.
One last note: I'm struggling to conceptualize the mindset of those still in support of the Trump Administration right now. How are people justifying these actions? How are they thinking about the sweep of history, and what is happening? How do they respond to the invocation of the history of fascism? I just can't wrap my head around the mindset of someone who sees the video above, and just shrugs, who feels like that is somehow ok, or at least that it is justified by a higher good. Is this you? If so, leave a comment below. Not so I or others can attack you. But I'm craving this conversation, because I need to understand that which I find incomprehensible. So, consider dropping a note below.
That’s my hand raised: I am a citizen who shares these politics. Do I deserve to be indefinitely detained for these views because I pose a threat to national security?