Representation is Theft! is a regular column by Samuel Rosenberg critiquing electoral democracy and advocating for lottery-based sortition as a viable alternative
A great metal monstrosity currently roams the streets of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, maiming anyone that finds itself as the target of its wrath. This machine has taken many forms over the centuries; eighty-two years ago, it was the Schutzstaffel; thirty-two years ago, it was the Interahamwe; today, it is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Anyone familiar with genocide studies can say that the Minneapolis Pogrom is the beginning of one; those who decry this comparison as unwarranted watch the horrors in Minneapolis and Saint Paul with closed eyes. The end goals of any genocide are rarely met overnight. There are many less “dramatic” steps to meet before extermination can truly begin, and despite what the politically myopic may tell us, the American Empire has already met most of them. White nationalists have dehumanized immigrants by comparing them to rodents and diseases. They have provided ICE and other groups as vectors for fascist desires to purge American society. Their corporate sponsors spread their propaganda throughout the digital sphere. They have begun to implement their final solution, as children as young as five are kidnapped and either deported to lands hostile to them or exiled to crowded ghettos as far-flung as El Salvador. Extermination may be merely one stage away, one that will be defined by a level of industrialization and scope perhaps not seen since the Khurbn Eyrope itself.
Everyone can be a victim to this violence; having citizenship or even being born in the country certainly won’t matter to these thugs. Intentions to expand the pogroms’ scope beyond immigrants who have not yet received citizenship have been declared; ICE has already “accidentally” kidnapped many with citizenship in both the Twin Cities and elsewhere. It would be naive to assume that this strategy of mass denaturalization will be limited to those without birthright citizenship. Eventually, the state may deem itself free to denaturalize, kidnap, and exterminate anyone it chooses; the regime’s targets may grow to include descendants of immigrants, political opponents, those of the LGBTQ+ community, disabled persons, and anyone who fails to meet the standards of an American white Christian hegemony. My perception of this is an inherently Jewish one. To my fellow community members who identify with the “Zionist” moniker, I ask: do you think the machine will not set its gaze upon you when it is ready? No one is safe.
It would also be naive to assume that this great project began in 2025 and no earlier. ICE has long terrorized its victims; it has plagued America since its founding in 2003, kidnapping and exiling several millions of innocents under the reigns of both Republican and Democratic presidents. The same can be said for its precursor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Some may declare that residing in this nation without proper certification is not an innocent act, but how can it be that the American Empire can demand “proper certification” for living on stolen land? This same great project also has roots in white suppression of America’s colonial holdings; from Puerto Rico to the Phillipines, horrors perpetuated in our colonies now manifest in the mainland as an imperial boomerang. While ICE’s current climb towards genocide is a new development, the roots of this climb are certainly not.
This reveals the reason why opposition to the pogroms in the Twin Cities and elsewhere from the Democratic Party has been so muted. As always, the needs of the hidden coalition supersedes the calls for accountability from the party’s left flank. Criticisms have largely been limited to ideas for how ICE could improve, ignorant that an inherently genocidal militia like ICE could never improve. While flowery language has sometimes been used, the party has always clarified that the militia’s abolition is completely off the table. As the Democrats become more numb to fascism and fall more in line with the newly designed hidden coalition, they may come to embrace the extermination campaign outright, accepting it as just another tool at the hidden coalition’s disposal to limit the chance of third-party groups from appropriating state apparatuses. After all, why would someone stomp out a plant they helped seed and water?
As we have already seen in the Twin Cities and across the nation, the fight against ICE has largely operated outside what some may dub “electoral politics.” A vast and diverse array of communities, from mutual aid organizations to advocacy groups to activist and labor unions, have worked tirelessly to combat the white supremacists and their deportation and extermination campaigns. The antifascist toolkit includes several handy strategies: publicity campaigns that communicate to people their rights, the exposure of horrors perpetuated by the state, the organization of mass protests, the distribution of food and other material aid, and even direct action that impairs ICE’s ability to organize, like physically blocking arrests and doxxing individual agents. This work has been vital to the protection of immigrant communities, all done with very little real support from the Democrats; if they did not exist to provide a buffer defending the brewing genocide of immigrants, political opponents, and anyone else the regime may declare undesirable, these actions would be even more effective.
As long as it is allowed to exist in the safety of the hidden coalition’s paradigm, the machine will not stop. As long as the common person remains banished from the halls of power and relegated to the passive position of a mere voter, the slaughter will not stop. The hidden coalition is like a great freezer, cooling resistance to injustice while ICE and other far-right militias thrive; for ICE to melt, the freezer must be removed. No matter the short-term strategies we use, one of our end goals must be sortition: the appointment of ordinary people to legislatures via random ballot, and the process of direct involvement in governance for the citizenry.
The machine cannot be tamed; it must be boiled alive by the heat of popular action.
