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Reposted by @geologysays.bsky.social

Michael @fleerultra.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

I said this last august and I feel like it has held up quite well in the following 6 months.

$Michael: They also want to deputize all 47,000 state law enforcement officers to conduct immigration enforcement. So yeah, I think that's a good—good way to transition to what I want to talk about next, which is there is this political scientist in the early 1900s named Ernst Fraenkel, German Jew who fled Nazi Germany in the late '30s. Social Democrat, all around good guy by most accounts that I've read. He wrote an important book on the structure of the Nazi state, which he called "dual state." The terms he used, which I'm not gonna use because I think they're maybe a little too overly academic, but are the "normative state" and the "prerogative state." The normative state is the one governed by laws. It's what you see when you watch Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, right? Everybody follows the rules, justice prevails, you have rights. Michael: The prerogative state, on the other hand, you are subject to arbitrary violence. The state can do whatever it wants to you. It is what you read about when you read about the Warsaw Ghetto. It is what you see when you go to the Holocaust Museum. And the idea is that these exist in parallel. You're in one state, but you can fall into the other at any time. The numbers in the Holocaust are, I think, a really good illustration that—like, so many people died, millions of people died, but in the early '30s, the population of Germany was something like 65 million people. So especially early on, the fraction of people subject to this lower standard, the prerogative state, this lawless track in the dual-track system was very small. And for everybody else, life went on normally. They went to work, they did their thing and, you know, they maybe read a report that something bad was happening, but they didn't think much of it. And that's what's being built right now.$ $. So especially early on, the fraction of people subject to this lower standard, the prerogative state, this lawless track in the dual-track system was very small. And for everybody else, life went on normally. They went to work, they did their thing and, you know, they maybe read a report that something bad was happening, but they didn't think much of it. And that's what's being built right now. That is how to think about what we're discussing here: the militarization of domestic law enforcement, the building of camps, the deputizing of local law enforcement and JAGs, the extreme abuses of ICE, and the lowering of standards and the suspension of due process, all of that is the creation of this prerogative state. I said I wasn't gonna use this term, but I can't help it. [laughs] And it's small right now. Rhiannon: Gaza is small. Michael: Yeah. The borders don't feel porous. I think most people who listen to this probably don't feel like they're in serious risk of being rounded up by ICE in the next week. But, you know, the first camp in Nazi Germany was established two or three months in, and the Final Solution wasn't adopted for eleven years, right? And in between were a thousand, five thousand tiny little steps getting you from that first point to that last point. And we are well past that first point here, and the steps are being taken, like, over and over and over. And the only question is how big the prerogative state gets and how porous the borders are between the two before everybody starts being a little uncertain when they see a Humvee fucking rolling down the street, right? When they see someone in fatigues, where you decide maybe you're not just gonna go out today because you heard that there are troops in downtown. Maybe you're not gonna vote in this election because you heard there are gonna be troops at the polling stations. Where we are now to there is not nearly as far as you think.$

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