“What a disgusting spectacle our country has become! Falsehood, cruelty and madness spread everywhere. And brute force lurks waiting to finish us off!”
The plot against America
Philip Roth, 2004
In his book ‘Plot Against America’, the novelist Philip Roth (1933-2018) tells us in 2004 what is happening in 2026 through fiction. If ‘1984’ is added to this novel, George Orwellpublished in 1949, the world we live in cannot be better described.
“There must have been a moment, at the beginning, when we could have said ‘No.’ But somehow we let it go,” says one of Philip Roth’s characters. “How can people like this be in charge of our country? If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would think I was hallucinating.”
And he asks: “And how long will the American people endure this betrayal perpetrated by your elected president? How long will Americans stay asleep while their beloved Constitution is destroyed?”
The reality is that Americans are not asleep. The town of Minneapolisin the state of MinnesotaThis is demonstrated these days by taking to the streets, with twenty degrees below zero, to protest against the death of the citizen Renee Goodexecuted in cold blood by the immigration police, and which now, under repression, has suffered this week the virtual murder of the 37-year-old nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti at the hands of that police.
It was also evident that Americans are not asleep with the election of the socialist democrat Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York last November.
Roth’s fiction was based largely on the experience of his own Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, and emphasized the triumph of a National Socialist president in America in the 1940s. And it is more than fulfilled with regard to the events that are currently taking place, although not focused on the repression against the Jews.
Actually, Trumpwith its support for the policy of Netanyahu of extermination of the Palestinian people in Gaza, has also promoted the genocidal practices of the Holocaustcarried out by the Jewish-Israelis, who, in turn, were victims of Hitler’s “final solution” of 1942-45.
This week, last Wednesday the 21st, also in Minneapolis, Liam Rabbit Ramosa five-year-old boy of Ecuadorian origin, was arrested. Liam was extracted from the family’s moving car and driven by federal agents to his home, where he was told to knock on the door asking to be let in. His parents, upon opening the door, were arrested. Both and Liam were taken to a ICE internment camp in Texas. This image evokes that of April 1943, in which a child is detained by the forces of the SS hitlerianas in the Warsaw ghetto, when the uprising against Nazi domination broke out.
The reality, then, in effect, surpasses Roth’s fiction.
According to information from The Wall Street Journalthe United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency or ICE) pays its agents a bonus for arrests of foreignerseven if they are released without charge.
The budget of ICEwith the support of the vote of representatives of the Democratic Partyhas tripled as of January 1, 2026, becoming the agency with more funds than domestic security and intelligence institutions (FBI), anti-drug (DEA), alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives (ATF) and the federal police (US Marshals Service) together. All for the attribution of large amounts of money to training of ICE agents.
There is another point outside the scope of Roth’s fiction: the International that drives from the Trump White House in Europe and Latin America. Trump’s absurdity with Greenland could never have been more pathetic than this week at the summit of the Davos Economic Forumfrom where the American president left battered.
The internal anti-immigration offensive in the US is seen by European political forces (Vox in Spain) as an example to follow. Those who want to punish the traditional parties and the two-party system, as happened in the elections that brought Trump to the White House again a year ago, can observe the effects of their politics firsthand.
You can, therefore, keep in mind what the character in Roth’s novel formulated:
“There must have been a moment, in the beginning, where we could have said ‘No.’ But somehow we let it go.”
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