‘This is what fascism looks like’: terror in Minneapolis reminiscent of civil war

Wearing helmets, gas masks and camouflage fatigues, the federal agents took aim and prepared to open fire. “It’s like Call of Duty,” one could be heard saying via a TV mic, referring to a first-person shooter military video game. “So cool, huh?”

This was the scene on the streets of Minneapolis on Saturday after armed agents, wearing masks and tactical vests, wrestled 37-year-old Alex Pretti to the ground and shot him dead. The killing took place just over a mile from where Renee Good was fatally shot on 7 January, a scene that itself was less than a mile from where police murdered George Floyd in May 2020.

In the first year of his second presidency, Trump’s ICE deployments have been carefully aimed at cities that are Democratic-led and often Black-led, as if imposing collective punishment for their defiance. In this, he is borrowing from an authoritarian playbook reminiscent of Saddam Hussein of Iraq targeting the Kurds or Soviet leader Joseph Stalin causing the Holodomor, or “death by hunger”, in Ukraine.

It is the same vengeful petulance that in the past week alone has seen Trump lash out at Canada and other Nato allies over perceived slights in Davos during his quest to conquer Greenland.

Trump seems to reserve a special loathing for Minnesota because he lost the presidential elections there in 2016, 2020 and 2024, despite most neighbouring states voting in his favour. He recently made the false claim that he won Minnesota all three times. In reality, no Republican – not even Ronald Reagan – has prevailed there since Richard Nixon in 1972.