Spectres of Fascism, Historical, Theoretical and International Perspectives is a book edited Dr. Samir Gandesha, Director of the SFU’S Institute for the Humanities. It was published in 2020 but is drawn from a free school presented at the Institute in 2017. The following is taken from Professor Gandesha’s foreword:
The free school can be situated within programming that stretches back several years and specifically addresses the increasingly aauthoritarian cast of politics globally and in Canada in particular. In Canada such an authoritarian turn was closely linked to Stephen Harper’s project of transforming Canada into an “emerging energy superpower.” Broadly speaking, the Institute has focused its attention on the resulting criminalization of dissent in this respect, in particular through the use of strategic lawsuits to limit public participation (SLAPPs) and the Anti-Terrorism Act that was passed in 2015 and was designed specifically to target opposition, particularly from Indigenous communities, to pipeline projects…
Fascism is uncanny insofar as it is a phenomenon that seems to belong to a distant age in a previous century yet has been all too close at hand in the first two decades of the present one..
…The spectre of fascism returns, then, as a response to a particular financial and ecological crisis of capitalism. If twentieth-century fascism, in part, offered a solution to the economic slump via an acceleration of the extraction of absolute and relative surplus-value extraction by smashing independent trade unions and other working-class institutions, today fascism centres on a deepening of resource extraction on the very precipice of massive deskilling of labour, and widespread automation and employment of robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, to wit: the prospective obsolescence of humanity itself…
Categories: Fascism
in-sights.ca 
In a January video a federal officer, in uniform, kicks a Renee Good memorial?
Was the video faked?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/real-video-shows-dhs-officer-defacing-renee-good-memorial/ar-AA1UbOzK?ocid=BingNewsSerp&cvid=6967b121ff304fd4959f253943acf2c5&ei=4
Claim: A January 2026 video authentically showed a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer kicking over a flameless memorial candle honoring Renee Good, the woman an ICE agent fatally shot in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, 2026.
Rating: Mostly True (About this rating?)
The video was from January 2026 and did show a law enforcement official twice kicking a flameless memorial candle honoring Renee Good. The incident occurred in Sacramento, California.
What’s False: The officer who kicked over the candle was a Federal Protective Service officer, not an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent. The FPS is the subsidiary of the Department of Homeland Security responsible for protecting federal government facilities.
In short, the clip was authentic — meaning it was not AI-generated or created using other video editing tools — and it showed a law enforcement official kicking over a candle at a memorial for Good in Sacramento, California, in early January 2026. However, the official was a Federal Protective Service officer, not an ICE agent. The FPS is the subsidiary of the Department of Homeland Security responsible for protecting federal government facilities. Therefore, this claim contained mostly true information.
=======================================================================
How well qualified are new ICE hires?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ice-is-reportedly-hiring-people-who-can-t-read-write-or-pass-fitness-tests/ar-AA1UahqK?ocid=BingNewsSerp&cvid=6967b57c752647398596fe7592600c13&ei=65
A major hiring push at Immigration and Customs Enforcement is drawing sharp criticism after lawmakers revealed that some new recruits are struggling with basic reading, writing, and physical fitness requirements. As ICE races to expand its workforce, questions are growing about whether speed has started to outweigh standards.
During recent oversight discussions on Capitol Hill, senators raised concerns that lowered barriers and accelerated training timelines have allowed recruits into the pipeline who cannot meet fundamental expectations of the job. According to statements entered into the congressional record, some trainees reportedly could barely read or write well enough to pass open book exams designed to test basic understanding of immigration and constitutional law.
Those exams were not meant to be difficult. Recruits were allowed to use notes and reference materials, yet a significant number still failed. Lawmakers warned that if officers struggle to comprehend written legal guidance in a classroom setting, the risks multiply once they are operating in real communities where split second decisions can carry lasting consequences.
Physical fitness has also become a major point of concern. ICE requires recruits to complete modest benchmarks including push ups, sit ups, and a timed 1.5 mile run. Oversight statements revealed that a sizable portion of new trainees failed to meet those minimums. Some were described as severely out of shape despite certifying they were physically capable during the application process.
=======================================================================
But in History it’s not like a healthy state ever deliberately attacked the public…
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Red-Guards
While engaging in marches, meetings, and frenzied propagandizing, Red Guard units attacked and persecuted local party leaders as well as schoolteachers and school officials, other intellectuals, and persons of traditional views. Several hundred thousand people died in the course of these persecutions.
By early 1967 Red Guard units were overthrowing existing party authorities in towns, cities, and entire provinces. These units soon began fighting among themselves, however, as various factions vied for power amidst each one’s claims that it was the true representative of Maoist thought. The Red Guards’ increasing factionalism and their total disruption of industrial production and of Chinese urban life caused the government in 1967–68 to urge the Red Guards to retire into the countryside. The Chinese military was called in to restore order throughout the country, and from this point the Red Guard movement gradually subsided.
=======================================================================
https://www.britannica.com/topic/inquisition
inquisition, a judicial procedure and later an institution that was established by the papacy and, sometimes, by secular governments to combat heresy. Derived from the Latin verb inquiro (“inquire into”), the name was applied to commissions in the 13th century and subsequently to similar structures in early modern Europe. In 1184 Pope Lucius III required bishops to make a judicial inquiry, or inquisition, for heresy in their dioceses, a provision renewed by the fourth Lateran…
=======================================================================
https://www.britannica.com/video/Adolf-Hitler-power-Germany/-192588
NARRATOR: In truth, Hitler plans to govern alone, with only one party – his National Socialist German Workers’ Party. The Nazi leader proposes the Enabling Act to parliament. While preserving the semblance of legality, the act essentially transfers state power to Hitler. His critics are intimidated.
ADOLPH HITLER: “You are self-pitying, gentlemen, and not fit for the present age when you talk already of persecution.”
NARRATOR: On March 23, the majority of delegates vote for their own disempowerment. Farmers’ Day 1934, the unions are destroyed, and other organizations are recognized by the National Socialists. The young people are told lockstep instead of diversity, order instead of liberty. It is not the individual that counts, but the ethnic community, not individual will, but that of their leader.
DORIS SCHMID-GEWINNER: “It was like soldiers. We had to swear to give our lives for Hitler and fatherland although we were only 14.”
NARRATOR: Rituals are used to bring individuals to heel.
SALLY PEREL: “The conformity, the expropriation of the German youth, the destruction of the individual. All this he achieved.”
LikeLike