Why the Tufts student arrest symbolizes democracy’s silent death

Should you can stand it, check out the nauseating video of masked federal officers pulling Tufts graduate scholar Rümeysa Öztürk off a Somerville avenue final week. Watch them casually saunter as much as the Turkish Fulbright scholar, as one in all them says, “Excuse me, ma’am.” See them seize her wrists, pull her telephone from her fingers, take her bag from her. Hear her terrified yells as she is surrounded by individuals whose faces she can’t see and whose identities she can’t confirm.

“We’re the police,” they are saying — as if that could possibly be any consolation — earlier than cuffing her and marching her to an unmarked automotive.

The Trump administration has imprisoned Öztürk, right here on a scholar visa, and is making an attempt to deport her. They received’t be particular about why they selected her, however she was flagged by a shadowy group called Canary Mission, a doxxing outfit concentrating on critics of Israeli coverage in opposition to Palestinians. Canary Mission and teams like them are successfully figuring out college students and professors whose ideas offend them, highlighting targets for the state to vanish and deport.

How would we describe this if it was occurring abroad?

The First Modification, which Trumpists as soon as pretended to revere, protects even probably the most heinous public speech: It permits Nazis to chant racist filth within the streets. Öztürk’s supposed transgression doesn’t come near that uncomfortable territory. The one factor Canary Mission has on her is that she was one in all 4 college students who signed a well mannered op-ed within the scholar newspaper final 12 months calling on Tufts to acknowledge as genocide Israeli assaults on Gaza. It expressed no help for Hamas, which carried out the horrific assaults on Israel in 2023. Nonetheless, it was an excessive amount of for the thought police.

On Thursday, soulless Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a person whom Democrats in Congress voted to verify on the ludicrous assumption that he could be a moderating affect within the administration, revealed that he had revoked the visas of 300 college students like Öztürk, possible on equally spurious grounds.

“We’re looking every day for these lunatics that are tearing things up,” he said.

Strive wanting within the mirror, Mr. Secretary.

Rubio and the remainder of this administration are tearing issues up with a velocity that has shocked even these of us who knew what was coming. They’re dismantling the federal authorities, tanking the economic system, and making us a pariah state.

Being one of many world’s good guys isn’t one thing we’re. It’s one thing we do. Slicing off life-saving assist to tens of millions all over the world, menacing allies, housing deportees in a horrific Salvadoran mega-prison, making individuals from different nations scared to journey and research right here, because the arrests of Öztürk and others absolutely do — all of it makes us the unhealthy guys.

Some MAGA zealots love this. However what about the remainder of us?

As a substitute of preventing authoritarianism, too many who may sluggish its creep have rolled over as a substitute.

Too many Democrats in Congress are nonetheless behaving with a decorum Republicans disbursed with way back, refusing to leverage what little energy they must sluggish the cataclysm. Because the president and his followers defy judges and problem flagrantly unlawful orders, Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer seems incapable of absorbing the fact that the country is already in a constitutional crisis. Over and over, an alarming variety of Democrats voted for nominees who clearly supposed to interrupt this nation. They play checkers whereas Trump’s GOP eats the board.

Trump has repeatedly abused his energy to threaten universities, firms, and massive legislation corporations with destruction except they chill speech, abandon justice, and bend to his calls for. A few of them have folded instantly: Columbia College, big authorized agency Paul, Weiss, and many others jettisoned rules they as soon as pretended had been sacrosanct.

We all know from expertise that no quantity of concessions will shield them from additional assaults. Each give up solely emboldens Trump and his henchmen, who can solely be slowed if everybody who cares about rights and democracy acknowledges the disaster we’re in and fights again — collectively.

One factor is obvious: The threats, to legislation corporations, universities, and college students like Öztürk, won’t cease coming.

Resistance could or might not be futile. Acquiescence undoubtedly is.

Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham might be reached at [email protected].