‘This is what fascism looks like’

Alex Pretti's death could be a moment of reckoning for Democrats to call time on Trump waging war on his people

- By David Smith WASHINGTON

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 military video game. “So cool, huh?”

This was the scene on the streets of Minneapolis last Saturday after armed agents wrestled 37-year-old Alex Pretti to the ground and shot him dead. The killing took place just over 1.5km from where Renee Good was fatally shot on 7 January, a scene that itself was a similar distance from where police murdered George Floyd in May 2020.

“How many more residents, how many more Americans need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end?” the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, demanded at a press conference last Saturday, referring to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. An angry crowd gathered and swore profanities at federal officers, calling them “cowards” and telling them to go home.

Donald Trump spoke of “American carnage” in his first inaugural address nine years ago. The US president has surely delivered it by deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to a major city in order to create a spectacle of terror reminiscent of a civil war - or a video game.