Pinchbeck films himself at an April 2025 anti-Trump demonstration outside Bryant Park in New York and argues that the moment demands active participation rather than dissociation. He centers the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal resident with an American wife and an autistic child, deported to a Salvadoran facility Pinchbeck insists should be called a concentration camp, alongside Trump's stated interest in sending American citizens there. He describes Elon Musk's DOGE operation as gathering tax, medical and social security records on the entire population, cites reporting that Erik Prince, the Blackwater founder, is contracting to build detention camps near the southern border, and notes that even the Wall Street Journal editorial page has raised impeachment. He faults the Democrats for failing working people and regrets the reversal of the Inflation Reduction Act's clean-energy manufacturing push.
In brief
- Pinchbeck argues that detention without due process in a foreign facility from which nobody is released meets the definition of a concentration camp rather than a prison.
- He contends the administration is repeating the pattern of the Nazi regime at roughly the eighty-year mark when direct memory of it has faded.
- Pinchbeck warns that consolidating Americans' tax, medical and social security data under an unelected figure builds the infrastructure of a techno-authoritarian state.
- He argues that opposition to the administration will ultimately depend on whether individuals inside the military and law enforcement refuse to carry out its orders.
- Pinchbeck maintains that due process is owed to everyone regardless of alleged gang affiliation, and that the dehumanizing rhetoric is the point of the policy.
- He faults the Democratic Party for not delivering material gains such as a higher minimum wage, which he believes would have changed the political position they now occupy.
Full text
Right up there very nice, very sizable protest. um which is in front of Brian Park and New York. Um I actually have no idea how many people are here. I'm not really good at calculating stuff. Um yeah, it's definitely good to see uh the protests uh and certainly there thousand several thousand 5,000 feels like more people are coming every moment and um yeah I thought I would just take a little time to explain why I feel that it's very important that people get more active right now. Um so yeah you know there's a few different issues. One is that the Trump regime is starting to incarcerate people without any due process uh without any legal sharing and and the regime is putting them into uh El Salvadorian concentration camps.
They're actually not prisons. They're technically concentration camps. Uh and um so basically those people there have no rights and apparently nobody even leaves that prison except they say an imposter. So once you're there, according to them, you're there for life or death, which is something soon. Now, one guy they put there, Abrago Garcia, you may have heard about was a legal resident who um married to an American citizen, has a kid, autistic young child, uh was part of a union, was learning, I think, sheet metal work or something. So this guy who was really just, you know, not harming anybody, uh they picked him up and they've now put him into a concentration camp apparently for life and uh you know and and then they brought the El Salvadorian dictator to the White House and the dictator and Trump like we can't get this guy back.
Um uh and then um Trump also said that he wants to put American citizens in these concentration camps, homegrown us. It's such a disgusting word, by the way. Homegrown. I mean, what a disgusting kind of phrase. like you know I think really what you have to understand is that game. Um, you know, they just look at ordinary people like all these people here. NPCs in their game, I guess, and nonplayable characters or they look at them as um, you know, somebody said, you know, the billionaires look at people as for them to grow money up, you know. So you know all these people have their own subjective lives who want to you know live decently who care about the world all all of us are threatened by this administration and you know I know that we have a problem because even now the administration has a lot of support of you know people that poll still vote very high support of the Republican party but that also can change you know we saw Actually, just last week, the Gall Street Journal uh had an editorial saying that Trump may have to be a freak impeach.
Uh so that was very exciting. Um and um yeah, I mean, of course, they're not really giving a they don't give a about the constitutional the total destruction of, you know, rights and sections under the constitution, but they are concerned about the destruction of the economy. And those things are not totally unlin. You know, as America turns itself, a sort of self-inflicted fatal gunshot wound to the head that is apocalypse, as we turn our country into a financial republic into a third dictatorship, you know, we we lose our status as a nation that other countries trust or want to do business with. And then I guess we can work with authoritarian countries and we're basically sacrificing Europe and we're embracing El Salvador and Russia.
So and another reason that protest obviously is what's happening with Musk and Doge which really I I still feel like I'm going to have to go back and write on that more unfortunately. But you know it feels like I mean according to some recent articles I've read basically all of that data is being funneled to to Russia to Putin. So essentially Musk who's not elected uh Putin uh are they're going to have all the private data of everybody in the US. They're going to have our social security. They're going to have our private medical information. They're going to have our tax information. So it's just uh quite extraordinary.
I already signed um those are great. Can I check out your signs for a second? Um there you go. Yeah, it's very cute. Uh nice ones. Uh yeah. So essentially like um what are they going to do with our private data in this attempt to create a technofascist uh you know global hypocrisy? Um it's really pretty terrifying I admit. Uh I mean uh what can we say at this point but you know the people still do have a voice and even people in the military right ultimately people in the marshals the military they have a voice they have to decide whether they can be there in their own souls be part of this.
I mean, we know, you know, we have had, you know, it's amazing to the extent to which that we're kind of like, um, you know, um, um, it's amazing to the extent that we're repeating the mistakes of the Nazi regime. And I guess it's been, you know, 80 years, so it's kind of fading from historical memory in terms of people's individual memories. So, that was just the right amount of time for all of this horror to kind of uh, return. And yeah, we really to be concerned that this what's happening in America is going to go full Nazi fascist. It really looks like that's where they want to go.
We've seen Trump's closest supporters like Steve Bannon and must give Nazi salutes. Um Eric Prince, the uh founder of Blackwater is apparently contracting with the US government to build concentration camps along the southern border. Uh the idea is to put something like 12 million people into these camps uh before the 2026 midterm elections. Uh and you know we basically you know obviously you know as people know who read my work I was never like the biggest supporter of um kind of the Democratic party and I think they really you know caused a lot of damage and if they just had like voted for the minimum wage to be raised or done something more powerful for you know working people uh we would be in such a different position right now but uh whatever we are we are where we are and um now we're kind of in I would say like a kind of life without struggle kind of a thing like that against a um you know technopathist regime that has incredible tools of control mind control mind programming I mean um if we let this continue yeah they really I don't I don't really see a limit I mean you know North Korea is a kind of totally controlled society um where um yeah you know people grow up thinking that the dictator is is a god thing And if you don't think Trump would like that, you know, you're being very serious. You know, meanwhile, you repress the people to destroy the middle class.
Another important reason is protest right now is um you know, the economic policies which I'm kind of irritated because I see a lot of um kind of um you know, economic correspondents and so on speaking about the tariffs, you know, and how arbitrary and absurd they are. Why are they why are we doing this? What's what's going on? But as I've written, I think the most reasonable kind of uh understanding is that actually it's a you know it's not just you know Trump is obviously what he is but it's really a determined effort to just collapse the US economy to destroy the middle class to to ruin everybody who has you know kind of education and skills and so on. They think that artificial intelligence soon will be able to handle you know most of the sort of mid-level administrative jobs.
You won't really need people for that anymore. Uh and um you know if the scrap sorry US economy and let's say um you have people who um uh let's say um um yeah you crash the US economy and let's say we default on our debt, right? Let's think about that for a second, you know, well, you know, so suddenly you have bankrupt companies, you have a bankrupt country, you have uh public lands that have to be privatized and sold off to creditors. So for instance, let's say the Saudi wealth fund which backed Trump's uh recent golf tournament that he had, I think last weekend or the weekend before. Uh they come in and they can buy yuse, which I'm sure would make a very nice, you know, very big uh golf course.
I know what they want to do for this. And um yeah, so I think this is really very much a controlled uh demolition of American society. I think it's, you know, probably been planned for a while. Um and it's a sort of transnational oligarchy mafia who um yeah, I mean they definitely took control of the US media. So most of the population is pretty much brainwashed at this point. But you know, people can be unbrained and you know, the the the population here can shift pretty quickly and there can be kind of like um even on the side of like the rock of Republicans, you know, a growing awareness that this can't continue.
And as I mentioned, the Wall Street Journal issued an editorial uh where they said that Trump may have to be impeached, but they're focusing on the economic issue. Joe Rogan who has been kind of like insanely magnified recently. He is now beginning to make some noises where oh what what is this? No due process and so on. So I think that things could actually turn pretty quickly but it really only turns if everybody who you know everybody can uh use their voice with their communities and however they can. And um yeah like uh what do we got here? evolutionary communist in America. I don't know if that's I'm not sure that's the way to go right now, but uh it's an option.
Um anyway um but I you know I hope people are really beginning to feel that um you know I I guess I feel that a lot of people in my community if I go on Instagram and Facebook and I look at all the people who were kind of um part of my Burning Man communities or it's spiritual or psychedelic community there's still like a massive amount of dissociation. Let's check them out. How's it going, sir? What do you got to say for yourself today? Oh, yeah. Nice one. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, one thing that's a little bit, you know, there are some young people at at the at these marches, but I really would love to see a lot more people in their 20s and 30s at these marches.
And I think unfortunately that the impact of uh social media network social technologies has really been quite negative in terms of um making people feel very kind of like socially disconnected like their voice doesn't matter very like disempowered somehow but actually yeah like everybody does have a lot of power and that everybody has a community that listens to them even if it's a small one if we all I mean and basically yeah ultimately everything is ideology right as you know you've all had written about you know basically a culture is a And at the moment we have one group that's controlling the story. Um this far right uh nonsense but um that could change. It could change quite quickly and we really have to hope that that it does happen. Um but yeah, so uh you know I'm constantly thinking about how do we speak to younger people? How do we get them more engaged?
How do we get everybody more engaged? uh it feels like there's a lot I should do about um even in a very short period of time because we all are very connected right now and I think a lot about why did these tech uh billionaires you know like Elon Musk and Peter Teal and Mark Andre uh you know swerve so far to the right so quickly because you know some of them not teal but some of them were like Obama supporters not even that long ago. Um I think there are a number of factors but I think one factor is um you know the possibility that they could lose control of even the social networks technologies and so on. I mean it's not a foregone conclusion that um controlling technologies continue to dominate uh and actually we all have the capacity to speak with each other to communicate with each other to make media. Uh if we could we sort of wake enough people up uh and sort of build an influence.
I think maybe we almost have to like shame or embarrass people who are uh you know not not um somehow connecting the moment of what what needs to be done. Uh yeah, I mean maybe we could still work together. You know, I've been very disappointed because uh years ago back in 2011 I put on a series of events with a number of um celebrities kind of like you know millennial influencers you know profit and bad and son and you know they all have millennial sensibilities but they're also such beneficiaries of the system you know we were doing these events around occupy wall street together and then they all kind of like evaporated on me and I sort of wonder if they got some kind of like message from their management or uh Alexa Chong was another one um yeah what you know so these were people like millions of followers on uh Instagram and and so on who could yeah be really like guides for humanity, but instead they're just um choosing this kind of narcissism with this. Um anyway, that's kind of where I'm at for now. Enjoying the march, hoping you're all feeling inspired to get involved.
These things are nice. Obviously wouldn't be nice if um the police felt attacking us, but uh as long as that doesn't happen, I think these kind of events really give me a lot of courage. I have to admit that I wasn't feeling very courageous this week. I kept feeling, oh, I should say what I feel should write what I feel that I was like, yeah, am I going to get tagged at the airport or something? But I don't know. You know, I I I think we have a little still have some time to push back. uh certainly the courts are pushing back certainly it's very good that um Harvard you know is pushing back from existing because we have to think of an institution like Harvard you know it's not just this very wealthy you know educational institution it's also all of the people who graduated from Harvard and people who are in the top firms in Wall Street and legal firms and so on so you know it's hopefully uh Harvard is not just making a token show it's actually mobilizing you know its kind of networks of uh wealthy and connected people but you know ultimately unfortunately in these types of scenarios it ultimately comes down to even just the rank and file military people going to go along with that clearly um Trump people have created a lot of kind of goons ideologically programmed then you have the far right people and so on so Um, yeah, it's very concerning.
Yeah, I understand the uh the reasons to be afraid right now. I really do. Um, I can answer a question if anybody has a question on the on the chat. Um, yeah, I I I I really also think that it's important to realize that these tech billionaires, you know, they know climate change is coming. you know, they know that the resources are disappearing. Um, and um, you know, that was another reason they they've done this sort of organizing a kind of um, a strike uh, to protect their own interests. And also, they know that AI and robotics are coming. I mean, um, you'll have, um, more and more, you know, capacity.
Um, what's your dog's name? Scarlet. Hi, Skylar. What's that? Um, yeah. So, um, how secure is the chat coming together? I mean, I don't know which chat you need, but signal is actually still some. So if you want to have secure chats, I recommend Signal. I'm also shifting the Proton Mail for email. That also has a great reputation as being very secure. Um so yes, that kind of a thing. Uh any other any other questions? Yeah, but I think basically, you know, as I've been saying, you know, this um of Garcia saying is really the limit and just kind of um this let's see we got here can I see your can I can I log in to your little sign mine from Thank you.
Thank you. Um yeah people get it you know people get it. Um but yeah because if you can if they're if they're allowed to just grab anybody off the street with no food process no hearing no law. Uh and he's also already talking about doing that to American citizens. That's just very bad. You know, that's just like basically um total descent into tyranny in the US. And um make it a very unsafe country. I mean, I've been writing about the tech billionaires and how um um I don't know. I mean, it sounds good to me. And it makes sense that there would be a you know kind of like a level where a certain degree of the population gets something.
I mean we have this weird division between red and blue and kind of north and south and we have the east and west coast and sort of middle of the country as undereducated. I don't know Gary Stevenson. Oh yeah. So the point I was trying to make is that um yeah there's this whole I mean what's fascinating to me and a bit schizophrenic is um you know you have this kind of America first patriotic kind of nonsense ideology. Sorry I'm not really a nationalist. Uh that Trump is like oh America's going to be great again or whatever. But these tech billionaires who have lined up with Trump are actually not even slightly interested in America.
Their whole thing is what they call network states uh or patchwork states which people like Velis Venison and um Curtis Yarvin have been promoting. And basically the idea with these things is um you have these sort of private what they call commercialized sovereignty. So you have these kind of like private little tech republics where you know you have like surfs, you have all these lawyers built a couple of them Gary Gary Stevenson. All right, I'll try to remember. Uh send me send me a link by uh on the notes. Um if I got a lot, you know it's a lot to think of. Um yeah so they're basically they actually wanted this book the sovereign individual is very interesting because basically that's a book that Andrea and he really support and they'll basically say the nation state is becoming irrelevant because of information technology network technology and in the future um yeah there won't really be nation states it'll be these little provinces where you know the sovereign individual has complete control over they kind of terrified terrorized that surf population.
So, you know, that sort of they had that ideology um they um got into the Trump thing, but I thought they saw this opportunity to take over the government and obviously, you know, seems kind of crazy because they were so successful and you know, so wealthy like in a way it's a risk to move into completely illegal activity. Uh so for instance like from what I'm understanding about there you know have a bus kind of building and all of our kind of data is being transferred over to user so they can use it to manipulate us. Um so yeah so um you know for whatever reasons thought that this was the moment for them to go totally rogue totally illegal you know even though they were only worth three billion or 300 billion or whatever but I think they must have felt somehow that that was insecure I think from like TL and less and probably David Sachs I know less about who are all South African grew up in a South Africa you know they probably grew up feeling very guilty very insecure because um I'm in New York City. Yeah, they probably felt very at some level very, you know, they like um Ke's father was the main engineer at a uranium mine. A lot of black people died from radiation poisoning.
M father ran an emerald mine. I'm sure horrible. So you grow up in these kind of situations and you know deep down you might you know be very rightwing but I think you also have a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety and a lot of guilt and you wait the way you suppress that is kind of double down and particularly as as people get older they tend to become more conservative or their kind of like memories of their early lives to their conscious. So yeah, these guys made this really sad, terrible term and we're all now suffering consequences from it. But um yeah, you know, I mean personally I'm not even a Democrat.
I'm more of a ultimately anarchist or social aologist. I mean I you know wonder about the level to which the source code of financial the financial system has been corrupted you know since 2007 2008 when we didn't punish or penalize the Wall Street elite financial elite for destroying the economy um that also seems to be one of the progressive kind of you know notes in this circumstance Um, great. Yeah, this would not be a safe platform to organize it. That is for sure. This is a platform that is uh actually I think one of the main investors are powerless. So this is really a platform for organizing.
It's a good platform for you know speaking out getting the word out talking to people communicating. I love substack um and I I do for um Anybody else question or com AI and robotics learning generative AI It's interesting. All right. Well, I might I might sign off for now. Uh, thanks for joining me. Thanks for listening. I hope you all get involved in the way that's appropriate for you. Uh, yeah, we're in a very dangerous situation. I think it's also really important to point out that it's um you know this Trump apocalypse is catastrophic for America for obviously for these poor illegal immigrants who are going to be deported concentration camps Nazis but it's also incredibly bad for the future of the planet which is incredibly bad for you know our children you know their their descendants grandchildren great children Yeah, I mean um you know they're taking away all the environmental regulations.
They pulled us out of the climate act. And it's also obviously true that those accords were not good enough. They were way under what was needed. But the way to deal with that was not to just like eliminate all environmental protections. It was, you know, to create a sort of echo regenerative systemic redo of sighting. I I guess it's sometimes one of my vague hopes um although it's a distant hope right now is that this I mean there there was a way in which the American the whole infrastructure of the American government and these institutions like Harvard was not really supporting enough movement towards an echoreenerative society.
Although I thought there were some great things that Biden was actually doing like inflation reduction act to kind of um bring renewable energy manufacturing um uh to to the US. But of course Trump is doing away with all of that. But um yeah I mean also I think that even that why is Trump doing away? I mean, he hates fossil fuels or whatever. But I think another element of it is um to make us more dependent to Middle Eastern oil supplies because he's obviously working he and Musk are working very closely with the Saudis and the Saudi wealth funds. Um all right, I've rambled enough. Yeah, everybody is a human.
Uh you have to we can't dissociate and act like people are less because even if they're gang members like hell. I mean uh they still deserve a day in court. They still deserve a CRA. They still deserve due process. This whole this whole effort by a fascist regime to completely dehumanize people uh is completely repugnant. From my perspective, everybody has a right to be everybody has a right to let go Trump. the right to uh yeah have their own life uh to have education and so on. This idea to just kind of rip all that away from everybody, it's just really uh it's load stuff basically.
It's horrible. Okay, I keep talking. I think that's enough for today. Thanks very much for listening.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.