Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Einsatzgruppen isn’t a word most people know—unless they’re German, a historian, or someone who’s noticed how history loves to recycle its ugliest ideas with a fresh coat of patriotic paint. It sounds foreign, academic, safely locked in black-and-white photos. And that’s the point. When atrocities wear unfamiliar names, they’re easier to dismiss as “over there” and “a long time ago,” not something we’d ever recognize while it’s happening.

The Einsatzgruppen were sold as necessary. Temporary. Patriotic. They were just doing hard things to “save the country.” You know—rounding people up, deciding who belonged, who didn’t, and acting like paperwork turns cruelty into duty. The language was clean. The uniforms were crisp. The results were anything but.

Fast-forward, swap out the German compound nouns for bureaucratic English, and suddenly we’re told this is all about “law and order.” About safety. About protecting “real” Americans. History lesson bonus round: that’s always how it starts. No one ever says, “We’re the bad guys.” They say, “We have no choice.”

The problem isn’t that people don’t know the word Einsatzgruppen. The problem is that they recognize the playbook and still pretend not to. If “never again” means anything more than a slogan for museums and hashtags, then maybe—just maybe—we stop defending agencies that operate on fear, dehumanization, and the fantasy that brutality somehow equals national strength.

We don’t need a better PR campaign. We need to get rid of ICE. Because history has already shown us where this road goes, even if the vocabulary has changed.