5. February 2026 – THE FLENSBURG FILES

Picking up from yesterday’s video on America and Fascism according to McGowan and Johnson is a follow-up by Tony Pentimalli, which looks at the flaws America had prior to Trump 2.0 and how that has been exposed wide open ever since he took office. This is a sobering post for everyone to look at, with a lot of questions to be answered, including one has he has at the end:

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This article exists because two women refused comfort and demanded honesty. Diana Harris and Triphena Johnson reminded me of something America still struggles to admit: Donald Trump did not create the conditions we are living under. He stripped away the disguise. He exposed a system that was already operating, already violent, and already structured around hierarchy and exclusion.

What feels shocking now is not what the state is doing. It is the loss of a belief that its violence was meant for someone else.

Since Trump regained office, the country has not entered a new era. It has entered an exposed one. ICE has been unleashed with fewer restraints and more political cover. Court orders have been ignored, delayed, or treated as optional. Deportations and detentions have expanded. Oversight has been mocked rather than respected. None of this has been hidden. It has been defended as strength.

For Black and Brown communities, this is not escalation. It is confirmation. For decades, state violence was applied unevenly and explained away when it landed on the same communities again and again. People disappeared into detention. Families were broken apart. Warnings were issued quietly because shouting rarely mattered. The country did not misunderstand those warnings. It chose to look past them.

James Baldwin explained why that was possible. “It is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent,” he wrote. “It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.” Innocence is not ignorance. It is distance. It is the ability to believe that what is happening to others has nothing to do with you.

That distance is gone now.

When the same machinery began touching people who believed citizenship, whiteness, class, or political alignment would protect them, the language changed. Suddenly people spoke of authoritarianism and tyranny. Suddenly there was fear. This was not an awakening. It was proximity.

There are white liberals who will say they stood up before. Many did. That mattered. But protest during moments of mass attention is not the same as solidarity that survives when the cameras leave. Outrage has an expiration date. Commitment does not. Solidarity that fades when attention fades is not solidarity. It is performance.

There are conservatives who will dismiss this argument as race baiting. That response is not confusion. It is bad faith. Race has always shaped how power is applied in this country. Naming that reality does not divide us. Denying it protects hierarchy. Authoritarian systems do not begin by targeting everyone at once. They begin where resistance is weakest and public concern is lowest.

Much of the Right still believes this power will never touch them. That enforcement is aimed outward. At immigrants. At protesters. At people they already distrust. They believe loyalty, usefulness, or ideological alignment function as shields. History offers no support for that belief. Power does not protect loyalty. It exploits it until it no longer needs to.

And yet, for many Americans, this only became real when white people began to die. When white families began to grieve publicly. When the illusion of exemption finally broke. What changed was not the behavior of the state. What changed was who could no longer ignore it.

Martin Luther King Jr. warned about this failure of commitment. He wrote not only about open hatred, but about those more devoted to order than to justice, patience than accountability. That posture did not fade with time. It hardened into habit. It taught people to wait. To trust process. To hope the moment would pass.

But waiting has never slowed a system built on hierarchy. It has only strengthened it.

Frederick Douglass was clear. “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Rights that exist only when they are convenient are not rights. Courts that can be ignored without consequence are no longer safeguards. A system that applies law selectively is not broken. It is functioning exactly as designed.

Which brings us to the question this moment demands and will not release.

When this regime falls, as all regimes eventually do, what happens then?

Do we return to comfort and distance, telling ourselves the crisis has passed? Do we slip back into privilege and allow the same system to resume grinding down Black and Brown lives once attention fades? Do we treat this period as an aberration instead of a revelation?

Acknowledgment is not enough.

Awareness is not enough.

Opposition, if it is temporary, is not enough.

Standing arm in arm means staying when it becomes quiet again. It means refusing to forget who will be targeted first once the cameras leave. It means understanding that if hierarchy survives, so will the violence, no matter who holds power.

The system has revealed itself.

The warning phase is over.

History is not asking whether we recognize what is happening.

That question has been answered.

History is asking who will still be standing together when recognition no longer earns praise, when resistance costs comfort, and when returning to distance would be easiest of all.

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Note:

This article was inspired by the writing of Triphena Johnson Pro Mua and Diana Harris, whose clarity cut through denial and reminded me that this moment is not about discovering injustice, but about deciding whether we will live differently once it is no longer hidden. Their voices do not need amplification. They need to be believed, remembered, and stood beside.

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the Communities Social platform opened recently and therefore, I started an account and started some pages. Communities is London-based and was created by a small-scale entrepreneur whose mission is to provide some healthy discussions and create events without being spied upon by Big Tech. Organizers wishing to leave Facebook and co., here are some pages that may interest you:

50501 USA/International: https://communities.social/group/group50501_usa-international/members

Resistance Roundtable: https://communities.social/group/resistance-roundtable

The Flensburg Files: https://communities.social/group/the-flensburg-files

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You can also check out the Files’ page on anything pertaining to Trump 2.0, which includes stories from the author and others. This includes terminologies, Endgames and the most recent project, collecting stories from Minnesotans about the ICE atrocities. Click on the contact page here if you have a story to share. The page is growing with articles so visit often. The page can be found here:

Trump 2.0 and Ways to End It: https://flensburgerfiles.wordpress.com/trump-2-0-and-ways-to-end-it/

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This past weekend I officially entered the Golden Years- practically the 50th year of my life on this planet. And to those who took the time to send me a birthday greeting, be it in person, through e-mail, Whatsapp, and other social media platforms, Thank You! Thank you very much for the birthday greetings!

For those who wanted to pass their birthday greetings on Facebook, you have probably seen my profile in a different way, which is the fact that Facebook censored it- intentionally!

Normally, when you have a birthday on Facebook, people in your network are reminded of the date, giving them a chance to post your greetings on your timeline, regardless of relationship. This time around, it was not mentioned in the followers’ news feed, nor was it possible to post on the timeline. One could do it with Messenger if the person remembered the birthday. In some cases however, one is reminded of the birthday greeting by Facebook, is automatically sent to Messenger, and even with a prepared birthday greeting by Facebook, when it is sent off on Messenger, it never arrives.

It was part of Facebook’s crackdown on dissent. Since Trump’s inauguration, the social media platform has been censoring posts against Trump’s policies and Project 2025. Those who post videos, facts and figures and the real cold truth are automatically disappeared within hours. In many cases those posting are barred from engaging in activities for days, weeks or even more. Anti-Trump groups are being taken down, and in some cases, being replaced with Turning Point groups. There has not been a time when sharing an anti-Trump post in a group where Turning Point appears on the group list, despite my not being subscribed to them. And as far as our database is concerned, that has been handed over to Palantir. Our lives and activities are now in the hands of the technocrats. It is no secret that Zuckerberg and Thiel are working together, like a blond woman going to bed with a married man with the wife not seeing what is going on.

The good news is that many people are leaving these platforms owned by those who have worked together with Trump to carry out the agenda. Platforms like X, Meta and anything with Apple are seeing a sharp decline in the number of subscribers. Many of my friends and family members have sought alternative platforms because of fear their privacy may be exposed. Some like myself are opening accounts on other platforms to experiment and determine whether they are the right alternative to Facebook and if so, move everything over that platform. We are currently boycotting products made by companies with ties to Trump, and general strikes are being strongly considered. While Palantir is collecting our data, smaller unidentified groups are likewise creating their databases to uncover the activities of the MAGA supporters and ICE agents. And some have left the social media scene altogether, preferring the old-fashioned way of communicating. All of these are excellent ways to counter what Facebook and other pro-Trump platforms are doing as far as suppressing our freedom of speech. While Hitler and Mussolini successfully suppressed their population through propaganda and limited media- namely in print, thanks to the advancement of technology, combined with an even larger population, it has become impossible for fascists of today to gain control over a region, especially when the information leaks out to undermine their agenda.

So what can you do if you are facing the situation I faced? You can leave it as is and hope for the best. But if you want to spread the word, make a photo post with a birthday cake and pin it on your timeline for a couple of days to see what happens. Chances are, if you do that, people will notice and can post your birthday greetings in the comments section. They do have the Messenger option if you want them to use it. But keep in mind of the risk of the message not arriving in the recipient’s mailbox when sent off. In some cases, a manual message using another form of communication would help. If you still want to be noticed on Facebook, if you want full coverage, pin your post to the top and watch it happen.

In case you receive many fewer birthday greetings as normal, don’t panic. I know many people who have left Facebook because they want nothing to do with this crap and I am not mad at them. In fact, my best greeting would be for them to help those in need, living in fear and not knowing where to go without ICE kidnapping them. There are many warriors out there, working around the clock to make the streets safer for use. Because that is something I would be doing, apart from writing.

For those who sent their greetings near and far, regardless of platform, many thanks! For others who didn’t get a chance, now you know why, and I am not mad about it. It was something that took me by surprise and you should pay attention to when you are active in social media. Regardless of such, be careful out there wherever you go. You are needed by your community and together, everyone achieves more.

Thank you.

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