Confounding Nazis and ICE by leftists

 

Confounding Nazis and ICE by leftists/liberals/Democrats/socialists leaves no room for a real, true, natural, objective distinction between the two concepts.

To eliminate this problem:

Start with objective definitions—by essentials, not by floating associations.

• Nazi: A totalitarian, one-party, collectivist regime (National Socialism) that abolished individual rights, centralized political power, initiated aggressive war, and institutionalized mass murder and censorship; force was initiatory and unlimited, directed at peaceful citizens and minorities as state policy [6].
• ICE: A rights-subordinate, statutorily created U.S. law-enforcement agency that operates under the Constitution, congressional statutes, executive oversight, and judicial review to enforce immigration and customs law and investigate cross-border crime; its use of force is retaliatory and limited by due process and objective procedure [4].

To erase this distinction is a package-deal fallacy: it collapses unlike units under a nonessential common denominator (“they both use force”) while dropping the essential differences—purpose, scope, and moral status of that force (initiatory vs. retaliatory; unlimited vs. limited; ideological tyranny vs. objective law) [3]. It further commits equivocation on “force,” treating the state’s legitimate, delimited retaliatory force as morally identical to criminal aggression, which inverts the principle that government’s sole function is the protection of individual rights under objective law [6].

How the conflation is done:

• Redefinition by nonessentials: substituting emotive imagery (“uniforms,” “detention,” “raids”) for the essential political-legal character of the institutions involved, thereby turning a rights-destroying dictatorship and a rights-protecting agency into alleged synonyms [6].
• Context-dropping: ignoring constitutional constraints, statutory limits, oversight, and legal remedies that bind ICE, while ignoring the unlimited, lawless character of Nazi power (Gleichschaltung, secret police, censorship, concentration camps) [4].
• Stolen-concept and package-deals: invoking “human rights” to attack the very concept of objective, rights-based law enforcement, which presupposes borders, jurisdiction, and procedures—concepts made meaningless if any enforcement is smeared as “Nazi” by definition [3].
• Moral inversion: equating the defense of a nation’s objective legal conditions of entry and trade with collectivist persecution, thereby normalizing actual totalitarianism and criminalizing the rule of law [6].

Objective tests that keep the concepts distinct:

• Source of authority: arbitrary party decree vs. constitutionally delimited statute and judicial review [4].
• Purpose: ideological domination and extermination vs. enforcement of immigration/customs law and interdiction of cross-border crime (smuggling, trafficking, money laundering) [6].
• Type of force: initiatory, unlimited, and political-terror vs. retaliatory, delimited, and procedurally reviewable [3].
• Accountability: none (censorship, one-party rule) vs. multiple avenues of redress (courts, inspectors general, congressional oversight, media scrutiny) [6].

From the standpoint of Objectivist epistemology, the conflation rests on rejecting definitions by essentials and on evasion of causal identity. A Nazi regime is the political embodiment of collectivism and the initiation of force; a proper rights-respecting government uses force only in retaliation and only under objective law. To equate the two is to discard the principle of non-contradictory identification—facts over feelings—and to blur the line between civilization and barbarism [3].

Politically, collectivists gain by such package-deals. By smearing any enforcement of immigration and customs law as “Nazi,” they seek to delegitimize objective law itself, clearing the ground for rule by pressure groups and executive fiat—i.e., for more statism. In contrast, the proper function of government is the protection of individual rights; a rights-protecting state must maintain objective conditions of entry, trade, and jurisdiction, or it ceases to be a government and becomes a whim-driven mob with badges [6].

On the wider economic-political framework, as George Reisman explains, Nazism is a species of collectivist statism (a command-and-control system that tramples private property and individual rights), whereas capitalism requires a government of strictly limited functions—police, courts, national defense—operating under objective law. Enforcing immigration and customs law, and combating cross-border crime, fall within the retaliatory use of force that a capitalist society delegates to government; they are not steps toward collectivist tyranny, but necessary implements of a rights-based legal order when executed under objective constraints [6].

Conclusion: The “Nazi = ICE” equation is a textbook package-deal and a moral smear. It obliterates the life-or-death distinction between initiatory force and retaliatory force, between totalitarian diktat and objective law. Intellectual honesty requires precise definitions, context-keeping, and the recognition that the protection of rights is not equivalent to their destruction. Any particular abuses should be identified and corrected by stricter adherence to objective law—not by annihilating the very concept of lawful, rights-respecting enforcement [4].

Sources

1 Understanding Objectivism by Leonard Peikoff. Edited by Michael S. Berliner

2 For the New Intellectual by Ayn Rand

3 Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff

4 Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology by Ayn Rand expanded 2nd edition edited by Harry Binswanger and Leonard Peikoff containing never-before published philosophical material by Ayn Rand

5 Founders of Western Philosophy by Leonard Peikoff

6 Capitalism by George Riesman

In addition:

Here is additional, objective analysis that keeps the concepts distinct by essentials and exposes the package-deal that equates a totalitarian dictatorship with a delimited law-enforcement agency.

1. Necessary and sufficient conditions—what “Nazi” actually names

• One-party dictatorship and Führerprinzip: the subordination of all institutions to the ruler and party; no opposition permitted (Gleichschaltung) [6].
• Abolition of individual rights: censorship, criminalization of dissent, outlawry of independent courts, and unrestricted secret police (Gestapo/SS) with extrajudicial powers [4].
• Racial-collectivist ideology embodied in law: the Nuremberg Laws; persecution as state policy, not as aberration [6].
• Initiation of force as a system: aggressive war, expropriation, and mass murder (concentration/extermination camps) as instruments of policy [4].
  By definition, “Nazi” denotes a rights-destroying, total state that initiates force without legal restraint; this is not a floating epithet but a concept defined by essentials [3].

2. What ICE is by essentials

• Origin and scope: created by statute (Homeland Security reorganization, 2003) to enforce immigration and customs law and investigate transnational crime; authority derives from Congress and is bounded by the Constitution [4].
• Nature of force: retaliatory and delimited—arrests, searches, and detentions occur under statutory standards, agency policies, and judicial review (warrants, probable cause, habeas corpus, administrative and Article III courts) [6].
• Accountability: inspector-general oversight, courts, congressional inquiry, media scrutiny, FOIA, and internal discipline; errors are punishable within the system because the rule of law is the framework, not a facade [4].
  This is what a rights-subordinate police power looks like in a limited government: it is constrained, reviewable, and purpose-bound to law enforcement, not ideological domination [6].

3. How the conflation is manufactured (the package-deal)

• Equivocation on “force”: treating the retaliatory force of a rights-based government as morally identical to initiatory force, erasing the life-or-death distinction that defines civilization vs. tyranny [3].
• Redefinition by nonessentials: focusing on uniforms, detention, or “raids” to smuggle in an emotive association, while dropping the essentials of scope, legal authority, and accountability that separate a dictatorship from law enforcement [6].
• Context-dropping: ignoring constitutional limits, due process, and avenues of redress in the U.S., while ignoring the Nazis’ abolition of law itself (party decree as law, censorship, secret police, political courts) [4].
• Stolen concept: invoking “human rights” to attack the enforcement of objective law as such—rights presuppose a legal system that defines borders, jurisdiction, and procedures; to damn any enforcement as “Nazi” destroys the very preconditions of rights [3].

4. Objective tests to keep the concepts from collapsing
   Ask these four questions in every claim:

• Authority: Is the action under a constitutionally valid statute with judicial review, or under arbitrary party decree? [4]
• Purpose: Is the purpose to protect rights by enforcing law (immigration/customs, anti-smuggling/trafficking), or to impose ideological domination and persecute categories of persons? [6]
• Type of force: Is it retaliatory and procedurally constrained, or initiatory, unlimited, and terroristic? [3]
• Accountability: Are there independent courts, inspectors general, a free press, and legislative oversight, or none? [6]
  A “yes” to the first option on each question marks a rights-based agency; a “yes” to the second marks a totalitarian regime. Mixing them is a package-deal, not cognition [3].

5. The “concentration camp” smear vs. detention under law

• Nazi camps were instruments of mass murder and slave labor, outside any legal constraint and aimed at ideological-racial extermination; that is their essential identity [4].
• Immigration detention is a temporary custodial measure tied to process (identification, hearings, removal, or release) and is subject to standards, auditing, and litigation; abuses are faults to be prosecuted under objective law, not features of an exterminatory system [6].
  To equate these is to obliterate the concept of genocide itself—a moral inversion that trivializes actual totalitarian crimes and criminalizes lawful adjudication [3].

6. Where the line actually is—objective red flags
   If any U.S. agency were to:

• Override courts systematically; abolish habeas corpus; censor the press; criminalize dissent; operate an unreviewable secret police; or adopt racial laws as policy—then the analogy to totalitarianism would have a factual base [4].
• Institute initiatory, unlimited force as a norm (collective punishment, extrajudicial disappearances, extermination)—that would meet the essentials of a total state, not a rights-protecting government [6].
  The remedy for misconduct in a free society is stricter adherence to objective law and punishment of violators, not the annihilation of the concept of enforcement itself [3].

7. The political-economy context (why collectivists push the package-deal)

• As George Reisman explains, Nazism is a form of collectivist statism: command-and-control over the individual and the economy under nominal private ownership—i.e., fascism—wholly incompatible with individual rights and capitalism [6].
• A proper government in capitalism is strictly limited to the protection of rights (police, courts, national defense) under objective law; immigration and customs enforcement and anti-trafficking investigations fall within retaliatory force delegated for that purpose [6].
• Smearing all enforcement as “Nazi” serves the statist goal of delegitimizing objective law so politics can be reduced to pressure-group warfare and decree—precisely the road to the kind of regime the smear pretends to oppose [4].

8. Methodological safeguards you can apply in debate

• Demand definitions by essentials; reject anti-concepts and floating abstractions [3].
• Insist on causal identity and concrete evidence (statute, regulation, court ruling, oversight record) rather than rhetorical imagery [4].
• Keep full context: distinguish between errors remediable within the system and structural features of totalitarianism [6].
• Expose the fallacies: package-deal, equivocation on “force,” stolen concept of “rights,” and context-dropping [3].

Conclusion
The “Nazi = ICE” equation is not analysis but an evasion packaged as morality. It obliterates the defining difference between initiatory and retaliatory force, between dictatorship and objective law. Intellectual integrity demands precise concepts, evidence, and context. Correct abuses by enforcing the law more objectively; do not dispense with the concept of law itself—that is the precondition of rights and of any civilized society [4][6][3].

Sources

1 Understanding Objectivism by Leonard Peikoff. Edited by Michael S. Berliner

2 For the New Intellectual by Ayn Rand

3 Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology by Ayn Rand expanded 2nd edition edited by Harry Binswanger and Leonard Peikoff containing never-before published philosophical material by Ayn Rand

4 Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff

5 Capitalism by George Riesman

6 Founders of Western Philosophy by Leonard Peikoff