Seeing large men dressed in goggles and trenchcoats echoes the camp fascism of musical comedies
An aspect of ICE’s deadly performance in Minneapolis that goes hand-in-hand with its mission to intimidate is the absolutely farcical tone of the ICE aesthetic. Broadway numbers like Springtime for Hitler in The Producers and more recently, Das Ubermensch in Operation Mincemeat, a showstopper performed with a German techno beat and Nazi boyband – “Third Reich on the mic” – vocals, present fascism as an essentially camp enterprise and we’re reminded this week that ICE fits the mould entirely.
It’s always about the costumes, isn’t it? Here’s border patrol chief, Greg Bovino, swishing around Minnesota in his long, green trenchcoat – as Gavin Newsom, the governor of California put it, “as if he literally went on eBay and purchased SS garb” – while rank and file ICE agents were described by Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general, as prancing about in “full battle rattle”. The vests, the fatigues, the goggles; I swear most of these goons are only in it for the accessories and an opportunity to admire themselves and each other under cover of rugged co-combatant team spirit. Meanwhile, as Lydia Polgreen pointed out in the New York Times, their sheer incompetence adds a darkly slapstick layer to events via videos of, for example, large men dressed for war slipping on ice and going “ass over teakettle”.
