Marty Levine
January 26, 2026
A few days ago, I watched Judgement at Nuremberg, a 1961 film. When it ended, I was shaken. This was not the first time I had seen it, but something about this viewing felt different.
The film hadn’t changed. This was not a remake. It was as Director Stanley Kramer had created it when it was first released. What had changed was our political reality. When it first came out, John Kennedy was our young President; he brought with him to the office the hope for a new age of American Democracy that would move us into a bright future.
The message of “Judgement” was not about us; it was about the horrors of Nazi Germany. It was about not forgetting the lessons from those days. It was about the need to learn from history and not forget what Hannah Arendt had called the banality of evil.
What left me shaken as the credits rolled the other evening is that this movie is about us, about America in 2026. It is about how we are seeing Arendt’s warning play out before our eyes as our nation is corrupted by the growing malignancy we call MAGA.
The movie tells us the story of a fictional world-renowned German Jurist, Ernst Janning, who is on trial along with several other lawyers and judges for their actions as cogs in Hitler’s judicial system. They are confronted with testimony of how they administered the law as it was distorted to become a weapon to be used to support Nazism’s brutality and evil. They were accused of crimes that brutalized those who came before them for justice. They were accused of not saying no.
As the trial proceeds, Janning seems to finally understand what he has done, to understand his complicity in the Nazi effort. He understands that he is guilty as charged. He finally accepts his part in allowing millions to be destroyed, not for any crime they had committed, but only because of who they were.
It is not easy to tell the truth. But if there is to be any salvation for Germany, we who know our guilt must admit it — whatever the pain and humiliation…What about those of us who knew better, we who knew the words were lies and worse than lies…”I never knew it would come to that.
What shook me is that Ernst Janning has been reborn in the phalanx of MAGA leaders who have lined up behind Donald Trump, their leader, and are willing to carry out his orders, damn their morality and their legality. And we are seeing the devastating results in our streets and in the havoc being done to our nation.
The lesson that Donald Trump learned during his first term was that there were many people who worked across the breadth of the federal government who believed in the rule of law and would say no when he tried to overstep it. He learned that even among the people he appointed to high positions in his administration, there were too many such people. And, to a great extent, they were able to blunt his racist, oligarchic agenda.
He learned from that “mistake” when he re-entered the White House a year ago. His DOGE-inspired purges of Federal Agencies, rationalized as necessary efficiency actions, were designed to get rid of people with morals and ethics and use fear of job loss to bring the rest of the workforce in line. It was designed to remove the guard rails and to allow him to move forward unfettered and unchecked.
His Cabinet and other high-level appointments were people who were willing to do what Ernst Janning did, stay in line and follow the new “law” even if it was not the law. They are willing to place their own personal benefit in front of us all.
We can see the results in almost every aspect of the federal government, but it is most clearly seen in our streets as Trump moves to implement his purge of those who do not fit his white, Christian supremacist vision of America. And we can see it as that effort has become more and more violent.
On Saturday morning, Alex Pretty, an emergency room nurse working for the Veterans’ Administration, was killed in a fusillade of bullets after being tackled by a scrum of Department of Homeland Security officers on a winter street in Minneapolis. Before he was attacked and shot, Petty had been part of small number of neighbors observing a large force of Homeland Security personnel. You can hear the whistles and the car horns observers use to alert neighbors of ICE’s presence. This was not a protest; this was rapid responders trying to keep people out of the way of ICE agents. Petty was filming and helping others get out of the way.
And then he was a victim.
And then MAGA began to spin reality to allow them to ignore that a murder had been committed.
Chief of Staff and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller quickly described the incident in a brief “X” post as “a would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement…”
Christi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, immediately described Mr. Pretti as a “Domestic terrorist perpetuating violence…”
As reported by Post Millennial,
Border Patrol head Greg Bovino said that deceased anti-ICE agitator Alex Pretti was armed as if to want to inflict “maximum damage and massacre law enforcement” before he was shot by Border Patrol agents on Saturday.
“During this operation, an individual approached US Border Patrol agents with a nine-millimeter semi-automatic handgun. The agents attempted to disarm the individual, but he violently resisted. Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, a Border Patrol agent fired defensive shots. Medics on the scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject, but the subject was pronounced dead at the scene. The suspect also had two loaded magazines and no accessible ID. This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” US Border Patrol justified, as reported by Politico, the murder of protestor in Minneapolis, denying the reality of his murder that was there for all to see.
“The victim? The victims are the Border Patrol agents. I’m not blaming the Border Patrol agents. The suspect put himself in that situation.”
Bovino said that Pretti had “injected” himself into a federal law enforcement operation and was “more than likely” on the scene to assault officers.
The federal agents, Bovino added, “prevented any specific shootings of law enforcement. So good job for our law enforcement in taking him down before he was able to do that.”
This is in the face of clear evidence that none of this is true. CNN’sr Jake Tapper compared Noem’s comments to the video of the incident and clearly showed us the lies that allow MAGA officials and their forces to rationalize that their evil is good.
Saturday’s shooting is the most recent and, perhaps, the most shocking example of those in power justifying the unjustifiable; of going along with the brutality of a government rather than just saying “NO, I will not be complicit.”
And as futile as it may seem that is what we all must consider doing. We must Stand Up. We must Fight Back. We must call on those serving this government to become conscientious objectors and refuse to follow orders that are unjust, illegal, and immoral.
Rep Anastasia Ocasio-Cortez tweeted her response and it should be our marching orders;
Cynics and defeatists share the same story as authoritarians do: that nothing is worth trying, the conclusion is foregone, hope is naïve, and attempts to resist are too small or futile. Don’t listen to them. Do not give up. Try. A better world is possible. We will win. We must.
The NY Times on Friday showed us what this looks like:
An F.B.I. agent who sought to investigate the federal immigration officer who fatally shot a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis this month has resigned from the bureau, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The agent, Tracee Mergen, left her job as a supervisor in the F.B.I.’s Minneapolis field office after bureau leadership in Washington pressured her to discontinue a civil rights inquiry into the immigration officer, Jonathan Ross, according to one of the people. Such inquiries are a common investigative step in similar shootings.
We are all complicit until we speak up and take action. We have options for taking nonviolent actions and fighting back, and we cannot sit back and wait. This is our country, and we must not stop fighting back.
Mike Nellis tells us how we can do just that:
A million small acts of resistance. Every single day.
No, you might not be able to show up at a protest every day. But you can still do something. We all have something to give.
If you have time, give it — volunteer with a local mutual aid group, help a neighbor with childcare, deliver groceries to a family that’s scared to leave the house. If you have money, support organizations doing legal defense work or back candidates who are actually fighting for people, not just tweeting about it.
If you’ve got a printer, print flyers. If you’ve got a car, offer a ride. If you’ve got a platform and a voice people listen to, use it to lift up organizers, share verified information, and point people toward ways to help.
And don’t underestimate the quieter work, either. Have the hard conversation with your dad who voted for Trump — like I did this weekend. Sit down with your kid and explain what’s happening, and what kind of person you hope they grow up to be. Check on your neighbors. Let people know they’re not alone.
Not everyone’s role is to stand on the front lines. But everyone has a role. And this is the moment to keep finding yours.
