We Tolerated Their Violence Abroad. Now We See Its Victims Here

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Posted by Joshua Scheer

I wanted to post this stand‑alone tweet from Chris Hedges for those who wanted to have his thoughts on what’s going on — as the streets of Minneapolis are bleeding the same way Fallujah and Helmand bled for decades. Today, the federal agents who terrorize our neighborhoods took the life of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an intensive‑care nurse, with the same impunity that American soldiers wielded abroad. What was once “over there” is now here. The machinery of state violence, perfected on those we abandoned — from Palestinians in Gaza to Iraqis and Afghans — is turning inward. We tolerated it, cheered it even, as long as it was someone else’s blood. Now, the empire’s boomerang has returned.

Chris Hedges:

“The murders of unarmed civilians on the streets of Minneapolis, including the killing today of the intensive-care nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti, would not come as a shock to Iraqis in Fallujah or Afghans in Helmand province. They were terrorized by heavily armed American execution squads for decades. It would not come as a shock to any of the students I teach in prison. Militarized police in poor urban neighborhoods kick down doors without warrants and kill with the same impunity and lack of accountability. What the rest of us are facing now, is what Aimé Césaire called imperial boomerang. Empires, when they decay, employ the savage forms of control on those they subjugate abroad, or those demonized by the wider society in the name of law and order, on the homeland. The tyranny Athens imposed on others, Thucydides noted, it finally, with the collapse of Athenian democracy, imposed on itself. But before we became the victims of state terror, we were accomplices. Before we expressed moral outrage at the indiscriminate taking of innocent lives, we tolerated, and often celebrated, the same Gestapo tactics, as long as they were directed at those who lived in the nations we occupied or poor people of color. We sowed the wind, now we will reap the whirlwind. The machinery of terror, perfected on those we abandoned and betrayed, including the Palestinians in Gaza, is ready for us.”

The murders of unarmed civilians on the streets of Minneapolis, including the killing today of the intensive-care nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti, would not come as a shock to Iraqis in Fallujah or Afghans in Helmand province. They were terrorized by heavily armed American execution… pic.twitter.com/NEw3gd85DT

— Chris Hedges (@ChrisLynnHedges) January 25, 2026

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