The Panopticon Review: FASCIST AMERICA 2026: Wajahat Ali and Jessica Zweng On the Heinous Real History of ICE and Why and How It Is Now Doing Exactly What It was Always Designed To Do Surveil, Harass, and Kill On Command

Thursday, January 29, 2026

FASCIST AMERICA 2026: Wajahat Ali and Jessica Zweng On the Heinous Real History of ICE and Why and How It Is Now Doing Exactly What It was Always Designed To Do Surveil, Harass, and Kill On Command

The Violence Is the Point: ICE Was Built to Kill

Wajahat Ali

January 28, 2026

VIDEO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-TlSiaQ2nw

ICE and CBP aren’t out of control they’re operating exactly as designed. From dehumanizing language to unchecked power, violence has always been the point. Immigrant rights attorney Jessica Zweng joins the show to trace how America built a system rooted in white supremacy, why recent ICE killings weren’t accidents, and how history is repeating itself in real time.

http:// Thelefthook.substack.com #AbolishICE #ICE #CBP #StateViolence #Fascism #Immigration #HumanRights #Trump #DHS #PoliceState #trending #ice #trump #news

Nina Simone (1933-2003)

"There's no other purpose, so far as I'm concerned, for us except to reflect the times, the situations around us and the things we're able to say through our art, the things that millions of people can't say. I think that's the function of an artist and, of course, those of us who are lucky leave a legacy so that when we're dead, we also live on. That's people like Billie Holiday and I hope that I will be that lucky, but meanwhile, the function, so far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times, whatever that might be."

Editor's Bio

Kofi Natambu, editor of The Panopticon Review, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He is the author of a biography MALCOLM X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: THE MELODY NEVER STOPS (Past Tents Press) and INTERVALS (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of SOLID GROUND: A NEW WORLD JOURNAL, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology NOSTALGIA FOR THE PRESENT (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.

The Panopticon Review

Thursday, January 29, 2026

FASCIST AMERICA 2026: Wajahat Ali and Jessica Zweng On the Heinous Real History of ICE and Why and How It Is Now Doing Exactly What It was Always Designed To Do Surveil, Harass, and Kill On Command

Malcolm X (1925-1965)

W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

James Baldwin (1924-1987)

Aimé Césaire (1913-2008)

Nina Simone (1933-2003)

Amilcar Cabral (1924-1973)

Angela Davis (b. 1944)

Duke Ellington (1899-1974)

Amiri Baraka (1934-2014)

Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)

Cecil Taylor (1929-2018)

Ella Baker (1903-1986)

Paul Robeson (1898-1976)

John Coltrane (1926-1967)

Miles Davis (1926-1991)

C.L.R. James (1901-1989)

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)

Edward Said (1935-2003)

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)

Susan Sontag (1933-2004)

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