The killing of Renée Good, a 37-year-old woman executed in her car by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minnesota, is not merely a news story. It is a historical rupture, a bloody sign of the direction of travel in America over the last two decades. To treat it as an isolated incident of police brutality or a tragic administrative error is to fundamentally misunderstand the trajectory of the American state in the second quarter of the 21st century.

As a historian, I am wary of hyperbole. Yet, looking at the events unfolding in the United States, it is impossible not to recognize the patterns of the past echoing with terrifying clarity. We are witnessing the collapse of the liberal democratic consensus and its replacement by what political scientist Ernst Fraenkel described in 1941 as “The Dual State.”

To understand why a woman on a school run can be summarily executed by a paramilitary force with state backing, we must look beyond the immediate headlines. We must engage with the historiography of fascism, the theory of biopolitics, and the dark legacy of colonial violence returning home.

The Return of the Prerogative State

In his seminal analysis of early Nazi Germany, The Dual State, the German-Jewish lawyer Ernst Fraenkel described a legal system split in two. On one side was the “Normative State” (Normenstaat), an administrative bureaucracy that functioned according to rules, statutes, and predictability. This state ensured the trains ran, contracts were honored, and the economy functioned.

On the other side was the “Prerogative State” (Maßnahmenstaat). This was the domain of the Party, the SS, and the Gestapo. Here, there was no law other than the will of the leader. In this sphere, violence was arbitrary, unchecked, and absolute. The tragedy of the 1930s was the gradual encroachment of the Prerogative State upon the Normative State, until the rule of law was entirely subsumed by the rule of force.

The killing of Renée Good signals that the Prerogative State has arrived in America. ICE has evolved from a law enforcement agency within the Normative State into the shock troops of the Prerogative State. When agents can kill a citizen, prevent a doctor from rendering aid, and receive immediate rhetorical cover from senior political figures like Kristi Noem, they are operating outside the constraints of the law. They are operating in a zone of exception where the sovereign decides who lives and who dies.

This is the fulfillment of what the French philosopher Achille Mbembe calls “Necropolitics.” Mbembe argues that the ultimate expression of sovereignty is not the power to make laws, but the power to dictate mortality. In the neofascist imagination, the state proves its vitality not by nurturing life (biopolitics), but by expelling and destroying those deemed “superfluous” or “dangerous.”

The Colonial Boomerang

Why has this happened? To answer this, we must look to the work of Hannah Arendt. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt described the “boomerang effect” of imperialism. She argued that the methods of violence, racial hierarchy, and bureaucratic murder perfected in the colonies eventually return to the metropole.

For decades, the United States has projected a form of imperial policing abroad. From the free-fire zones of Vietnam to the drone strikes of the War on Terror, American power has long operated with impunity against non-white populations overseas. Aimé Césaire, in his Discourse on Colonialism, famously argued that fascism is essentially colonialist procedures applied to white people in Europe.

What we are seeing in 2026 is the American frontier moving inward. As the historian Greg Grandin argues in The End of the Myth, the closing of the American frontier meant that the nation could no longer export its violence or its social contradictions. The “forever wars” have come home. The militarized policing, the surveillance technology, and the dehumanizing rhetoric once reserved for insurgents in Fallujah are now being deployed in Minnesota.

Renée Good was not just a victim of bad policing; she was a victim of a colonial mindset turned inward. The rhetoric of the “Great Replacement,” espoused by figures on the Trumpist right, frames the domestic population as a battleground. In this worldview, parts of the citizenry are viewed not as rights-bearing individuals, but as an occupying force or a demographic threat that must be “cleansed.”

The Psychological Wage of Whiteness

The defense of this violence by the political right is rooted in what W.E.B. Du Bois called the “psychological wage” of whiteness. Du Bois noted that poor white workers in the ReconstructionReconstruction Full Description:The period immediately following the Civil War (1865–1877) when the federal government attempted to integrate formerly enslaved people into society. Its premature end and the subsequent rollback of rights necessitated the Civil Rights Movement a century later. Reconstruction saw the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments and the election of Black politicians across the South. However, it ended with the withdrawal of federal troops and the rise of Jim Crow. The Civil Rights Movement is often described as the “Second Reconstruction,” an attempt to finish the work that was abandoned in 1877. Critical Perspective:Understanding Reconstruction is essential to understanding the Civil Rights Movement. It provides the historical lesson that legal rights are fragile and temporary without federal enforcement. The “failure” of Reconstruction was not due to Black incapacity, but to a lack of national political will to defend Black rights against white violence—a dynamic that activists in the 1960s were determined not to repeat.
Read more South were willing to accept low wages and economic exploitation in exchange for a public and psychological “wage”—the status of being white, of being “not black,” and of being aligned with the dominant caste.

In the current era of neoliberal collapse, that economic bargain has frayed. The material wages of the American working class have stagnated for fifty years. The social safety net has been shredded. What remains is the psychological wage.

The Trumpist movement offers its adherents a restoration of this status. It promises that the state will use its monopoly on violence to enforce racial hierarchy. When Stephen Miller or other ideologues defend the actions of ICE, they are signaling to their base that the state is still “theirs.” The cruelty is not a byproduct; it is the point. As Adam Serwer famously wrote during the first Trump term, “The cruelty is the point.” It is a performative assertion of dominance in a world where economic security has vanished.

The Anatomy of Fascism

Historian Robert Paxton, the preeminent scholar of fascism, defined the phenomenon not just as a set of beliefs, but as a set of processes. He identified the “Stage of Complicity” as the moment when conservative elites, fearful of the left and unable to solve national crises, decide to invite the fascists into the halls of power.

We passed that stage long ago. We are now in what Paxton might call the stage of “Radicalization.” This is the phase where the regime, unmoored from traditional restraints, begins to treat the rule of law as an obstacle to the national will.

The comparisons to the SA (Brownshirts) of 1933 are not hyperbolic; they are structural. The SA were men who felt disregarded by the Weimar Republic, who found meaning and status in the uniform and the truncheon. When they were deputized as auxiliary police in Prussia by Hermann Göring, the result was an explosion of “wild terror.” They set up ad-hoc camps in cellars and warehouses, settling personal scores and terrorizing political opponents.

The reports of ICE agents operating with total impunity suggest a similar dynamic. When the executive branch signals that the law does not apply to its enforcers, every agent becomes a petty sovereign. The state monopoly on violence fragments into a thousand acts of individual terror.

The Spectre of Civil War

Where does this lead? There is a tendency in American discourse to imagine a Second Civil War looking like the first—armies meeting on a field of battle. But history suggests a different, grimmer future.

If the US descends into conflict, it will likely resemble the “Years of Lead” in Italy in the 1970s, or “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. It will be a low-intensity conflict of assassinations, car bombs, and paramilitary reprisals.

The historian Timothy Snyder, in On Tyranny, warns that the collapse of democracy is rarely a sudden explosion; it is a slow erosion of the institutions that stand between the individual and the state. When the judiciary, the press, and the civil service are purged or cowed, the individual stands naked before the power of the gun.

The execution of Renée Good is a signal that the erosion is near completion. If a citizen can be killed by the state without immediate, overwhelming legal consequence, then the social contract is void. We are entering a Hobbesian state of nature, but one armed with 21st-century surveillance technology and military-grade weaponry.

The Failure of Liberalism

We must also confront the failure of the liberal centre to prevent this. For decades, the Democratic establishment has played the role of what Tariq Ali calls the “Extreme Centre.” By embracing the economics of neoliberalismSupply Side Economics Full Description:Supply-Side Economics posits that production (supply) is the key to economic prosperity. Proponents argue that by reducing the “burden” of taxes on the wealthy and removing regulatory barriers for corporations, investment will increase, creating jobs and expanding the economy. Key Policies: Tax Cuts: Specifically for high-income earners and corporations, under the premise that this releases capital for investment. Deregulation: Removing environmental, labor, and safety protections to lower the cost of doing business. Critical Perspective:Historical analysis suggests that supply-side policies rarely lead to the promised broad-based prosperity. Instead, they often result in massive budget deficits (starving the state of revenue) and a dramatic concentration of wealth at the top. Critics argue the “trickle-down” effect is a myth used to justify the upward redistribution of wealth.—deregulationDeregulation Full Description:The systematic removal or simplification of government rules and regulations that constrain business activity. Framed as “cutting red tape” to unleash innovation, it involves stripping away protections for workers, consumers, and the environment. Deregulation is a primary tool of neoliberal policy. It targets everything from financial oversight (allowing banks to take bigger risks) to safety standards and environmental laws. The argument is that regulations increase costs and stifle competition. Critical Perspective:History has shown that deregulation often leads to corporate excess, monopoly power, and systemic instability. The removal of financial guardrails directly contributed to major economic collapses. Furthermore, it represents a transfer of power from the democratic state (which creates regulations) to private corporations (who are freed from accountability).
Read more, privatizationPrivatization Full Description:The transfer of ownership, property, or business from the government to the private sector. It involves selling off public assets—such as water, rail, energy, and housing—turning shared public goods into commodities for profit. Privatization is based on the neoliberal assumption that the private sector is inherently more efficient than the public sector. Governments sell off state-owned enterprises to private investors, often at discounted rates, arguing that the profit motive will drive better service and lower costs. Critical Perspective:Critics view privatization as the “enclosure of the commons.” It frequently leads to higher prices for essential services, as private companies prioritize shareholder returns over public access. It also hollows out the state, stripping it of its capacity to act and leaving citizens at the mercy of private monopolies for their basic needs (like water or electricity).
Read more, and the hollowing out of the state—they created the vacuum that Trumpism has filled.

Liberalism assumes that institutions will save us. It assumes that there are “adults in the room” who will check the worst impulses of a demagogue. But as Christopher Browning showed in Ordinary Men, institutions are made of people, and people are malleable. When the pressure is applied, the “adults” often become the most efficient executioners.

The liberal response to this crisis has been legalistic and procedural. But you cannot fight a Prerogative State with procedural norms. When the other side is playing by the rules of Carl Schmitt—defining politics as the distinction between friend and enemy—adhering to the norms of the Senate debating chamber is a suicide pact.

Conclusion: The Duty of Memory

We are living through history, and it is a nightmare. The temptation to look away, to retreat into the private sphere, is immense. But as historians, or simply as citizens who care about the past, we have a duty to bear witness.

We must name this. We must call it what it is: the rise of an American authoritarianism that fuses the racial violence of the Jim Crow South with the bureaucratic impunity of the 20th-century police state.

Renée Good is not just a statistic. She is a warning. Her death marks the moment when the theoretical debates about “democratic backsliding” became a visceral reality of blood on the asphalt.

The 20th century taught us that the road to the camps is paved with the silence of the majority. The “Good Germans” were not monsters; they were ordinary people who looked the other way when their neighbours were taken. In 2026, we are all being asked where we will look.

If we do not confront the Prerogative State now, while there is still a flicker of civil society left, we will find that the darkness has not just fallen—it has been invited in.

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Further Reading:

• Ernst Fraenkel, The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship (1941) – The essential text for understanding how law and lawlessness coexist in authoritarian regimes.
• Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) – For the connection between imperialism and the collapse of the nation-state.
• Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics (2019) – A theoretical framework for understanding the power of death in modern politics.
• Greg Grandin, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America (2019) – Explores how the closing of the frontier turned American violence inward.
• Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands and On Tyranny – Practical and historical guides to recognizing the warning signs of tyranny.
• Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (2004) – Defines the stages and processes of fascist development.
• W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935) – The foundational text on the “psychological wage” of whiteness.

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