I had planned to write this week about what time it is in history. February 1933, with the Reichstag still unburnt? November 1918, on the eve of the Palmer Raids? June 1948, when 12 members of the CPUSA were indicted under the Smith Act?

But if that gives you a sense of the direction of my thoughts these days, the news that Khalil, a Columbia graduate student and legal resident in this country, had been abducted from his home in New York and taken to an ICE detention center in Louisiana, where he was being threatened with deportation—and mocked by the Trump White House—was terrifyingly specific.

Having spent considerable time researching the question, I can tell you that in the 1930s, Germans did not come first for the Jews. “First, they came for the Communists,” as Martin Niemöller wrote, presumably because they knew that speaking up on behalf of Communists would be unpopular. But if there is anything to be learned from that dismal decade, it is that the time for solidarity is when they come not for you or your friends, but for the people whose cause makes you uncomfortable.

As it happens, Mahmoud Khalil—a peaceful protester who, despite the best efforts of the Israel lobby, is a difficult man to demonize—should be easy to defend regardless of your views on the Middle East. Because it is crystal clear that this is just the beginning of the assault on our liberties. Yet Columbia University did not speak out, and neither did the majority of New York’s elected officials. What time is it in history? I fear we may be reentering the “time of the toad.”

Yet another world still remains possible—as we hope to remind you in our new print issue, which offers Eamon Whalen’s fascinating cover story on the crisis of boys and men, Natasha Hakimi Zapata on how Argentina’s neighbor achieved green energy independence, Elie Mystal on how neoliberalism was born in the airlines, and David Montgomery on Cuba’s continuing torments. In the back of the book, we have David Klion reviewing the rise and rise of Stephen Miller, Karrie Jacobs on how Atlanta became walkable, Bill Fletcher Jr. on the African pasionaria Andrée Blouin, Adam Hochschild on the making of a Cold War spy, and Jorge Cotte on the return of Severance.

In my editor’s note, I report on a recent trip to Argentina, whose chain-saw-wielding president, Javier Milei, has been an inspiration to our own right wing. Is that where we are headed? Perhaps, but there is still time to change course if we act together.

-D.D. Guttenplan

Editor, The Nation

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