The stark images of caged undocumented immigrants stacked on top of bunks while U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem toured an El Salvadoran megaprison conjure up a grim reality of where the country is headed.
That’s according to Bulwark editor Jonathan V. Last, who told readers that propaganda images such as the ones manufactured by Noem on Wednesday have been seen before, “just not from America.”
“I want to be deadly serious about this: We are now the bad guys,” Last wrote in an opinion piece on Friday as he reminded readers of the use of video and photos showing imprisonment and execution of ISIS prisoners, a tactic also used by the Viet Cong and north Vietnamese, he added.
“The use of prisoners for propaganda purposes is as old as war itself,” Last wrote. "The goal is always the same, though: To use prisoners’ bodies as weapons of political war and to do so against their will.”
He added: “This is what evil, illiberal regimes do.”
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“Liberal regimes have standards for the treatment of prisoners. These standards are codified under the Geneva Conventions, which the United States has signed and ratified,” Last wrote.
Last, a one-time conservative who left the movement in the wake of President Donald Trump's political rise, continued to condemn the MAGA administration’s invoking the Alien Enemies Act two weeks ago, which led to the apprehension of many of the individuals at the maximum-security prison that Noem toured this week.
The entire episode left Last with a lasting impression of the message he heard Noem deliver.
“The message is this: America is no longer a shining city on a hill,” Last wrote. “It is no longer the leader of the free world. It no longer stands on the side of liberty as a beacon for those who yearn to breathe free.”
He added: “This is the land of wolves now.”