Schutzstaffel.

Trump says he’s sending his federal troops to Chicago.

He’s already sent them to Portland where the anonymous members of his Schutzstaffel have been grabbing citizens off the street and holding them incommunicado.

Now Chicago?

Mayor Lightfoot has warned him not to even think about it.

All Chicago must speak as one about this.

The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg asks, “Can we call it fascism yet?”

The “Schutzstaffel,” (the SS) was founded in 1925 and initially served as Adolf Hitler’s  personal bodyguards.

Later the SS became one of the most powerful and feared organizations in all of Nazi Germany. Heinrich Himmler, a fervent anti-Semite like Hitler, became head of the Schutzstaffel in 1929 and expanded the group’s role and size.

Writes Goldberg, The month after Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Yale historian Timothy Snyder published the best-selling book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century.” It was part of a small flood of titles meant to help Americans find their bearings as the new president laid siege to liberal democracy.

One of Snyder’s lessons was, “Be wary of paramilitaries.” He wrote, “When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.” In 2017, the idea of unidentified agents in camouflage snatching leftists off the streets without warrants might have seemed like a febrile Resistance fantasy. Now it’s happening.

Note that it was Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara that opened the door for Trump’s fascist threat to send his SS to Chicago.

This week, Catanzara send this letter to Trump.

How this gang gets to sit down and bargain with our Mayor is a mystery to me.

Update: I have been told by a reader that I published the first draft of the letter to Trump from Catanzara. She included the final draft that was sent.