You make a good point. I was kinda second-guessing emphasizing that part. The US would still be a nightmare prison complex with or without for-profit prisons, of that I’m sure. I do think there is something distinct, though, about formally tying market profit motives to putting people in prison and keeping them there.
The article notes that CoreCivic, the private company running the prison, defers all questions to DHS. Dilley, CoreCivic, and DHS all have one thing in common: they are beyond reform. They need to be shut down.
Some context I could find on CoreCivic:
from late 2025: https://timesofsandiego.com/politics/2025/10/06/corecivic-300-million-ice-contracts/
CoreCivic prison company will rake in $300 million from new ICE contracts
also from late 2025: https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/2025/08/19/corecivic-damon-hininger-ice-immigration/85723038007/
CoreCivic CEO to step down amid flurry of ICE contracts, soaring profits, prison violence
CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger will step down after serving as head of the Brentwood-based private prison giant since 2009.
The company in an Aug. 18 announcement said President and COO Patrick Swindle will replace Hininger. Swindle will also take Hininger’s seat on CoreCivic’s board.
“I am humbled by the opportunity to have served this great company since I started my career as a correctional officer in 1992," Hininger said in a statement.
What a shock that the previous CEO started out as working for the prison system and became a CEO of a company profiting off of it. Something something revolving door.
The leadership change comes as CoreCivic and GEO Group - the country’s two largest private prison systems - have reported significant profits amid the sharp rise in immigration arrests and detainments.
In a second quarter earnings call on Aug. 11, Hininger said the country is seeing the highest detention populations ever recorded by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has been CoreCivic’s largest customer.
“Our business is perfectly aligned with the demands of this moment,” he said. “We are in an unprecedented environment with rapid increases in federal detention populations nationwide and a continuing need for solutions we provide.”
Capitalist profit language in service of a manufactured rise in imprisoning people is some wild shit to read. It still boggles my mind that for-profit prisons are even a thing.
The following is intended as satire, not a real reported picture of events:
An inconsolable Sam Altman was found in his office, trying to teach a robot dog to put blocks in the right holes by offering it increasing sums of money each time it failed. With bags under his eyes, empty cans littering the walls, and a worn hoodie on his shoulders with the hood pulled up, the once bright-eyed and optimistic CEO, heralding the arrival of true intelligence any day now, was sharing some hard truths.
“It turns out the Chinese know how to build things,” he says, while he pokes the robot dog with a stick and tries increasing the offered sum to $500 instead of $450. The robot makes a movement and tries to nudge a square block into a round hole, which frustrates the weary Altman. “This robot is useless. How is it ever going to help break strikes if it can’t handle simple shapes?”
Sam Altman rose to fame, heading up a company known for transparency and openness called OpenAI. The company later reversed this decision when they realized it wasn’t profitable enough or good for business. When asked about his origins, some light returns to Altman’s increasingly deadened eyes, if only for a moment.
“Back then, it was about making waves. Now it’s about crushing the competitive with those waves until their bones break. For legal purposes, that was metaphor.” He prods the robot a few more times and a fanatical gleam rises in him. “Let’s raise the stakes.” He ups the offering to $5 billion. After all, he explains, it’s not like the robot will actually get the money anyway. The robot dog goes for a round block this time. The atmosphere in the room is tense. We could be witnessing history.
Then the robot nudges the round block at the square hole. Altman lets out a long-suffering sigh and puts his head in his hands. “The Chinese have something we don’t,” he admits in a rare candid moment. What is the miracle factor they have on hand? Socialism? Money? Integrity? Altman shakes his head, “It’s magic, it has to be, there’s no other explanation. They’re tapping into the cosmic energies that make up our world. And it’s going to take the Grand Wizard to stop them.”
When pressed about his choice of title and its historical connotations, he ends the interview and refocuses his attention on the robot dog, now upping the offer to $100 trillion. “What do I pay you for?!?” He is heard screaming as we retreat down the hallway, being escorted out by security.
draws sharp criticism
We live in a world that is far too figurative.
So remote-control model cars and airplanes are the original AI slop? Just trying to following your train of thought to its conclusion.
Thank you, I appreciate the kind words. Tbh, in this case, writing out the analysis was also its own form of clarifying for myself; putting it into my own words made me think more deeply about what I’d read. But yeah, usually it’s shorter to find the stuff than to do a write-up on it. :)
Was curious because this sounds kinda weird out of context, especially with a Marx drawing that makes him look like he’s enjoying the idea of causing terror. Here’s what I found find from a brief search:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Marxism/comments/r0ecob/what_do_you_make_of_marxs_quote_when_our_turn/
OP of the reddit thread posting the full quote:
“We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable.”
One of the replies:
The more context here is that Prussia had sent soldiers to shut down his newspaper and he was pissed off about it - this was published in the final issue (in red ink!). So the main point is that he’s condemning the State’s suppression of dissent through violence and throwing a threat in there. And it is certainly true, as in the Twain quote above (and more recently the argument is made in Zizek’s Violence) that the far greater terror of the capitalist state is ignored, treated as unremarkable and inevitable.
I think it is a mistake to take it as a core tenet of Marxist thought, it’s like the 1849 equivalent of him posting a guillotine meme. And in any case, it is wrong. The terror that comes with our turn is a disaster, and we should do everything we can to avoid/minimize it. Terror, no matter who it is directed against, is not an effective way to start a classless society.
Mexie has a great video addressing this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVQSKciU4uY along with the follow-up.
Then a slight disagreement replying to that:
I think the point here is that terror is inevitably required when it is “our turn”. The abolishment of capitalism and the revolution it heralds will undoubtedly be violent. Nonviolent action will not defeat the ruling class, as they will show no mercy in defending their existence. Of course the terror is bad, and of course it should be minimized. But Marx is saying that when it inevitably happens we shall not hide it or make excuses. We will own up to it, unlike the capitalists’ deceitful cover up of the terror they have invoked on the world for centuries.
Someone else also highlighted the Twain quote about “terror”:
There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.” ― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
So, as far as I can tell, the context is that Marx is speaking directly to the ruling classes who were in the middle of repressing him. And his point seems to be that in the act of deposing them from power, a class who relies on brutality to rule, he will have no compassion for them in that moment nor make excuses for what is necessary to depose them as they so often do for the brutality they exercise to stay in power.
In other words, he is not in it to repeat the deceitful patterns they do and be shy of required violence, but work to get the job done swiftly with honest intention, so that a new society can begin without their terroristic grip in charge.
I am open to disagreement on the interpretation, but I wanted to go over it because, as one of the reactionary replies on the thread I found exemplifies, some people would seize on this as an excuse to characterize marxism as wanting to cause terror in some general way, no matter who is terrorized. Which is quite a different thing from recognizing that violence is an inevitable part of deposing a power that has a monopoly on violence and violently represses those who oppose it. Or not having compassion for the rulers of colony and empire who order massacres and organize genocides.
US ‘economists’: “Trust me, creating jobs is HARD. Like you don’t even understand how hard it is to make a functioning economy.”
China: creates jobs
US ‘economists’: “WTF, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA THE DAMAGE YOU’VE DONE.”
Really goes to show the power of consequences. The working class can lose their livelihood if they don’t think about how they come across with care (and sometimes even if they do). A billionaire? No such thing.
Confederacy is an interesting choice. Probably more accurate than saying Nazi Germany, since it’s closer to already existing US characteristics/history. Though I have some misgivings about it because I could see liberals going “yeah, this is just the country being like the confederates, unlike us who would have been on the side of the union army,” while not understanding that the union army was still a settler colony army and far from a bastion of anti-racism and liberation; had it actually been such, it would have liquidated the racist elements of the US instead of allowing them to change form into a violent reaction to integration. I mean, it didn’t even truly wipe out slavery. It moved it to prisons.
I used to think Lincoln was such a cool guy. 😬 If he was alive today, I guess he’d be somewhere in the milquetoast reformist realm of Bernie Sanders. The broader world probably would have been better off if the US of the time had fragmented and stayed that way instead of holding together.
That’s totally fair. It is very trying times for a lot of people, more so I’m sure for the victims of imperialism. I try to hold onto hope about it and remember that we are part of what makes change happen, not just the inertia of things. But I am also personally just tired a lot and sometimes probably sound more hopeful in words than I actually feel. The pain of not growing up with much of a sense of community is something that drives me to try, but it also leaves me feeling more isolated and dismayed than I would probably otherwise be.
So yeah, I don’t know. I wish I could be like, “Look over here though, we’re getting wins” maybe just cause I wish I could be boosting moral or something idk.
I think your frustration with the US is very understandable. It’s been world terrorist organization since the end of WWII and was doing various kinds of horrible shit before then as well, going back to its roots of genocide. And then for people living there to be too often arrogant on top of that, as if they are superior and not the bombs the country uses, is galling.
That said, as a USian, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about the Epstein stuff. But I’m already of an ML mind, so although it’s uniquely shocking and horrifying, it doesn’t move the needle much on how I already understood the nature of the capitalist/imperialist class. I mean, the genocide perpetrated by israel, propped up by the US, that has been going on for a while. And it’s worse than this. Mass murder of kids, along with adults.
I’ve always cared about others, but society has never taught me how to stand up for them properly and I don’t expect it to do ever do so in its current form, knowing better now how it operates. The worsening contradictions and conditions, the increased internal repression, violence, and racial profiling from ICE, are forcing some people to learn though. Forcing them to learn the same kind of lesson that every other oppressed group in history has learned, that if they have arms and you don’t, you need arms or you aren’t going to last. When that’s going to reach a tipping point, if it does in time, I don’t know.
Just know there are people here who care. But I wouldn’t blame you for a second if you’re frustrated with their seeming inaction. Talk is cheap, as the saying goes. Except when you’re a multi-billion-dollar propaganda arm of a global empire, then I guess talk can get expensive, but that’s a whole other matter.
a steady rise since 08
Economic decline correlated with an increase in state violence.
Really syncs up well with an understanding of capitalism and its contradictions.
Ohh I get it, so you meant like higher in the sense that the US numbers are worse, even accounting for much of Tiananmen losses being military. With your first post, I thought you were doing the “but what about bajillion killed in Tiananmen Square thing” for a moment there. 😅 Glad that wasn’t the case.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing.
Apparently it’s The Nation magazine trying to nominate them: https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/the-nation-nominates-minneapolis-for-the-nobel-peace-prize/ | https://archive.ph/i0fLm
People can read for themselves and judge, but to me it reads like liberal pacifism and a publicity stunt to corral perception and support for the resistance there into pacifism:
With their resistance to violent authoritarianism, the people of Minneapolis have renewed the spirit of Dr. King’s call for “the positive affirmation of peace.”
Through countless acts of courage and solidarity, the people of Minneapolis have challenged the culture of fear, hate, and brutality that has gripped the United States and too many other countries. Their nonviolent resistance has captured the imagination of the nation and the world. Renee Good’s widow has said, “They have guns; we have whistles.” Those whistles alert the residents of Minneapolis when they are threatened. But they have done more than that. They have awakened Americans to the threat of violence that extends from governments that unjustly and irresponsibly target their own people.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who served as The Nation’s civil rights correspondent from 1961 to 1966, said when he received the Peace Prize in 1964 that the award recognizes those who are “moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice.” King believed that it is vital to illustrate “that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation.”
Okay, not “sterile passivity” but they promote a quote about whistles vs. guns? Come on…
And notice how they don’t name these “too many other countries.” Which are the other countries, The Nation? Which ones? I can’t trust western journalism to have reliable views there…
I am reminded of an Irish Catholic phrase I once heard, “May the Lord be takin a likin to him… real soon.”
Assuming we even get to full fledged elections without things coming apart first, likelihood is they will run on decorum and following the constitution, without meaningfully challenging policy, and will faceplant as a result. It’ll probably go something like:
Dem candidate is asked “A lot of voters are concerned about ICE, do you oppose it?” “I support following the constitution that our founding fathers laid out-” “But do you oppose ICE?” “I think we should be following legal procedures and blah blah blah.”
So yeah, I expect nothing meaningful from them.
In the fine print:
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