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Radio War Nerd EP #577 — Minneapolis nICE, feat. Andrew Hart (Patreon)

Published:
2026-01-29 22:22:17
Edited:
2026-01-29 22:22:35
Imported:
2026-01
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Guest: Andrew HartRecorded: January 28, 2026

We talk to longtime friend of the RWN community & Minnesota native Andrew Hart about personal impressions of life under federal occupation.

Total time: 45:06Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

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Buy & review John Dolan's new book, They Should Have Been Hanged: War Nerd Essays on the U.S. Civil War

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

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Comments

Tim Lunning

appreciate all the eyes on Minneapolis right now

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Live a couple hours across the border in Wisconsin and went to Minneapolis and St Paul with my husband a couple years back for a Prince tour and to pay respects to the George Floyd memorial and to hit up some good food places and just hang out. Genuinely two of the best cities I’ve been to in America and I’ve been all over. Minnesotans are fucking different man in the context of the US. You can call it radical liberalism idc but there is a humanism involved when you have to deal with extreme winter weather where it bonds you to others who live there. Some bond over it in the Midwest and some places breed the most notorious serial killers (where I live) and have extreme reactionary politics. I mean we literally have tshirts that say beer, cheese and serial killers. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/01/29/luigi-mangione-fbi-jail-murder-mark-anderson.html My husband and I ate at Somali, Venezuelan, and Ukrainian restaurants during our visit and everyone was just cool and kind remarkably different to other places I’ve been all across the US. And not in a “I wanna sell you shit” way. But genuinely interested in you as a person. Just my experience. I’m not saying it’s some sort of socialist panacea I mean waltz passed an overwhelmingly supported bill for free child lunches at public schools but this area is the antithesis of the anti human right wing project.

cstenzy

Absolutely, it's a wonderful place. Visited multiple times in the past couple years to see my favorite American metal band (Panopticon) perform and made friends who I can visit every time I come back. The sense of community even in the MN suburbs is nothing like here in Commiefornia

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When my husband and I drove back to Wisconsin I turned to him and said this is the only other place I want to live in America if we have to move. I cannot stress enough how fucking awesome these people are on a personal level. It’s why this admin is trying to crush them. It’s the most radical liberal state.

Andrew Hart

Apologies for my microphone making it sound like I have a lisp. Many thanks to Mark and John for letting me share an average person's experience living in the Twin Cities through these terrible times.

T

When the topic of ICE recruits comes up I always think of Stanley Milgrims quote: “I would say, on the basis of having observe a thousand people in the experiment and having my own intuition shaped and informed by these experiments, that if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town.”

CR

Who gives a shit about the Nazis? We have 80 years of postwar police violence in this shithole country exhibiting exactly what a bunch of depraved demons they are and will be be unleashed. Fuck, even Minneapolis let Derek Chauvin kill three other people before he got around to Floyd. Thanks, Amy Klobuchar! They are scum, the politicians who use them and endorse their actions are scum.

CR

Since the Democrats are so pro-cop they devoted a day of the 2020 convention to them in the middle of the fucking protested and made one Vice President, there is no point in bothering. There is a 50-year trail of laws explicitly devoted to brutalizing the victims du jour and destroying rights in the name of drugs, terror, hate, etc. that will always allow the federal government and subordinate governments to destroy anyone they want. And that is what the people want because the people are stupid and cruel and want their privileged lives and want the exploitation and death that fuels that privilege. I only wish the Democrats weren't so right wing that they were even 1% as ruthless and leftist as the right thinks so that we could all sadistically enjoy them doing this to right wingers in Texas or Florida or any other shithole red state one day. Instead, they're btiching about why ICE and CBP are in Minnesota instead of stemming the flow in Texas. Of course, that would also allow them not to care because it's Texas and because liberals hate Mexicans as much as the right does so they get what they deserve, as evidenced by the fact that those two agencies do have massive presences In border states brutalizing people and no one gives a fuck, especially when it's brown on brown violence because so many ICE and CBP personnel are from those areas. Come to think of it, I wonder what the demographic makeup is because the idea of Mexican-American federal agents beating up white Midwesterners is starting to seem ironic.

Chris Knutson

Thanks for doing this Andrew! I live in NE Minneapolis, Central Ave area has a large Ecuadorian population and ICE is consistently fucking with people in our neighborhood and Columbia Heights, suburb directly north. Have had numerous interactions with these creeps, just this morning they pulled someone over on our block and the same thing happened on Wednesday. It’s completely infuriating knowing there are roving gangs of kidnappers all over the cities. We’ve taken to asking agents who’s fucking their wives while they’re here, they don’t seem to like that too much 🤷‍♂️

Boobs123

The ICE agents tried to get into the Ecuadorian consulate because they were chasing a guy ran in there, and believe me, there were many Mexicans who were amused by this as it hasn't even been two years since the Ecuadorian police did the same thing to the Mexican embassy in Quito.

Benj

The famed Jodie Battalion that’s who

Shane

I always thought “MN nice” was sarcastic and implied a seething rage underneath under a thin veneer of pleasantry like Matt Christman talked about.

Matt Houle

I'm a flaker (local slang for people from Forest Lake), and I am in no way surprised that Hegseth came out of that town. Forest Lake has often seemed to me very emblematic of the lowest, most inane and petty kinds of corruption and public malfeasance that small town USA can produce. Very happy to hear this episode with a local about what's happening here too.

Jennifer Hammerhead

You guys should do a series about the Dakota War. I recently finished the book 38 Nooses by Scott Berg (I think) and it really expanded my understanding of the conflict and its context. Not to mention constant the apples to apples similarities between Palestine, October 7th, and the genocide that followed. I can't over emphasize how striking it was but I'd love to see a War Nerd take on the subject!

Andrew Hart

I was very sad to find Los Cactus up in Columbia Heights closed (presumably because of ICE) a few weeks ago. I went to one of the many East African places and was happy to see that, at least in that restaurant, people were having a good time. That area seems to be very hard hit because of the pressure on the Spanish-speaking communities. Hope you and your neighbors are holding up.

Peter Z

Great guest. Love the paint sniffing analogy.

Breakaway

Friends who grew up there have told me it’s really Midwest Passive-Aggressive

Seraj Farabi-Iverson

This is usually how I (20 year transplant to the twin cities) have always interpreted it. The perception generally goes Minnesotans are slow to open up but maintain an outwards “politeness” that goes along with many of the other midwestern jokes “Ope” and all, but they keep their true feelings to a very tight knit group. That said, I find that this mostly describes the suburban and rural Minnesotan and even then I think you get back the energy you give in a way. I’ve found an ability to get along with people from all around the state if I am somewhat suspicious about my general earnestness getting burned.

Seraj Farabi-Iverson

Appreciate your perspective, I feel similar in some respects as I live in the fancier part of uptown. But my job takes me all over the cities specifically to schools, that has made not running into ICE impossible as they constantly shadow the schools.

Andrew Hart

What they're doing around the schools is disgusting. I don't have children, and the younger ones in my extended family aren't school aged yet, so I don't have any experience with that issue. But I can't imagine sending any kid to school knowing that someone in their class (or the parents) might be harassed or taken.

Andrew Hart

I agree that this would be a great topic for an episode or series. (I recall John talking about the Dakota War in the context of John Pope, a general who was removed from the Civil War after a terrible performance at Second Bull Run and set loose on the Dakota in Minnesota.) I grew up in the southwest part of the Twin Cities, which partly overlaps with area of the war. My high school, Chaska, shares its name with a common Dakota first name borne by one of the 38 executed men, specifically the man whose sentence was commuted by Lincoln but was killed anyway. There were some Mdewakanton tribal members at my school, and we (surprisingly) learned about the Dakota War pretty extensively. I don't know if the uprising is commonly known outside of the area where it literally took place, however.

Seraj Farabi-Iverson

Yeah, I can’t imagine being a parent right now. As an IT professional for the district, it’s already quite the shotgun of information with each site visit. My closest personal experience was walking out to whistles and observers filming an idling vehicle shadowing district HQ in North. It seems like the feds have shifted to a primary activity window from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., with most visible abductions happening before noon. They’ve been nominally instructed not to engage observers unless touched, although there are still instances of chemical agents and non-lethals. They’ve also obtained local plates, started adding bumper stickers and are more often in plain clothes with low-visibility gear, etc. I really empathize with your portrayal because I haven’t personally come face to face with a fed. A focus on nursing an injury and work that I think is really important has kept my activities mostly to supporting others and driving folks home from work. But it’s a truly dystopian feeling, with the hyper-vigilance and periodic hours of helicopter sounds.

Seraj Farabi-Iverson

I am no expert but I think Mark and John would enjoy learning about the labor history of Minnesota and specifically how progressive Minneapolis has been. I don’t think it’s really a coincidence that we have ended up under the boot, even if it took that shirly halfwit and a cooked up conspiracy to give them the excuse. Whether it’s the George Floyd unrest, our repeated moments of upheaval after the numerous other killings of innocent black men back by cops in the era around Ferguson, lots of support and involvement in protesting the Dakota access pipeline, protests of the RNC way back, not voting for Reagan, or numerous historic strikes I can’t remember off the top of my head, we always seem to be a thorn in the side of the system.

Chris Knutson

Dang I didn’t realize that about Los Cactus. Yeah it’s been wild how much attention on CH there has been, a silver lining though is they are remarkably well-organized when we’ve popped up there to help out. At the end of the day ICE can’t win because we live here and they don’t. I’ve gotta say it must be a weird time to be a regular person with out of state plates driving around these days.

Flipswitch

THANK YOU for the Somali Vs Somalian correction, it drives me wild.

The Real Spiro Agnew

Would like for them to do more eps about Indian wars in general (Pueblo Revolt would be my dream)

Demented Avenger

Fuck, why didn't I play this episode earlier? I live four blocks from where Pretti was killed, and sometimes stop in at that doughnut shop. I'll have to give a more detailed account when I can, but someone is going to have a helluva oral history of the Whittier (where I live, where Pretti was killed) and Central (where Renee Good was killed) neighborhoods during this time. My anxiety started to subside just before ICE started leaving. I have a couple of stories, nothing too big, but they're in my area.