We need to listen to our elders.
Last week in Florida. People gathered outside the “Alligator Alcatraz” facility. Final vigil. The detainees were moving, shipped out to locations the Department of Homeland Security won’t tell us.
Enter Robert Hilliard. He was 100. He turned 101 this past week. World War II veteran. Purple Heart recipient.
A PhD student named Thomas Kennedy filmed him. Posted to Instagram. Went viral. Naturally.
Hilliard spoke from the hip. No polish. No PR filter.
“As you just heard, next week I’ll be 101… In February 1944… I was inducted into the Army… basic training at Camp Blanding… near Jacksonville, Florida.”
He paused. Let it hang.
Then he delivered the blow.
“They taught me to kill people who had set-up detention camps in Germany,” Hilliard said. “Can you imagine how I felt… when they announced that one of the future detention camps would be at that same Camp Blanding? What remarkable irony.”
It’s dark. It’s sharp. It stings.
“We in this country have seen a remarkable change.”
He went there. Right for it.
“Forgive me… I’m gonna use the ‘f’ word. We have a fascist, a fascist government, that allows innocent people to be put in detention camps.”
No hesitation.
He dismantled the official narrative on immigration policy. Point by point.
“29% have criminal records.”
That means 71% do not.
Seventy-one percent. The vast majority. The government claims these camps are for criminals. The data says they’re filled with people who, by their own standards, shouldn’t be there.
“65,000… 70,000” incarcerated. Most of them not belonging. By the book.
Hilliard didn’t mince words. Neither should we.
He ended with a command.
“We’ve got to fight… reach people all over the country. ‘Don’t look away… See what’s happening.’”
The reaction?
Instant support.
One comment stood out.
“If a 101-year-old veteran… trained to spot and kill fascists… says we have them, who steps up to call him wrong? Nobody.”
Another user noted Hilliard is 20 years older than Donald Trump. And “20 times more coherent.”
Human decency. Finally on screen.
Is there no better moment? To have a man who saved us from fascism remind us why it was evil in the first place.
The comments are full of gratitude. Patriotism. Anger.
There’s no justification for the injustice. None at all.
