The Council of Blood Reborn: Tools of Tyranny In The Time of Tweets
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The streets of Los Angeles are no stranger to marches. They have seen everything from farmworkers seeking fair wages to students seeking sanctuary. But in June 2025, those streets bore witness to a different kind of march—of marching boots. federalized National Guard troops and masked militarized ICE forces, summoned by the monarch of Mar-a-Lago, filed in to crush a crowd that demanded nothing more than human dignity and rule of law due process.
The deployment is a page ripped from the black-letter book of imperial repression bearing no resemblance to America’s playbook of liberty. It is a scene that would have been familiar to the merchants and burghers of sixteenth-century Antwerp or Leiden—towns that once thrived under the tolerant, moderate, humanist reign of Charles V, only to find themselves battered by the chain-mailed fist of his son, Philip II. When a regime that once tolerated pluralism decides that military might is the only tool left, what you’re witnessing is an affront to society’s social contract.
Trump’s Troops on American Soil: The Dutch Parallel
Philip II inherited the Netherlands, a patchwork of proud cities and free-trading ports where Catholic processions shared the streets with Protestant preachers and merchants from every compass point. The Dutch had grown accustomed to relative liberty: local councils, bustling trade fairs, a cosmopolitan air that belied the Spanish yoke overhead. For a time, even the emperor on which the sun never set on his realms, Charles V (yes, he was the original), allowed them this breathing space.
But Philip II saw in these liberties a threat—a riot of color against his monochrome court of Catholic orthodoxy. And so he dispatched the Duke of Alba with 10,000 troops to impose “order.” The Council of Troubles—later known, with bitter clarity, as the Council of Blood—condemned thousands without the right to due process: many were exiled and other killed. Streets once alive with argument and enterprise became silent under the boot.
So too now does Trump, clad in the phantoms of flags and the fog of phony nationalism, decide that he alone will determine the shape of American life. He doesn’t send 10,000 Spaniards, but thousands of American soldiers in militarized ICE and National Guard fatigues. Their mission is to have the people cower in obedience. To stand in the gap between the governed and the governors, and remind us that the state can always resort to violence if liberty grows too loud.
A Legacy of Liberty Betrayed
The American promise, this was once a promise of sanctuary: a promise that the law exists to protect the weak against the strong, that the square belongs to the citizen, and that no king or demagogue can set troops upon his own people without moral ruin. That promise is now being put to the torch by a man who sees public protest as a personal affront.
We have seen this before in the Netherlands. The Dutch Revolt was not born in a vacuum. it was born from the betrayal of an implicit social contract. The Burgundian Netherlands had been a place of debate, of art, of innovation. Under Philip II, that flourishing spirit was strangled by decrees, by inquisitors, and by the cold edge of Spanish steel.
In America today, the Trump regime’s deployment of troops against peaceful protesters is no less a betrayal. It is an assault on the idea that American streets belong to American citizens—not to the king’s men. It is an act of ideological conquest against the pluralism that is the bedrock of every open society. Citizens told they are not citizens. Agents and “special forces” without badges or identity (Department of Homeland Security (DHS) regulations, which, according to the letter sent to the agency by the legislators, require law enforcement to properly identify themselves and limit the use of masks during official operations.) Due process suspended—even the head of DHS not knowing its constitutionality. Ensnaring and sending away souls to slave camps abroad without verification, notice, or chance for appeal.
From Bourse to Barricades: The Economic Consequences of Repression
Philip’s crackdown killed commerce, too, for the business owners reading. Antwerp, once the bustling warehouse of Europe, saw its trade routes wither. Refugees fled to Amsterdam and Leiden, carrying their skills and capital away from the suffocating noose of the Spanish army. A land of merchants and makers was reduced to a land of suspicion and stagnation.
Trump’s turn to militarization will have its own economic reckoning. Investors watch with wary eyes as America signals that rule of law is no longer sacred. Business thrives on stability, and stability cannot survive when soldiers stand where dialogue once stood. Every military deployment, every arrest of a citizen exercising the rights of assembly and protest, is a message to the world that America is no longer a safe harbor for free enterprise—nor for the free mind. Deemed “America, The Unstable” by The Financial Times.
The Propaganda of Order
Philip II wrapped his repression in the rhetoric of order. He claimed he was the defender of true faith and civic calm. Trump wraps his repression in the red, white, and blue—he claims he is the last line of defense against chaos. It is the voice of the people he fears, just as he distracts by declaring it chaos. A voice rising in unison to declare that dignity is not for the king to grant, but society as a while.
The Spanish propagandists of the sixteenth century spoke of “purity” and “duty” to smother the diversity of the Netherlands. Trump’s mouthpieces speak of “invasion” and “security” to mask the simple fact that immigrants are people, they are human beings, and that peaceful protest is a constitutional right. The claim that he is only deporting convicted criminals as been proven false again and again. In multitude.
“Trump deported 200 Colombians. None were criminals.”
“A Missouri Town Was Solidly Behind Trump. Then Carol Was Detained.”
“ICE ending migrants' court cases in order to arrest and move to deport them.”
“Trump-appointed judge blocks Alien Enemies Act deportations in Los Angeles area.”
“Timeline: Wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.”
“Mass deportation effort sweeps up U.S. citizen children with deported parents.”
“Trump Has Now Deported Multiple U.S. Citizen Children With Cancer.”
The Blood Tax of Tyranny
In the Netherlands, the price of Philip’s repression was measured in blood and exile. Thousands executed, thousands more driven to the wind. In America, we have not yet reached the scale of bloodshed that stained the North Sea’s shores—but the echoes are there. When militarized forces are ordered to quell peaceful dissent, we must ask: how long before the blood tax is paid in earnest?
For every protester arrested, for every person disappeared, for every immigrant incarcerated, for every family driven underground by fear, the moral cost grows. A nation that was built on the promise of liberty cannot long survive the contradiction of military violence against its own conscience.
The Founders Knew This Danger
The architects of the American republic—Adams, Hamilton, Wasington—knew the lessons of history. They studied not only Roman law, but the abuses of kings like Philip II. They knew that once a ruler calls out the soldiers against his own citizens without just cause, he has ceased to be a leader of a republic. He becomes a monarch in all but name.
Trump has learned no such lessons. He has taken the tools of an imperial presidency and wielded them in defense of his personal authority instead of in defense of the Constitution. He has become, in the mold of Philip II, a ruler who confuses the dignity of the state with the dignity of his own pride.
The People Will Outlast the Tyrant
History tells us that the people always outlast the tyrants and those who follow in their footsteps. The Dutch refused to be cowed by Philip’s armies. They took to the sea in their ragtag fleets of Watergeuzen, they fortified their cities, and they rebuilt a republic in the face of an empire.
So too will the American people outlast the troops sent against them. They will organize, they will vote, they will litigate—and they will remind every uniformed man and woman that their oath is to the Constitution and the people. It isn’t to the person occupying the White House.
Let This Be America’s Council of Blood: Exposed, Condemned, and Rejected
Philip II’s Council of Blood is remembered today as a stain on the soul of his empire. It didn’t restore order as he claimed it would. The name itself is an accusation down the centuries: that no ruler has the right to drown the free voice of the people.
Let this deployment of force in Los Angeles be remembered the same way: as a moment where the tide turned. A rally to the republic. A rally to the Constitution. When the history of this moment is written, let it be said that you stood not with the tools of tyranny, but with the people. That you saw through the false flags of order and chose the enduring liberty that has always been the promise of America.
The story of the Dutch Revolt is not a distant memory. It is a living parable. When liberty is threatened by the heavy hand of the state, the people must rise in unwavering conviction. We mustn’t give in to violence. The square belongs to the people. The law belongs to the people. No king, no president, no monarch of mediocrity can take it away.
So, let us stand with those who march in Los Angeles, with those who refuse to be silenced, and with the long, unbroken line of those who have always known: that the state is strong only when it remembers that its strength flows from the consent of the governed—not the barrel of a gun.
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