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>This sounds strangely familiar in relation to what is occurring within the USA... Not quite. There are no concentration camps in the United States. And we don

>This sounds strangely familiar in relation to what is occurring within the USA... Not quite. There are no concentration camps in the United States. And we don't have guys out executing jews and other minorities while trashing their temples and churches. EDIT: Oops. iamdave below makes a very good point that people are out executing minorities and attacking their churches. (In fact, a few enterprising numbskulls are out doing both at the same time.) That was a miss on my part. Extremely bad example.

iamdave 8y ago
And we don't have guys out executing jews and other minorities while trashing their temples and churches. How far off the mark would I be in guessing you're not a minority in America? Jason Van Dyke, a Chicago police officer was just convicted of 2nd degree murder and sixteen counts of aggravated battery with a fire arm of a black man in a time when more and more black Americans feel scared for their lives simply being in the presence of a police officer (I happen to be one of them) and Dylan Roof was given the death penalty for killing nine black parishioners at a church in my hometown of Charleston South Carolina three years ago. These are by no means the only examples I can give you.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- xvedejas 8y ago
  Statistics have to come before anecdotes. I'm not really disagreeing with you, but we live in an era with many more people and much more open dialogue. It's easier to find countless stories of minority abuse, regardless of the actual prevalence. I don't know how many stories of the 1930s we have never heard because nobody was left to chronicle them...
  - iamdave 8y ago
    Statistics have to come before anecdotes Point conceded, even if the two examples I gave are two of the highest profile events in the last five years speaking on the topic of minority repression in America, they are symptoms of a larger disease. But point conceded. I'll play along and gladly provide sources and statistics if you'd like, I seem to have made a faulty assumption that these issues I pointed to were speaking for themselves rather loudly and the volumes of data would be readily available to anyone inclined to look for them. There's much more recency to this discussion than what happened in as you put it "the 1930s"
    - xvedejas 8y ago
      It's kind of a sad, losing game to compare atrocities from different time periods, and then task ourselves with saying "this time period was worse than that time period". Unfortunately, it's the game we must play to determine whether things are really getting better over time. Since most crimes of repression were not reported in the past, it becomes a game of asking "which book has more words per page?" when one book is water-damaged and the other is burned to ash. I guess any claim that isn't too certain is reasonable.
- ams6110 8y ago
  I took bilbo0s comment to mean we do not have formal government policy and programs to imprison and execute a race of people. We do have a few wackos here and there which is unavoidable.
  - iamdave 8y ago
    There may not be formal government programs that presriptively sanction the murder and decimation of minority communities by the American constabulary but the law also historically has given merit to "disparate impact". Furthermore Van Dyke's conviction came with mitigating factors that I will passionately argue create the conditions for disparate impact when black Americans are killed by state actors in the form of local police officers. This IMO supersedes any argument that we lack government policy that sanctions police brutality and points to a direct need for police reform which is the root of a statement like "Black lives matter".
- glafa 8y ago
  This year in Chicago there has been 457 (around 350 blacks) killed, how many have the police killed in Chicago? 4 this year. The crime rate is the biggest problem not the cops in minority areas. I understand the fear of cops and I do believe in self policing but for the black community the biggest problem is rampant crime.
  - ivraatiems 8y ago
    What do you believe causes the rampant crime?
    - mullingitover 8y ago
      Poverty[1]: For the period 2008-12- - Persons in poor households at or below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) (39.8 per 1,000) had more than double the rate of violent victimization as persons in high-income households (16.9 per 1,000). - Persons in poor households had a higher rate of violence involving a firearm (3.5 per 1,000) compared to persons above the FPL (0.8-2.5 per 1,000). - The overall pattern of poor persons having the highest rates of violent victimization was consistent for both whites and blacks. However, the rate of violent victimization for Hispanics did not vary across poverty levels. - Poor Hispanics (25.3 per 1,000) had lower rates of violence compared to poor whites (46.4 per 1,000) and poor blacks (43.4 per 1,000). - Poor persons living in urban areas (43.9 per 1,000) had violent victimization rates similar to poor persons living in rural areas (38.8 per 1,000). - Poor urban blacks (51.3 per 1,000) had rates of violence similar to poor urban whites (56.4 per 1,000). [1] https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5137 https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5137
      - ivraatiems 8y ago
        I agree, in part. According to the latest government data, as of 2017 21% of African Americans and 18% of Hispanics are living in poverty. Only about 10% of Asian Americans and 8.7% of whites are in poverty.[1] To what would you attribute the racial disparity in poverty rates? (Naturally I have an opinion, but I'm withholding it because I want to understand your approach to this.) [1] http://federalsafetynet.com/us-poverty-statistics.html http://federalsafetynet.com/us-poverty-statistics.html citing https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-263.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-26...
archagon 8y ago
Did you miss the memo about kids in tents in the desert?
smsm42 8y ago
There are no concentration camps, sure, but there are people - a lot of people - who do not consider their political opponents somebody worth treating with respect, civility and basic human decency, and engage their arguments instead of shutting them up and excluding them from participation in public (or even private) life as much as possible. From there to physical violence is but a small step, and this line has been crossed and continues being crossed in modern US politics all too often. Surely, we are nowhere near where Weimar Republic has been in 1930s, but unfortunately, a lot of people looking at the same direction and try to delegitimize their opponents and promote the idea that they should be not argued with, but deplatformed, assaulted and suppressed. And yes, I am aware that comparing people to Nazis is part of doing the above, so we need to be extremely careful with it. But I think we can condemn people who purport to dehumanize their opponents without falling into the same trap.
- floren 8y ago
  > but there are people - a lot of people - who do not consider their political opponents somebody worth treating with respect, civility and basic human decency, and engage their arguments instead of shutting them up and excluding them from participation in public (or even private) life as much as possible. But enough about Silicon Valley
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    >But enough about Silicon Valley... Not just Silicon Valley. That sounds like every nook and cranny of the United States. From Florida to the northernmost acre of Alaska, from Maine to Hawaii to Guam, and from Minnesota to Puerto Rico. Right wingers and left wingers are generally not interested in having a reasonable discussion with you. With a lot of those more extreme people it's not so much data and ethics they come armed with, but tiki torches and baseball bats.
    - floren 8y ago
      You're quite right. The political ad deluge has been particularly bad in New Mexico this year, probably similar in other states. The ads are incredibly nasty.
gumby 8y ago
> There are no concentration camps in the United States. I don’t know what else to call the tent camps full of kids in the desert. They even move the kids around at night in the classic “Nacht und Nebel” fashion. They use the classic vocabulary (“vermin”, “animals”) and even call the children “criminals” and subject them to bureaucratic nonsense like dressed-up court appearances for two year olds. Yes, I would call that right out of the 1930s playbooks.
- iamdave 8y ago
  How about the cages we put people in for having a certain plant in their glove compartments? No comparisons to Nazi-ism needed for that level of barbarism
  - grkvlt 8y ago
    The whole 'But marijuana is a PLANT, it's part of NATURE, man!' argument is specious. Just because it's a plant doesn't mean it's all great and should be legal. There are plenty of poisonous plants, which if you make preparations based on them by purifying or extracting essential oils, you would quite rightly be locked up for possession.
    - iamdave 8y ago
      There are plenty of poisonous plants. This is not one of them, and that's a poor argument to make against the mounting evidence that people are finding valid medical and therapeutic relief from cannabis, and it's an even worse argument in the face of how cannabis has been historically used to paint early 20th century negroes as unhinged savages that terrorize and victimize white communities from being "addicted" to the devils lettuce. See also: "reefer madness" THAT is my issue with that topic. Not just that it's a plant but the very way you've argued against it and the wholesale ignoring of how that prohibition was used to disenfranchise and disempower feeding into Ameria's current incarceration obsession because of a plant. Alas we're straying from the central of the thread right now.
      - 8y ago
Retric 8y ago
> keep them from having a voice in government Vote suppression/manipulation is very common in the US. Things like making registration harder on people that move regularly are very common and are considered in political terms. The most insidious cas relates to defining things as Felony convictions based on which groups will lose voters. PS: Gerrymandering of course increases the impact of such things while directly marginalizing the opposition. Really though it's just part of a wider pattern of seeking power at the expense of others which is the true core of Fascism.
- masonic 8y ago
  making registration harder on people that move regularly That's a silly constraint given that one has to reregister every time one moves because almost every move results in a change of precinct. So, yeah, if you move regularly, you incur more reregistration tasks.
  - Retric 8y ago
    Provisional ballets are an 'easy' solution to this problem. If person X, did not vote anywhere else then count the ballet. Having less permissive rules is a question of does this rule help or hurt the party writing the rule. Which is the antithesis of a democracy. Consider, if your a US citizen and live in DC or a territory, you don't get a meaningful vote. However, if your a US citizen and live in China but used to live in a state then you can vote.
vkou 8y ago
There are no 'concentration' camps, but there is a campaign of dehumanization and abuse against undocumented immigrants, making a mockery of the legal process, as well as another campaign, that is trying it's hardest to strip citizens/permanent residents of their status. There is absolutely an other, upon whom all the country's problems are blamed.
- smsm42 8y ago
  You mean illegal immigrants, of course. > that is trying it's hardest to strip citizens/permanent residents of their status. Those that obtained the status by fraud, right? Do you think if somebody acquired the status by fraud, this should be excused because when it concerns immigration, laws are mere guidelines and should not really be enforced? Or what would be the reason to excuse fraud in case of citizenship/permanent resident status?
  - hef19898 8y ago
    Ok, I see where you are coming from. And it is a pitty to see this kind of thinking from otherwise intelligent and educated people. So, here we go. e.g. Dreamers are not illegal immigrants, tjere was a law protecting them. I do follow US politics quite closely as of late, and up to now I dis not see any plausible proof of people getting resident status by cheating. There is asystem in place, and at the moment the current US administration is also pushing against legal residents of foreign origin. Zjing is the means used, like the use of food stamps, is targwting a specific sub group. This will not the affect the ex-pats from, say, Norway. It will affect migrants from Latin America. And with their path to citizen ship blocked by some BS like that zhat is a way to keep non-whites out. For that there is proof.
    - smsm42 8y ago
      > And it is a pitty to see this kind of thinking from otherwise intelligent and educated people. What kinds of thinking? > Dreamers are not illegal immigrants What is "dreamers"? If you refer to people DREAM Act has been about, they are by definition illegal immigrants. That's the whole purpose of this law - if they weren't illegal, there would not be any need for this law to exist. The whole purpose is to convert them from illegal to legal status. This may be the right thing to do - I actually like this solution, if only it would be combined with actual immigration reform and not be just "well, we feel bad about you so we decided not to enforce any immigration laws anymore and see how it works out". But the absolutely first step for it to work is to recognize there are illegal immigrants that need this solution. > up to now I dis not see any plausible proof of people getting resident status by cheating Then you do not follow US politics as close as you'd like to think, or your ideological filter does not allow you to encounter the facts. > at the moment the current US administration is also pushing against legal residents of foreign origin What you mean by "pushing against"? The only "push" is if somebody is suspected of fraud, this will be investigated, and if the evidence of fraud would be found, the person who committed fraud would be denaturalized. > This will not the affect the ex-pats from, say, Norway. It will affect migrants from Latin America. It will affect anyone who commits fraud. There are much less people from Norway immigrating to US, and even less of them have reasons to cheat instead of following proper immigration procedures, so statistically more people will be caught in fraud from Latin America than from Norway. So what? Does US have some obligation to people of Latin America to suspend American immigration law because they are from Latin America? Or deport some Norwegians just to keep statistics nice? > And with their path to citizen ship blocked by some BS like that You mean US immigration laws? Yeah, too bad Americans dare to put some bullshit laws in front of people only exercising their natural rights to become US citizens without following naturalization procedure, too bad they require honesty in applications. No country would dare to do that, every other country just accepts whoever comes in and believes whatever they say, no question asked, citizenship granted right at the border, just sign on the line, and only stupid Americans (probably because they are racist) have immigration laws. Right? Implying that it's somehow racist to have immigration laws and actually enforce them makes no sense. Only in a bizarro world of modern US politics it can be seen as a viable argument.
ivraatiems 8y ago
Just recently, the United States imprisoned children in camps separate from their families because their parents committed the (misdemeanor) crime of crossing the border illegally. At what point does a "camp" become an "internment" camp and then a "concentration" camp?

iamdave 8y ago

And we don't have guys out executing jews and other minorities while trashing their temples and churches. How far off the mark would I be in guessing you're not a minority in America? Jason Van Dyke, a Chicago police officer was just convicted of 2nd degree murder and sixteen counts of aggravated battery with a fire arm of a black man in a time when more and more black Americans feel scared for their lives simply being in the presence of a police officer (I happen to be one of them) and Dylan Roof was given the death penalty for killing nine black parishioners at a church in my hometown of Charleston South Carolina three years ago. These are by no means the only examples I can give you.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
xvedejas 8y ago
Statistics have to come before anecdotes. I'm not really disagreeing with you, but we live in an era with many more people and much more open dialogue. It's easier to find countless stories of minority abuse, regardless of the actual prevalence. I don't know how many stories of the 1930s we have never heard because nobody was left to chronicle them...
- iamdave 8y ago
  Statistics have to come before anecdotes Point conceded, even if the two examples I gave are two of the highest profile events in the last five years speaking on the topic of minority repression in America, they are symptoms of a larger disease. But point conceded. I'll play along and gladly provide sources and statistics if you'd like, I seem to have made a faulty assumption that these issues I pointed to were speaking for themselves rather loudly and the volumes of data would be readily available to anyone inclined to look for them. There's much more recency to this discussion than what happened in as you put it "the 1930s"
  - xvedejas 8y ago
    It's kind of a sad, losing game to compare atrocities from different time periods, and then task ourselves with saying "this time period was worse than that time period". Unfortunately, it's the game we must play to determine whether things are really getting better over time. Since most crimes of repression were not reported in the past, it becomes a game of asking "which book has more words per page?" when one book is water-damaged and the other is burned to ash. I guess any claim that isn't too certain is reasonable.
ams6110 8y ago
I took bilbo0s comment to mean we do not have formal government policy and programs to imprison and execute a race of people. We do have a few wackos here and there which is unavoidable.
- iamdave 8y ago
  There may not be formal government programs that presriptively sanction the murder and decimation of minority communities by the American constabulary but the law also historically has given merit to "disparate impact". Furthermore Van Dyke's conviction came with mitigating factors that I will passionately argue create the conditions for disparate impact when black Americans are killed by state actors in the form of local police officers. This IMO supersedes any argument that we lack government policy that sanctions police brutality and points to a direct need for police reform which is the root of a statement like "Black lives matter".
glafa 8y ago
This year in Chicago there has been 457 (around 350 blacks) killed, how many have the police killed in Chicago? 4 this year. The crime rate is the biggest problem not the cops in minority areas. I understand the fear of cops and I do believe in self policing but for the black community the biggest problem is rampant crime.
- ivraatiems 8y ago
  What do you believe causes the rampant crime?
  - mullingitover 8y ago
    Poverty[1]: For the period 2008-12- - Persons in poor households at or below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) (39.8 per 1,000) had more than double the rate of violent victimization as persons in high-income households (16.9 per 1,000). - Persons in poor households had a higher rate of violence involving a firearm (3.5 per 1,000) compared to persons above the FPL (0.8-2.5 per 1,000). - The overall pattern of poor persons having the highest rates of violent victimization was consistent for both whites and blacks. However, the rate of violent victimization for Hispanics did not vary across poverty levels. - Poor Hispanics (25.3 per 1,000) had lower rates of violence compared to poor whites (46.4 per 1,000) and poor blacks (43.4 per 1,000). - Poor persons living in urban areas (43.9 per 1,000) had violent victimization rates similar to poor persons living in rural areas (38.8 per 1,000). - Poor urban blacks (51.3 per 1,000) had rates of violence similar to poor urban whites (56.4 per 1,000). [1] https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5137 https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5137
    - ivraatiems 8y ago
      I agree, in part. According to the latest government data, as of 2017 21% of African Americans and 18% of Hispanics are living in poverty. Only about 10% of Asian Americans and 8.7% of whites are in poverty.[1] To what would you attribute the racial disparity in poverty rates? (Naturally I have an opinion, but I'm withholding it because I want to understand your approach to this.) [1] http://federalsafetynet.com/us-poverty-statistics.html http://federalsafetynet.com/us-poverty-statistics.html citing https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-263.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2018/demo/p60-26...

archagon 8y ago

Did you miss the memo about kids in tents in the desert?

smsm42 8y ago

There are no concentration camps, sure, but there are people - a lot of people - who do not consider their political opponents somebody worth treating with respect, civility and basic human decency, and engage their arguments instead of shutting them up and excluding them from participation in public (or even private) life as much as possible. From there to physical violence is but a small step, and this line has been crossed and continues being crossed in modern US politics all too often. Surely, we are nowhere near where Weimar Republic has been in 1930s, but unfortunately, a lot of people looking at the same direction and try to delegitimize their opponents and promote the idea that they should be not argued with, but deplatformed, assaulted and suppressed. And yes, I am aware that comparing people to Nazis is part of doing the above, so we need to be extremely careful with it. But I think we can condemn people who purport to dehumanize their opponents without falling into the same trap.

floren 8y ago
> but there are people - a lot of people - who do not consider their political opponents somebody worth treating with respect, civility and basic human decency, and engage their arguments instead of shutting them up and excluding them from participation in public (or even private) life as much as possible. But enough about Silicon Valley
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  >But enough about Silicon Valley... Not just Silicon Valley. That sounds like every nook and cranny of the United States. From Florida to the northernmost acre of Alaska, from Maine to Hawaii to Guam, and from Minnesota to Puerto Rico. Right wingers and left wingers are generally not interested in having a reasonable discussion with you. With a lot of those more extreme people it's not so much data and ethics they come armed with, but tiki torches and baseball bats.
  - floren 8y ago
    You're quite right. The political ad deluge has been particularly bad in New Mexico this year, probably similar in other states. The ads are incredibly nasty.

gumby 8y ago

> There are no concentration camps in the United States. I don’t know what else to call the tent camps full of kids in the desert. They even move the kids around at night in the classic “Nacht und Nebel” fashion. They use the classic vocabulary (“vermin”, “animals”) and even call the children “criminals” and subject them to bureaucratic nonsense like dressed-up court appearances for two year olds. Yes, I would call that right out of the 1930s playbooks.

iamdave 8y ago
How about the cages we put people in for having a certain plant in their glove compartments? No comparisons to Nazi-ism needed for that level of barbarism
- grkvlt 8y ago
  The whole 'But marijuana is a PLANT, it's part of NATURE, man!' argument is specious. Just because it's a plant doesn't mean it's all great and should be legal. There are plenty of poisonous plants, which if you make preparations based on them by purifying or extracting essential oils, you would quite rightly be locked up for possession.
  - iamdave 8y ago
    There are plenty of poisonous plants. This is not one of them, and that's a poor argument to make against the mounting evidence that people are finding valid medical and therapeutic relief from cannabis, and it's an even worse argument in the face of how cannabis has been historically used to paint early 20th century negroes as unhinged savages that terrorize and victimize white communities from being "addicted" to the devils lettuce. See also: "reefer madness" THAT is my issue with that topic. Not just that it's a plant but the very way you've argued against it and the wholesale ignoring of how that prohibition was used to disenfranchise and disempower feeding into Ameria's current incarceration obsession because of a plant. Alas we're straying from the central of the thread right now.
    - 8y ago

Retric 8y ago

> keep them from having a voice in government Vote suppression/manipulation is very common in the US. Things like making registration harder on people that move regularly are very common and are considered in political terms. The most insidious cas relates to defining things as Felony convictions based on which groups will lose voters. PS: Gerrymandering of course increases the impact of such things while directly marginalizing the opposition. Really though it's just part of a wider pattern of seeking power at the expense of others which is the true core of Fascism.

masonic 8y ago
making registration harder on people that move regularly That's a silly constraint given that one has to reregister every time one moves because almost every move results in a change of precinct. So, yeah, if you move regularly, you incur more reregistration tasks.
- Retric 8y ago
  Provisional ballets are an 'easy' solution to this problem. If person X, did not vote anywhere else then count the ballet. Having less permissive rules is a question of does this rule help or hurt the party writing the rule. Which is the antithesis of a democracy. Consider, if your a US citizen and live in DC or a territory, you don't get a meaningful vote. However, if your a US citizen and live in China but used to live in a state then you can vote.

vkou 8y ago

There are no 'concentration' camps, but there is a campaign of dehumanization and abuse against undocumented immigrants, making a mockery of the legal process, as well as another campaign, that is trying it's hardest to strip citizens/permanent residents of their status. There is absolutely an other, upon whom all the country's problems are blamed.

smsm42 8y ago
You mean illegal immigrants, of course. > that is trying it's hardest to strip citizens/permanent residents of their status. Those that obtained the status by fraud, right? Do you think if somebody acquired the status by fraud, this should be excused because when it concerns immigration, laws are mere guidelines and should not really be enforced? Or what would be the reason to excuse fraud in case of citizenship/permanent resident status?
- hef19898 8y ago
  Ok, I see where you are coming from. And it is a pitty to see this kind of thinking from otherwise intelligent and educated people. So, here we go. e.g. Dreamers are not illegal immigrants, tjere was a law protecting them. I do follow US politics quite closely as of late, and up to now I dis not see any plausible proof of people getting resident status by cheating. There is asystem in place, and at the moment the current US administration is also pushing against legal residents of foreign origin. Zjing is the means used, like the use of food stamps, is targwting a specific sub group. This will not the affect the ex-pats from, say, Norway. It will affect migrants from Latin America. And with their path to citizen ship blocked by some BS like that zhat is a way to keep non-whites out. For that there is proof.
  - smsm42 8y ago
    > And it is a pitty to see this kind of thinking from otherwise intelligent and educated people. What kinds of thinking? > Dreamers are not illegal immigrants What is "dreamers"? If you refer to people DREAM Act has been about, they are by definition illegal immigrants. That's the whole purpose of this law - if they weren't illegal, there would not be any need for this law to exist. The whole purpose is to convert them from illegal to legal status. This may be the right thing to do - I actually like this solution, if only it would be combined with actual immigration reform and not be just "well, we feel bad about you so we decided not to enforce any immigration laws anymore and see how it works out". But the absolutely first step for it to work is to recognize there are illegal immigrants that need this solution. > up to now I dis not see any plausible proof of people getting resident status by cheating Then you do not follow US politics as close as you'd like to think, or your ideological filter does not allow you to encounter the facts. > at the moment the current US administration is also pushing against legal residents of foreign origin What you mean by "pushing against"? The only "push" is if somebody is suspected of fraud, this will be investigated, and if the evidence of fraud would be found, the person who committed fraud would be denaturalized. > This will not the affect the ex-pats from, say, Norway. It will affect migrants from Latin America. It will affect anyone who commits fraud. There are much less people from Norway immigrating to US, and even less of them have reasons to cheat instead of following proper immigration procedures, so statistically more people will be caught in fraud from Latin America than from Norway. So what? Does US have some obligation to people of Latin America to suspend American immigration law because they are from Latin America? Or deport some Norwegians just to keep statistics nice? > And with their path to citizen ship blocked by some BS like that You mean US immigration laws? Yeah, too bad Americans dare to put some bullshit laws in front of people only exercising their natural rights to become US citizens without following naturalization procedure, too bad they require honesty in applications. No country would dare to do that, every other country just accepts whoever comes in and believes whatever they say, no question asked, citizenship granted right at the border, just sign on the line, and only stupid Americans (probably because they are racist) have immigration laws. Right? Implying that it's somehow racist to have immigration laws and actually enforce them makes no sense. Only in a bizarro world of modern US politics it can be seen as a viable argument.

ivraatiems 8y ago

Just recently, the United States imprisoned children in camps separate from their families because their parents committed the (misdemeanor) crime of crossing the border illegally. At what point does a "camp" become an "internment" camp and then a "concentration" camp?