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Sorry those camps are miserable but they aren’t concentration camps. The word concentration camp has a specific connotation with the extermination camps build t

by verroq 8y ago

Sorry those camps are miserable but they aren’t concentration camps. The word concentration camp has a specific connotation with the extermination camps build to kill Jews and other undesirable under Nazi Germany i.e. genocide. To conflate the two here like many people conflate Japanese internment camps with “concentration camps” is so off the scale it is at least misleading and at worst grossly insensitive.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago
That isn’t true. The first concentration camps were used against the Boers by the British, for which the term was coined. Definition: > a place where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution. The most famous usage was by Germans and is heavily associated with extermination, but the British just wish to deprive the Boer’s of support and to put pressure on them into surrendering. Hence the term “concentration” rather than “extermination”. Many Boers did wind up dying due to inadequate sanitation and food, but the point wasn’t to kill them. Whether the camps in Xinjiang are concentration camps or not remains to be seen. Definitely some of the awful work camps in China in the 70s met the threshold.
- verroq 8y ago
  The meaning the words change with context. Much like the way the Swastika is no longer recognised in the western world as a Hindu peace symbol. My point is that the modern usage of concentration camp is the extermination camps of Nazi Germany, which is obviously not what’s happening in China.
  - roymurdock 8y ago
    They're extrajudicial camps used to punish and re educate people, the semantics aren't as important as the reality of the chinese government rounding up, imprisoning, and torturing an ethnic group of "muslim terrorists"
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    I don’t think that is modern usage at all. The dictionaries haven’t been updated, at least.
    - verroq 8y ago
      https://www.dictionary.com/browse/concentration-camp https://www.dictionary.com/browse/concentration-camp "a guarded prison camp in which nonmilitary prisoners are held, esp one of those in Nazi Germany in which millions were exterminated" "A place for assembling and confining political prisoners and enemies of a nation. Concentration camps are particularly associated with the rule of the Nazis in Germany, who used them to confine millions of Jews (see also Jews) as a group to be purged from the German nation. Communists, Gypsies, homosexuals, and other persons considered undesirable according to Nazi principles, or who opposed the government, were also placed in concentration camps and eventually executed in large groups. ( See Holocaust.)" Particularly associated
      - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
        Yes. Note the “particularly associated” with but lack of extermination as a requirement in the definition. The word in neither definition is limited to those cases, and concentration camp has been used to describe situations post 1945 that are unrelated to genocide. The debate on the word is also well known, from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment: > As a result, some[who?] say that today the term "concentration camp" may be conflated with the concept of "extermination camp" and historians debate whether the term "concentration camp" or "internment camp" should be used in order to describe other examples of civilian internment, such as the United States government's internment of Japanese Americans during World War II,[4] the Australian government's immigrant detention facilities,[25][26] and South Korea's detention camps for "undesirables" in the 1970s and 1980s.[27]
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Sorry those camps are miserable but they aren’t concentration camps. Yes they are. > The word concentration camp has a specific connotation with the extermination camps build to eliminate (aka kill) Jews and other undesirable under Nazi Germany. Those are the most well-known concentration camps to many people today, but the term is older, going back to Spanish practice in Cuba in the Ten Years War and popularized for British camps in the Boer War. Extermination camps are a distinct subcategory of concentration camp, and have a unique name specifically because their nature is not fully captured by “concentration camp” (which in their case was—somewhat amazingly for a title that even before that was typically associated with things that by modern standards would be grave human rights abuses—was actually a consciously used as a deceptive euphemism.) > To conflate the two here like many people conflate Japanese internment camps with “concentration camps” is so off the scale it borders on misleading. “internment camp” is a synonym for “concentration camp” and those operated by the US for the Japanese were exactly concentration camps in the usual sense of the word.
- verroq 8y ago
  Sure but concentration camp does not have the same historic meaning that any more the Swastika has its historic meaning in the Western world. They may be concentration camps by their old definition but the using the word immediately draws to the most well known usage. The Japanese and Ughur camps may be miserable but it isn’t genocide.
  - jbay808 8y ago
    I think the meaning of "concentration camp" hasn't changed, actually. How come you seem so certain that it has? Most of the time when concentration camps appear in the news, they are often not of the Holocaust variety.
    - verroq 8y ago
      I think internment camps is a more apt description without invoking some implicit notion of genocide in this case.
dang 8y ago
Would you please stop posting inflammatory, unsubstantive comments? Nitpicking plus Nazis equals particularly pointless. Edit: you've been posting a lot of flamewar comments lately (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18620146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18620146), and we've already asked you not to. If you keep doing it, we're going to ban your account.
- verroq 8y ago
  You gotta stop selectively enforcing moderation. The person who said China has concentration camps and is now somehow racist isn’t being inflammatory? A few threads back when the Christian missionary got killed by the natives the entire comment section was a leftist circlejerk. The flamewar was already burning when I got here, and there is no discussion. I guess I shouldn’t start dropping out shitposts but I don’t feel particularly bad when the entire comment section is already beyond saving. I shall refrain in the future and just flag instead.

by verroq 8y ago

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

That isn’t true. The first concentration camps were used against the Boers by the British, for which the term was coined. Definition: > a place where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution. The most famous usage was by Germans and is heavily associated with extermination, but the British just wish to deprive the Boer’s of support and to put pressure on them into surrendering. Hence the term “concentration” rather than “extermination”. Many Boers did wind up dying due to inadequate sanitation and food, but the point wasn’t to kill them. Whether the camps in Xinjiang are concentration camps or not remains to be seen. Definitely some of the awful work camps in China in the 70s met the threshold.

verroq 8y ago
The meaning the words change with context. Much like the way the Swastika is no longer recognised in the western world as a Hindu peace symbol. My point is that the modern usage of concentration camp is the extermination camps of Nazi Germany, which is obviously not what’s happening in China.
- roymurdock 8y ago
  They're extrajudicial camps used to punish and re educate people, the semantics aren't as important as the reality of the chinese government rounding up, imprisoning, and torturing an ethnic group of "muslim terrorists"
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  I don’t think that is modern usage at all. The dictionaries haven’t been updated, at least.
  - verroq 8y ago
    https://www.dictionary.com/browse/concentration-camp https://www.dictionary.com/browse/concentration-camp "a guarded prison camp in which nonmilitary prisoners are held, esp one of those in Nazi Germany in which millions were exterminated" "A place for assembling and confining political prisoners and enemies of a nation. Concentration camps are particularly associated with the rule of the Nazis in Germany, who used them to confine millions of Jews (see also Jews) as a group to be purged from the German nation. Communists, Gypsies, homosexuals, and other persons considered undesirable according to Nazi principles, or who opposed the government, were also placed in concentration camps and eventually executed in large groups. ( See Holocaust.)" Particularly associated
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      Yes. Note the “particularly associated” with but lack of extermination as a requirement in the definition. The word in neither definition is limited to those cases, and concentration camp has been used to describe situations post 1945 that are unrelated to genocide. The debate on the word is also well known, from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment: > As a result, some[who?] say that today the term "concentration camp" may be conflated with the concept of "extermination camp" and historians debate whether the term "concentration camp" or "internment camp" should be used in order to describe other examples of civilian internment, such as the United States government's internment of Japanese Americans during World War II,[4] the Australian government's immigrant detention facilities,[25][26] and South Korea's detention camps for "undesirables" in the 1970s and 1980s.[27]

dragonwriter 8y ago

> Sorry those camps are miserable but they aren’t concentration camps. Yes they are. > The word concentration camp has a specific connotation with the extermination camps build to eliminate (aka kill) Jews and other undesirable under Nazi Germany. Those are the most well-known concentration camps to many people today, but the term is older, going back to Spanish practice in Cuba in the Ten Years War and popularized for British camps in the Boer War. Extermination camps are a distinct subcategory of concentration camp, and have a unique name specifically because their nature is not fully captured by “concentration camp” (which in their case was—somewhat amazingly for a title that even before that was typically associated with things that by modern standards would be grave human rights abuses—was actually a consciously used as a deceptive euphemism.) > To conflate the two here like many people conflate Japanese internment camps with “concentration camps” is so off the scale it borders on misleading. “internment camp” is a synonym for “concentration camp” and those operated by the US for the Japanese were exactly concentration camps in the usual sense of the word.

verroq 8y ago
Sure but concentration camp does not have the same historic meaning that any more the Swastika has its historic meaning in the Western world. They may be concentration camps by their old definition but the using the word immediately draws to the most well known usage. The Japanese and Ughur camps may be miserable but it isn’t genocide.
- jbay808 8y ago
  I think the meaning of "concentration camp" hasn't changed, actually. How come you seem so certain that it has? Most of the time when concentration camps appear in the news, they are often not of the Holocaust variety.
  - verroq 8y ago
    I think internment camps is a more apt description without invoking some implicit notion of genocide in this case.

dang 8y ago

Would you please stop posting inflammatory, unsubstantive comments? Nitpicking plus Nazis equals particularly pointless. Edit: you've been posting a lot of flamewar comments lately (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18620146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18620146), and we've already asked you not to. If you keep doing it, we're going to ban your account.

verroq 8y ago
You gotta stop selectively enforcing moderation. The person who said China has concentration camps and is now somehow racist isn’t being inflammatory? A few threads back when the Christian missionary got killed by the natives the entire comment section was a leftist circlejerk. The flamewar was already burning when I got here, and there is no discussion. I guess I shouldn’t start dropping out shitposts but I don’t feel particularly bad when the entire comment section is already beyond saving. I shall refrain in the future and just flag instead.