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Wow, what a ludicrous jump at the end there. Whatever complaints you may have about ICE, there is no analogy between the mass extermination of 6M people by the

Wow, what a ludicrous jump at the end there. Whatever complaints you may have about ICE, there is no analogy between the mass extermination of 6M people by the Nazis and what is happening at the border.

Majromax 7y ago
> Whatever complaints you may have about ICE, there is no analogy I disagree. The analogy may or may not be very good, but there is an analogy that deserves to be treated on its merits. The Holocaust was evil and horrible, but the lesson we sought to take from it wasn't that it was a singular evil that could never happen again. Instead, it was about the banality of evil (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem), that great evils are often the product of thousands of small steps that individually seem innocuous or trivial compared to what came before. One point being made by the article is that providers of technology -- then IBM, but here github and the like -- carry a moral responsibility for the likely uses of that technology. If that point is correct and IBM is stained by its initial provision of card sorting machines to the Reich (well before the regime began mass killings), then Microsoft et al might carry the stain of crimes that haven't happened yet.
- xwowsersx 7y ago
  I agree with the idea that "great evils are often the product of thousands of small steps that individually seem innocuous or trivial". What I take issue with is these sort of insidious analogies (which, no surprise, tend to be analogies to Hitler or the Holocaust) where none exists except in the most circuitous of ways. Of course we need to be vigilant and, yes, the Holocaust stands out in our collective memory as the best proof of that. However, there is a vast difference between people going to the border of their own volition (put aside the question whether they are doing so under tremendous duress and exigent circumstances) vs the Jews during the Holocaust who could do basically _nothing_ to escape persecution. Immigrants could avoid whatever treatment they are receiving at the border by not going to the border altogether or going by other means. What exactly could the Jews during the Holocaust do? Nothing. None of this is to say there aren't legitimate criticisms related to what's happening at the border. But drawing an analogy, however loose it is, just weakens the argument and serves to seriously understate what happened during the Holocaust.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    Jews could leave Germany until 1941. In fact, they were encouraged to do so. Finding a country that would take them was the problem.
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      > Finding a country that would take them was the problem. ... was those Jews' immediate problem, just then. The problem was rather larger. We will be seeing huge waves of refugees as Global Climate Disruption renders large areas of the globe newly uninhabitable. There are already Nazi-like movements to "keep them out". Plenty of people will be found who would rather they were killed or starved to death than allowed in.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    The Holocaust is far from unique. Stalin executed or starved millions, maybe tens of -- for having the wrong grandparents. Mao starved tens of millions for the same offense. Pol Pot, similarly, albeit with fewer to draw on. The behavior in question is not the killing, but the enabling of abuse. IBM aided the Nazis. Who aided Stalin and Mao? Doesn't matter. The topic at hand is our evil, ICE. Are they Nazis? Doesn't matter. Are they engaged in evil? Yes. Is corporate America eager to aid the evil they do? Yes. "ICE are not executing Jews" distracts from the very valid analogy.
    - anoncake 7y ago
      > The Holocaust is far from unique. Only if you ignore the ideology behind it. Which doesn't make Stalin, Pinochet, Franco, Pol Pot or Mao less evil. > "ICE are not executing Jews" distracts from the very valid analogy. That the ICE isn't executing anyone also doesn't mean that they won't in the future. Heinrich Himmler – the SS leader – called the "bolshevist method of physically exterminating a people [...] un-Germanic and impossible" as late as 1940.
      - ncmncm 7y ago
        Ideologies come and go. It is all sophistry: People will always invent reasons why doing what they are inclined to do is justified, and then do it if not stopped. It is everyone's personal responsibility to stop them.
- amitport 7y ago
  The original post did make a very specific analogy between ICE and following operations performed by the Reich: - Identifying citizens who practice Judaism or have Jewish blood for purpose of asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and extermination - Efficiently transport Jews out of European ghettos along railroad lines and into death camps while I agree with what you wrote to some degree, I think the article's writer did mean the above specific analogy.
Fnoord 7y ago
Current technology allows for much better fine-tuning of flagging and getting rid of humans. I recently commented on the usage religious/racial profiling of IBM in The Netherlands in WWII here [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21212341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21212341
rasz 7y ago
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/24-immigrants-have-died-ice-custody-during-trump-administration-n1015291 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/24-immigrants-h...
- sbmthakur 7y ago
  How many of them were staying in the US legally?
  - detaro 7y ago
    that somehow would justify denied medical treatment?
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Does it matter?
    - serf 7y ago
      is there a cost related to the treatment? if the answer is yes, then quite a few people probably care; regardless of the humanitarian element. Who is paying it, if there is? The payers would tend to care.
      - jacquesm 7y ago
        I'm sure they would. And then there is of course simply the right thing to do. People who are scared of immigrants because of medical costs are not only lacking in their humanity, they are also lacking in math skills. Long term immigrants are a big plus for society in a financial sense.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  Link is to "24 immigrants have died in ICE custody during the Trump administration".
jacquesm 7y ago
Not yet. But those people are capable of anything and I'm fairly sure the person that is willing to separate a mother from a newborn would have no compunction with gassing either. 'Just following orders...'. Even if IBM supplied machinery it required a whole pile of minions (apologies to cartoon fans) to operate and execute the strategy. Those very same people that are hands on in ICE 'detention centers'.
- xwowsersx 7y ago
  More wildly outrageous statements. Separating a mother from her child at the border hand-wave, hand-wave and tada before you know it you're gassing millions. I won't dignify these absurd statements with responses anymore.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    > I won't dignify these absurd statements with responses anymore. That's fine by me. Note that people weren't gassed by the millions 'at once' nor by a single individual. And note that nobody did all of the work required to gass a single individual either. It was all little steps where everybody could claim it wasn't them that gassed the Jews. And that's exactly what is happening here. Same principle; same outcome; so far different level of severity. But you can take this to the bank: if the government greenlights summary execution of illegal immigrants through some diffuse responsibility means there will be plenty of people willing to sign up to do the deeds. Given your other comments in these threads you seem to be of the opinion that by drawing analogies like these we are diminishing what was done to the Jews. That is definitely not the intention. What is the intention is to point out that there is the potential for a repeat, and that this is exactly how it could happen.
lern_too_spel 7y ago
Agreed. A better analogy is to what is going on in Xinjiang. Apple's handover of access to all Chinese users' iCloud data should be viewed accordingly.

Majromax 7y ago

> Whatever complaints you may have about ICE, there is no analogy I disagree. The analogy may or may not be very good, but there is an analogy that deserves to be treated on its merits. The Holocaust was evil and horrible, but the lesson we sought to take from it wasn't that it was a singular evil that could never happen again. Instead, it was about the banality of evil (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem), that great evils are often the product of thousands of small steps that individually seem innocuous or trivial compared to what came before. One point being made by the article is that providers of technology -- then IBM, but here github and the like -- carry a moral responsibility for the likely uses of that technology. If that point is correct and IBM is stained by its initial provision of card sorting machines to the Reich (well before the regime began mass killings), then Microsoft et al might carry the stain of crimes that haven't happened yet.

xwowsersx 7y ago
I agree with the idea that "great evils are often the product of thousands of small steps that individually seem innocuous or trivial". What I take issue with is these sort of insidious analogies (which, no surprise, tend to be analogies to Hitler or the Holocaust) where none exists except in the most circuitous of ways. Of course we need to be vigilant and, yes, the Holocaust stands out in our collective memory as the best proof of that. However, there is a vast difference between people going to the border of their own volition (put aside the question whether they are doing so under tremendous duress and exigent circumstances) vs the Jews during the Holocaust who could do basically _nothing_ to escape persecution. Immigrants could avoid whatever treatment they are receiving at the border by not going to the border altogether or going by other means. What exactly could the Jews during the Holocaust do? Nothing. None of this is to say there aren't legitimate criticisms related to what's happening at the border. But drawing an analogy, however loose it is, just weakens the argument and serves to seriously understate what happened during the Holocaust.
- anoncake 7y ago
  Jews could leave Germany until 1941. In fact, they were encouraged to do so. Finding a country that would take them was the problem.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    > Finding a country that would take them was the problem. ... was those Jews' immediate problem, just then. The problem was rather larger. We will be seeing huge waves of refugees as Global Climate Disruption renders large areas of the globe newly uninhabitable. There are already Nazi-like movements to "keep them out". Plenty of people will be found who would rather they were killed or starved to death than allowed in.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  The Holocaust is far from unique. Stalin executed or starved millions, maybe tens of -- for having the wrong grandparents. Mao starved tens of millions for the same offense. Pol Pot, similarly, albeit with fewer to draw on. The behavior in question is not the killing, but the enabling of abuse. IBM aided the Nazis. Who aided Stalin and Mao? Doesn't matter. The topic at hand is our evil, ICE. Are they Nazis? Doesn't matter. Are they engaged in evil? Yes. Is corporate America eager to aid the evil they do? Yes. "ICE are not executing Jews" distracts from the very valid analogy.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    > The Holocaust is far from unique. Only if you ignore the ideology behind it. Which doesn't make Stalin, Pinochet, Franco, Pol Pot or Mao less evil. > "ICE are not executing Jews" distracts from the very valid analogy. That the ICE isn't executing anyone also doesn't mean that they won't in the future. Heinrich Himmler – the SS leader – called the "bolshevist method of physically exterminating a people [...] un-Germanic and impossible" as late as 1940.
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      Ideologies come and go. It is all sophistry: People will always invent reasons why doing what they are inclined to do is justified, and then do it if not stopped. It is everyone's personal responsibility to stop them.
amitport 7y ago
The original post did make a very specific analogy between ICE and following operations performed by the Reich: - Identifying citizens who practice Judaism or have Jewish blood for purpose of asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and extermination - Efficiently transport Jews out of European ghettos along railroad lines and into death camps while I agree with what you wrote to some degree, I think the article's writer did mean the above specific analogy.

Fnoord 7y ago

Current technology allows for much better fine-tuning of flagging and getting rid of humans. I recently commented on the usage religious/racial profiling of IBM in The Netherlands in WWII here [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21212341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21212341

rasz 7y ago

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/24-immigrants-have-died-ice-custody-during-trump-administration-n1015291 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/24-immigrants-h...

sbmthakur 7y ago
How many of them were staying in the US legally?
- detaro 7y ago
  that somehow would justify denied medical treatment?
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Does it matter?
  - serf 7y ago
    is there a cost related to the treatment? if the answer is yes, then quite a few people probably care; regardless of the humanitarian element. Who is paying it, if there is? The payers would tend to care.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      I'm sure they would. And then there is of course simply the right thing to do. People who are scared of immigrants because of medical costs are not only lacking in their humanity, they are also lacking in math skills. Long term immigrants are a big plus for society in a financial sense.
ncmncm 7y ago
Link is to "24 immigrants have died in ICE custody during the Trump administration".

jacquesm 7y ago

Not yet. But those people are capable of anything and I'm fairly sure the person that is willing to separate a mother from a newborn would have no compunction with gassing either. 'Just following orders...'. Even if IBM supplied machinery it required a whole pile of minions (apologies to cartoon fans) to operate and execute the strategy. Those very same people that are hands on in ICE 'detention centers'.

xwowsersx 7y ago
More wildly outrageous statements. Separating a mother from her child at the border hand-wave, hand-wave and tada before you know it you're gassing millions. I won't dignify these absurd statements with responses anymore.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > I won't dignify these absurd statements with responses anymore. That's fine by me. Note that people weren't gassed by the millions 'at once' nor by a single individual. And note that nobody did all of the work required to gass a single individual either. It was all little steps where everybody could claim it wasn't them that gassed the Jews. And that's exactly what is happening here. Same principle; same outcome; so far different level of severity. But you can take this to the bank: if the government greenlights summary execution of illegal immigrants through some diffuse responsibility means there will be plenty of people willing to sign up to do the deeds. Given your other comments in these threads you seem to be of the opinion that by drawing analogies like these we are diminishing what was done to the Jews. That is definitely not the intention. What is the intention is to point out that there is the potential for a repeat, and that this is exactly how it could happen.

lern_too_spel 7y ago

Agreed. A better analogy is to what is going on in Xinjiang. Apple's handover of access to all Chinese users' iCloud data should be viewed accordingly.