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> 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 t

> 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.
      - anoncake 7y ago
        The Nazis didn't just randomly decide to exterminate the Jews and adopt facism as an excuse.
        ncmncm 7y ago
        They did randomly decide to exterminate Jews, and Roma, and gays, and Catholic Poles. They were predisposed to fascism because it lent cover to gratuitous violence. Fascism is never a reasoned position. It provides a social framework for people's worst impulses.
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.

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.
    - anoncake 7y ago
      The Nazis didn't just randomly decide to exterminate the Jews and adopt facism as an excuse.
      - ncmncm 7y ago
        They did randomly decide to exterminate Jews, and Roma, and gays, and Catholic Poles. They were predisposed to fascism because it lent cover to gratuitous violence. Fascism is never a reasoned position. It provides a social framework for people's worst impulses.

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.