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If ICE facilities qualify as concentration camps, then so does every prison. At that point it's no longer a useful term. Except politically, of course, which i
by leereeves 7y ago
If ICE facilities qualify as concentration camps, then so does every prison. At that point it's no longer a useful term.
Except politically, of course, which is why terms like that are abused so often.
- claudeganon 7y agoThe only abuse of terms is by people who have difficulty or confronting the political and moral reality of what's happening. Holocaust scholars have already said that drawing these parallels in these specific circumstances is needed to prevent a reprisal of violence and genocide: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/07/01/an-open-letter-to-the-director-of-the-holocaust-memorial-museum/?fbclid=IwAR1AoKWPKzbxZfxd8ia48BuBjDfbyerfRizy7SZziGGWqnCShfUQ8LFZjyY https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/07/01/an-open-letter-to-t...
- leereeves 7y agoYou've really gone off the rails if you think enforcing immigration law, as all countries do and the US has done for decades, is going to lead to genocide.
- claudeganon 7y agoSorry, but you’re not going to succeed in gaslighting anyone with these kinds of clearly dishonest talking points. It’s obvious to anyone not entirely lost to right-wing ideology that the Trump administration is built on scapegoating immigrants and targeting them for violence. If you don’t think that has consequences or historical precedent, you’re either oblivious or onboard with all the malice and horror.
- leereeves 7y agoYou're clearly here to "gaslight" people with extreme rhetoric and hostility, not facts and reason, so I'll simply wish you a wonderful life.
- LiNeXT 7y agoThat letter says nothing of the sort.
- eesmith 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment points out that internment "is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges, and thus no trial. ... Interned persons may be held in prisons or in facilities known as internment camps, also known as concentration camps." It then quotes The American Heritage Dictionary's definition of concentration camp as: "A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group which the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable." Ergo, prisons which only contain people who have been convicted in a trial or agreed to a plea bargain cannot be regarded as concentration camps. By comparison, the US held Japanese Americans in concentration camps during WWII, and held Filipino civilians in concentration camps ("reconcentrados") during the Philippine–American War. These can be distinguished from prisons as there was no trial for those held. As I understand it, if the people being held at ICE are asylum seekers, then entry into the US is not illegal (even if they are not granted asylum). The US instead argues that they can be detained until that process is finished, even if that is indefinite. This certainly sounds a lot closer to the definition of a concentration camp than US prisons containing prisoners who have be convicted in a court process. In any case, we're talking about people in an organization which argued that the requirement for "safe and sanitary" conditions was so vague that it was okay to refuse toothbrushes, soap or adequate bedding to children. Are all US juvenile prisons the same way? No. The 'typically under harsh conditions' is yet another distinction between "concentration camp" and "prison". That said, many US jails and prisons are horrid, inhumane places. "No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones." - Nelson Mandela in Long Walk to Freedom.