4 ms·

I assume they are referring to this: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/expanding-migrant-operations-center-at-naval-station-guantanamo-bay

I assume they are referring to this: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/expanding-migrant-operations-center-at-naval-station-guantanamo-bay-to-full-capacity/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/expa...

southernplaces7 2y ago
I assumed they were referring to something like this but wanted to be sure. It's also way the fuck off base to call this a concentration camp for undesirables with all the insinuations of Nazism that come with that. This kind of Trump = Hilter hyperbole at the drop of a hat hazes all the very real and heavy criticisms that can be made of this administration. Gitmo being used as a transit camp for deported illegal immigrants is not at all as say, Sachsenhausen or Dachau being used to illegally dumb german citizens and torture them there indefinitely because they criticized the ruling regime. When Trump starts trying to dump opposing intellectuals, Hollywood producers and "wayward" reporters or writers into Gitmo for indefinite detention, then we can make some firmer claims of literal dictatorship. If anything, the use of Gitmo under Bush II, when actual U.S citizens were held there indefinitely under terrorism charges was closer to the mark than this now.
- misnome 2y ago
  Did the Nazi program start at those levels? Or did it start with exactly this rhetoric and excuses?
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    That was probably a rhetorical question, but just-in-case, the Nazis absolutely started with deportations many years before the gas chambers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_evacuation_and_expulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_evacuation_and_ex... They even plotted to forcibly deport victims to fenced-in zones on an island which they would seize from another country, putting it outside their laws at home. Except it wasn't Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan
  - southernplaces7 2y ago
    The Nazi program of concentration camps and terror started almost immediately, and included an enormous amount of overt, obvious, very violent state repression against anyone at all who criticized the regime. This included sending them to the first camps, formed in 1933, right after Hitler's appointment, and openly torturing and beating people, or executing them extrajudicially. None of anything from Trump's government is at all comparable so far and making such comparisons, aside from being a genuinely idiotic case of ideological exaggeration, is also an insult to real victims of real historical concentration camps and violent regimes. For all the self-congratulatory patting on the back by many readers on HN about their "superior" intellectual reasoning, I see a remarkable abundance of largely failing at such reasoning when it comes to many comment threads and subjects on this site.
    - misnome 2y ago
      Wikipedia says it was two months after Hitler’s appointment before the first camps were established. It’s been less than two weeks and you are already doing the groundwork to preemptively excuse it.
- anigbrowl 2y ago
  Concentration camps have been operated by many regimes, not just the nazis. That equation is in your head. I am however personally pessimistic about the probity of a camp run on a remote island without any oversight. And I think insisting that everyone wait until after a dictatorship is fully embedded and engaging in retaliation against political enemies (after making open threats to do so) is strategically stupid, much like saying you need to let an asailant get in 4 or 5 punches just to be sure the first two weren't accidental.
  - khazhoux 2y ago
    > Concentration camps have been operated by many regimes, not just the nazis. That equation is in your head. They may been operated by hundreds of regimes, but the term is 100% identified with Nazis now. It's a rather daft statement to say that these are not equated.
    - BeetleB 2y ago
      > They may been operated by hundreds of regimes, but the term is 100% identified with Nazis now The reason this is being discussed here is because it isn't.
  - southernplaces7 2y ago
    >I think insisting that everyone wait until after a dictatorship is fully embedded and engaging in retaliation against political enemies You realize this is a democratically elected government whose leader was already president once without a dictatorship? Just a couple of weeks ago a federal court stopped his plans to end birthright citizenship in its tracks, and what was Trump's response? "We'll appeal it in court".... Oh damn! all those dictatoring plans stopped by the monstrous hurdle of constitutionally mandated judicial oversight.... You'd almost think he's not quite.... a dictator. This kind of tedious hyperbole not only ran rampant before and during the first four years, it also made it harder to make genuine criticisms of Trump gain attention. With so much hysteria about every bullshit little thing being touted far and wide as an example of a 21st century Hitlerism, it's easy for the critics to be viewed as a laughing stock except in their own little echo chambers of like-thinkers.
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  If you find yourself in a situation where you feel compelled to quibble over fine details of the definition of terms like " concentration camp", this is an indication that you are desperately compromised in some way.
  - exe34 2y ago
    the parallel with the Nazis for me is the building of it on foreign soil instead of somewhere with judicial oversight - even while they own the supreme court and Congress. that and the Nazi salute at the inauguration.
  - timeon 2y ago
    What would you expect when people are even arguing against their eyes about Fascist salute.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > It's also way the fuck off base to call this a concentration camp for undesirables with all the insinuations of Nazism that come with that. Tell me, how many other governments can you list that planned to deport large numbers of people living in their country out to a special island they controlled in order to take advantage of its extraterritorial legal limbo separating it from the source country? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan If I had a nickel every time that happened, I'd have two nickels, but it's weird that it's happened twice.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    [dead]
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      > they broke the law crossing the border illegally The majority here crossed legally and overstayed their visa. That's just basic table-stakes knowledge for this issue, please remember it. Bonus points if you know that overstaying is a civil infraction like a parking ticket, below the level of a misdemeanor. > these initial rounds of deportations are prioritizing illegal aliens with violent criminal records. That's what the professional liar says, but why would you trust him on that? https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-deportation-colombia-ice-arrests-b2688591.html https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit... > These people are factually the worst of the worst. How the hell can you "factually" know that when the Trump administration still won't even explain what criteria they are using!? (Even assuming they'll be making any honest effort at all.)
  - hiharryhere 2y ago
    Not defending it… but Australia has done this for decades. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Solution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Solution Most famously on Nauru https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru_Regional_Processing_Centre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru_Regional_Processing_Ce...
    - 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Spivak 2y ago
  I think you've associated the entirety of concentration camps with the one that's taught in WWII history. There are extermination camps where the goal is efficient mass-murder, forced labor camps where the goal is slavery, both of which are a kind of concentration camps which is simply a place where groups of people are illegally detained. Don't focus too hard on the illegal part because it's always legal in the state that does it. The Japanese internment camps the US used were concentration camps. In a weird way the events of WWII saved the US from going down the same path because we were on it. Anything literally Hitler did became politically toxic and it's a bit worrying that this toxicity is wearing off. It kept us far away from the fence. The thing that matters for concentration camps is large groups of related civilians detained to advance a political goal— to restore Germany to its former greatness or to make America great again.

southernplaces7 2y ago

I assumed they were referring to something like this but wanted to be sure. It's also way the fuck off base to call this a concentration camp for undesirables with all the insinuations of Nazism that come with that. This kind of Trump = Hilter hyperbole at the drop of a hat hazes all the very real and heavy criticisms that can be made of this administration. Gitmo being used as a transit camp for deported illegal immigrants is not at all as say, Sachsenhausen or Dachau being used to illegally dumb german citizens and torture them there indefinitely because they criticized the ruling regime. When Trump starts trying to dump opposing intellectuals, Hollywood producers and "wayward" reporters or writers into Gitmo for indefinite detention, then we can make some firmer claims of literal dictatorship. If anything, the use of Gitmo under Bush II, when actual U.S citizens were held there indefinitely under terrorism charges was closer to the mark than this now.

misnome 2y ago
Did the Nazi program start at those levels? Or did it start with exactly this rhetoric and excuses?
- Terr_ 2y ago
  That was probably a rhetorical question, but just-in-case, the Nazis absolutely started with deportations many years before the gas chambers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_evacuation_and_expulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_evacuation_and_ex... They even plotted to forcibly deport victims to fenced-in zones on an island which they would seize from another country, putting it outside their laws at home. Except it wasn't Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan
- southernplaces7 2y ago
  The Nazi program of concentration camps and terror started almost immediately, and included an enormous amount of overt, obvious, very violent state repression against anyone at all who criticized the regime. This included sending them to the first camps, formed in 1933, right after Hitler's appointment, and openly torturing and beating people, or executing them extrajudicially. None of anything from Trump's government is at all comparable so far and making such comparisons, aside from being a genuinely idiotic case of ideological exaggeration, is also an insult to real victims of real historical concentration camps and violent regimes. For all the self-congratulatory patting on the back by many readers on HN about their "superior" intellectual reasoning, I see a remarkable abundance of largely failing at such reasoning when it comes to many comment threads and subjects on this site.
  - misnome 2y ago
    Wikipedia says it was two months after Hitler’s appointment before the first camps were established. It’s been less than two weeks and you are already doing the groundwork to preemptively excuse it.
anigbrowl 2y ago
Concentration camps have been operated by many regimes, not just the nazis. That equation is in your head. I am however personally pessimistic about the probity of a camp run on a remote island without any oversight. And I think insisting that everyone wait until after a dictatorship is fully embedded and engaging in retaliation against political enemies (after making open threats to do so) is strategically stupid, much like saying you need to let an asailant get in 4 or 5 punches just to be sure the first two weren't accidental.
- khazhoux 2y ago
  > Concentration camps have been operated by many regimes, not just the nazis. That equation is in your head. They may been operated by hundreds of regimes, but the term is 100% identified with Nazis now. It's a rather daft statement to say that these are not equated.
  - BeetleB 2y ago
    > They may been operated by hundreds of regimes, but the term is 100% identified with Nazis now The reason this is being discussed here is because it isn't.
- southernplaces7 2y ago
  >I think insisting that everyone wait until after a dictatorship is fully embedded and engaging in retaliation against political enemies You realize this is a democratically elected government whose leader was already president once without a dictatorship? Just a couple of weeks ago a federal court stopped his plans to end birthright citizenship in its tracks, and what was Trump's response? "We'll appeal it in court".... Oh damn! all those dictatoring plans stopped by the monstrous hurdle of constitutionally mandated judicial oversight.... You'd almost think he's not quite.... a dictator. This kind of tedious hyperbole not only ran rampant before and during the first four years, it also made it harder to make genuine criticisms of Trump gain attention. With so much hysteria about every bullshit little thing being touted far and wide as an example of a 21st century Hitlerism, it's easy for the critics to be viewed as a laughing stock except in their own little echo chambers of like-thinkers.
forgetfreeman 2y ago
If you find yourself in a situation where you feel compelled to quibble over fine details of the definition of terms like " concentration camp", this is an indication that you are desperately compromised in some way.
- exe34 2y ago
  the parallel with the Nazis for me is the building of it on foreign soil instead of somewhere with judicial oversight - even while they own the supreme court and Congress. that and the Nazi salute at the inauguration.
- timeon 2y ago
  What would you expect when people are even arguing against their eyes about Fascist salute.
Terr_ 2y ago
> It's also way the fuck off base to call this a concentration camp for undesirables with all the insinuations of Nazism that come with that. Tell me, how many other governments can you list that planned to deport large numbers of people living in their country out to a special island they controlled in order to take advantage of its extraterritorial legal limbo separating it from the source country? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan If I had a nickel every time that happened, I'd have two nickels, but it's weird that it's happened twice.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  [dead]
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    > they broke the law crossing the border illegally The majority here crossed legally and overstayed their visa. That's just basic table-stakes knowledge for this issue, please remember it. Bonus points if you know that overstaying is a civil infraction like a parking ticket, below the level of a misdemeanor. > these initial rounds of deportations are prioritizing illegal aliens with violent criminal records. That's what the professional liar says, but why would you trust him on that? https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-deportation-colombia-ice-arrests-b2688591.html https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit... > These people are factually the worst of the worst. How the hell can you "factually" know that when the Trump administration still won't even explain what criteria they are using!? (Even assuming they'll be making any honest effort at all.)
- hiharryhere 2y ago
  Not defending it… but Australia has done this for decades. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Solution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Solution Most famously on Nauru https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru_Regional_Processing_Centre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru_Regional_Processing_Ce...
  - 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Spivak 2y ago
I think you've associated the entirety of concentration camps with the one that's taught in WWII history. There are extermination camps where the goal is efficient mass-murder, forced labor camps where the goal is slavery, both of which are a kind of concentration camps which is simply a place where groups of people are illegally detained. Don't focus too hard on the illegal part because it's always legal in the state that does it. The Japanese internment camps the US used were concentration camps. In a weird way the events of WWII saved the US from going down the same path because we were on it. Anything literally Hitler did became politically toxic and it's a bit worrying that this toxicity is wearing off. It kept us far away from the fence. The thing that matters for concentration camps is large groups of related civilians detained to advance a political goal— to restore Germany to its former greatness or to make America great again.