An Expert on Concentration Camps Says That's Exactly What the U.S. Is Running at the Border

[BeckyDem]

( Trump World )

By Jack Holmes
Jun 13, 2019


Surely, the United States of America could not operate concentration camps. In the American consciousness, the term is synonymous with the Nazi death machines across the European continent that the Allies began the process of dismantling 75 years ago this month. But while the world-historical horrors of the Holocaust are unmatched, they are only the most extreme and inhuman manifestation of a concentration-camp system—which, according to Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, has a more global definition. There have been concentration camps in France, South Africa, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and—with Japanese internment—the United States. In fact, she contends we are operating such a system right now in response to a very real spike in arrivals at our southern border.

“We have what I would call a concentration camp system,” Pitzer says, “and the definition of that in my book is, mass detention of civilians without trial.”

Historians use a broader definition of concentration camps, as well.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a27813648/concentration-camps-southern-border-migrant-detention-facilities-trump/

[dlk]

1. Concentration Camps are a Form of Torture

Unfortunately, torture was normalized under the Bush administration. The current concentration camps and their attendant abuses and human rights violations are a “normal” outgrowth of their demonizing “the other.”

[Saviolo]

2. People have too narrow a definition of "concentration camp"

The Nazi death camps were not the only example of concentration camps, even during WWII. The Nazis ran several different kinds of concentration camps, including forced labour camps, and the death camps. But the Nazis were not the only, or the first to use concentration camps. Robert Evans' really interesting podcast "Behind The Bastards" did a pretty comprehensive look at the history of concentration camps, right up to the ones currently operating at the US/Mexico border:

https://www.behindthebastards.com/podcasts/concentration-camps-are-back-so-lets-talk-about-their-history.htm

[appalachiablue]

5. The Brits and Germans used cc's in So. Africa if not before.

It's associated with the development of steel barbed wire fencing for cattle in the US West in the late 1800s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbed_wire

[Saviolo]

6. The pearl clutching on this is driving me mad.

AOC tweeted a link to that article actually calling them concentration camps, and the pearl clutching of people saying "How DARE you compare those fun time summer camps for kiddies to the horrors of 6 million Jews being murdered!" as though the nazi regime leapt right in with with murdering. Nope, they started with concentration and detainment camps, then labour camps, then came the death camps. It was a slow march, not a sprint, and the slower it went, the easier it was to ease the people into believing it was all just hunky dory.

And as you (and Robert Evans in his podcast) said, concentration camps were used long before the nazis adopted them, and have been used plenty of times since, including in the USA and Canada in the form of internment camps. It's just marketing the same old horrors under a new name so that people won't associate the horrors.

And apparently it's working.

[hughee99]

9. Exactly, we just need to change what people think concentration camps are,

So that a politician’s statement will sound more reasonable.

[Mosby]

10. that may be so...

But the phrase is being used because of it's association to Nazi camps.

[Saviolo]

11. I disagree.

People are calling these concentration camps because they're concentration camps.

[Mosby]

12. She literally referenced the Holocaust in her statement

"the U.S. is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are.”

She continued: “If that doesn’t bother you … I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that ‘Never again’ means something.”

She is quite clearly referring to nazi style concentration camps.

[Saviolo]

13. Because that is the worst-case scenario that we all know of.

We're trying to stop things before they get to that point. It doesn't matter if they're "nazi style" concentration camps or "British style" concentration camps or "American style" concentration camps. Getting upset about the terminology of describing things by what they actually are when there are *people in cages* is really tired.

People are upset about the use of the word "concentration camps" but not the actual concentration camps.

[volstork]

3. We ran them in WWII as well

for Japanese-Americans. We've always been dirty and just pretending not to be.

[Eugene]

4. One of these new "temporary emergency influx shelters" will be on the site of a Japanese internment

camp at Fort Sill. Back in WWII, the euphemism was "relocation center."

Trump Administration To Detain Migrant Children On Site Of WWII Japanese American Internment Camp (Huffington Post)

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/undocumented-immigrant-children-detained-internment-camp_n_5d00ea38e4b0e7e781705ded

[BeckyDem]

7. 99-Year-Old Nuremberg Prosecutor Calls Trump's Detention of Children a 'Crime Against Humanity'

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/08/08/99-year-old-nuremberg-prosecutor-calls-trumps-detention-children-crime-against

[BeckyDem]

8. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ‏

Ah yes, because history knows that people who run concentration camp systems almost always acknowledge to the public what they’re doing.

Link to tweet