Calling the concentration camp in Florida Alligator Alcatraz libels the real Alcatraz. The inmates in the former had been duly convicted of crimes. They were fed (and not forced to eat doglike with hands cuffed behind their backs), had beds, not forced to sleep in concrete floors, surely had some kind of medical care and meds as needed. They were not treated as animals. I think Alligator Auschwitz is a much more appropriate name. And I can only hope that the people running get to spend a long time in a real prison.
I wouldn’t assume too much good about the prisoners’ treatment at Alcatraz. Many of our prisons are a complete horror show where some men are literally raped to death.
Either way it’s a travesty and a stain on our country. Guantanamo is also fucking awful but seems narrower in scope. What’s happening with that facility is going to keep happening and there will be more and more of these places built. It’s more comparable to Japanese internment where people were also imprisoned without due process due to racism and which is also a stain on our country. There is no limit to the fucked up things this country has done in the name of “security."
It took a long time for me to find out that Alligator Alcatraz was actually the real name of the facility. I had assumed it would have some long official name like Federal Immigration Detention Facility FL-Ochopee and that the Alligator thing was just the nickname. Was pretty shocking to see it was the actual name, just like the comical One Big Beautiful Bill.
You meant to say the inmates in the latter, right? As in, the inmates in the real Alcatraz had been convicted of crimes? (I think so, but so much of life confuses me now.)
The inmates in Alcatraz were there for what they did. The prisoners in Auschwitz were there for who they were. Alligator Auschwitz seems a bit more appropriate.
In a world where people scream and are deeply insulted by micro-aggressions and cultural appropriation, lets keep in mind that in the pasr, there were genuine horrors, far, far worse than what we are seeing today. Using accurate language is important, so we don’t diminish the past.
Alligator Alcatraz might be worse than real Alcatraz was, but it’s not like the only two levels of badness a facility can have are “normal prison” and “death camp”.
I would agree with that, if we had rulers in power that had any shame. It is not cheap at all to point out what before it was a death camp, Auschwitz was a just a concentration camp for the Third Reich’s military and political enemies in Poland. 2 years later it became a death camp for Jews and the Nazi enemies. The point here is that yeah, we would like to prevent that typical worsening and prevent it from becoming a thing, and to stop the criminal unfairness that is taking place now.
As it is, I will said (with some corrections) what I said when trump made his neo-concentration camps in his first administration:
“I will have to say that Trump is not Hitler, but he is a very dedicated Nazi cosplayer.
And after looking at the neo concentration camps, there was a difference even with many of the non death camps of WWII: deliberate neglect of the prisoners corresponded with the German policy to cause the deaths of large numbers of Jews and POWs through over-crowded, squalid living conditions and a lack of reasonable medical care.
Of course I did say that there was a difference…
…was.
Nasty Nazi cosplayer that Trump is, he can not set the current camps more harsher (Why do I feel though that he will still try?) so letting nature “dispose” of the immigrants and refugees is a convenient way to try to avoid responsibility. But, as me and other historians conclude, the holocaust denier’s excuse that ‘disease in the camps = that the Nazis were blameless’ is poppy cock. Even then the fascists knew how to set things up so as to make specific concentration camps to be as deadly as possible. While today this will not be as bad as the inmates getting Typhus (but with the current CDC I would not be surprised). It is very naive for the administration to avoid responsibility for the unnecessary danger and likely deaths and disappearances of family members of immigrants (many of them innocent) that will take place.”
When I was in the “Trolls R US" thread but a few moments ago, I saw a link to a thread titled “Fuck This” in the suggestions at the bottom. Intrigued, I followed the link, which was a thread by a poster complaining about the reception he got for another thread he posted on 2019 comparing Trump’s migrant camps to death camps.
That comparison, as we now know, was vastly overblown.
I think Trump’s current policy is certainly worse than his 2019 policy. I don’t see any evidence that it’s that much worse.