# How We Get From Here To Internment Camps **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [November 16, 2016, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186 "2016-11-16T18:22:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/81 "2016-11-18T05:16:07Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Clearly, you’ve never eaten at Little Ceasars. Hey, I happen to like Little Caesar’s on occasion! ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/82 "2016-11-18T15:01:56Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > The idea of registering Muslims is a violation of America’s liberal values. To be more inclusive the government should register all citizens from birth and track them using computer chips. Just to be safe. The Japaese internment was justified because we were at war with Japan. Well, our new gov’t believes we are **at war** with Radical Islamic Terrorism. Therefore, all Muslims are a security threat. The Japanese who were rounded up were not combatants or spies, were they? If Congress wants to justify it, they can. It would be reeeeally stupid and divisive, but the could do it. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/83 "2016-11-18T21:18:07Z")
> [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > … Comparing 1930s Germany and 2016 US is not apples and oranges, it’s apples and turtles. > #4 - So, this is can’t-win for DT. He goes racist: Hitler. He goes full-Mandela: Hitler. > #3 - Same as 4. He let’s violence unchecked: Hitler. He stops the violence: Hitler. > #2 - Who’d be the “Prussian Generals” here? SA? Hitler wanted to invade other countries, lebensraum and all that shit. > #1 - Internment camps? Boycotting Muslim businesses. In the Internet era they’d get swamped with orders. > > I’m not saying DT is angel, he’s a bombastic buffon prone to say stupid (sometimes dangerous) things. Making him Hitler even before his done one thing is to preemptively poison the well. _After_ it happens, it’s too late to stop it from happening. There’s a saying that you appear to be determined to mock: > [@](#): > > _ **Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it** _. ----George Santayana You seem to be claiming “it can’t happen here.” On what grounds do you believe the USA is immune to authoritarianism? ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/84 "2016-11-18T22:57:51Z")
> [@Sherrerd](#): > > _After_ it happens, it’s too late to stop it from happening. > > There’s a saying that you appear to be determined to mock: > > You seem to be claiming “it can’t happen here.” On what grounds do you believe the USA is immune to authoritarianism? Already has. 1942 and the FDR Administration internment if the Japanese. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/85 "2016-11-18T23:04:19Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Already has. 1942 and the FDR Administration internment if the Japanese. Right, and Kris Kobach, Trump transition-team member, has already had experience making registries of Muslims (as has been mentioned earlier here). > [@](#): > > Under the 2002 National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, _ **which Kobach helped design** _, people from “higher risk” countries were interrogated and fingerprinted upon entering the country. The “special registration” program required some noncitizen males over the age of 16 to register in person and occasionally notify the government of their whereabouts. > > Following complaints that the program violated civil liberties and was discriminatory toward Muslims, the special registration program ended in 2003. > **[Trump Team Has Plan to Start Building Wall, Maybe Reinstate Muslim Registry](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/11/trump-team-has-plans-for-wall-reinstating-muslim-registry.html)** > > According to Kris Kobach, architect of several extreme anti-immigration laws, who could become attorney general. (emphasis mine) Are Trump-apologists claiming that Kobach was added to the Trump team purely at random or by coincidence? ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/86 "2016-11-18T23:11:55Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > The worlds most extensive and sophisticated surrvelliance apparatus. Soon to be in Trumps hands. Terrific. It’s in the hands of the man who said this: “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.” - Donald Trump, speech to National Achievers Congress , 2011 ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/87 "2016-11-18T23:18:12Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > Remember that more than 50% of the population voted down Trump. American’s aren’t going to sit idly by while innocent citizens are rounded up in interment camps. Taking this action based on lead to civil and uncivil disobedience against the illegal orders, if not out and out civil war. > > The only scenario that I can think of that would come close to leading to this would be nuclear terrorism with hundreds of thousands of casualties. I don’t think it would be ‘internment camps’ per se, but we would definitely see a spike in detentions. The rest would simply not be allowed into the country and/or strongly encouraged to move elsewhere. Internment camps are bad PR. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/88 "2016-11-18T23:39:49Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > I don’t think it would be ‘internment camps’ per se, but we would definitely see a spike in detentions. The rest would simply not be allowed into the country and/or strongly encouraged to move elsewhere. Internment camps are bad PR. Certainly they’d call them something else. “Opportunity camps,” perhaps. Private prisons are going to be popping up like mushrooms–taxpayers pay, and the private prison owners have reason to be grateful to Trump for the profits that will fill their bank accounts. (If you want to build up a base of oligarchs who will support your regime, privatization is the way to go.) No doubt many of them will specialize in ‘terrorists’ (read: pretty much any Muslim man between the ages of 12 and 82). ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/89 "2016-11-18T23:41:54Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I don’t know if I’d call people who were willing to beat their neighbors to death with clubs at the drop of a hat “ordinary”. There are very few people willing to do such a thing here in America. Based on… what? American history has plenty of incidents of lynch mobs. Genocide and forced relocation and/or permanent internment of Natives. The German nation was considered highly civilized prior to WWII. _Of course_ it could happen here. Americans are human beings and like all human beings they are capable of atrocities. That doesn’t mean they’ll commit them, but the notion they’re immune to that sort of evil in dangerous self-delusion. > [@ThelmaLou](#): > > The Japaese internment was justified because we were at war with Japan. No, it wasn’t justified. If it had been all the Germans and Italians would have been rounded up and imprisoned, too, because we were just as much at war with them, too. It was racism and an unjustified violation of what most consider to be core American values - all men are equal, innocent until proven guilty, and so foth. > [@](#): > > Well, our new gov’t believes we are **at war** with Radical Islamic Terrorism. Therefore, all Muslims are a security threat. That’s the flaw - no, not all Muslims are RIT’s. In fact, very few of them are. Just as there are very few Christians who shoot doctors or blow up Federal buildings containing a day care along with offices. > [@](#): > > The Japanese who were rounded up were not combatants or spies, were they? No, they weren’t, and that’s why it was wrong - the US locked up a lot of completely innocent people for no other reason than their ethnicity. Many of those locked up had been born in America. Some of their families had been US citizens for multiple generations. It was a travesty. > [@](#): > > If Congress wants to justify it, they can. It would be reeeeally stupid and divisive, but the could do it. Sure, Congress has previously done illegal things - for example, the Indian Removals of the early 1800’s under Andrew Jackson _after_ the US Supreme Court declared the plan illegal. The non-judicial parts of the government just flat-out ignored the SCotUS and did it anyway, forced marched thousand of people inadequately clothed through late fall and early winter to a location over a thousand miles from their homeland. The ones who died along the way? Too bad - and who cares, right? > [@Sherrerd](#): > > On what grounds do you believe the USA is immune to authoritarianism? I suspect the group believe the USA is immune to authoritarianism overlaps heavily with the group who think the USA is incapable of instituting the sort of health system everyone else in the developed world has done. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/90 "2016-11-18T23:45:29Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > … I suspect the group believe the USA is immune to authoritarianism overlaps heavily with the group who think the USA is incapable of instituting the sort of health system everyone else in the developed world has done. Good point. (I’d laugh, but the laughter would be very bitter.) ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/91 "2016-11-18T23:45:57Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > …No, it wasn’t justified… I think she meant to suggest that was the _justification_ deployed to support something that was not, actually, _justified_. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/92 "2016-11-18T23:51:08Z")
After 9/11 we saw spikes in the detention of suspicious Muslim immigrants, so this is not without precedent, not even in modern times. I suspect there will be a difference in terms of degree. If some Muslim commits an attack on American soil, it’s possible that the government starts going through that person’s Facebook accounts and finds anyone with any connection – even remote ones – and starts interviewing them and detaining them as “persons of interest.” A little harder to do with Americans, but not hard at all with immigrants, including permanent residents. In the meantime, those from predominately Muslim countries would be asked to leave the country, even if they’re in the process of moving from permanent residency to citizenship, even if they’ve been here 10, 15, or 20 years. I could absolutely see that. This could include Indians as well – how do we know whether they’re Muslim or not? ---
**Author:** ![Zero-syde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Zero-syde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zero-syde)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/93 "2016-11-18T23:58:25Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Maybe now would be a good time to stop smashing windows, burning things, and blocking traffic? The wording of the law would have made Martin Luther King’s peaceful sit ins a felony. “Disrupting business” includes, but is not limited by, _anything under the sun_ that might make a customer say “not just this second.” So even _being present_ near the business would qualify. Essentially _all_ forms of protest would be illegal. It wouldn’t survive supreme court scrutiny, unless, say, one recent candidate got the chance to court pack… Let us all wish happy and long lives for our present supreme court justices. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2016, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/94 "2016-11-19T00:01:54Z")
Yup, Trump and his jackbooted thugs will round us up and take our guns! And cede our sovereignty to the U.N! And DEATH CAMPS!!! Wait, that was _Obama_ who was gonna do that. Guess he never got around to it. It’s the same principle, though. Y’all are sounding _a bit_ like _those_ folks. C’mon, people. Trump can do a lot of damage, but internment camps ain’t among the possibilities. ---
**Author:** ![Zero-syde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Zero-syde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zero-syde)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2016, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/95 "2016-11-19T00:09:41Z")
> [@Typo\_Negative](#): > > Yup, Trump and his jackbooted thugs will round us up and take our guns! And cede our sovereignty to the U.N! And DEATH CAMPS!!! > > Wait, that was _Obama_ who was gonna do that. Guess he never got around to it. It’s the same principle, though. Y’all are sounding _a bit_ like _those_ folks. Outrageous false equivalency and you know it. Obama never said anything like any of what he was accused of. The problem is, Trump did run on what he was accused of. Trump campaigned on it, made it the core of his platform. Even if Trump himself isn’t heir fuhrer, Trump is surrounding himself with people who have publicly advocated for similar measures. This is not the case of a moderate, center-right candidate/administration being labeled a communist. This is a literal _definition_ of extreme-right, reactionary\* candidate/administration being labeled an extreme rightist. We’re going off of what was _said_, in widespread media. I challenge you to find **any** equivalent from Obama. > [@Typo\_Negative](#): > > C’mon, people. Trump can do a lot of damage, but internment camps ain’t among the possibilities. The language and rhetoric is almost identical to certain historical figures. The will is there amongst the nuttier right wingers, and unfortunately they’re the “base” now. Trump’s policies weren’t determined by mainstream republicans, the saner portions of the right wing were dragged kicking and screaming into the KKK’s wet dream. Edit: \*The word conservative shares a root with _conserve_ for a darn good reason. The political alignment associated with “returning to a bygone age” or “making \_\_\_\_ great again” is Reactionary, not Conservative. Reactionaries, fueled by revaunchism (“we don’t win anymore”) have historically been **very bad**. Mussolini, Hitler, & Franco spring to mind because they had the most impact in living memory, but pretty much every government fueled by revaunchism spirals into dark waters. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2016, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/96 "2016-11-19T00:10:43Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > I think she meant to suggest that was the _justification_ deployed to support something that was not, actually, _justified_. Thank you, that is what I meant. And when I said that the Republicans believe we are at war with Islam, therefore all Muslims are dangerous, I was most definitely NOT staying my pov-- I was hypothesizing how the Republicans would justify registering and rounding up Muslims. American citizens were interned in a camp in Texas during WWII \: > [@](#): > > **[The Train to Crystal City: FDR’s Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America’s Only Family Internment Camp During World War II](https://www.amazon.com/Train-Crystal-City-Prisoner-Internment/dp/1451693672/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479513875&sr=8-1&keywords=jan+jarboe)** > > By now, most Americans past high school have learned something about the internment of Japanese-Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1940; until recently a not-much-discussed piece of history—the internment of citizens mostly born on our soil—was, to many, a blight on the human rights record of the Roosevelt administration. But what The Train to Crystal City makes clear is that Executive Order 9066, which paved the way for internment of Japanese Americans, was just one of the questionable human rights decisions the wartime administration made. > > According to this dramatic, copiously detailed but still very readable account, a camp in Crystal City, Texas housed **American-born children of German and Italian descent as well as Japanese** , and many of those children were traded for “more ostensibly important Americans – diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, and missionaries” who were stuck behind enemy lines. (The program was dubbed the “quiet passage.”) > > How did such a thing happen? To find out, author Jan Jarboe Russell looked into government files (surprise: Eleanor Roosevelt did not agree with her husband the president and publicly abhorred internment of “Oriental looking people,” suggesting that it was un-American) and interviewed now-adult survivors who had been in the camp as children, most notably a Japanese-American girl named Sumi and a German American one named Ingrid. Though the two never met, their stories, taken together, celebrate the pluck and resilience on the part of many survivors. They also paint a vivid picture, all too applicable today, of a country beset by wartime fear, bigotry and governmental misguidance. ---
**Author:** ![standingwave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@standingwave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/standingwave)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2016, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/97 "2016-11-19T00:17:03Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > Terrific. It’s in the hands of the man who said this: > > “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.” - Donald Trump, speech to National Achievers Congress , 2011 Inspiring words. I hope that they make it onto his memorial statue on the National Mall. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2016, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/98 "2016-11-19T00:17:04Z")
I am Jewish and I am scared. There, I said it. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2016, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/99 "2016-11-19T00:23:08Z")
I’m a Texas boy, and you can’t get more _goy_ than that without taking advanced classes. And I’m with you on that one. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2016, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186/100 "2016-11-19T00:25:56Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I am Jewish and I am scared. There, I said it. It’s perfectly reasonable. In my opinion, Jewish Americans are one divorce (meaning Ivanka versus Jared Kushner) away from becoming the targets of major scapegoating. Scapegoating Muslims is all very well, but it’s not what really revs up the base–not as much as scapegoating Jewish people does. More history to the hate. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-we-get-from-here-to-internment-camps/772186.md?page=6)