Probably. People don’t care about overcrowded prisons that contain actual Americans. They are definitely not going to care about overcrowded prisons that contain brown, poor, non-Americans.
We both know that there is a difference. I agree with your historical argument. However, there is no question that since 1945, when you say “concentration camp” the first thing anyone thinks of, me or you included, is the Nazi genocide camps.
We can bemoan the fact that most people aren’t well versed in history, but it still remains that the meaning of the word has evolved. We might as well beat our heads against the wall and argue that the swastika does not mean Nazism as it had very positive meanings throughout history.
Things change (and it is somewhat amusing that a conservative would argue that to a liberal. 
)
If you agree that the migrant campus fit the historical definition of the phrase, then I’ll consider that a big win.
Oh hey, another addition to the “did not read the thread, the OP, or even the first article linked in the first sentence” club. Let’s just not engage, eh? They’re painfully wrong and it’s very apparent from the very silly nature of the comparisons they’re making. (Look, I know the Esquire article is long. But it’s really important, and if you cannot be bothered to at least skim it, you really have no business telling me my premise is wrong.)
The idea that these are definitely not concentration camps because “concentration camps = nazis” is pretty silly, but let’s assume for the moment that anyone claiming this has actually read the words of the (multiple) historians I’ve cited throughout this thread. That’s another great reason why we should be concerned that historians, journalists, and human rights groups are calling this a “concentration camp”! They know that connotation as well as you or I. In fact, many of them very explicitly explain what they mean, and point out that this is the start of the camp system, not the end.
As said before: this thread is not about “are these concentration camps”. This thread is about the increasing perception among experts and the growing media attention to the idea that these are concentration camps, and the effects this will have on Trump’s reelection campaign. As said, if you think “this will die down because they’re not concentration camps”, I guess that’s a take, but it’s one I find super unrealistic for any number of reasons. And if you insist on taking that tack, could you find maybe one historian to back up your claims? Just one? Maybe?
Sad to say, I mostly agree with this thinking.
However, if stories about these camps do reach a level of mainstream attention where they become a bona fide issue, Democrats need a genuine alternative plan beyond “let’s not throw these people into camps” – a plan that assures people illegal aliens won’t be running amok in their communities while re-establishing some sanity around immigration and asylum processes.
Otherwise, we risk “Gosh, those camps are terrible” leading to “… but I guess the border must be a terrible problem if that’s the only solution.”
I think this is what destroys the credibility of the administration and those who defend these internment camps. Deliberately separating small children from their parents manifests the administration’s desire to traumatize the migrants. It colors all of the other details that have been described, such as sleeping on cold floors, having minimal food and water, or receiving sub-standard medical care. There are cities around the country that have already indicated they can take migrants in, and the administration won’t have it. So I don’t buy that these are anything other than internment camps. You don’t get the benefit of the doubt when the first thing you do to people with nothing but the clothes on their back after a 1000 mile journey is to traumatize small children by snatching them from their parents, not to be seen for months, if ever again.
…as Budget points out: this isn’t a narrative that most of the Dem politicians want to play out. They view it as politically risky. The politician who has spoken out got predictably attacked with all the expected talking points.
The intention isn’t to have “electoral consequences.” Although this may be one of the eventual results.
The intention is to let the American public know what is happening in the detention camps. Nothing that we have heard about in the last couple of days is new information. For anyone who has been paying attention we have known about this stuff for a while.
But Trump & Co have a near command over the news cycle. They know how to make a story linger in the news and they know how to kill one. They are a propaganda machine. Its why “her emails” effectively killed the Clinton campaign and why nobody cares that Kushner and Pence have done absolutely the same thing.
AOC is one of the few Dems who understands how to control and influence the news cycle. And she has used that power to push the narrative here. Because the reality is that these are, by any normal definition, concentration camps. There is nothing to be gained by pretending they are not. Because things are pretty fucking bad in the camps right now. But they are on track to get even fucking worse.
I think a great many Americans were content to pretend that everything is fine at the detention camps. That the conditions in the camps are comparable to maybe a medium security prison. But that isn’t the truth. I would hope that most Americans, even those that agree with the concept of “holding migrants at the border”, will be shocked, aghast and disgusted to find out that in some cases 155 detainees are kept in a cell that was built for 35. If it takes labelling the camps (correctly) as concentration camps to bring this to people attention then it hasn’t backfired at all.
An overcrowded prison in the US has, at absolute worst, around 150% operational capacity, and almost never more than 105% operational capacity. Nationwide, the average is slightly over 100%.
That’s bad. Make no mistake, a prison being over capacity is never a good thing. A 150% operational capacity means that any given cell meant for 2 may have to fit 3, and the guard:prisoner ratio goes from 1:9 to 1:13 or so. It’s less safe.
That is not what we’re dealing with here.
Here’s a few pictures of conditions at one border camp. Not for “a few hours” or “a day”, but for weeks.
I get it. But a lot of people don’t care. What’s so hard to understand about that? 60 million people don’t care. And they are going to keep not caring when you tell them there are “concentration camps” at the border when they don’t resemble the Nazi concentration camps that everyone knows. “But, but, but the Boer War!” is not going to convince anyone. Historians trying to say what “concentration camp” means in a historical sense are not going to convince anyone. The average American thinks of “concentration camp” as what happened in Nazi Germany. And that is NOT happening here.
I would almost guarantee that if you showed those horrible photos around America, there would be at LEAST 30 million people who would say “Well, they should have stayed in their own country!” And that’s terrible.
Those are horrible conditions that anyone with any sense of compassion at all would know. But every day, I get a free newspaper in the Metro, published by the Washington Post (owned by Jeff Bezos). And I haven’t seen a story in it about the conditions at the camps on the border for a while. Are you saying Trump and his cohorts are somehow preventing the Post from publishing how bad it is? Why aren’t the traditional “liberal leaning” media outlets making this front page news every single day?
So if it works according to plan, it won’t have backfired you say? Fascinating. How about if people just stop reading after yet again they see liberals crying about Trump=Hitler.
Part of making them care is how we speak. When we talk about “overcrowding” and then turn around and say, “Well, American prisons are overcrowded too”, the images we bring to mind are those of American prisons - bad, but nothing worth getting upset about. But that’s not what’s going on. These camps aren’t overcrowded like the American prison system, they’re overcrowded like… well, concentration camps, funnily enough.
There’s a one-word answer to this, an answer these historians keep screaming, that should send chills down everyone’s spine.
“Yet.”
Also, whoops, funny story, here’s another historian (who specializes in the Holocaust, fancy that) calling 'em concentration camps, how did that happen. (Lest anyone click through and get confused: for the record, Nicholas Clairmont is not a historian.)
Practically everybody agreed right off the bat that it would have little if any effect, and it immediately veered into the debate that was going to happen somewhere here, over whether the use of ‘concentration camps’ was legit. And the opinions of my fellow citizens have nothing to do with the latter.
I highly recommend Josh Marshall’s righteous rant about the ‘concentration camp’ debate. I think he hits the nail on the head with this:
Yes, it does seem like a lose/lose situation. Overcrowding! So? Prisons are overcrowded. Concentration Camps! Now you are being ridiculous.
Welcome to the America where people don’t really care.
Sure, but I’m betting it will never, ever be that bad. And nobody believes it will be that bad. I’m not seeing the parallels, because American citizens are not being rounded up and sent to camps. And I am one who actually cares. The people who DON’T care, the ones you want to convince, definitely don’t see the parallels. And saying “concentration camps” and Trump=Hitler is not helping.
That’s some guy on Twitter. You think morons in West Virginia give one rat’s ass what some douche bag academic on Twitter says?
Ooh, another historian chiming in and saying that calling them concentration camps isn’t wrong, funny how that keeps happening.
Also, here’s the LA Times, the largest mainstream source to date willing to stake out this position: “Call immigrant detention centers what they really are: concentration camps”.
The question of whether this is just one news cycle or whether the story has real, long-term legs is still open.
This feels like a layup, so let’s just take the dunk: we may have some of those lovely people from West Virginia here on this very forum, in this very thread, who seem to think that I’m just saying “concentration camps” out of my own opinion or that it’s somehow a fringe position, and I like to remind them that lots and lots of experts think they’re wrong.
I don’t think you are saying “concentration camps” out of your own opinion. You’ve linked to some fine historians and such who say the same thing. I’m telling you that the people you are trying to convince don’t care what these historians say. They care about what they know of “concentration camps” that they have read in history books and seen on TV. They are morons. They think coal is coming back. They think the President is the best President in the history of Presidents. They are 48th or 49th in literacy rate. A random person on Twitter is not going to convince them. Front page news every single day might.
I’m a smart person, and until I see “the deliberate policy of extermination through labor…was designed to ensure that the inmates would die of starvation, untreated disease and summary executions within set periods of time” then I’m not going to consider them “concentration camps”. But that doesn’t mean the conditions aren’t a horrible way to treat human beings.
…the camps have been almost ignored by the media for since the initial flurry when the child separation policy began. Even the recent revelation that 1000’s of additional children had been separated didn’t bring the camps back into the news. The camps have now trended for a couple of days now. This isn’t a “backfire.”
You are in the middle of a propaganda war. You need to come to grips with that. Just look at this. I’m a photographer. Its plain as day that those photos have been “blocked out”, that they have been posed, that these photos probably don’t reflect the reality of transgender women in detention. You can’t counter propaganda by pretending that everything is okay.
Here’s the reality:
Trump & Co have adopted a deliberate strategy having leaders in place precisely so they can avoid oversight. Kirstjen Nielsen stood down because she knew what was coming was indefensible. Sarah Saldaña stood down in 2017. A self-admitted white supremacist is generally regarded as the person who is setting immigration policy. Katharine Gorka, who has a “long history of working with far-right national security groups, and her writings have been described as anti-Muslim in sentiment” and who is married to this guy, is expected to be named Customs and Border Protection press secretary.
Can you not see the problem?
Yes: people are going to say “liberals crying about Trump=Hitler”. That is inevitable. Because this is a propaganda war. They will lie, they will mis-characterize, they will spin the truth. I mean seriously: what did you expect? They are always going to be pushing back. Especially when you bring a subject like this back into the spotlight.
But the situation on the borders is an emergency. This is a deliberately manufactured crisis. It will only get worse if nothing is done. There is limited oversight, they are making things up as they go along, and the people in charge are literal white supremacists. We are beyond the point of appeasing the outrage machine because the outrage machine is simply another tool of the Trump administration. The goal is to silence opposition. And if you buy into the narrative that we need to modify our language lest “we upset the right wing” then you are making a serious mistake.
Is it? How would I know it’s an emergency? I just looked on the CNN web site, and the top story is lack of water in a city in India. There is not one story about the horrible conditions in the camps. If the situation is such an emergency, how come I don’t know about it unless I search for stories about it?
“Enquiring” Minds Want To Know.
…I think my entire point is that this story has dropped off the radar, that the media have not been covering the story well enough, and even though the story has been bought back into the public conciseness there is still a fuck-load more work that needs to be done. Are you disagreeing that its an emergency, or are you complaining that the media aren’t doing a good enough job here?