Comment by tuetuopay
11 hours ago
> in one of our concentration camps
As a European, I find the use of "concentration camp" to be a very strong word. Trump and its administration are often touted as a Nazi and such. How much of this is hyperbole, and how much of this is real?
Nazis were systemic against a religion and disabilities. They made systemic ways of exterminating those deemed "unpure". The concentration camps had gas chambers to kill people. Is this really what is happening in the US?
Note: this is not snark to defend Trump, I'm French and I could not care less. I genuinely want to understand. I feel like the Nazi lexical field is much much weaker in the US, and people are more eager to use it over there than here in Europe.
I think maybe OP was using the traditional definition of the word, and hopefully not trying to imply we have Treblinka’s across the US.
But there is some cause for concern regarding the detention centers and the lack of oversight.
For example, even Congress members have to provide 7 days of notice if they wish to visit a center [1]. So, the only real oversight is from the executive. And these centers are often ran by private companies somewhat notorious for bad conditions and lawsuits related to bad conditions / civil rights violations.
Here’s a story about where we’re holding families and children:
https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2026/01/27/inside-the-dilley...
1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-facilities-homeland-securit...
This doesn't even touch our, ahem, overseas facilities, which certainly do not have the same standards.
Nazis were systemic against a religion and disabilities. They made systemic ways of exterminating those deemed "unpure". The concentration camps had gas chambers to kill people. Is this really what is happening in the US?
It is often useful to differentiate between "concentration camps" and "death camps" or "extermination camps". The Nazis had both. Some of their concentration camps were focused on concentrating and detaining people, some of them also systematically killed them -- they are not the same. If you fail to make this distinction, then saying "America has concentration camps" could make it sound like they're running extermination camps.
The US does to my knowledge not yet have those, nor as large-scale application of concentration camps as Germany did, and whether you even want to use the term "concentration camp" rather than something more like "detention facility" is up to you, but the federal government certainly has camps where people detained by ICE are being concentrated. Sometimes they are also subject to human rights abuses and/or die there.
Here's one of these camps, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_East_Montana
Here is a list of people dying under ICE detention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deaths_in_ICE_detentio...
> Here's one of these camps, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_East_Montana
Thats a textbook concentration camp. You are correct in your descriptions and distinction from extermination camps, concentration camps are not that rare even these days around the world in troubled places.
They are as name suggests just to herd bunch of people behind the fence, not much more. Of course, the reasons are usually far from nice and thus due to at most OKish treatment even there some sad things happen due to amount of people crammed together for a long time.
In Europe during WWII we had tons of concentration camps all over conquered Europe but only few were actual extermination ones, usually converted/expanded from concentration ones. When allies were coming nazis often turned concentration -> extermination due to orders given from above.
Thank you for the clarification!
I do agree that there are three slight between "concentration", "death", and "extermination" camps when speaking about Nazi Germany. In France virtually only "concentration" is used in history classes as an umbrella term for all three. It's only very recently (less than 5 years) that I've seen people start to use the more nuanced term. (as an example, any French will tell you that Auschwitz is a concentration camp while it was, in fact, a death camp).
Yet I stand behind what I said about the word "concentration camp" be a strong and heavy word, since those were integral part in the final solution.
I'm not denying that the US has detainment camps akin to the "gentlest" camps from Nazi Germany, far from it. However, I fail to see the difference between e.g. the East Montana one and a large-scale 5k inmate prison, other than it's less regulated than a federal/regular prison thus with more abuse, and filled with regular people instead of criminals. According to the linked Wikipedia articles, the camp has been dubbed after the Alcatraz prison (known for all sorts of violations).
I may be wrong, and they may be indeed set up by ICE and the government to torture and kill the immigrants. I have a hard time to believe it though, as making a detainment camp to frighten and push immigrants to "go back" would me much more effective and less controversial. My guess would be the intent is the latter form of facility, but ends up being the former due to being staffed with ICE and not professional prison crew.
At any rate, even having detainment camps for non-convicted civilians is already too much. We're quick to point fingers at China and their labor camps for Uyghurs, but this is on the way. (as with the Nazi discussion, this is still far from what china does: ad-vitam detainment, children born in captivity, forced sterilization of people, forced religion, etc).
>even having detainment camps for non-convicted civilians is already too much.
How do you suggest enforcing immigration law when millions have entered your country illegally? (If you believe in enforcing it all.)
4 replies →
> Nazis were systemic against a religion and disabilities.
Just a note that Nazism was systemic primarily about a race: atheists with ethnically Jewish backgrounds were targeted, converts were few but they would have been considered 'Aryans'. It's an important distinction because many groups (specifically the Muslim Brotherhood) try and draw false equivalence between their beliefs and actual innate characteristics.
Fellow European. They are not death camps, but what information does come out of them does sound a lot like concentration camps, already prior to Trump coming to office.
These are all stories about the facility the 5 year old toddler from last week is kept, a facility known as "baby jail".
https://www.proskauerforgood.com/2018/06/pro-bono-for-immigr... https://www.aila.org/blog/volunteering-in-family-detention-s... https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/stories-reve...
The first nazi concentration camp was founded in 1933, gas chambers and systematic killing were only added in 1941 when the "final solution" was implemented. Those last four years are the most well-known period, but for the majority of Hitler's rule concentration camps were just what it says on the tin: camps where undesirables were concentrated. Places that became overcrowded, hotbeds for disease, labor camps and places of medical experimentation. Plenty of people died there even in that period, but from causes like illness, work accidents, malnutrition and bad medical care.
ICE detention centers are not comparable to a 1942 nazi death camp, but comparisons to a 1939 concentration camp seem apt
> The concentration camps had gas chambers to kill people.
First concentration camps were create right after the election 1933 and the gas chambers were not invented yet. They were used against political opposition first, minor criminals second and only then Jews/homosexuals/etc. The regime had to consolidate power and invent the gas chambers first. The deportations, general violence, arrests on made up excuses, exclusion of jews and opposition from public life happened at the beginning.
Trumps rhetoric against Somalis in particular has strong echoes. So does the strategy of arresting and beating people on ethnic membership only.
> Nazis were systemic against a religion
Kinda yes kinda no. Religion was competitor against power ... but klerofascism was a thing. The pope was kinda neutral. And then you have places like Slovakia where catholic church priests were not just facilitating holocaust, but literally leading it. Religion was fairly frequently anti-semitic itself.
The thing is, while I agree we are closer to the 1933 definition of what a concentration camp is, it's not 1933 anymore as 1945 happened since. The meaning of words change and are tarnished by history, as is the meaning of symbols. The swatiska was a peace symbol before the 3rd reich, and pepe was just a frog 10 years ago.
> Trumps rhetoric against Somalis in particular has strong echoes
From what I just read about (just discovered this whole ordeal originates from a special status Somalis enjoyed in the US), I don't find anything wrong with what was said at the beginning. That's government policy at work. Indeed, the situation worsened ending with Trump openly talking about revenge against the Somalis, which is just nuts. Unless I missed more details, it's not an actual parallel as the Jews were scapegoats for the whole economic ruin of Germany after WWI (ruin caused by France and others).
> Religion was fairly frequently anti-semitic itself.
About religion, we need to look at the big picture of Europe, and realize that anti-semitism and eugenism was trendy among intellectuals of the time and basically the hot thing for think tanks. The tracking of Jews, handicapped, etc was only possible because people were kinda enclined to follow it. And more horribly so, parts of the catholic church.
This is why I wrote a religion, not religion. They were helped by the rules of Judaism that makes the religion and race the same set of people.
At any rate, I do have a better picture now of what is happening and what is colloquially called "concentration camps" by Americans in this context, thanks!
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