"As long as my record stands in federal court, any American citizen can be held in prison or concentration camps without trial or hearing. I would like to see the government admit they were wrong and do something about it, so this will never happen again to any American citizen of any race, creed, or color." - Fred Korematsu

I think I've decided that I need to separate out "concentration camps" from the larger fascist mass deportation story, because given the sheer amount of funding for migrant cages provided by the GOP's recently passed, homicidal-class war reconciliation budget, I think it's very unlikely "Alligator Alcatraz" will be a one-off. As such I'm going to link my previous post about why the facility in Florida is definitely a concentration camp here, so we can reference it going forward.

https://social.treehouse.systems/@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes/114824828223683936

Alligators, Concentration Camps, and Theatrical Fascism

"So, let's be clear what we're talking about here. The fascist Florida government purposely built a concentration camp in the middle of a hurricane alley swamp, to facilitate the fascist Trump regime's ethnic cleansing project. And now, we're treating people who may be guilty of nothing more than a civil violation like War on Terror prisoners at Gitmo."

AnarchoNinaAnalyzes (@[email protected])

I think there is a larger conversation to be had about the crass, ignorant, and dystopian "game show" style of fascism the Trump regime is installing in America; a situation perfectly exemplified by the emergency construction of a migrant concentration camp on an abandoned airfield in the Florida Everglades, affectionately marketed (with actual merchandise) as "Alligator Alcatraz." It says a lot about what lies at the rotting core of Trumpism that in the implementation of its fascist policies, the regime always finds a way to surpass satirists in Hollywood and the fever dreams of authors like Hunter S. Thompson, in terms of theatrical cruelty, open greed, and complete disregard for human decency. As such, I understand why the outrage in response to the construction and implementation of what amounts to a dollar store knock off version of torture prisons like CECOT, has been focused on the outrageous pageantry Downmarket Mussolini, Ronny DeSantis, and the American fascist movement are engaged in to cover up the fact that we've just build a domestic "Gitmo" and the guy running it is a former Bush War on Terror lawyer with a very checkered past on the subjects of human rights and torture. The reality however is that "Alligator Alcatrez" (that is the official name of the gulag) is very clearly a concentration camp, designed to torture migrants as part of a slow-motion ethnic cleansing project to whiten the demographics of the USA. Furthermore, the evidence that this is so goes far beyond Trump's obscene comments about alligators eating escaped migrants, as Florida Republicans have openly touted the idea that exposure to hurricanes might make migrants self-deport to avoid being sent there - which a responsible media would recognize as US politicians arguing "death by hurricane" is an acceptable punishment for the civil violation of being in the country without papers. In fact, this alarming idea is literally baked into the second half of the dungeon's name; Alcatraz was a maximum security federal prison ostensibly designed to house "the worst felons in America," while Alligator Alcatraz is a giant torture cage for brown people on the wrong side of an imaginary line - the conflation is intentional on the part of the fascist politicians behind this monstrous scheme. Given the clear intentions behind opening our very own concentration camp in the Florida Everglades, the men behind the plan, and their open statements about why Alligator Alcatraz was built, it shouldn't surprise anyone that we're already getting reports of widespread human rights violations out of the facility. https://www.commondreams.org/news/alligator-alcatraz-human-rights 'A Form of Torture': Detainees Allege Mistreatment at 'Alligator Alcatraz' "They're not respecting our human rights," one detainee told CBS News Miami during a phone interview. "We're human beings; we're not dogs. We're like rats in an experiment." "I don't know their motive for doing this, if it's a form of torture," he added. "A lot of us have our residency documents and we don't understand why we're here." Another inmate, the Cuban reggaeton artist Leamsy La Figura, said guards "only brought a meal once a day and it had maggots." "They never take off the lights for 24 hours," he claimed. "The mosquitoes are as big as elephants," and "there's no water to take a bath, it's been four days since I've taken a bath." A Colombian detainee said his mental health is breaking down. "I'm on the edge of losing my mind. I've gone three days without taking my medicine," he said. "It's impossible to sleep with this white light that's on all day." "They took the Bible I had and they said here there is no right to religion," the detainee added. "And my Bible is the one thing that keeps my faith, and now I'm losing my faith." So, let's be clear what we're talking about here. The fascist Florida government purposely built a concentration camp in the middle of a hurricane alley swamp, to facilitate the fascist Trump regime's ethnic cleansing project. And now, we're treating people who may be guilty of nothing more than a civil violation like War on Terror prisoners at Gitmo. We've had entire hearings about the effects of restricting access to food, shower facilities, and medicine because this is what our government did to suspected terrorists during the one of the darkest moments of modern American history. We know leaving the lights on 24/7 to deny prisons adequate rest and a sense of passing time is a type of torture because we purposely did that "to root out Al-Qaeda." You know who else knows? Ron fucking DeSantis, the former Bush era JAG who worked AT Gitmo. In other words? We have built a concentration camp for brown people and we are now intentionally torturing them. In the United States of America. While bragging about it and selling T-shirts to celebrate it. Tell me again why it's wrong to compare Trump's new America to Nazi Germany? #Fascism #Trump #RonDeSantis #ConcentrationCamps #AlligatorAlcatraz #GOP

Treehouse Mastodon

I must confess I am discouraged by the alarming countercurrent in US discourse, pushing back on the idea that "Alligator Alcatraz" is an "actual" concentration camp. Some of this is fascist ideological flak, some is "enlightened centrists" whistling past the graveyard, and some of this is even coming from cynical folks on the left who know enough about the American carceral industrial complex to confidently (and to be fair, correctly) state America had "concentration camps" long before Trump. Frankly however I can think of few things less productive than entering into a semantic debate about the wholly accurate term concentration camp; I thought it might be better to just talk about the horrifying observed conditions inside Alligator Alcatraz instead, and let reasonable folks figure it out for themselves.

To that end I want to share two stories about the same highly-controlled visit to Alligator Alcatraz by 3 Dem politicians, that each focus on different aspects of why I think the term fits and disputing the characterization borders on apologia.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/14/alligator-alcatraz-lawsuits

Hundreds of detainees with no criminal charges sent to Trump’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

"The notorious new “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail in the Florida Everglades contains hundreds of detainees with no criminal records or charges, it was disclosed on Sunday, as lawmakers decried “inhumane” conditions inside after touring the facility.

Donald Trump has insisted that the remote camp in swamp land populated by pythons and alligators was reserved for immigrants who were “deranged psychopaths” and “some of the most vicious people on the planet” awaiting deportation.

But at least one detainee shouted out to politicians during Saturday’s visit that he was a US citizen, the Democratic Florida congressman Maxwell Frost said. And the Miami Herald obtained and published a list of 700 people held in cages showing that at least 250 had committed no offense other than a civil immigration violation."

So let's briefly touch on the important revelations in this article. First of all immigration officials are purposely obscuring the numbers and identities of detainees in the camp. Florida politicians are also lying about who runs the camp, which is clearly ICE, to deny opposition (Democrat) oversight of the facility. Please keep in mind that this is in addition to the migrant cages being located in a remote area in the Florida Everglades, far away from the prying eyes of the media and making official oversight all the more difficult. Furthermore, Trump and regime officials who are justifying keeping migrants in appalling conditions that amount to a concentration camp by saying only the worst types of criminals are being held at Alligator Alcatraz, are once again lying; as I stated repeatedly in prior articles hundreds of people in the camp are simply in the US without permission, which as the article notes is a civil violation, not a criminal charge - let alone a violent one.

So, can you articulate what perfectly innocent reason a fascist government might have for building a semi-secret migrant cage complex, demonizing all the brown inhabitants as violent criminals even though many of them have committed no crimes, and are actively working to hide what is actually going on inside Alligator Alcatraz from media, regulators, and opposition officials? Yeah, me neither. Now let's take a look at the conditions the 3 Dem politicians were allowed to see despite the regime's efforts to hide occupied cages from them:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/alligator-alcatraz-lawmakers-visit

'This Is an Internment Camp': Lawmakers Horrified by Inhumane Conditions in 'Alligator Alcatraz'

"Wasserman-Schultz described it as an "internment camp" where detainees are "essentially packed into cages."

"Wall-to-wall humans. 32 detainees per cage," she said. This, she noted, is unusual for immigration facilities, like the nearby Krome detention center in Miami-Dade County, where detainees are allowed to roam freely between buildings."

Whatever I think of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as a politician, it is inarguable that she's objectively describing a type of concentration camp. With dozens of brown bodies packed into small cages, inadequate access to washroom facilities and water, purposely reduced caloric counts inadequate for the preservation of healthy adults, exposure to elements and insects; what exactly would you call it? It's not an accident Wasserman-Schultz references America's dark history with the term "interment camps" but I think she's still being too generous to the Trump regime here; this is a camp of cages for cruelty concentrating migrants without any concern for their wellbeing at all - a concentration camp if you will.

Folks, this is not a question of semantics. This is a concentration camp, for brown people, on US soil and word games aren't going to stop the nightmare we're speeding towards now.

#Fascism #Trump #DHS #AlligatorAlcatraz #Noem #EthnicCleansing #Immigration #ConcentrationCamps

Hundreds of detainees with no criminal charges sent to Trump’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

Authorities have refused to release list of people sent there as Democratic lawmakers decry ‘inhumane’ conditions

The Guardian

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Semantics is the domain of cowards who still wouldn't act even if they massaged the words to the point of their own alarm.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

That's definitely a concentration camp. Note that people are being interned there for violations of civil law rather than criminal statutes. Most of them have no criminal record. A fair portion of them have cases in immigration court and were in full compliance with the dictates of that court when abducted by ICE.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes This is a classic Polish cartoon. It says "This is no fascism. I suggest you educate yourself on the definitions before you speak."

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

There are metal bunk beds in cages, toilets in the corner and gruel as food.

What more do you need?

This isn't supposed to be a prison (not that prisons being like this would be OK either) but it's not a "prison" which is for those convicted of crimes. It's a "holding facility" but set up like a human flesh warehouse.

That is an internment camp.

It is a place where people are gathered, concentrated. A concentration camp.

The end.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Like. I don't get what other box needs to be ticked for this to have crossed the line. Every line. From the optics to whatever definitions you'd like to haul out

It looks like a concentration camp.
It functions like a concentration camp.

There are nearly 1000 people at Alligator Alcatraz, plans to build more camps just like it.

They have been reducing the number of judges, there will NOT be a legal process. The camps will multiply and fill up.

We know where this goes.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Anyone who calls me hysterical for that last bit would have said I was hysterical about "they will set up camps" when I saw the "mass deportation now" signs.

Mass deportation isn't *possible* it's a euphemism. It always ends up being a euphemism.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Deportation is dependent on violence. "mass" deportation means violence is inevitable and unavoidable.

It is impossible to process, justify, find places for millions of people who live in your country to go "en mass" just because you've changed your mind about who has full human rights.

This is the predictable outcome and as the population of the camps grows so will the human rights atrocities.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Sometimes it feels like it's only some people here and Stephen Miller who really get what this is turning into and how fast it's happening.

They won't even let the lawyers of the people who have lawyers with the time an energy to go talk to them into the place.

@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Yep. I've been writing about this too, since the "Mass Deportation Now" signs. It's simply not physically possible for the US to deport the number of people the fascists want to get rid of. It would be prohibitively costly and time-consuming, and they'd *never* get it done before 2028.

That ghoul Miller has been shouting about 3000 detentions per day (they've not reached that yet).

Let's assume GhoulFace Asshole is right, and they can get 3000 per day moving.

There are something like 1200-1300 days left in the Trump administration.

In that time, then, they would (at 3000 per day) gather a maximum of 3.9M people.

The estimated population of undocumented people in the US is 11M people. Maybe more, but let's give the fascists the leg up on this one, and assume it's only 11M.

It would take another two full terms to reach 11M people. Eight more years after 2028.

That's just getting them in. To deport them, they have to be divvied up into bunches of, let's say 250 for the easy numbers, meaning 12 flights per day minimum just to keep up with detentions.

That's a flight every two hours for 11 years.

Do we really think this pack of idiots and sycophants can organise that well? I just gave them all the benefits of the doubt, and it's still an 11-year job.

Ahhh...but if you put the detention camps in swamps, you get plenty of mosquitoes. With mosquitoes, you get diseases spreading. If one has it, soon all will.

And that disease, given the lack of medical attention and even basic hygiene they're getting, will kill the majority of them *for them*. No messy gas chambers. Cholera, typhus, TB, hell, if you pick the right county, bubonic plague.

All they have to do is stuff them inside small cages, and wait for biology to work.

And who needs crematoria when you've got a large alligator population to feed?

My inner Cassandra wants to beg them to stop making her right.

@oldladyplays @futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes they will mix in some slavery for good measure. As all the people who built camps like these did before them. Death through work will be included of course.
@Leendaal @oldladyplays @futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes
Didn't they already announce "wellness camps" where people would be expected to "grow organic produce"
#uspol

@oldladyplays
Alligators do not eat that much, mass graves collapse - eventually they will start burning people. That's why Nazis did how they did. No other way if the US refuses to find back to humanity collectively.

Fight it.
There's far more people who do not want this to happen than those that do.

Best from Germany.

@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

@oldladyplays @futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes
should we describing it as a extermination camp rather than a concentration camp at this point?

@floppyplopper @oldladyplays @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

I want to say "not yet" however the pretext for these concentration camps is "deportation" but they are impeding that process by making it hard for lawyers to reach their clients, reducing the number of immigration judges and kidnapping people who have no country to "go back to" --if a person has lived in the us for upwards of five years, in some cases decades this is their home now.

@futurebird @oldladyplays @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes
they've been calling it deportation for long enough for no one to be fooled if they don't wish to be fooled. 800 years ago in england they called it an expulsion, they must be happy for a word further from extermination now.

@oldladyplays @futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

If it was about deportation they would not refuse to let people who want to leave the country voluntarily at their own expense leave, or arrest people at airports as they are about to leave the country.

@oldladyplays
its been 6 months we have reports of typhus, measles, and TB... you win prediction prize unfortunately.
@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

@futurebird I could not agree more with every single comment you've made to me here tonight. You are totally right.

The night at the RNC when they all had pre-printed "Mass Deportations Now" sign brought me back to writing after a very long hiatus. I'm not saying that to brag, I just saw all this coming and it freaked me out badly. I think you can feel it coming off the page:

https://www.ninaillingworth.com/2024/07/19/how-it-happens-here/

(You don't have to read it, I just absolutely wrote about what I thought they meant and why it was gonna be mass graves. I was, very upset. Since then I've focused on getting as many people as possible to accept these guys really are on that genocide trip... Also if you do read it, I'm sorry for the swearing about rich liberals but at that moment I realized they were gonna blow it and these nazis would win, so I was, really upset.)

How It Happens Here | Nina Illingworth Dot Com

Trump loving GOP fascists are calling for ethnic cleansing at the Republican National Convention and our media barely mentioned it; this is Weimar America.

Nina Illingworth Dot Com | "When the revolution is for everyone, everyone will be for the revolution"

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes @futurebird

I think it's more likely to be crematoria than mass graves. Mass graves provide proof in the aftermath.

"Bodies? What bodies?"

@Fishercat
We have learned from the Nazis that while bodies may be disappeared the paperwork lasts.
@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes @futurebird
@Fishercat @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes @futurebird
It's in a swamp; you think they won't just dump the bodies in it & leave them to rot?

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes @futurebird

The thing about mass deportations is that even if they were carried out, the people carrying those signs wouldn't benefit in any way. In fact they'd end up spending more money for many things. But they'll feel "safer" not seeing so many colored people in their towns.

@Onemeatball @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes @futurebird People talk about mass deportations as if Holocaust wasn't about mass deportations of "undesirable people".
@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes Whoever laughed at you were the nazis. They laughed at your statements not because they were ludicrous, but because they were on point.

@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

My current thinking is that every American needs to do a personal risk assessment based on the fact that there is (or will be within weeks) no rule of law as we understand it.

I realize that some Americans have been in this position to some degree throughout the history of the country, but this is exponentially more serious for everyone. Imagine the worst possible outcome and be prepared for it as best you can be.

@VirginiaHolloway @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

This kind of caution is probably good. But I see some promising positive signs. For example it's a good thing that companies that supply these facilities put tape over their logos when they drive in.

Find out who they are anyway.

If you know people who work for these companies let them know what you think of that work.

We as a nation *do* need to give our permission for this to get worse and we're be tested to see how much we will allow.

@VirginiaHolloway @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Someone needs to wear the boots. And someone needs to make dinner for the people who wear the boots.

We should keep exposing the people who work for ICE, the contractors who supplied the metal bunk beds, the company that delivers the food. Everyone who participates in making the concentration camps.

@futurebird @VirginiaHolloway @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes follow the money. Always. There are people directly profiting from this business!

@futurebird My people were astonished when I said, "They're not going to deport people."

It's math estimation, the kind you first learn in elementary school and then get really good at in actuary education.

This is America. Some deportations could be by bus or train. But they don't have the rolling stock. Most would be planes or boats. The former is expensive, and the latter not enough passenger capacity.

A 9x19mm bullet costs $0.25 . A coil of piano wire is $8 . A bacterium is $0 .

@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes I think people would just rather argue online because calling this what it is means the time for discussion is over and people, by and large, are action-averse.
@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes all you need to know is that none of the tens of billions for mass deportations went to immigration courts. the fact that they won’t be able to scale is deliberate
@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes have you watched Punishment Park, by Peter Watkins?
I've been thinking about it a lot, lately.

@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

I suspect some of the mainstream confusion comes from the fact that the Nazis didn't have a strict difference between concentration camps (where they put people they didn't like without any kind of due process, and didn't care if they died) and death camps (where they put people they didn't like with the express intent of killing them all, in the most efficient way possible). Some of their camps were set up as the former but became the latter. And reporting, both academic and news-focused, often refers to both as 'concentration camps', which led to confusion about exactly what a concentration camp was.

For this reason, historians often avoid the term 'concentration camp' for things that match the wider definition (places where people were sent without due process and often died as a result of overwork, poor nutrition, poor sanitation, abuse by guards, and so on). If you use the phrase, people tend to conflate it with the death camps (where people died as a result of being pushed into gas chambers or other mass-murder machines).

Part of this is probably linked to colonialism. A lot of the colonial powers used concentration camps before the Nazis and wanted a clear distinction between their human rights abuses and systemic genocide.

If you say 'concentration camp', a lot of people hear 'death camp' and will note that there are no gas chambers, no firing squads, and so on. I don't know a solution to this that doesn't involve teaching Americans about history, which is typically not an easy thing to do.

@david_chisnall @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Concentration camps turn into death camps because concentration camps turn people who were working, participating in society, parts of communities into an ongoing financial and logistical "burden" --it's designed to do this creating the permission structure for greater violence.

And the brutal conditions lead to death as the numbers grow which is also by design.

@david_chisnall @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

It might have been more efficient to go into the neighborhoods of the people they want to eliminate and simply shoot them in their homes. But, even hard-liners can see the "optics" of such an action would be unpalatable.

@david_chisnall @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

So first it's "we are deporting the worst criminals" then "we are deporting those who have broken any law no matter how minor" then "we are deporting anyone who seems like the kind of person who might have broken a law"

But, for many there is no destination, they are warehoused, concentrated. And now "look at how they are draining our resources" so maybe they are put to work, this is how you create a problem that needs a final solution.

@david_chisnall @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

It ends in the same place as simply shooting the people in their homes because the initial impulse was based in ethnic fears and a desire for racial and ethnic purity.

When you see human beings as problems you will eventually find only one solution.

I thought that is what we were learning in history class. How to recognize this shit.

@futurebird @david_chisnall @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes honestly you round them up and shoot them elsewhere so you don't have to clean the homes and possessions before you resell them or give them to supporters.
@futurebird I just commented to a friend yesterday that as this regime of "yours" is speed running the Nazi history I guess we will see gas chambers in two years rather than the nine-ish years it took them back then.

@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

The Nazis didn't do that even after they'd built their death camps, for two reasons.

First, shooting people isn't actually that cheap. You still need to dispose of the bodies. Killing a load of people in the same place makes it easier put them in mass graves.

Second, if you shoot people in the streets then, as you say, the optics are bad, but that matters for two reasons. People will be more likely to resist if they know that the alternative is death, and people are more likely to help people they know will die without help. If you keep up the fiction that they're 'just' being relocated, you can persuade a large portion of the population to not help them and convince them that resisting to the point of being shot is not worth it.

If you want to systematically exterminate people, letting them know that's what you're doing makes it harder, and having to do it where they are is expensive. Some of this has probably changed since the 1930s, because efficiency is no longer a priority for the folks who are trying to extract as much money from the government as possible without the constraints of basic ethical behaviour.

But my point is not that this isn't a concentration camp, it's that calling it one is historically accurate but in a way that can cause confusion due to over 80 years of intentionally ambiguous terminology. The good guys have internment camps, the bad guys have concentration camps.

@david_chisnall @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Really good points. I just wonder if it is possible to explain to people that "mass deportation" isn't possible. The notion that people should "follow the immigration law" in this very uncritical way remains uncontested and uncontroversial even among people who see themselves as liberals.

And they think "mass deportation" could be a legal and orderly process but this isn't physically possible.

Mass deportation means concentration camps.

@futurebird @david_chisnall @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes we've also had a lot of recent history with concentration camps and we've tolerated them largely without complaint. People are going to feel self conscious criticizing something that's just been there for years.

@futurebird @david_chisnall @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes I think one thing that helps break the fiction is that ICE has been so contemptuous of actual legal status. They'll scoop up citizens and legal residents who are in the wrong place at the wrong time, who seem Hispanic or express dissenting opinions, and are really keen on declaring legal status null and void on their say-so on the spot. Trump himself likes to threaten citizens with being turned into "illegals". There's no sharp distinction being made between "illegals" and anyone else-- an "illegal" is just any person they don't like.

But I do think it's important to recognize that the status quo ante was also cruel and absurd: even undocumented immigrants are here by and large because there's economic demand for their labor, but it's demand that found it cheaper to keep their legal status from being normalized to keep them under threat.

Some years ago there was even a bipartisan idea that we could do something sensible about this, but of course MAGA folk don't want that, they either want ethnic cleansing or have found it convenient to make common cause with people who do.

@futurebird @david_chisnall @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes In fact, even Trump now realizes that he can't actually deport or incarcerate all of the US's undocumented farm workers without causing trouble for his own base, so what to do? Well, they're making up those numbers in part by catching more legal residents and the occasional citizen.

But if they *were* just rounding up all the undocumented farm workers, would that be better? Not really. There's nothing wrong with these people aside from having been brought in by a system that doesn't want the process to have legal sanction. And what they're then doing shouldn't happen to anybody.

@futurebird @david_chisnall @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes I'd complain that anyone who was paying attention during Trump's first administration or spent any time at all arguing with Republicans about immigration should have been able to foresee this, but, eh, people don't pay attention and it's hard to make them. So amazingly many have been caught by surprise.

@david_chisnall @futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes "The good guys have internment camps"

Ummm what????

@dalias

@david_chisnall is not endorsing internment camps *either*

P sure he's just pointing out the difference in rhetoric. Like "freedom fighter" vs "terrorist", the word choice has more to do with political alignment than with any empirically valid distinction in denotation

@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

@trochee @david_chisnall @futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes But I mean I thought folks were supposed to be in agreement that "internment camps" were evil too, that this was something basic you learn in school...

@dalias @david_chisnall

I think American textbooks still use "the Japanese internment in America" and not "the American ethnic cleansing of Japanese"

... Because "internment" is not as loaded as "concentration"

The textbooks also don't bother calling the Trail of Tears ethnic cleansing _either_

@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

@david_chisnall @futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes There was a kids' board game from Nazi-era Germany called "Juden Raus!" It was all about kicking the Jews out of Germany, and the victory-condition square was labeled "Back to Palestine!"

So, yeah, even in Nazi Germany, there was a fiction that the people they were trying to eliminate were all going to be safely repatriated. At least, in the stuff they said to kids.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

The existence of our prison system has normalized treating people in this way so that my point about "these aren't criminals" is lost in the noise.

Which is why having prisons like these camps for any people warrants more resistance.

If we were a country where even "real criminals" were not treated this way this would stand out more clearly.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

I found it interesting (disturbing, upsetting) that the Florida concentration camp is a "men's only" facility. There is no reason why women and children couldn't also be sent there, there are many women and children in the same category but I think Americans have been desensitized to seeing adult men (mostly non-white) in such conditions by our prison system.

The people doing this are thinking about optics and how to desensitize the public to more and more violence.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

"Where are the men's right's activists livid at the way that notions of masculinity are being used to enable abuse?" I say, knowing exactly where they are and why they are silent.

The politicians and people running this concentration camp like to show images of huge crowds of men. Because it fits into a known category for many Americans. But the reason why those men are in that camp is a flimsy pretext that could also apply to a grandmother or a child.

@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes when they were grabbing people to send to CECOT they were looking specifically for people with tattoos. It’s all about optics to make the base happy

@cinebox @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Not just the base it's so the general US public can tell themselves "it's not THAT bad" because they can sort the disturbing images into categories they have been desensitized into not seeing for what they really are.

@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes I don't want to be one of those tedious-ass "Oh this is just like <other thing that happens regularly>" dudes. But Joe Arpaio's "Tent City" was 100% a trial run of this shit. Hundreds of people, mostly minorities, most not convicted of any crime (waiting trial), stuffed into tents in the AZ heat while Arpaio joked about pink uniforms and bologna sandwiches. And the public...shrugged.
@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes Also on the note of AZ being a proving ground for this stuff. I sadly don't have good references anymore, but at the time it was pretty well understood that some of the major backers of the AZ SB-107 "show your papers" shit were the private prison industry; who were filling local politicians' heads with visions huge facilities on the border to house all the people being rounded up.
@angry_drunk @futurebird That's a good reference - I wrote about the connection between Arpaio's tents and concentration camps back during the first Trump admin, so I'm certainly not gonna disagree with you.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes @futurebird

“If we were a country where even "real criminals" were not treated this way this would stand out more clearly.”

What is happening today is an open-ended destination on the road pushed by every “tough on crime” politician, leader, or neighbour you’ve ever heard expound on the topic.