Paul CantrellFeb 23

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@rationaldoge/116116583354261712

Is it OK to call them concentration camps yet?

Or do we have to wait until they all get built?

Until they get filled?

Until they become death camps?

Please, if you object to the term “concentration camp” right now, clearly identify your bright line for when that term becomes acceptable.

Show threadЖафстелцеFeb 23
@inthehands you could use so many other words to appropriately describe the US internment camps; if you choose deliberately the term "concentration camp", you actually want to create the association with nazi death camps.
And the problem here is not that the Trump camps would be demonized (idc), but that the magnitude and horrors of the actual Concentration Camps are diminuished through comparison with "lesser evils".
Show threadHollieK

@Schafstelze @inthehands So when do they become "Concentration Camps" in your eyes? Even the Nazi system started small and was built up over a number of years:

"The Nazi regime set up its first concentration camp in Dachau in March 1933, barely two months after Hitler’s rise to power. Between 1933 and 1945, Germans built an extensive system of more than 44,000 camps and other incarceration sites (including ghettos), aiming to imprison and kill “enemies of the state”, which included Jews, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, German Communists, Socialists, and homosexuals."

https://www.lbi.org/exhibitions/virtual-exhibition-last-stop-before-the-last-stop/concentration-camps-existed-long-before-hitler-came-to-power/

CONCENTRATION CAMPS EXISTED LONG BEFORE HITLER CAME TO POWER

Concentration camps have been used by governments on almost every continent over the last three centuries. Between 1933 and 1945, Germans built an extensive system of more than 44,000 camps.

Leo Baeck Institute
Feb 23 at 8:49amWeb
Show threadЖафстелцеFeb 23

@inthehands @HollieK72 What we know as CC's is defined by the pictures of Auschwitz. Again, by using the term for Trumps Camps, you WANT to invoke the comparison. When we talk about (actual) CC's, we don't picture forced labour camps (which existed as well) but the extermination camps.

If you can't see the difference, you proof my point that the inflationary use of the word downplays the "original" in the head of people.

Show threadHollieKFeb 23

@Schafstelze @inthehands

From the OP:

'Please, if you object to the term “concentration camp” right now, clearly identify your bright line for when that term becomes acceptable.'

Not all concentration camps are extermination camps. When I picture concentration camps, it's not "just" the Nazi camps, but also the Russian Gulag system, and I'm also aware of the British Concentration Camps from the Second Boer war. There are more examples in the article I linked. I would call Trump's camps concentration camps, under the following definition:

"A concentration camp is a place where a large number of inmates, often those deemed political enemies or members of ethnic and religious minorities, are confined against their will and under guard, usually without having been charged with a crime. Punitive conditions of internment usually result in a high rate of mortality."

Apparently you object to the term being used now, so where do you draw the line?

Show threadЖафстелцеFeb 24
@inthehands @HollieK72 I tried to explain several times. I'm sorry for my lack of eloquence, but I failed.
Show threadHollieKFeb 24

@Schafstelze @inthehands From what you explained I take it that you would only call them concentration camps when they become death camps, which is a long way down the line from what the Nazis started with, in 1933. It took them years to get to that point, and even the Nazis differentiated between death camps and normal concentration camps. There were six death camps: Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp

Extermination camp - Wikipedia

Show threadЖафстелцеFeb 24
@inthehands @HollieK72 I try one more time: We can argue if the term existed before (or afterwards) to describe something DIFFERENT than the german CC's. But that's not the point. The way the term is used for Trumps facilities is not accidentially the same, but is aiming at invoking pictures of Auschwitz in our heads. So, on the one hand equalizing Trumps camps with Auschwitz, on the other one claiming that it's not used in this sense? What is it, now?
Show threadЖафстелцеFeb 24
@inthehands @HollieK72 btw, needless to say that Trumps camps are horrible enough and should be shut down immediately (or the inmates replaced with MAGAs).
That I criticise the use of the term CC for his camps doesn't mean I support or defend them.
Show threadHollieKFeb 24
@Schafstelze @inthehands Well, we aren't ever going to agree on this point, because of our different interpretations of what a Concentration Camp is. I agree with the OP that it's okay to call them concentration camps now, because they've only just started to create them, and it's possible that they will evolve into death camps in the future. You say that they are not Auschwitz and therefore aren't concentration camps - I agree that they aren't Auschwitz (yet), but don't agree that they aren't concentration camps.