1d ago

Say The Words: American Concentration Camp

davidgate.substack.com

SAY THE WORDS: AMERICAN CONCENTRATION CAMP

By all criteria, this a concentration camp. Not “concentration camp” as rhetorical inflation, or emotionally manipulative shorthand, or edgy metaphor—but as in: literally.

As in: detention without trial, state control, inhumane living conditions, forced labor, dehumanization, brutal violence, isolation from accountability, psychological torture, and—by every available logical extension—murder.

That last one we can’t yet verify in the strict evidentiary sense, but the circumstances suggest it like smoke suggests fire, and they are already trying to hide their actions and deny what is occurring.

BoycottUnitedStates @europe.pub

tfm @europe.pub

18h ago

Say The Words: American Concentration Camp

davidgate.substack.com /p/say-the-words-american-concentration

World News @lemmy.ml

technocrit @lemmy.dbzer0.com

1d ago

Say The Words: American Concentration Camp

davidgate.substack.com /p/say-the-words-american-concentration

36 comments

America already had concentration camps in the form of ICE detention camps and prisons. The trials most faced before being sent to prison do not some how make those prisons not concentration camps. Those also have inhumane living conditions, forced labor, dehumanization, brutal violence, isolation from accountability, psychological torture and murder.
El Salvador is certainly worse, but we didn't get here overnight. The american people have been conditioned to accept this over decades by sending millions of people to internal slave labor camps with the thin excuse of "but they had due process!!!1!"

It is my firm belief that anyone who would do this or approve of this image should be removed from society. There should be some kind of test where these images are shown to a person. If they are not disgusted by them they should be imprisoned for the safety of everyone else for life. Not imprisoned like they would but housed somewhere they can do no harm to anyone.

One thing I noted is that the majority of the people that got deported had tattoos.
Are they intentionally seeking people like that?
- yes, they are explicitly going after people with tattoos https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/ice-list-venezuelan-immigrants-gang-members-1235306641/
- This facility, built under President Nayib Bukele’s “war on gangs,” houses over 40,000 men, most of whom were arrested en masse without any process resembling justice—just tattoos, zip codes, or looking nervous.
  Not just American deportees...
- Or more interestingly evil...could they be given tattoos forcible to make them look like that?
  
  They would have to be pretty fresh in photos. They take at least 2 weeks to heal
  
  Yikes, I didn't think of that. It would be a convenient way for them to prove that they are some Mexican gang member.
  
  A horrific thought indeed.

In all literal sense of the phrase: this is a concentration camp

It's a very honest article.
It's hard to know how to respond, however. The problem is religion. And believe it or not, compassion and the existence of trans people is the key that has allowed the psychopathic class to gain power.
- The first half of this was great. Then you descended into tomfoolery.
- Bases and altering time?

The stated purpose of CECOT is to put people in violently cramped, close confinement with each other until they die.
It is a deathcamp.

ICE detention centers in the USA count as concentration camps as do American Indian reservations, too, but yes we now have our own concentration camps out-of-country like the CIA black sites for illegal rendition or the NAZIs in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Belarus and the "secure hamlet" programs carried out by our Vietnam vets, for examples.
- My entire country counts as one
- CECOT is the American gulag

From Wikipedia:
"A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or minority ethnic groups, on the grounds of state security, or for exploitation or punishment."
I'd say it tracks.

It is not new though, it started with Guantanamo concentration camp for Taliban fighters.
- It is not new though, it started with Guantanamo concentration camp for Taliban fighters.
  It is not new though, it started with 10 concentrations camps during World War 2 for Japanese Americans.
  
  It is not new though, it started with Guantanamo concentration camp for Taliban fighters.
  It is not new though, it started with 10 concentrations camps during World War 2 for Japanese Americans.
  It is not new though, it started with concentration camps for the extermination and removal of the Native Americans
  
  In Die Hard, when Hans is describing Takagi, he says "interned at Manzanar 1942-43". 9 year old imsufferableninja thought he was talking about an internship at a prestigious company called Manzanar. 25 year old imsufferableninja finally figured it out. They did not teach about the US's concentration camps at my schools, for some reason...
- Guantanamo Bay is/was its own fresh hell, but it was not a concentration camp.
  
  Why is it not?

They're right that we should at minimum not allow them to define how we talk about this, and we should call it what it is.
But we should also have a plan to avoid getting put in a concentration camp when we do so. Stay safe, and be good everyone.

How is this all going so fast, tho? Didn't it take the nazis a few years to get to this point?
- No, Dachau concentration camp was started in March 1933, just a few months after Hitler took power.
- The Nazis didn't have the historical context of the Nazis' rise to power to help guide them.
- Nazis got to all the points they wanted so lightning-fast that nothing happening now can rival it.
  That's one of the reasons for the cultural shock about Nazis - everybody expected such processes to happen very slowly, in small flashes, as they do now. Thus them to be voted out or pressed out as a reaction, or at least for most potential victims to flee Germany, gradual pressure, compromise, all that.
  Instead they came to power, almost momentarily changed the internal balance of power (of armed forces, their own paramilitary organizations, veteran organizations and such), anschlussed Austria, "solved unemployment" (organized massive programs of building autobahns and such, not very economically viable, but a symbol and a working mechanism), attracted investments (various scams on enormous scale, but the funds were attracted and it wasn't all scams), scaled the military back to something realistic, performed successful rearmament programs ... And built concentration camps. They started with something like Guantanamo almost immediately after coming to power, then didn't lose any time to learn.
  See, they had an apparatus, even a social layer of very well educated people, but with indoctrination of service and obedience, and the legacy of German science and industry and patriotism too. They broke that, but not before successfully using it for a lot of things.
  That's the problem with building good systems, they prevent idiots from learning who they are earlier. It's the same with Sun and DEC and other legacy in tech. Everybody still uses their paradigms and products descended from theirs. Vision, architecture, aesthetic (only hidden somewhere deep). So everybody big has now IMHO wrong ideas about how to solve problems, but since everybody also uses solutions made by those who had right ideas 30-15 years ago, they don't get the feedback. Today's tech is a pile of crap reinforced with yesteryear grass, but it doesn't fall apart in your hands because for the main problems you use solutions from a more civilized age.
  
  While this was informative, I don't quite understand the progressive change from concentration camps in nazi Germany to a fanatic escalating hate for.. Uh.. x86 architecture?
  Sounds like a really, really wild ride to be on.

The balance of power shifted in February 2021 when New Ideas (Nuevas Ideas), the party Bukele had helped found in 2017, and allied members of GANA captured 56 seats in elections for the 84-seat legislature. That two-thirds majority meant that Bukele had the legislative support he needed to replace both the country’s attorney general and five of the Supreme Court’s justices. With some of the checks on his power minimized, Bukele began to take an increasingly authoritarian approach to addressing some of El Salvador’s pressing problems.
I suggest making some reforms to state institutions before someone else gains control of at least two thirds of the political power. Having support from two thirds of a legislative body is sufficient to completely rewrite a constitution in many cases, so the only question is whether a "supermajority" can reach some consensus.
I personally don't have a lot of hope for peaceful reform, given what I see from https://ballotpedia.org/Results_for_ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)_and_electoral_system_ballot_measures,_2024

They've done it before, why would we think they wouldn't do it again?

36 comments