I assumed they were referring to something like this but wanted to be sure. It's also way the fuck off base to call this a concentration camp for undesirables with all the insinuations of Nazism that come with that. This kind of Trump = Hilter hyperbole at the drop of a hat hazes all the very real and heavy criticisms that can be made of this administration.
Gitmo being used as a transit camp for deported illegal immigrants is not at all as say, Sachsenhausen or Dachau being used to illegally dumb german citizens and torture them there indefinitely because they criticized the ruling regime. When Trump starts trying to dump opposing intellectuals, Hollywood producers and "wayward" reporters or writers into Gitmo for indefinite detention, then we can make some firmer claims of literal dictatorship.
If anything, the use of Gitmo under Bush II, when actual U.S citizens were held there indefinitely under terrorism charges was closer to the mark than this now.
Concentration camps have been operated by many regimes, not just the nazis. That equation is in your head.
I am however personally pessimistic about the probity of a camp run on a remote island without any oversight. And I think insisting that everyone wait until after a dictatorship is fully embedded and engaging in retaliation against political enemies (after making open threats to do so) is strategically stupid, much like saying you need to let an asailant get in 4 or 5 punches just to be sure the first two weren't accidental.
>I think insisting that everyone wait until after a dictatorship is fully embedded and engaging in retaliation against political enemies
You realize this is a democratically elected government whose leader was already president once without a dictatorship?
Just a couple of weeks ago a federal court stopped his plans to end birthright citizenship in its tracks, and what was Trump's response? "We'll appeal it in court".... Oh damn! all those dictatoring plans stopped by the monstrous hurdle of constitutionally mandated judicial oversight.... You'd almost think he's not quite.... a dictator.
This kind of tedious hyperbole not only ran rampant before and during the first four years, it also made it harder to make genuine criticisms of Trump gain attention. With so much hysteria about every bullshit little thing being touted far and wide as an example of a 21st century Hitlerism, it's easy for the critics to be viewed as a laughing stock except in their own little echo chambers of like-thinkers.
So, what would be the red line in the sand for you where you stop and say... "Aw, shit, this guy _really_ is fascist."
Because all I've been seeing so far were excuses, he won't do that's (that promptly were then done), contorsions to justify his insane dribble and complete disregard for the law.
This guy is going to destroy your country, and it's absolutely mind-boggling people are cheering him.
> This guy is going to destroy your country, and it's absolutely mind-boggling people are cheering him.
He was already president for four years, and the next four years were so bad for the world and the US that he was asked to come back overwhelmingly. Or it could just be because the Republicans run democratic primaries that party leadership can't just overrule or turn into a mockery, and the Democrats don't.
he pardoned the January 6 rioters that he sent to the capitol to stop the certification of the election. they can all walk free now including the ones who killed a police officer.
> Concentration camps have been operated by many regimes, not just the nazis. That equation is in your head.
They may been operated by hundreds of regimes, but the term is 100% identified with Nazis now. It's a rather daft statement to say that these are not equated.
If you find yourself in a situation where you feel compelled to quibble over fine details of the definition of terms like " concentration camp", this is an indication that you are desperately compromised in some way.
the parallel with the Nazis for me is the building of it on foreign soil instead of somewhere with judicial oversight - even while they own the supreme court and Congress.
I think you've associated the entirety of concentration camps with the one that's taught in WWII history. There are extermination camps where the goal is efficient mass-murder, forced labor camps where the goal is slavery, both of which are a kind of concentration camps which is simply a place where groups of people are illegally detained. Don't focus too hard on the illegal part because it's always legal in the state that does it. The Japanese internment camps the US used were concentration camps.
In a weird way the events of WWII saved the US from going down the same path because we were on it. Anything literally Hitler did became politically toxic and it's a bit worrying that this toxicity is wearing off. It kept us far away from
the fence.
The thing that matters for concentration camps is large groups of related civilians detained to advance a political goal— to restore Germany to its former greatness or to make America great again.
> It's also way the fuck off base to call this a concentration camp for undesirables with all the insinuations of Nazism that come with that.
Tell me, how many other governments can you list that planned to deport large numbers of people living in their country out to a special island they controlled in order to take advantage of its extraterritorial legal limbo separating it from the source country?
Comparing this to the Madagascar plan and the core aims of the regime behind it is even more the fuck off base than the original insinuation of the current plans for Gitmo being akin to a concentration camp for undesirables.
Truly, at least use some basic bloody comparative reasoning to formulate arguments.
> they broke the law crossing the border illegally
The majority here crossed legally and overstayed their visa. That's just basic table-stakes knowledge for this issue, please remember it. Bonus points if you know that overstaying is a civil infraction like a parking ticket, below the level of a misdemeanor.
> these initial rounds of deportations are prioritizing illegal aliens with violent criminal records.
That's what the professional liar says, but why would you trust him on that?
> These people are factually the worst of the worst.
How the hell can you "factually" know that when the Trump administration still won't even explain what criteria they are using!? (Even assuming they'll be making any honest effort at all.)
They even plotted to forcibly deport victims to fenced-in zones on an island which they would seize from another country, putting it outside their laws at home.
The Nazi program of concentration camps and terror started almost immediately, and included an enormous amount of overt, obvious, very violent state repression against anyone at all who criticized the regime. This included sending them to the first camps, formed in 1933, right after Hitler's appointment, and openly torturing and beating people, or executing them extrajudicially.
None of anything from Trump's government is at all comparable so far and making such comparisons, aside from being a genuinely idiotic case of ideological exaggeration, is also an insult to real victims of real historical concentration camps and violent regimes.
For all the self-congratulatory patting on the back by many readers on HN about their "superior" intellectual reasoning, I see a remarkable abundance of largely failing at such reasoning when it comes to many comment threads and subjects on this site.
Gitmo being used as a transit camp for deported illegal immigrants is not at all as say, Sachsenhausen or Dachau being used to illegally dumb german citizens and torture them there indefinitely because they criticized the ruling regime. When Trump starts trying to dump opposing intellectuals, Hollywood producers and "wayward" reporters or writers into Gitmo for indefinite detention, then we can make some firmer claims of literal dictatorship.
If anything, the use of Gitmo under Bush II, when actual U.S citizens were held there indefinitely under terrorism charges was closer to the mark than this now.