A Democratic congresswoman has given a scathing review of the Trump administration’s so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida, describing it as an “internment camp” that needs to be “shut the hell down.”
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who represents Florida’s 25th congressional district, said that pictures of the facility “don’t do it justice” and that detainees were being “packed into cages.”
On Saturday Florida lawmakers from both parties took a state-arranged tour of the new 3,000-bed detention center that the state rapidly built on an isolated airstrip surrounded by swampland in the Everglades.
Auschwitz was an extermination camp, not a concentration camp. This is more like Dachau. Pretty accurately like Dachau I’d even say.
You’re right, BUT -
this is a majorly fucked up timeline when people are complaining that it’s too mean to call a US concentration camp “Auschwitz” when it’s clearly just harmless little “Dachau.” Dachau led to Auschwitz and if the normalization of it is any indication, it WILL happen again here. THAT’S why people are calling it that - we’ve seen this shit before and know how it ends.
Well, in Germany we got hammered it in that any likening of anything that was not part of the Holocaust to parts of the Holocaust is inherently antisemitic and a new form of nazism. The Holocaust is supposed to be unique and special forever, as no one is as good at exterminating people like we Germans are and Jews are the eternal victims, hence Israel can’t do any wrong. Conveniently ignoring how other victims of the Holocaust such as Sinti and Roma are still facing rampant systemic discrimination in Germany and also that understanding of Jewish victims being limited to Israelis or people loyal to Israel, whereas Jews who criticize Israel face various forms of repression in Germany.
Now obviously that isn’t the way it is taught directly, but it does involve a sick guilt pride on the one hand and the immediate shut down of any criticism of anything that actually does have parallels to aspects of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust. Or well, that is as long as the criticism is geared towards our allies such as the US and Israel.
Unfortunately the whole debate has been deeply intoxicated and instrumentalized in the “Staatsräson” logic of unconditional support for any and every atrocity, as long as it serves the current Israeli state and its government.
From the best attempt of a neutral perspective: In Auschwitz the Nazis murdered about 1.5 Million people. At its peak there were about 150,000 - 200,000 people concentrated there. From medicinal experiments on humans to random acts of brutal violence there has been all sorts of further gruesome atrocities piled on top of the systematic extermination. So in terms of scale the comparison really cannot come even remotely close.
I do agree with you that these atrocities escalate and escalate quickly, when left unchallenged. The idea that Germany, Israel, the US or anyone other state entity truly learned a lesson of humanity from the horrors of the Holocaust and there would be a certain prevention unfortunately also is wrong. I remember how in school everybody was like “i could have never done this” or “i would have fought against this, how could the people?!” and now we see the same writings on the wall here in Germany again and most people do fuck all, if they don’t already openly embrace it
I hate how often people act like this is the case. We Americans will soon be making “the” Holocaust “a” Holocaust and prove that the Germans were not somehow unique in committing crimes against humanity, and I hate that so many of us are this fucking stupid and evil.
I see it another way.
By the time Auschwitz happened it was already way too late to oppse the Nazi Regime. It was too late to save lifes and prevent tragedy. But at Dachau it wasn’t.
It also makes it seem like this (Donalds Dachau) is the endgame. Like this is the worst they will do. When they will in fact do much worse.
By calling it an Auschwitz, I feel we’re kind of throwing a towel and telling ourselves that the MAGA-Regime is already too powerful. It isn’t. They’re only just starting, they can still be stopped. It also makes it seem like this is the height of their tyranny, which it isn’t. Noone should stay at home thinking “well, it isn’t that bad” but instead go to the streets thinking “it mustn’t get worse”
Also we all know that Dachau isn’t “harmless” in any way, and my comment should be pretty clear that it was awful. Comparing it to dachau isn’t normalizing it, it isn’t disrespectful, because it’s what gets closest to it. On the other hands it can be seen as disrespectful to all those who suffered and even perished in Birkenau to be compared to “Donalds Dachau”.
Lastly let me assure you that I am NOT, as implied in your comment, defending the current US-Regime nor normalizing Dachau.
Yeah let’s weaken our political messaging for the camp where acting forces want to feed the latino population to alligators in the name of pedantry! Fuck the fact that most Americans would probably guess Dachau is a cheese or something, and that Auschwitz is certainly the most recognizable of the camps taught from the holocaust, we want to be 5% more correct!
I mean. They built it in the middle of a swamp. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next time that area gets a particularly heavy rain it’ll morph into an extermination camp in a matter of hours.
The facility is comprised of tents, in a gator and snake infested swamp in southern Florida, one of the most active hurricane regions on the planet. The first hurricane or tropical storm that comes through there is going to destroy that place, and put those people at mortal risk.
Look, if you put people in “concentration camps” until they die, wouldn’t that be an extermination camp, even if you aren’t doing anything to accelerate their deaths?
Anne Frank didn’t die in a gas chamber; she died of typhus. Putting people in a place full of health hazards where they will not get proper medical care is a form of extermination.
No, because words have meaning. People also died in the original concentration camps - they were still distinct from the extermination camps.
Auschwitz 1 was a concentration camp, Auschwitz 2 (Auschwitz-Birkenau) was an extermination camp
Also please stop using the euphemisms the Nazis used. It’s an extermination camp.
Euphemisms are meaningless once the connotation settle in. No person alive in the modern civilization can heart the term “concentration camp” and think “oh, this is not so bad then”.
Alligator Auschwitz will be an extermination camp, but the “oopsie, the residents all died of heatstroke and dehydration, maybe they shouldn’t have been illegally entered the country” kind.
But the alliteration…
I nominate “Donalds Dachau”. Would that work for you?
YES👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼