23:10ff. Totally agree, Austin. These are great points. "Concentration camp" conjures up such extreme horror that it is easy for advocates of the current system to say that they are not exterminating millions of people and thus the centers are [in comparison] "good." Getting the word out in persuasive ways about the inhuman conditions in the camps is probably a better way to go.
Thank you for a fascinating discussion with two of my favorite experts on immigration and the border.
I offer “torture camps.” It avoids comparison to the camps of World War II and, based on first-hand accounts, is an accurate description of the mental and physical abuses that happen there.
Great discussion with two great minds! Thanks, guys! I've grappled with this same issue throughout my ongoing speaking tour, with my terms evolving as the horrors of this regime come more clearly into focus. From the jump, I eschewed the use of "processing" and "detention" center, precisely because these words don't trigger the wanton abuse of human rights that we know exists within these facilities. I tried out "internment camp" as well, because "camp" on its own, for some, was too closely associated with summer and fun. But having been inside several of these places, particularly the CoreCivic camp in Eloy, Arizona, I think the term "concentration camp" does the best job of evoking the violence, brutality, loss of liberty, dignity, and control, not to mention the crowded, filthy, and abusive conditions within that are, indeed, killing people who've been locked up indefinitely, though they've largely committed no crime. It also puts a find point on what's happening right in front of our eyes: the Trump regime expanding an already existing US government built transportation and incarceration network into which kidnapped people are trafficked between facilities, including the coming warehouse prisons, before expelling them to harm back home or to third countries where they are being imprisoned, executed, chain refouled, or released onto the streets of places where they know no one, will struggle to survive, and be lost to their families forever. So, yeah, what's happening doesn't exactly mirror Hitler's model -- it never will because we're in a whole new era. But it's pretty fucking close. Indeed, I'm kicking myself now that I didn't push harder to retain my book's intended title, The First Solution. My publisher changed it to Crossing the Line because she found the reference to the Holocaust in the original title too triggering. And that was only two years ago! Anyway, thank very much for bringing these issues to the public stage. So grateful.
The privately-run, but publicly-paid ICE camps are not going anywhere, either, which is just one more way to terrorize Americans and threaten them into compiance:
23:10ff. Totally agree, Austin. These are great points. "Concentration camp" conjures up such extreme horror that it is easy for advocates of the current system to say that they are not exterminating millions of people and thus the centers are [in comparison] "good." Getting the word out in persuasive ways about the inhuman conditions in the camps is probably a better way to go.
Thank you for a fascinating discussion with two of my favorite experts on immigration and the border.
I offer “torture camps.” It avoids comparison to the camps of World War II and, based on first-hand accounts, is an accurate description of the mental and physical abuses that happen there.
Great discussion with two great minds! Thanks, guys! I've grappled with this same issue throughout my ongoing speaking tour, with my terms evolving as the horrors of this regime come more clearly into focus. From the jump, I eschewed the use of "processing" and "detention" center, precisely because these words don't trigger the wanton abuse of human rights that we know exists within these facilities. I tried out "internment camp" as well, because "camp" on its own, for some, was too closely associated with summer and fun. But having been inside several of these places, particularly the CoreCivic camp in Eloy, Arizona, I think the term "concentration camp" does the best job of evoking the violence, brutality, loss of liberty, dignity, and control, not to mention the crowded, filthy, and abusive conditions within that are, indeed, killing people who've been locked up indefinitely, though they've largely committed no crime. It also puts a find point on what's happening right in front of our eyes: the Trump regime expanding an already existing US government built transportation and incarceration network into which kidnapped people are trafficked between facilities, including the coming warehouse prisons, before expelling them to harm back home or to third countries where they are being imprisoned, executed, chain refouled, or released onto the streets of places where they know no one, will struggle to survive, and be lost to their families forever. So, yeah, what's happening doesn't exactly mirror Hitler's model -- it never will because we're in a whole new era. But it's pretty fucking close. Indeed, I'm kicking myself now that I didn't push harder to retain my book's intended title, The First Solution. My publisher changed it to Crossing the Line because she found the reference to the Holocaust in the original title too triggering. And that was only two years ago! Anyway, thank very much for bringing these issues to the public stage. So grateful.
Thanks for sharing the thoughts/experience, Sarah. And thanks for your work.
I have no problem naming them what I believe them to be... Concentration camps or gulags. I started calling them this years ago.
Walmart storage spaces and underground tunnels were already being prepared for the death camps in 2022:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/walmarts-are-prepared-for-becoming
The privately-run, but publicly-paid ICE camps are not going anywhere, either, which is just one more way to terrorize Americans and threaten them into compiance:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/terrorizing-americans-is-the-new