bilby
Fair dinkum thinkum
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To me it seems like an accurate description of what these facilities are. They are central sites intended for the temporary but indefinite detaining of non-criminals, established to prevent those persons from dispersing around the nation, so that their activities can be supervised by the authorities. That's what a concentration camp IS.
Detainees are placed in concentration camps on the basis of ethnicity, point of origin, or other group characteristics, rather than as the result of (or pending) individual legal proceedings to establish their guilt for a specific charge (or multiple charges).
The first concentration camps were established by the British Imperial government in South Africa, to house the Boer families who were suspected of giving shelter and comfort to guerrilla forces. They were not intended to be particularly unpleasant, much less deadly; But neglect and disinterest turned them into hell holes.
The Nazis adopted a similar approach a few decades later, but later developed the concept to include deliberate death camps, as well as camps used to supply slave labour to the nation and her industries.
As a result, the association between concentration camps and Naziism is well established in popular culture - but the Nazi camps were only the most extreme variant on a well established theme. And even the Nazis started out with simple detention camps for persons deemed inferior to, or politically dangerous to, the Nazi ideal. Whch is exactly what the current US government is worried about - THEY are in our country, making things worse for, (or at least threatening to make things worse for) US. THEY are rounded up and put in camps, because WE are scared of what THEY will do if allowed to roam free. Not what they will do as individuals; But what they, as a group, will do to our national identity, to our precious self-image.
That's what concentration camps ARE; And that's what the US (and for that matter Australia) has set up. It's an unfortunately common 'solution' when governments stop treating certain groups as though they were real people.
You are either a person; Or you are an 'illegal', a 'queue jumper', an 'enemy of the state', a 'traitor', a 'Jew', or a 'communist'. Once you have established who isn't really a person, rounding up the sub-humans and putting them in camps is the obvious solution. You wouldn't do that to people; Even criminals deserve due process before being locked up. But when you lock up unpersons, that's perfectly fine, reasonable, even patriotic and noble.
It's a very easy mindset to get into. The VAST majority of Nazis considered themselves decent, honest, god-fearing, and patriotic. They weren't monsters - the scariest thing about them was that they weren't monsters. They were just regular Joes (or Johanns), trying to earn an honest crust, and intent on keeping society orderly, clean, and decent.
That this desperate defence of national identity and self-image, as strong, morally upstanding, virtuous paragons of all that is best in humanity, leads in fact to being reviled as evil sadists, is a tragedy not only for the victims, but also for the perpetrators.
It's not yet too late for America. But the edge of the precipice is perilously close, so it's a good idea to take off the blinkers, and watch where you are heading.
Pretending that your concentration camps are not real concentration camps, is a bad, bad, bad idea.
