Thursday, February 22, 2024

Repeating History

https://apple.news/AxF_akWjjSxiW6F0fwoDl2w


Is it any surprise that Trump is now dreaming of concentration camps?

Answer: No. 


We have tried it  before and it was a crime against humanity.  Trump plans to repeat the atrocity and to make it even worse.


https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/concentration-camps-existed-long-before-Auschwitz-180967049/


Addenda to the Facebook post (above) summarizing the history.


>President Dwight Eisenhower’s notorious mass deportation program, “Operation Wetback,” that took its name from a derogatory slur against Mexican migrants. In the 1950s, federal agents conducted aggressive raids and rapidly deported hundreds of thousands of migrants by truck, train, plane and cargo ship. The enterprise was a humanitarian nightmare, as a Vox report recounting the operation explained:

Conditions for deported immigrants were horrifying. A later congressional investigation described conditions on one cargo ship as a “penal hell ship” and compared it to a slave ship on the Middle Passage. Immigrants who were dumped over the border in trucks didn’t fare any better. They were shoved into trucks “like cows,” driven 10 miles into Mexico, and unceremoniously dumped into the desert — often in punishing heat, without water. Families were torn apart.

At the time, The Los Angeles Times described the prison camps, surrounded by wire fences, as “concentration camps.” Columbia University historian Mae Ngai estimates that nearly 90 migrants died of sunstroke after being stranded in the desert.<


Historical note:   Concentration camps were first created by Spanish to be used against Cuban rebels fighting for their nation's freedom. The Spanish general in charge of Cuban operations refused to implement the plan, calling it inhumane. He was relieved of duty and a new general, who approved the idea, took charge to implement it.

Later the British used the system to fight against Boer  insurgents in South Africa.

Finally, Hitler turned the concept into outright death camps.


We don't need to add America to the list of nations using concentration camps...Oh. Too late. That is exactly what the Japanese detention centers were during World War II. 

As concentration camp go, those detention centers were on the less horrific side.  Nonetheless, they were concentration camps aimed at a racial minority.