Once again, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is using the exaggerated language of ignorant internet trolls to make a point.
And, as usual, she really stepped in it.
This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying.
This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis ⬇️https://t.co/2dWHxb7UuL
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 18, 2019
That “expert analysis” comes from author Andrea Pitzer. She wrote a book about “concentration camps” around the world, including Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, British South Africa, and FDR’s internment camps for Japanese, many of whom were U.S. citizens. She broadened the definition of “concentration camps” to include other nations, thus lumping in far less egregious abuses of internment protocols with the crimes against humanity committed by Nazis.
Do the detention centers run by the U.S. government on the border meet the definition of “concentration camp”? This is a term for which great care must be taken so that there is clear separation in the public mind between the horrific crimes of Hitler and his henchmen, and the admittedly difficult humanitarian situation on the border. The casual, nauseating use of the term in a political context by Ocasio-Cortez is an abomination, as she was brutally reminded by the Auschwitz Museum
@KFILE Please consider following @AuschwitzMuseum where everyday we commemorate and educate about the tragic human history of #Auschwitz.
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) June 18, 2019
The history of Auschwitz is far more complicated than this as it combined two functions: a concentration camp and from March 1942 an extermination center. See our online lesson: https://t.co/45MCqODtva
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) June 18, 2019
AOC’s problem is that in her eagerness to sound like someone who knows what she’s talking about, she took a crap on the six million people — and their families — who endured the unspeakable atrocities meted out by Hitler’s goons.
It doesn’t matter if the detention facilities on the border meet some vague, nebulous, definition of some academic’s notion of “concentration camp.” The point is that using the term in a political context immediately calls to mind Hitler and his crimes. It is a deliberate attempt to equate the U.S. government with Nazis — which is, indeed, “hyperbole,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, to all but the paranoid hysterics who nod their empty heads in agreement
The United States has a guaranteed right to protect itself. That includes the right to refuse entry to those who are seeking asylum. That many of the asylum seekers arrive seriously ill after walking a thousand miles in brutal conditions is not surprising. Some, unfortunately, don’t survive. But to equate those few accidental deaths with the deliberate mass killings of six million human beings by the Nazis makes decent people want to throw up. It is using the skeletons of the Holocaust dead as a stepping stone for political advancement.
Perhaps the words of attorney Joseph Welch, who brought down Senator Joseph McCarthy, would be appropriate: “You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”
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