By all criteria, this a concentration camp. Not “concentration camp” as rhetorical inflation, or emotionally manipulative shorthand, or edgy metaphor—but as in: literally.

As in: detention without trial, state control, inhumane living conditions, forced labor, dehumanization, brutal violence, isolation from accountability, psychological torture, and—by every available logical extension—murder.

That last one we can’t yet verify in the strict evidentiary sense, but the circumstances suggest it like smoke suggests fire, and they are already trying to hide their actions and deny what is occurring.

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[–] 112 points 1 year ago (23 children)

It is not new though, it started with Guantanamo concentration camp for Taliban fighters.

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  • [–] 91 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    It is not new though, it started with Guantanamo concentration camp for Taliban fighters.

    It is not new though, it started with 10 concentrations camps during World War 2 for Japanese Americans.

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  • [–] 76 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    It is not new though, it started with Guantanamo concentration camp for Taliban fighters.

    It is not new though, it started with 10 concentrations camps during World War 2 for Japanese Americans.

    It is not new though, it started with concentration camps for the extermination and removal of the Native Americans

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Hey! You skipped the civil war concentration camps on both sides, how dare you.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I've always thought it was hypocritical of Americans to be calling Nazis the worst. We literally enslaved a group of people for hundreds of years, bred and slaughtered them at our whim. Had concentration camps, and more. We're not better, and probably worse. We just had good propaganda.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Eh, I wouldn't say Americans reached the level of industrialized genocide Nazi Germany achieved but we definitely had and still have plenty of blood on our hands.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    I'm not sure I'd agree, though maybe you're correct because it wasn't industrial. We put bounties on bison skulls though to encourage them being slaughtered because we new native populations relied on them, for example. It was brutal and systematic. Sure, we didn't use industrial means to actually kill them, but I don't think that makes it better or worse, only different.

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  • [–] 44 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    In Die Hard, when Hans is describing Takagi, he says "interned at Manzanar 1942-43". 9 year old imsufferableninja thought he was talking about an internship at a prestigious company called Manzanar. 25 year old imsufferableninja finally figured it out. They did not teach about the US's concentration camps at my schools, for some reason...

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    Guantanamo Bay is/was its own fresh hell, but it was not a concentration camp.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (10 children)
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Because it was used for a select few (relatively speaking). It wasn't a camp built to concentrate a sizeable portion of our population into one small area.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I've already said that there are good arguments for why this shouldn't be considered a concentration camp, and this isn't one of them. This is like saying genocide isn't genocide because the unique tribe you wiped out was only a couple hundred people. So, if you took that same tribe of people and put them in a camp and resteicted their movement, would you not consider it a concentration camp because of it's size?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago*

    Gitmo was never meant to store large amounts of people (and not civilians). It was a place that was conveniently located that allow them to detain and torture individuals. That's not a concentration camp dude.

    Even when they started trying to send some migrants there, there were articles saying that they didn't have the facilities for it because it was never meant for that.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    It was an off the record black torture/interrogation site. They didn't send every taliban they accounted there. It was selective.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Ah, sorry, I didn't realize that the Nazis sent all their prisoners to one camp. I guess those weren't concentration camps, either.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I'm sure the Nazis had torture/interrogation sites too.

    Nobody said that not being a concentration camp made Guantanamo ok.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    No, someone just said it's not a concentration camp because everyone of one demographic wasn't there.

    Actually, on further thought, I'll give you that. But, unsurprisingly, limited rights abuses tend to lead to more extensive rights abuses, and the only really surprising thing is that it took more than 20 years to go from torture camps to concentration camps. Waiting for those ghettos, Poland style.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    You misinterpreted my response. The point is the intention (giving 1 example at the time of operation). That intention was interrogation not concentrating undesirables.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    I'm pretty sure the vast majority of criminals imprisoned in America have been interrogated without having to be removed to a different country and kept in a special prison. I imagine the exceptions are military personnel stationed outside America, criminals serving sentences in other countries, and the people at Guantanamo bay? So why are they being treated differently?

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