<
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trumps-massive-deportation-plan-echoes-concentration-camp-history/>
"The Republican National Convention hit rock bottom on its third day in
Milwaukee, Wis., on July 17, with a sea of signs calling for “Mass Deportation
Now.” If former president Donald Trump is elected for a second term, he and his
advisers promise to remove from the U.S., via forced expulsions and deportation
camps, as many as 20 million people—a number larger than the country’s current
estimated population of undocumented residents. Put into effect, this scheme
would devolve quickly into a vast 21st-century version of concentration camps,
with predictably brutal results.
Concentration camps are built for the mass detention of civilians based on
group identity, excluding protections normally afforded by a country’s legal
system. I wrote a history of these camps that traced an arc from their
19th-century origins in Spanish-occupied Cuba through the development of death
camps in Germany and their modern-day descendants around the world.
Trump’s plan to launch a massive deportation project nationwide—the first plank
in the platform approved at his party’s convention—draws on the same flawed
historical rationales and pseudoscience that built support for concentration
camps worldwide in the 20th century. Early architects of these camps veiled
their efforts in scientific terms while using terror and punishment to seize
more power.
For example, Trump has claimed repeatedly that undocumented immigrants are
“poisoning the blood” of the U.S. “Blood poisoning” is a medical condition;
saying that foreigners are poisoning a nation’s blood is simply a slur. But
perverting scientific or medical language to violate human rights and permit
atrocities comes from a familiar playbook.
Justifications for brutal immigration policies have often distorted scientific
goals of public health programs. Trump and his advisers have long been prone to
panic-mongering over the threat of disease from immigrants. They’ve likewise
twisted sociology to stoke anxiety about assimilation to justify a Muslim ban
or to try to make racist comments seem less objectionable. Even simple
principles of statistics get skewered as Trump lies about crime committed by
immigrants.
Trump’s incendiary language echoes dangerous historical precedents. He has
called his political opponents “vermin,” referred to immigrants as depraved
“animals” and “rapists,” and described the U.S.–Mexico border as an “open
wound.” Examples abound of similar rhetoric in Nazi propaganda about Jews.
Less well known is the fact that before World War II, the Nazis framed German
Jews as aliens who needed to be forced into emigration or expelled. This was
the original logic for stripping Jews of citizenship: to officially render them
foreigners. (It should be noted that Trump aims to end birthright citizenship
in the U.S.)"
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
