Chapter 11
Summary by James R. Martin, Ph.D., CMA
Professor Emeritus, University of South Florida
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Chapter 12 | Epilogue
Chapter 11: Concentration Camps in Trump's America?
On June 17, 2019, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman from New York, created a fierce debate when she Instagram live-streamed her views on the conditions of migrants at the Customs and Border Protection holding centers at the US-Mexico border. She said, "The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border..." She went on to say, "A presidency that creates concentration camps is fascist." Her language created a larger debate about the utility and meaning of making comparisons of the administration's policies to the Nazi era, and it added to the debate over whether Trump is a fascist.
The Controversy
Ocasio-Cortez pointed out that concentration camps have occurred throughout history including the colonial development of camps, and the camps that were developed when the U.S. rounded up Japanese Americans during WWII. Those camps fit the definition because a concentration camp is the "mass detention of civilians without trial."
In the summer of 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services held more than 12,000 minors and an average of 52,000 people per day in migrant detention. Seventy percent of them were held in private, for-profit prisons. Twenty-six adults died in US detention between 2017-2019. Six children died in 2019 alone. The Trump administration's policy focused on deliberate cruelty, overcrowding and sexual abuse of adults and children. The detention centers, both private and publicly run, operated on the basis of deterrence through cruelty and abuse. Detainees were placed in empty frigid holding cells where they sat on the floor. Children were taken from their parents and the parents had no way to track or reunite with them because the administration failed to create a system for reunification.
Shifts in Holocaust Memory Culture
Between the 1970s and 2000s the Holocaust became the signifier for absolute evil and an important source of moral education in the United States. Ocasio-Cortez applied the Holocaust to contemporary American political realities and the Trump administration. Other administrations had made Holocaust comparisons (e.g., Clinton during the 1993-1995 Bosnian War, and Bush to justify the war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq), but Ocasio-Cortez used the memory of the Holocaust to focus on a domestic political crisis.
Donald Trump and Historical Analogies
Trump's election in 2016, his authoritarianism, disregard for democratic norms, support for white supremacy and cult personality created a search for historical analogies. Many pointed to the period of classical fascism. The endless repeated question "Is Trump a fascist?" showed a desperate search for historical validation or resistance. Some promoted analogies to Hitler while others argued that comparing Hitler and Trump is neither accurate or useful. (See Chapter 2 for a comparison). Others were critical of creating analogies between the Holocaust and other events. But Ocasio-Cortez used the historical analogies to focus attention on the detention centers that the Trump administration sought to hide. Her analysis revealed that the Trump administration's policies were in alignment with those of other racist regimes.
Backlash From the Right
Republican politicians and right-wing media argued that comparisons to the Holocaust were offensive, and that it cheapened the memory of the Holocaust to advance a left-wing political narrative. According to Vice President Pence, it was a slander against Customs and Border Protection. Right-wing Jewish organizations argued that comparing the detention centers to the Holocaust insulted the Jews as well as history. All this was of course a sideshow designed to distract from what was actually going on.
Democratic Ambivalence
Most democrats did not use the term concentration camps, but agreed that locking up children and keeping them in deplorable conditions for weeks in places not meant for kids is absolutely unacceptable. Clearly camps where people are held in solitary confinement, deprived of sleep, sexually abused and forcibly drugged need to be called something stronger than detention facilities.
Progressive Direct Action
A coalition of left-wing publications and websites developed a "Call to Action: Close the Concentration Camps Now!" a week after Ocasio-Cortez's Twitter posts on detention centers. A group of progressive Jewish activists developed a social movement in response to her media posts using the slogan "Never Again." Never Again embraced the label concentration camp and used it in their movement. They organized protest at detention centers and Department of Homeland Security offices across the country. In 2020 Never Again Action had fifty chapters with the mission to take down the entire detention and deportation machine. The lesson is that once a group of people has been dehumanized, or "otherrized" and removed from public view, a potential has been created for greater and greater atrocity.
Conclusion
The 2019 controversy over concentration camps was on the surface a language debate, but it revealed a new way for Americans to see their past, present, and future.
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Related summaries:
Anonymous. 2019. A Warning: A Senior Trump Administration Official. Twelve: Hachette Book Group. (Summary).
Martin, J. R. Not dated. Policies of a Second Trump Presidency.
Martin, J. R. Not dated. Shepard Fairey Political Posters.
Martin, J. R. Not dated. Summary of Trump's Seven Part Plan to Overturn the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election.
Martin, J. R. Not dated. Summary of what Trump is and what he is not.
Martin, J. R. Not dated. Why I vote for Democrats.
Oser, J. 1963. The Evolution of Economic Thought. Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. See Chapter 5 for Adam Smith's invisible hand. (Summary).
Stanley, J. 2018. How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Random House. (Summary).
Unger, C. 2018. House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia. Dutton. (Note).