Family separation and the Nazi comparison
It’s a meme that’s been cropping up with some regularity on the left: the detentions at the border, and in particular the separation of children from parents, is Nazi-esque.
Yesterday a commenter named “holmes” (who used to be an episodic regular here but who hasn’t been around for a couple of years as far as I know, and who seems to have had one of the rare right-to-left transitions—I believe courtesy of the candidacy and then election of one Donald Trump) made the comparison: “and for Jewish conservatives not to squint at all of this and think ‘Hmm, looks vaguely familiar’ is a disgrace.”
But this really isn’t about holmes, who is of course free to believe and think as he wishes. However, his comment reminded me to take the opportunity to clear something up, since holmes is hardly the only one making Nazi comparisons lately. In fact, his statement is relatively mild compared to what some are saying on the subject.
So: no, there is nothing familiar, not even vaguely, to the Holocaust, and it is a disgrace to suggest that there is.
I’m not going to go into a long post describing the Holocaust, but it is clear to all who study history that the death camps and even work camps were not refugee detention centers, and the people in them (Jews and others) were not illegal immigrants asking for asylum or seeking to become German citizens (or Polish citizens for that matter, the country where the Germans located most of the death camps).
In Nazi work camps, many people (if relatively able-bodied to begin with) were set to “work” to be starved, tortured both psychologically and physically, and killed in droves by disease and exhaustion because of the terrible conditions. In Nazi death camps they were killed at the outset, although a very small percentage were spared briefly to help with the cleanup of the mass killing in exchange for a few more months of life, or to work at certain other tasks for a while under conditions that would ordinarily kill them rather quickly (within months as a rule). The object was to eliminate them as a group from the face of the earth, and certainly from Europe.
That was the stark reality, and it is obscene to make the comparison so many people are making.
What’s more, the idea that small children (younger than teen years) were often taken from their mothers in Nazi camps is actually an error, because what usually happened is that mother and young child stayed together because both mother and child were ordinarily killed together on arrival. Teenagers who seemed strong enough to work were often spared, however. Here’s how it went:
Many children died on the trains or on arrival in the gas chambers. Two camps – Auschwitz and Majdanek – operated a selection policy where the fittest were chosen for slave labour, while babies, small children and their mothers were sent straight to the gas chambers. Teenagers had a better chance of surviving selection, particularly if they claimed to have a skill.
Long term survival was rare and most of those selected to work died eventually of exhaustion and disease. The conditions were so extreme that even the fittest people rarely survived more than a few months in the camps. Some children were kept back from the gas chambers so they could be used for horrific medical experiments.
Anyone who sees a similarity between that and the situation taking place near the border in the US has lost all claim to logic or truth.
If you want to find the facts on what’s been happening to illegal immigrant children at the US border, good luck. The headlines scream “Children kept in cages!!!”—as they apparently also were during the Obama administration, although there are now a lot more of them because of the Trump zero tolerance policy.
But how long are they kept in these fenced enclosures? All of the articles I’ve read so far (and I’ve read quite a few) make it difficult to tease out that information. As best I can tell these “cages” are initial holding areas limited to a 72-hour stay, and then the children are placed in other facilities with beds and services, or foster homes in some cases (see this article, for example).
If vast numbers of unaccompanied children or families cross a border illegally, there has to be some mechanism for holding the people while decisions are being made for further placement. It’s hard to see what other kind of arrangements could be made unless a huge new outlay of money were to be appropriated.
Nearly 60 miles away, in the town of Brownsville, some 1,500 boys are being housed inside a building that was once a Walmart superstore. The boys, aged 10 to 17, were all caught illegally crossing the border. It is America’s largest facility for such minors, and numbers have increased in the past month by several hundred…
…[T]he accommodation was likened to dorm rooms inside a giant warehouse. To accommodate for the growing numbers since the new “zero-tolerance” policy went into force, cots have been added to sleeping areas in the Casa Padre.
The New York Times described it as “clean, massive and brightly lit”, with the children given classes six hours each week day and outdoor play time for two hours a day. They have 48 medical staff and three on call doctors on hand…
Officials say they are trying to keep siblings together and not separate children under four or younger from their parents.
There are anecdotal reports of a few such separations happening, however, although I wonder how many are accurate. There is so much fog and propaganda around this that it’s impossible to tell what’s really going on. But it sounds like the majority are unaccompanied minors, and it sounds like this is a makeshift response to a bad situation—including the fact that many of these children have almost certainly already been traumatized before they even get here, by conditions (and predators) on the journey itself, among other things.
Most of the descriptions in the MSM of the conditions focus on the cages, because that reliably elicits the most outrage. And I would guess that most people probably think the children are held there indefinitely instead of for up to 72 hours and then transferred elsewhere. Here’s another a description of what “elsewhere” is like (by someone not friendly to the Trump policy):
They have classrooms, some of them are in old schools, some of them are in new buildings. This one is an old Walmart. There are rooms with bunkbeds. There are classrooms where children are given English classes and basic education courses.
…When a child comes into the Office of Refugee Resettlement, they’re provided with a know your rights presentation. There are legal service providers located anywhere there’s a facility. They explain to them they’re in removal proceedings and what their rights are. They explain a little of the court system and what to expect. But no child is expected to understand. They’re children and they’re explaining things in another language to them. We have to contextualize this all that way. They’re given a legal screening and evaluated for immigration legal release, it could be asylum, a juvenile visa or visas for victims of trafficking. There are some services, giving them some information about what they’re doing there. My sense is the kids understand kind of what’s happening but don’t really understand. They’re kids.
I’m curious to see what effect Trump’s EO will have on any of this. One of the problems is that the zero tolerance policy was instituted with what seems like a lack of preparation. No one has mentioned this in any article I’ve read, but I seem to recall that illegal immigrant entry numbers had been way down a while back and only recently climbed again, and that may be part of the reason for the lack of preparedness for the large scope of the problem. Now that the EO has been issued, if the shelters still just don’t have enough beds, what will happen? If the Flores ruling isn’t changed, will children be able to be housed with their parents for longer than 20 days? And if so, won’t the left complain about caged families?
Of course they will. The left will not rest until one or both of two things happen: the GOP adopts catch-and-release, or the GOP loses the 2018 election.
“…and it is obscene to make the comparison so many people are making.” THIS. It is a great offense to anyone who had ever suffered under the Nazis to make these charges.
There is no lie too big, no issue too important, that the Left will not seek to use for political advantage.
I know this is a rhetorical question, but is Neo the only sane person writing blogs OR “news” these days?
If you don’t see what Trump and the Republicsn as pure evil then the truth is that you are a monster.
We should have open borders if for no other reason we NEED more diversity. The United States is appalingly white and has a history of white supremacy
I IMPLORE you to read Leonard Pitts and Nikole Hannah Jones
Educate yourself as to the legacy of white supremacy and white privilege
Trent Denton Says:
…And awaaaay we go.
AesopFan Says:
June 21st, 2018 at 3:34 pm
If you’re not already a follower, Fan, let me introduce you to DiploMad 2.0:
http://www.thediplomad.com/2018/06/trump-deals-with-prog-border-madness.html
I read somewhere that Sessions is also looking into DNA testing to determine whether the kids are really related to traffickers who claim to be parents.
Remember when we were supposed to be outraged that Trump said some countries are s***holes? Now we hear how some women are leaving because of family abuse. We don’t get honest or sufficient info from anyone.
Trent, if you didn’t exist the right would have to invent you.
Diversity of skincolor is not a strength, diversity of skills is. The A-Team is a fine example of what diversity of skills could do, with a group of people with different skills join together to solve otherwise insurmountable problems. What exactly is the benefit of diversity of skincolor if they all bring the same low level redundant good for nothing skill sets? how many more landscapers, apple pickers, dishwashers or bed makers does this country really need?
besides Illegal immigration kills diversity when 90% of all legal or illegal immigrants are hispanics, don’t you want more immigrants with different ethnicity and from different parts of the world? Instead our immigrants are predominately hispanics, explain to me how the heck is that diversity when 95% of immigrants came from the same place. Illegally immigrates are thieves stealing immigration quotas and resources from legal immigrants who actually have something to offer this country.
They are gaming the system cheating everyone else waiting in line just because they have the advantage of living close by, how the heck do liberals explain to a legal immigrant in China waiting in line that it is fair that his place got taken away by an hispanic illegal alien because he lives closer by?
No, not like the gulags, the german camps, or work camps
BUT
not unlike the DP camps my famly came through AFTER the war
in fact a leftist hear at work got all upset and i said, if you dont like things change the law.. dont ask the president to be a king, you wont like it when you get an even worse king…
she claimed we never did that.
really?
well prior to the middle of last century, we treated children like small adults.. the first admieral of the US navy got his first military commission as an officer in charge of a vessel at the age of 12
immigrants coming through eliss island were separated as men could not be with women, and children had their own areas and play…
many many came alone
if taking kids is bad, then CPS taking kids under false auspices and giving them back is a nazi practice going on since when? the 1980s in the form its in? (and that stands in contrast to the kids tehy ignore and leave also for ideological reasons)
and even worse… the ONE Thing they wont listen to is what happens to the kids if you process them too fast or like obama, had an unflux that jams the machine?
Smuggler abandons 6-year-old in Arizona desert…
so my friend is all upset at me cause of donald trump and how kids in big areas cant be abused, and unlike her actual priveleged life she has never seen kids get used as a NORMAL thing
the smugglers use them
they then are used as slaves..
and YES in the US
Obama administration placed children with human traffickers, report says
what would the yelling friend upset we live under lex rex and not stalins rex lex, doesnt know about this kind of thing, she woudl rather think we are just hurtful and hateful
and not using the legal database in which your not supposed to hire such people made it possible to find slave labor in the US… do you want to bet that the people doing this are not part of the conservative base?
she is immagining a reality that isnt reality
so its easy to get angry cause in her world the above isnt happening so that the kids aer just away from paretns… she cant concieve pf people snatching a kid off the street, and then beating it, and then taking it to use them at the border for entry and special treatment… can
at the end of her tirade i was not allowed to answer. she said she would never let them take away her kid…her daubghter… yada yada.. and i said good for you, but since your also for gun control, how would you stop them from doing that to you? and that your safer if neither side can do such things, but empowering the left to defeat the right by any means, is not the same as winning the debate in the halls of reason.
if you succeed in getting guns off the street then she wont be able to protect her child as she claims.. what sould she do… spit at them?
of course she didnt get how that one point enables the other point
and that discretion in folllinw the law is not something a president can legally do, unless you define legal as what you cant prosecute for… which would make a farce of the oath to uphold the laws of the land…
the left thinks like a child,short term, under passion, no thought of other issues or things, and gets angry at any reason that says no
daddy i want a poney
no, we really cant afford one
daddy i want a poney
and your oppressing me if i dont get one
but we live in an apartment
mommy will divorce you if we dont get a poney
damned if you do, damned if you dont
maybe thats why the population is collapsing and the articles on it are more frequend and moving the dates up…
why would the dems want to not ingratiate themselves with the population that IS having babies and IS supporting them
right now, feminism is getting destroyed by racialists under hegel. after they destroyed their mates (all for the state which stands taller each defeat)…. and right now, they are really upset that these white priveleged (And the leaders were, naomi husband was a wall streeter ands she was bored in her happy gulag!!)… and they are VERY angry at them… murderously angry at them…
so much so, they are now ignoring the men, who are a bit tough to attack.. and have started attacking the women… and the men wont defend them any more than they do in sweden…
and this is the dinosaur meeting ground where they talk till all that is left is an echo…
the problem is fixing itself… no reason to discuss things, as the people discusing are on the way out!!! funny how they discuss things as if they will have any numbers i the group they discuss.. nope… way past that point and we dont even have an inkling!!!
Fewer Births Than Deaths Among Whites in Majority of U.S. States
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/white-minority-population.html
everyone does… its disinformation to hide the decline from the victims so they dont turn on their leaders advising them how to live their lives and die out
GREAT news… you dont have to worry at all anymore
Good thing this was never discussed, IF it was, there would have been a chance to avoid what happens when demography gets to this point (unless you think we somehow skirt the rules of nature – oh wait, they do teach we do, ven though we dont)
The median age for Hispanics in the United States is 29, prime for child bearing, compared with 43 for whites.
women are NOT the future of anything, people who dont procreate are dinosaurs beliving otherwise…
even the dodo had hope…
at what point will it be believed enough that its een worth discussing? i have posts going back over 10 years as to this decline. and it is accelerating.. [as more and more the men who would have families cant even get jobs – but the rhetoric says otherwise, so its not a problem, until when?]
they been importing migrants for this reason so that the dummies who wont beilve it wont stop it as they exterminate themselves. which unlike germany, will make sure there is no blowback.. from who? to whom?
you voluntarily did it, who you gonna fight for listening to bad advice?
you CAN hate the ldear leader for forcing people
but can the people hate the doyens for tricking them?
First experienced it in the late 1970s. In recent years, deaths have exceed births among its black population, too. [well yeah, 4 times the abortion centers in their neighborhoods.. no one asked. how could they live since colonial times and have so few of them and yet so many babies? duhmmies… they self exterminated them under marxist feminism]
and the women? well, they go the way their preferred mates go, either to oblivion or what? why would people of color want her? she is the producer of the hated class in the world now… if the people of color let her in, she will make more..
so what is the final solution to the question THIS TIME
anyone have any popcorn?
I AM MONSTER and proud.
Trent Denton — I always enjoy clips from the Onion. Thanks!
At the Wash. Post: “Border Patrol will stop referring migrant parents who cross into the U.S. illegally with children for prosecution, official says”:
Rich Lowry’s response at NRO — “A Fiasco at the Border”:
SlutfulCodgerSmiles,
If demographic trends continue, as they well may, the world you and yours will inherit will be a “shithole” of your own making. You will richly deserve it.
Its not the color of our skin that matters but the content of our character. You and yours reject judeo/christian tenets, greek logic and roman reason. Replacing it with the collectivism of the mob. History reveals past versions of the world you’re creating and clearly you lack the awareness of that which you sow.
One of the most curious phenomenons to me is the ‘Nazi, Nazi, Nazi’ thing. Why is nothing compared to the Japanese WWII atrocities? They were just as bad if not worse in many cases.
The whole thing is incredibly stupid and honestly it’s all so tiresome at this point.
There is almost no interest in the kids themselves. It is only a bludgeon to hit Trump with.
I no longer give any credence to anything reported in the press attributed to “high-ranking officials,” “staffers,” “persons close to,” or any other anonymous sources. It’s virtually always fake news. Note that the “fact checkers” never follow up on these stories.
Griffin,
Slamming the “Nips” would be racist. The Nazis were safely white…
Trent Denton — I recommend the writings of Earl Pitts, American. He’s much, much wiser than anyone who bleats about “white supremacy”.
As to why they don’t compare to the Japanese atrocities: Japanese are not Europeans. No one on the left believes non-Europeans are completely human, and attributes all the acts of non-Europeans to reactions to the actions of Europeans. Thus, what the Japanese did was just a reaction to American and English Imperialism.
Plus, most of them probably don’t even know what side the Japanese were on in WWII.
I went and crossed the line – over at The Guardian.
They published an article that twice likened the US government’s actions to that of Nazi’s.
Below the line (in their comments) the usual partisan bunch carried on with that theme.
One fellow likened illegally crossing borders to jay-walking.
I likened that ‘jay walking’ with all the ‘jaywalking’ that happened in Poland, September 1939.
No references to Nazi’s, Hitler, invasions, anything.
I am now on their shitlist and all my comments are pre-moderated for being a risk.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/21/children-camps-normal-life-donald-trump#comment-117286942
The Holocaust and all things related were a singular horror. Anyone making comparisons to current events is either profoundly ignorant or engaging in propaganda that borders on Holocaust denial.
and look how they are gonna get clever to show whats going on since the old images are whats run… well, the old images dont have Melania in them… new ones will…
Melania Trump makes surprise visit to border facility
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/21/politics/melania-trump-border-visit-immigration/index.html
“She wants to see what’s real,” the first lady’s spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham told CNN during a news briefing en route to Texas, explaining Trump’s decision to visit.
Sweden’s largest music festival cancelled over ‘migrant sex attacks’
The Bråvalla festival is Sweden’s largest music festival. Organisers have just announced that the event will come to an end after being cancelled this year due to sex attacks, local newspaper Norrköpings Tidningar reports. Last year’s festival saw at least 11 sex attacks, three which led to arrests and the year before nearly 40 young girls complained of being sexually harassed and abused by men most often described as “foreign”.
“So: no, there is nothing familiar, not even vaguely, to the Holocaust, and it is a disgrace to suggest that there is.”
Yes, yes, yes. Anybody making those comparisons is, to coin a phrase, a fool or a knave. And probably both.
@Trent Denton
“Educate yourself as to the legacy of white supremacy and white privilege”
Perhaps a refresher on the Human Genome Project findings published in 2007 is in order here (see below). Just to be clear, white supremacy and white privilege do not exist owing to the fact that the racial subspecies categories your belief is predicated upon have been conclusively proven to not exist. If your rejoinder is something to the effect of science and reason being tools used by white supremacists, you have disqualified yourself from rational conversation.
DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another.
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/minorities.shtml
The Nazis were single-payer economists.
The Nazis were diversitists. That is they denied individual dignity and judged/discriminated between individuals by the “color” of their skin.
The Nazis were Pro-Choice. They operated gas chambers and clinical cannibalism (i.e. recycled-child) under a veil of privacy. The aborted lives they deemed unworthy or inconvenient (i.e. selective-child) a la Planned Parenthood et al.
The Nazis were politically congruent (“=”). They selectively excluded people and groups that were politically profitable/unprofitable.
The Nazis favored a concept of Jew privilege, which was, in principle, the inspiration for Progressives and Liberals’ White privilege. That has evolved to capture Asians under a doctrine of Asian privilege.
A human live evolves from conception. A coherent nervous systems forms around one month. Pro-Choice is a quasi-religious/moral doctrine derived from the twilight faith (i.e. penumbra) that justifies torture and elective abortion of the wholly innocent that are deemed unworthy, inconvenient, or profitable. The resumption and normalization of abortion rites is an unprecedented violation of human rights (and corruption of science), second only to the Holocaust, followed by slavery, etc.
Here is a Nazi comparison– the Dutch had wonderful forts on their border with Germany before the Nazis violated their neutrality. The Nazis rounded up women and children and elderly and marched them in front of their tanks. The Dutch surrendered without firing a shot. The immigrants are using children the same way. Cowards.
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“I’m curious to see what effect Trump’s EO will have on any of this. One of the problems is that the zero tolerance policy was instituted with what seems like a lack of preparation. No one has mentioned this in any article I’ve read, but I seem to recall that illegal immigrant entry numbers had been way down a while back and only recently climbed again, and that may be part of the reason for the lack of preparedness for the large scope of the problem.”
There’s comedy for you. A problem is the lack of preparedness is a feature, not a bug, of the Trump administration, especially as it concerns illegal immigration.r
A comparison with FDR would be more apt, but strangely isn’t being made. No one was fleeing to Germany Nazi, they were trying to get out—and come here, for example— but FDR forbade them entry, even sending a ship of Jewish refugees back to the arms of the Nazis.
He interned Americans of Japanese descent, why not also Americans of German descent?
Recent information discovered about FDR showed that he also planned that if there were any Jewish survivors, they should not be allowed to settle together anywhere on the planet. WTF? Truman chucked that plan when he took office.
So, who is like Hitler, since Democrats can’t seem to stop tossing around the term?
There is such a thing as projection.
He interned Americans of Japanese descent, why not also Americans of German descent?
Americans needed the Nazi scientists and tech transfers through Operation paperclip. Getting rid of the property and due process of American citizens.. ain’t nobody care about that at your White House.
ColoComment Says:
June 21st, 2018 at 3:56 pm
AesopFan Says:
June 21st, 2018 at 3:34 pm
If you’re not already a follower, Fan, let me introduce you to DiploMad 2.0:
http://www.thediplomad.com/2018/06/trump-deals-with-prog-border-madness.html
* * *
I don’t follow him, but usually enjoy what I do read.
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