Elise Stefanik took issue with fellow U.S. Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez referring to migrant detention camps on the country’s southern
border as “concentration camps” last week.
Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, responded by tweeting about a
Holocaust education act she co-introduced and saying the congresswoman from the
Bronx needs to learn the history.
“I think that she needs to educate herself,” Stefanik said
in a phone interview on Thursday. “That was something that I learned in school.
I vividly remember reading Anne Frank’s diary in sixth grade. As we see these
numbers moving globally with lack of education on the Holocaust … frankly it’s
disappointing that clearly in this case the members of Congress themselves
needs to be educated.”
Apparently AOC has "educated" herself. Pick up a dictionary, Elise!
While the most common use of “concentration camp” is in reference to the Nazi Germany-era camps where many people were executed, concentration camp is defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary as any place where “large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution.”
Many nations before and after Nazi Germany have run
concentration camps.
I have seen a couple of historians quoted who said the term is accurate for what the Trump gang is doing at the southern border. In any case, this is a typical right-wing tactic -- divert the discussion onto an argument about terminology. The fact remains that those camps are ghastly, regardless of what words one uses for them.
ReplyDeleteNeither Trump nor my rep nor any other Republican would hesitate to call what FDR put those of Japanese descent into during WWII concentration camps. I can't see where they wouldn't qualify.
ReplyDelete