Complicity

[Hehehe]

You've provided an example of one who agrees. To claim more is a stretch.

Was that the impression you got from that? Let me highlight some of the key parts for you:

There are few remaining survivors of concentration camps. Ed Mosberg is one of them.

And the 93-year-old from Morris Plains, NJ, has no time for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s statements last week, when she called the southern border’s migrant detention centers “concentration camps.”

“She should be removed from Congress. She’s spreading anti-Semitism, hatred and stupidity,” Mosberg told The Post. “The people on the border aren’t forced to be there — they go there on their own will. If someone doesn’t know the difference, either they’re playing stupid or they just don’t care.”

On June 18, the Bronx/Queens politician posted a video on Instagram in which she said: “The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are — they are concentration camps.”

Mosberg, who lost his entire family during the Holocaust and himself survived both the Plaszów and Mauthausen camps, said: “Her statement is evil. It hurts a lot of people. At the concentration camp, we were not free. We were forced there by the Germans who executed and murdered people — there’s no way you can compare.”

"there’s no way you can compare.”

https://nypost.com/2019/06/29/nobel-prize-in-stupidity-holocaust-survivor-wants-aoc-out-of-congress/

I guess I should also note that he's the head of a Holocaust education group "From the Depths", so presumably he speaks for more than just himself

 

[El_Machinae]

The thing that I am really interested in sussing out is when do these illegal acts require more than simply voting against the government? When do we become morally obligated to march and protest and attempt to disrupt the actions of the government? Is it when child rape in these detention centers becomes more widespread than it already is? (one of the links I previously provided talks about a 3 year old that was sexually abused by a guard) Or is it when the death toll climbs above a hundred? A thousand?

My answer is not whether if you should be protesting, but what you should be protesting. There are always problems to agitate against. So you pick.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Was that the impression you got from that? Let me highlight some of the key parts for you:


https://nypost.com/2019/06/29/nobel-prize-in-stupidity-holocaust-survivor-wants-aoc-out-of-congress/

I guess I should also note that he's the head of a Holocaust education group "From the Depths", so presumably he speaks for more than just himself

Did he make the statement on behalf of From the Depths? If not then you are just making an assumption again.

edit: but again I am making the mistake of following you down the rabbit hole and helping your attempt to distract from the actual subject of the thread.

 

[El_Machinae]

My answer is not whether if you should be protesting, but what you should be protesting. There are always problems to agitate against. So you pick.

There are many forms we can take to make the work a better place. Our money is the driver of other people's behaviour. Our spare time can be used to build the world. But, there's always something that should be protested. Every dollar can be spent better. People have just allowed their current lifestyle to be the expected standard.

 

[Berzerker]

Didn't we just spend close to three decades blowing up Muslim countries?

 

[Hehehe]

Did he make the statement on behalf of From the Depths? If not then you are just making an assumption again.

Presumably. According to the article, the group offered AOC a tour of the actual concentration camps

 

[jarred!]

@Hehehe, you are using an argument from authority. Just because whomever you're quoting is an expert, doesn't make him correct. You would still need to prove that these camps aren't concentration camps.

Edit, I mean, refute the claims they are.

 

[El_Machinae]

None of this matters! It's not like 'acceptable' is a binary condition.

 

[Farm Boy]

Of course it matters. There's status to be had.

 

[Gorbles]

As the thread is well and truly on this particular track, let me just say:

Calling something a concentration camp is, by itself, not a reference to Nazi Germany. Plenty of countries have operated them, in greater or lesser forms.

If somebody, @Hehehe, that you yourself have noted is apparently new to the thread, simply mentions "concentration camps", and you jump to something about comparisons to Nazi Germany, that's on you. Not on them. They don't have to answer that fabrication, because it was invented by you, in that post just there.

 

[Estebonrober]

Fwiw im softer in complicity than most of you I think. I did not consider my family members who support this administration complicit until even after all this they still thought the policy was right on concentration camps. Voting for it moving forward is obviously complicit.

They are exactly like the concentration camps in Germany before the rise of the Third Reich. As the Weimar Republic which was quite friendly in comparison to the rest of Europe at the time established camps for dealing with the Jews fleeing Eastern Europe. Even before the Nazis took power they were vilified for political purposes.

There are numerous differences obviously but of course the point of comparing the two is that we should be wary of the course we are on.

 

[Socrates99]

You brought it up, after I had given my reply to Lexicus (reply which addresses your point too). You're the one arguing about toothbrushes. You're the one bringing it up. I've only addressed it in reply to you or someone else.

Yeah, my response was to your response to Lexicus. It was video of the Trump admin lawyer arguing that soap, toothbrushes and blankets weren't necessary for safe and sanitary conditions.

When (if) Donald "Literally Hitler" Trump starts detaining all Hispanics (as opposed to, say, illegal immigrants) this point will certainly be made valid.

I never drew the comparison between Donny and Hitler. I only point out that the detention centers fit the dictionary definition of concentration camps. Also, no, he doesn't need to round up all Hispanics to fit the definition. Did you miss the word "political" in there?

 

[EnglishEdward]

Complicity is one of those weasel words that people use in smearing, to try to make one responsible for something disreputable
or illegal merely because one may have known something about it, irrespective of the fact that one was not actually responsible.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

As the thread is well and truly on this particular track, let me just say:

Calling something a concentration camp is, by itself, not a reference to Nazi Germany. Plenty of countries have operated them, in greater or lesser forms.

If somebody, @Hehehe, that you yourself have noted is apparently new to the thread, simply mentions "concentration camps", and you jump to something about comparisons to Nazi Germany, that's on you. Not on them. They don't have to answer that fabrication, because it was invented by you, in that post just there.

To be fair, I drew the parallels in the OP and they speak for themselves as many have pointed out. What is going on that is derailing discussion is the deliberate misconstruing of these modern concentration camps with extermination camps in order to discredit the entire conversation and anyone that has anything negative to say about the Trump administration. This is unfortunately a subject which demands nuance which is not something tolerated by people with particular political axes to grind.

Complicity is one of those weasel words that people use in smearing, to try to make one responsible for something disreputable
or illegal merely because one may have known something about it, irrespective of the fact that one was not actually responsible.

I think this is fair but I'd like to point out that most of us are not intending to smear anyone. But you do raise another point which does get at the point of the thread - if you know something truly atrocious is going on, you are responsible to speak up or do something to try and stop it. What counts as truly atrocious and what the various levels of response should be is the question at hand.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

They are now separating children from families on the pretext of the parents being a danger to the children, the danger being that their parents shoplifted $5 items in the past or got parking tickets or because their speech impediment stopped them from answering questions as quickly as the Border Patrol would have liked.

I was watching Orange is the New Black and this season features the detention centers. There is a scene where ICE demands to see the papers of a man visiting his girlfriend in the center and decide to detain him in part because he couldn't talk fast enough to keep up with their questions. At the time I scoffed at it as a piece of theatrical hyperbole. Now I'm horrified.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Ice have literally picked up people deemed "illegal" (basically non-whites) that have turned out to be us citizens and yet people still don't think theres any form of racism involved.

 

[EnglishEdward]

I think this is fair but I'd like to point out that most of us are not intending to smear anyone.

I am not accusing thread posters of using the word 'complicity' to smear, but it is used that way by lawyers, journalists and politicians.

But you do raise another point which does get at the point of the thread - if you know something truly atrocious is going on, you are responsible to speak up or do something to try and stop it. What counts as truly atrocious and what the various levels of response should be is the question at hand.

Well yes, but sometimes merely surviving that is the most people can hope for.

 

[innonimatu]

it's like a blowtorch on my insides every single day to be honest. ask yourself how often you've bought something from Amazon this year, how often you've had fruit or veggies shipped for literal thousands of miles away, how often you've bought clothes at H&M or other fast fashion outlets, made in Bangladesh.

Never, never and nearly never. Only though gifts or eating out (can't police the restaurant's owners...) have I ever consumed those things. It can be avoided, though you can't control what other people do. What I hate is the generalized hypocrisy I see around, of people pretending to be concerned as a means of signaling virtue.

 

[Berzerker]

if we dont buy clothes from Bangladesh how will they make money?

 

[innonimatu]

if we dont buy clothes from Bangladesh how will they make money?

Making stuff for themselves perhaps? Instead of running the damn country as if it were an (industrial) plantation economy.

A world with less international trade would be a far better world. Some trade is necessary, most is just for the sake of squeezing some circumstantial profit through arbitrage. Labour arbitrage especially. Countries, especially smaller countries, can become trapped specializing on some few sectors for export, and utterly dependent on imports of stuff they could have produced locally.

Ricardo was one of the worst economists ever, for his comparative advantage thing.

You are not making a favor to the bangladeshi worker on miserable wages by buying the county's exports, any more that your fathers made a favor to the workers of the banana republics when they bought a banana. You are more likely to be empowering the exploiters over there to tighten their grip on power even more, to in their own interest keep their country stagnated as a producer of that commodity, than you are giving that country useful capital for investment on development.

In a world without capital controls the profits from exports of third-world commodities get immediately recycled into the financial markets, not invested locally. Very few escape that trap. Under those conditions increased international trade worsens the lot of third-worlders, rather than uplift them. The few countries that did develop did it by also controlling the terms of trade and the flow of capital and forcing local investment.
Africa is currently a disaster area, and latin america mostly another. A few countries in Asia escaped. Bangladesh, unfortunately, is not among them.