That, I think, is the problem. Of course Ocasio-Cortez was attacked by the Right, who claimed that she was comparing the Obama-Trump incarceration of migrants to the Holocaust, and she made exactly the right rebuttal. She was referring not to Nazi death camps but to concentration camps, whose use by the United States and other countries predates the Nazis by a century or more. (Unsurprisingly, controversy over the meaning of "concentration camp" isn't new either: some people have objected to the term's being applied to US camps for Japanese Americans during World War II.) She was supported by numerous experts, including Jewish ones, on the point, though of course Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried to undermine her with typical centrist-Democratic pusillanimity. Probably she too believes that "concentration camp" refers to a specifically, even uniquely Nazi institution. As one of the articles I quoted above points out:
Right-wing gentiles like [Lynne] Cheney are not credible advocates for Jewish Americans; their invocation of the Holocaust is a bad-faith ploy to distract Americans from the horrors of the current camps. But it’s a bad-faith attack that can easily find fertile ground in the American imagination because of a fundamental, and apparently widespread, misconception that the phrase "concentration camps" somehow belongs solely to the history of the Holocaust.But it isn't only "shrieking Republicans" who cling to this misconception. Quite a few of Ocasio-Cortez' fans and supporters believe, and say even in comments on her tweets, that she was in fact invoking the Holocaust, and was in effect lying about the distinction she drew so explicitly. At best they ignore her denials and bring up parallels to Nazi Germany. This isn't surprising, since Americans (among others) love to draw parallels to Nazi Germany, despite an ample supply of parallels in our own history, and every foreign leader who gets in our way will be compared to Hitler. (Actual admirers of Hitler can be excused if they are Our SOBs.) It's so much easier to dwell on the crimes of official enemies than to recognize or admit those of one's own country, and safer to blame whatever one deplores in one's countries on the evil influence of foreigners. From anti-Papist agitation in the early 1800s to blaming Trump's presidency on Putin now, Americans have preferred to play it safe in this way.
So, for example: "Those soldiers on the train platforms in Germany loading the freight cars with people were just like this." Why rely on foreign suppliers when such we have an ample collection of such behavior made right here in America? Those soldiers who massacred civilians in Korea and Vietnam and every other US war down to the present were just like this. Those soldiers who drove Indians off their land on forced marches in which thousands died were like this. Those Americans who returned escaped slaves to slavery were like this. Those Americans who flocked to lynchings were like this. Those Americans who did nothing when American citizens of Japanese descent were removed from their homes and sent to concentration camps were like this.
Besides blaming our problems on foreigners, it's easy and safe to rend one's garments over "what we've become," as though herding brown people into cages were a Trumpian aberration. Again, there is nothing new about Trump's policies and actions; they're as American as apple pie. There's been a wave of liberal fury, fully justified, at the federal government attorney who argued in court on behalf of the Trump regime that denying child detainees soap and toothbrushes, suitable food, and proper shelter, was compatible with the legal requirement to provide them with "safe and sanitary conditions." But it must not be forgotten that the same attorney was in court four years ago, defending the Obama regime's policy of putting detained children into solitary confinement to punish their parents for insubordination. Yet almost every day I see forlorn Obamaphiles lamenting that their god-king no longer holds the reins of power, and wishing he would return on clouds of glory to judge the quick and dead.
I've been wondering, though, how "concentration camp" came to be the standard name for the Reich's death camps. It feels comparatively euphemistic, though like most euphemisms it came to acquire negative associations. It might have been partly because not all the camps were death camps, and "concentration" was chosen as an umbrella term. It's not surprising that the pre-Nazi history of concentrations camps has been forgotten by most Americans -- it would be uncomfortable and so unnecessary -- and that they prefer to focus exclusively on the use of the camps by our enemies to the exclusion of our own. And I can't help thinking that although Ocasio-Cortez knows the difference, the term has power for her because of its association with the Nazis. I'm sure it does for her fans.
Another annoying motif is the Slippery Slope, that Hitler began with baby steps and became worse only gradually, because people elsewhere in the world didn't realize how bad it would get. This comes partly from Martin Niemöller 's famous litany, and it's not entirely invalid. But it overlooks that coming for the trade unionists was just fine with many people, not just in Germany but around the world. So was stomping on Jews, and homosexuals, and Communists. So was sterilizing the allegedly unfit, which had after all been pioneered by the US at the turn of the century. There was widespread support for fascism in the United States in the 1930s, and that was a major reason why there was less concern about the implementation of fascism in Europe: not "isolationism," not "America First," not even myopia about how bad things would get; but active endorsement of Hitler's agenda, and a wish to emulate it here.
If Trump's concentration camps are a slippery slope, it's one that we've been careening down for some time now, on a bipartisan sled. Perhaps bearing down on the accurate history would make many liberals uncomfortable. If so, so much for the worse for them. Take a cue from Martin Luther King Jr.: "I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government." White liberals didn't like King's criticism of Lyndon Johnson's war, but so much the worse for them. But it's more comfortable to draw a line between Us and Them, locating all the evil with Them, the Others, than to start looking for the source of the trouble at home.
There's been some complaint online about "quibbling over semantics" instead of acting against the camps. I don't see them as mutually exclusive, and I believe that at least some people will learn something useful from the debate. When the Right claims that "concentration camp" refers only to the Holocaust, they are lying, and it's always important to challenge lies. Here's the thing: if the term you use for the US concentration camps makes them sound less bad than they are, it's the wrong term to use.
