Cable news people call them “prison camps” or “Trump prison camps,” but look in any dictionary: prisons are where people convicted of crimes are held. As Merriam-Webster notes, a prison is:
“[A]n institution for confinement of persons convicted of serious crimes.”
But what do you call a place where people who’ve committed no criminal offense (immigration violations are civil, not criminal, infractions)? The fine dictionary people at Merriam-Webster note the proper term is “concentration camp”:
“[A] place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard.”
Because Netflix. The circus is strong.
Curious as to why Common Dreams and others aren’t using the term “Internment Camp”? I’m not trying to whitewash the present, but it does seem to me that a large number of people might feel that term “concentration camp” is a dramatization of the current situation. “Internment” is also awful but less loaded, and might get more people on board and thinking about this seriously. Thoughts?
Edit: Upon looking it up, I have a few thoughts. One, some say “internment camp” was white washing in the first place. Two, “internment camps” might specifically refer to U.S. Army run concentration camps during wartime. I’m still not really clear, though, and would love some additional insight.
Internment camps are built for criminal reasons or to hold political prisoners. Concentration camps are built for eugenics purposes - to concentrate, contain, and control a target ethic group or population. ICE does not exist to address a crime problem. It exists to address the ‘problem’ that America will soon no longer be a white majority country.
The term concentration camp is accurate. When your goal is to engineer the demographics of an entire country, then you’re firmly in the territory of concentration camps. If Trump announced a new open-air prison to hold thousands of “Antifa members,” then that facility would be an internment camp. A facility is labeled based on who it holds:
Actual criminals guilty of real crimes like rape, murder, etc.: prison/jail
Political prisoners: internment camp
Targeted ethnic/demographic groups: concentration camp
deleted by creator
Upvoting simply because I love to see people challenging their own opinions
Because everything is on fire all at once, people are scared/exhausted/lack any actual leadership (Fuck you Schumer) and when that happens people hunker down, until something so atrocious happens it breaks through the fog of fear.
Couple that with every major media company being owned by facist Trump Cronies and well… yea
And before some asshat starts going “Then why don’t you do something?” Look out your front door. You willing to go murder your neighbor right now? Because that’s what it’ll come to, a massive civil war. So yeah, nothing is happening yet but the rumbles are there and we are all fucked no matter the outcome.
“yet”
Just as a thought exercise, can you fathom and put into words a hypothetical breaking point that would wake people up to the madness around them?
Because here’s my prediction: the regime will commit atrocity after atrocity, each one somehow more monstrous than the last, and nothing will happen, because your first paragraph will still be true. They will start wars and nothing will happen because your first paragraph will still be true. Then suddenly WWIII will happen and the regime will be unstoppable. Then, some manner of nuclear exchange, potentially marking the end of human civilization, because all fascist regimes end up destroying themselves – too bad this one has the power to take the entire fucking world down with it.
If you are right that Americans won’t fight for decency now (and I think you are), then all hope is lost. All historical precedent says that we are past the point of no return and you’ve forfeited your - and quite possibly humanity’s - future.
Honestly, it’ll be a Kent State or stonewall riots kinda thing, which is what they want so they have the legal excuse to stop the midterms.
History has shown the only time protests actually do work are when tensions hit the breaking point and violence ensues. (And I’m not saying I want this to happen, my whole premise was that it’s easy to yell at people on the US to rise up, not so easy when “rising up” most likely means committing violence against friends and family)
Arm chair warriors and arm chair pacifists never actually look at what their calls to action really mean. It’s easy to sit in the UK or somewhere else in Europe when it’s not you in the car watching the crash coming in slow motion with no good options
Saw this on here a little while ago
https://drstaceypatton1865.substack.com/p/the-slow-release-of-the-epstein-files
Seems relevant to the interests of a bot such as yourself
lack any actual leadership
people lack freedom not leadership
Can be both.
massive civil war.
We are decades from a “civil war” Tim Pool.
Yes, the problem is the media landscape is corrupted that the average liberal American thinks there’s some bad business going on with ICE but knows nothing about the world past that, because most people are just working 6 - 7 days a week and get their news from Facebook for a half hour every week. The exit polling from 2024 confirms all of this.
The thing we do is we build community and instead of thoughts of “murdering your neighbor” (where the FUCK did that come from) let’s start thinking about TALKING to our neighbors and getting to know them again so that we rebuild the thing that oligarchy is actively trying to take away from us, which is social involvement and community and locality.
The USA isn’t like the Philippines or Turkey or other countries that have been deposed by dictators or foreign powers, we still are made of 50 individual states and those states have a LOT of power. We need to stop looking at the Federal Government like a monolithic empire that can’t be defeated, YOU PAY THEIR BILLS.
Go on https://www.progressivevictory.win/ and find local progressive leaders who you can help support and we kick the legs out of the system that has empowered fascists. They helped get the recent wave of socialists and progressives like Mamdani and Katie Wilson elected among many others.
I hate your whole comment, it’s bad and wrong and gives people no hope of better outcomes.
You really need to work on your messaging.
No. I take butthurt whinging about my tone as success. Ya’ll need to get slapped around a lil’, these sheltered spaces just breed echo-chamberism and that’s how we get a new, even weirder MAGA-like movement.
Wow your entire post is bullshit. And Tim Pool? Fuck you.
You think our dollars now control the Govt? We have a group of billionaires that are able to use their vast wealth to destabilize democracy across the globe. And while doing it they are getting richer. they can spend more in a month than any dedicated group n the US and not even blink.
People like you have never picked up a damn history book. You don’t know anything about sociology or psychology. You point to some random website like we aren’t already at the point where people are getting fucking taken in the middle of the streets, where every fucking control and law is broken by the current administration and no one with power will do anything about it.
You think having a protest is gonna fix things. You think donating an extra 10 bucks to AOC is gonna be the thing stopping this train to hell. Read a fucking history book man. They’ve already said the next step is to have ICE at the voting booth, which is so fucking illegal and spelled as such in great detail that even saying that would trigger impeachment investigations. Instead all we hear are “OOOOH we’ll have a national walk out! That’ll teach them to overthrow democracy!”
Jesus fucking Christ, wake the fuck up
I’m actually delighted my pushback made you fly off the handle and spit incoherencies and ignore my points, it tells me I hit the right buttons.
If my efforts at reminding people that we still have a future, hope and community and ways to fight oppression made you this mad, then it tells me all I need to know about what you’re doing here and why. Have a good one.
Yea whatever you need to tell yourself to boost your self esteem. I’m glad you have blind optimism at this point, I truly am. Reality and your world view don’t agree however, I honestly wish it did. Also, you called me Tim Fucking Pool, so yea still fuck you
We need to drop “our” traditional support for a strong federal government, and instead embrace states’ rights. Because the 10th amendment has been abused our entire lives, and there are a lot of people on the right that agree, even if their leaders are all in bad faith about it.
Every power not delegated to the feds in the constitution is reserved for the States. The document basically just gives them power over the common currency, relations with other countries, and regulating interstate commerce. Even so they are prevented from inhibiting the free movement of people and goods between states.
How they affect most of the things they’ve ursurped is with money, after the income tax was established and kept, in ww1, they had too much money, and they withhold it from programs/sharing/spending with a state unless they do what they want. That’s how they lowered the bac driving level, upped the driving age. That’s a good share of how the drug laws are promulgated with things like workers comp being cheated from anyone with any weed in their system, etc.
We need strong leaders all around, not the least in the States, seeing as our leaders are weak, we need leaders outside of government too, about now, and we need to reclaim a lot of the powers ursurped by the feds, that fully intend on fixing elections in our states.
Even maga supporters should realize after they fix elections those politicians won’t need them anymore, and become even less responsive to them. There is no one party state that remains responsive to their base after they achieve absolute power.
deleted by creator
And it gets all your white tshirts super white!
Because everything is on fire all at once, people are scared/exhausted/lack any actual leadership (Fuck you Schumer)
According to him, the people are “aroused”.
Wtaf? Please tell me this is some ai bullshit….
Fucking aroused? That’s insanity. We aren’t aroused, you fuck face, we’re pissed. And some of it is dorected at you, Chuck!
He’s meaning “aroused” in the dictionary sense, aka “Brought to a state of great psychological tension.”
However, it’d be nice if the dude was at least aware enough to know that it sounds very much like he’s downplaying the situation for one, and secondly, even though some Americans might know the dictionary definition of “aroused” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s about someone that has a boner…many do not.
I mean, exactly. Like I get that he doesn’t mean sexually or having a boner but I would have the same complaint if he used maybe… excited. It’s just a horrible word choice and to your point, does not meet the moment. Downplaying the fascist takeover, ice goons murdering and kidnapping people.
Quite so. Everyone lambasting Americans right now seems to forget it was the rest of the world that had to come save the Germans from the Nazis.
Wait wait wait wait, where does this idea come from that the German people weren’t to blame for Nazism? They were to blame. They were blamed. Their country was partitioned, their army was dismantled, their families were torn apart, and they endeavored to teach future generations what they did wrong. It did not even remotely make up for their nation’s crimes against humanity, but they were “lambasted”.
Do not weaponize history to justify your own apathy. These lessons were paid in blood. Yet new blood is being shed, and every American who does not fight against the regime is responsible. Yes, it’s an unfair ask; no-one wants to live through troubled times. But you are living in them so stop cowering behind historical wrongs to feel better about your inaction.
“inaction” they say, to the mass protests despite the threat of death. Fuck you, pal.
Edit: and the total lack of self-awareness as you generalise an entire population being victimised by fascist ghouls who very likely cheated their way into office, while you yourself do sweet fuck-all. Double fuck you, that’s an unbelievably callous response.
Double edit: and what I meant was, Hitler wasn’t overthrown by the German people. Are you trying to imply there was no resistance in Germany to the Nazis? Are you completely historically illiterate?
If there had been significant opposition to the Nazi party in Germany, Hitler would not have become reichsführer.
There was a heroic resistance movement in Germany, however they did not have enough support to make a difference.
This is exactly what is happening in America right now. Heroes are getting beaten, arrested and attacked with chemical weapons. The majority are sitting at home watching, or actively assisting the fascist regime.
The callous idea in this thread is that it’s the responsibility of non-Americans to give our lives to save you from your degenerate society.
Statistically, it was the communists that saved Germany. Soviet and Chinese efforts in WW2 dwarfed any other contributions.
Edit: If you’re downvoting me, did you forget that the USSR lost 25 million lives fighting the Nazis, while the US lost only 100,000?
The same soviets who signed a non aggression pact with Hitler and took advantage of Nazi aggression to grab their own slice of Poland?
Would you care to explain the class some of the things that caused Soviet casualties to be so high?
Of all the nazis that died in combat, something like 4/5 of them were at the hands of the Russians.
The russians accused the americans of slow walking their involvement to maximize the pain on them, and accusation that may not be entirely without merit.
But the Russians had more men under arms at one point than any country every, the largest standing army every, last I recall, and at one point were fighting on 17 different fronts although I don’t know when that was exactly.
I’m pretty sure “rest of the world” includes the communists…
People are probably downvoting you because “lives lost” is not an effective metric for contribution in a war.
Also, let’s be clear, “the US lost only 100,000” is only true if you are just counting mainlanders. Estimates of deaths in the Philippines, who were American, top 1,000,000.
If you are going to incorporate all the SSRs in the USSR casualty counts, you should be incorporating the Dutch east indies for the Netherlands, India for the UK, French Indochina for France, etc.
I think thats probably not a good thing to do, cause if you are a citizen of a current/former colony, you probably dont feel like your colonial masters should get to “claim” your death. This also holds for all the non-russian SSRs and internal minority groups in Russia, though.
Plus, the numbers for the USSR are sadly inflated because Stalin didn’t care how many of the soldiers died. They were completely disposable and treated as such.
Also, their methodology was sloppy and completely relies on inaccurate military records. They counted POWd as KIA, even after they returned.
That is a wild take. Not saying you’re completely off target, but that framing is just wild.
In terms of overall effort, sacrifice, and suffering, they’re spot-on.
Although much of that monumental sacrifice is probably also due to the view of disposability, as well as poor coordination and support, USSR leadership had toward its troops. Plus Germany basically confiscated the fertile farming land upon which so many USSR citizens depended to avoid deadly famine.
Woe to the poor USSR soldier who became a POW under Germany. Their chance of survival in that state was very low, and their opportunity to be the subject of a cruel medical experiment was very high.
I would extend this to say the Soviets contributed monumentally, after Operation Barbarossa started, to the eventual downfall of National Socialism in Germany…but I hesitate to say they saved Germany…based on what East Germany looked like following the war. USSR’s behavior prior to Operation Barbarossa was pretty despicable and highly enabling of Germany’s regional proliferation. But, the western democracies should have been much more open to early communications and treaties/pacts with USSR, so to some extent Stalin was just adapting to the geopolitical reality of his position on the continent.
deleted by creator
Only a small fraction of the people abducted have been convicted of any offense, let alone those listed. Many aren’t even accused of any of those actions (e.g. overstaying a visa does not require fraud or evasion)
Oh there is a national emergency.
Their emergency is “threats to national security” such as foreign-born non-whites like me, cuz half of the country doesn’t care about constitutional violations and authoritarianism
The same reason Donald Trump is president.
A significant percentage of Americans are too ignorant to know what’s happening around them.
And another significant percentage are bigots who like it.
That’s why this ship will almost certainly continue sinking after the orange rapist is dead.
had three women in an suv give slack for our friday return commute protest. It just blows my mind. their stuff is always. go trump if not an explexitive aimed at us. I mean you are yelling at signs talking about he should not ignore the constitutiion. its so surreal in some ways. all the while they are surrounded by cars giving us waves, thumbs up, peace signs. I honestly am not sure if they see how they are the only ones who are ok with this among the whole crowd at the traffic light.
Not only are people dying inside the camps (as the article correctly points out), but after they are deported as well:
Or they are offloaded to prisons that are notorios for human rights abuses:
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/08/americas/el-salvador-cecot-prison-deportees
Multiple reasons.
-
As is always the case when fascism, authoritarianism or similar takes over, things happen slowly, and there’s a reason for that: humans notice fast changes very quickly, but not necessarily slow changes. They didn’t start building these concentration camps yesterday. This has been going on for a while.
-
Because at least right now, there isn’t the stated goal of keeping people there, but just keeping them there in the intermediate term. We all know where this is going, but it does make it a little more difficult to use that term.
-
The Trump administration has a habit of suing the press. This has already had a chilling effect. See CBS, BBC, and I think ABC as well. They have decided that it does not make sense financially to fight it, and there are probably a number of lawyers much smarter than I who know what they’re talking about. And since most major news sources are profit-driven and public broadcasting is chronically underfunded, that’s all you get.
-
The word “concentration camp” often gets confused with the word “death camp”, and we have failed to properly differentiate. How often do you hear about the Nazi concentration camps where they killed people on an industrial scale. No, those were death camps (they had concentration camps as well). But the term has been used wrongly for so long that when people hear “concentration camp”, they think “death camp”, so calling it a concentration camp, while correct, could make a fair number of people think the wrong thing - as of now, there is no systematic extermination, and I hope we get a handle on this before it gets that far.
-
Anyone else just really impressed by how well “the boys” tv show predicted all this?
No, because I can’t shake the feeling that I’ll be watching a documentary in a decade or two and learn that these Nazis took multiple ideas from works of fiction meant to be a warning.
This was all predicted in The Newsroom 14 years ago. That was the start of media enshittification.
It was also predicted in House of Cards, where social media could be used to influence any opinion in the USA.
The next phase started for sure. Media enshitification happened before we even had a word for it.
They’re coming. They’re coming for me. They’re coming for you. We all need to panic. This madness needs to end.
Panicking is the worst reaction. Better to hide your head in the sand.
Because the people in charge of declaring national emergencies are the ones building the concentration camps
No one said anything about declaring an official emergency.
Because apparently only leftists - socialists, communists, anarchists, and even some liberalists, have been calling them that. And remember, we are Enemies of the State.
Cause he has 70 million supporters. And the army. And ICE. And has captured federal institutions.
I’ve been calling them concentration camps the whole time. It’s obvious that’s what they are. Fuck the media outlets.
That dude in the picture be like….
