I must confess I am discouraged by the alarming countercurrent in US discourse, pushing back on the idea that "Alligator Alcatraz" is an "actual" concentration camp. Some of this is fascist ideological flak, some is "enlightened centrists" whistling past the graveyard, and some of this is even coming from cynical folks on the left who know enough about the American carceral industrial complex to confidently (and to be fair, correctly) state America had "concentration camps" long before Trump. Frankly however I can think of few things less productive than entering into a semantic debate about the wholly accurate term concentration camp; I thought it might be better to just talk about the horrifying observed conditions inside Alligator Alcatraz instead, and let reasonable folks figure it out for themselves.

To that end I want to share two stories about the same highly-controlled visit to Alligator Alcatraz by 3 Dem politicians, that each focus on different aspects of why I think the term fits and disputing the characterization borders on apologia.

Hundreds of detainees with no criminal charges sent to Trump’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

Authorities have refused to release list of people sent there as Democratic lawmakers decry ‘inhumane’ conditions

the Guardian (www.theguardian.com)

Hundreds of detainees with no criminal charges sent to Trump’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

"The notorious new “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail in the Florida Everglades contains hundreds of detainees with no criminal records or charges, it was disclosed on Sunday, as lawmakers decried “inhumane” conditions inside after touring the facility.

Donald Trump has insisted that the remote camp in swamp land populated by pythons and alligators was reserved for immigrants who were “deranged psychopaths” and “some of the most vicious people on the planet” awaiting deportation.

But at least one detainee shouted out to politicians during Saturday’s visit that he was a US citizen, the Democratic Florida congressman Maxwell Frost said. And the Miami Herald obtained and published a list of 700 people held in cages showing that at least 250 had committed no offense other than a civil immigration violation."

So let's briefly touch on the important revelations in this article. First of all immigration officials are purposely obscuring the numbers and identities of detainees in the camp. Florida politicians are also lying about who runs the camp, which is clearly ICE, to deny opposition (Democrat) oversight of the facility. Please keep in mind that this is in addition to the migrant cages being located in a remote area in the Florida Everglades, far away from the prying eyes of the media and making official oversight all the more difficult. Furthermore, Trump and regime officials who are justifying keeping migrants in appalling conditions that amount to a concentration camp by saying only the worst types of criminals are being held at Alligator Alcatraz, are once again lying; as I stated repeatedly in prior articles hundreds of people in the camp are simply in the US without permission, which as the article notes is a civil violation, not a criminal charge - let alone a violent one.

So, can you articulate what perfectly innocent reason a fascist government might have for building a semi-secret migrant cage complex, demonizing all the brown inhabitants as violent criminals even though many of them have committed no crimes, and are actively working to hide what is actually going on inside Alligator Alcatraz from media, regulators, and opposition officials? Yeah, me neither. Now let's take a look at the conditions the 3 Dem politicians were allowed to see despite the regime's efforts to hide occupied cages from them:

'This Is an Internment Camp': Lawmakers Horrified by Inhumane Conditions in 'Alligator Alcatraz' | Common Dreams

"I saw 32 people per cage—about 6 cages in one tent. People were yelling 'Help me, help me'," said Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost.

Common Dreams (www.commondreams.org)

'This Is an Internment Camp': Lawmakers Horrified by Inhumane Conditions in 'Alligator Alcatraz'

"Wasserman-Schultz described it as an "internment camp" where detainees are "essentially packed into cages."

"Wall-to-wall humans. 32 detainees per cage," she said. This, she noted, is unusual for immigration facilities, like the nearby Krome detention center in Miami-Dade County, where detainees are allowed to roam freely between buildings."

Whatever I think of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as a politician, it is inarguable that she's objectively describing a type of concentration camp. With dozens of brown bodies packed into small cages, inadequate access to washroom facilities and water, purposely reduced caloric counts inadequate for the preservation of healthy adults, exposure to elements and insects; what exactly would you call it? It's not an accident Wasserman-Schultz references America's dark history with the term "interment camps" but I think she's still being too generous to the Trump regime here; this is a camp of cages for cruelty concentrating migrants without any concern for their wellbeing at all - a concentration camp if you will.

Folks, this is not a question of semantics. This is a concentration camp, for brown people, on US soil and word games aren't going to stop the nightmare we're speeding towards now.

#Fascism #Trump #DHS #AlligatorAlcatraz #Noem #EthnicCleansing #Immigration #ConcentrationCamps

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

There are metal bunk beds in cages, toilets in the corner and gruel as food.

What more do you need?

This isn't supposed to be a prison (not that prisons being like this would be OK either) but it's not a "prison" which is for those convicted of crimes. It's a "holding facility" but set up like a human flesh warehouse.

That is an internment camp.

It is a place where people are gathered, concentrated. A concentration camp.

The end.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Like. I don't get what other box needs to be ticked for this to have crossed the line. Every line. From the optics to whatever definitions you'd like to haul out

It looks like a concentration camp.
It functions like a concentration camp.

There are nearly 1000 people at Alligator Alcatraz, plans to build more camps just like it.

They have been reducing the number of judges, there will NOT be a legal process. The camps will multiply and fill up.

We know where this goes.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Anyone who calls me hysterical for that last bit would have said I was hysterical about "they will set up camps" when I saw the "mass deportation now" signs.

Mass deportation isn't *possible* it's a euphemism. It always ends up being a euphemism.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Deportation is dependent on violence. "mass" deportation means violence is inevitable and unavoidable.

It is impossible to process, justify, find places for millions of people who live in your country to go "en mass" just because you've changed your mind about who has full human rights.

This is the predictable outcome and as the population of the camps grows so will the human rights atrocities.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Deportation is dependent on violence. "mass" deportation means violence is inevitable and unavoidable.

It is impossible to process, justify, find places for millions of people who live in your country to go "en mass" just because you've changed your mind about who has full human rights.

This is the predictable outcome and as the population of the camps grows so will the human rights atrocities.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Sometimes it feels like it's only some people here and Stephen Miller who really get what this is turning into and how fast it's happening.

They won't even let the lawyers of the people who have lawyers with the time an energy to go talk to them into the place.

@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Yep. I've been writing about this too, since the "Mass Deportation Now" signs. It's simply not physically possible for the US to deport the number of people the fascists want to get rid of. It would be prohibitively costly and time-consuming, and they'd *never* get it done before 2028.

That ghoul Miller has been shouting about 3000 detentions per day (they've not reached that yet).

Let's assume GhoulFace Asshole is right, and they can get 3000 per day moving.

There are something like 1200-1300 days left in the Trump administration.

In that time, then, they would (at 3000 per day) gather a maximum of 3.9M people.

The estimated population of undocumented people in the US is 11M people. Maybe more, but let's give the fascists the leg up on this one, and assume it's only 11M.

It would take another two full terms to reach 11M people. Eight more years after 2028.

That's just getting them in. To deport them, they have to be divvied up into bunches of, let's say 250 for the easy numbers, meaning 12 flights per day minimum just to keep up with detentions.

That's a flight every two hours for 11 years.

Do we really think this pack of idiots and sycophants can organise that well? I just gave them all the benefits of the doubt, and it's still an 11-year job.

Ahhh...but if you put the detention camps in swamps, you get plenty of mosquitoes. With mosquitoes, you get diseases spreading. If one has it, soon all will.

And that disease, given the lack of medical attention and even basic hygiene they're getting, will kill the majority of them *for them*. No messy gas chambers. Cholera, typhus, TB, hell, if you pick the right county, bubonic plague.

All they have to do is stuff them inside small cages, and wait for biology to work.

And who needs crematoria when you've got a large alligator population to feed?

My inner Cassandra wants to beg them to stop making her right.

@oldladyplays @futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes
should we describing it as a extermination camp rather than a concentration camp at this point?

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

There are metal bunk beds in cages, toilets in the corner and gruel as food.

What more do you need?

This isn't supposed to be a prison (not that prisons being like this would be OK either) but it's not a "prison" which is for those convicted of crimes. It's a "holding facility" but set up like a human flesh warehouse.

That is an internment camp.

It is a place where people are gathered, concentrated. A concentration camp.

The end.

@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

I suspect some of the mainstream confusion comes from the fact that the Nazis didn't have a strict difference between concentration camps (where they put people they didn't like without any kind of due process, and didn't care if they died) and death camps (where they put people they didn't like with the express intent of killing them all, in the most efficient way possible). Some of their camps were set up as the former but became the latter. And reporting, both academic and news-focused, often refers to both as 'concentration camps', which led to confusion about exactly what a concentration camp was.

For this reason, historians often avoid the term 'concentration camp' for things that match the wider definition (places where people were sent without due process and often died as a result of overwork, poor nutrition, poor sanitation, abuse by guards, and so on). If you use the phrase, people tend to conflate it with the death camps (where people died as a result of being pushed into gas chambers or other mass-murder machines).

Part of this is probably linked to colonialism. A lot of the colonial powers used concentration camps before the Nazis and wanted a clear distinction between their human rights abuses and systemic genocide.

If you say 'concentration camp', a lot of people hear 'death camp' and will note that there are no gas chambers, no firing squads, and so on. I don't know a solution to this that doesn't involve teaching Americans about history, which is typically not an easy thing to do.

@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

I suspect some of the mainstream confusion comes from the fact that the Nazis didn't have a strict difference between concentration camps (where they put people they didn't like without any kind of due process, and didn't care if they died) and death camps (where they put people they didn't like with the express intent of killing them all, in the most efficient way possible). Some of their camps were set up as the former but became the latter. And reporting, both academic and news-focused, often refers to both as 'concentration camps', which led to confusion about exactly what a concentration camp was.

For this reason, historians often avoid the term 'concentration camp' for things that match the wider definition (places where people were sent without due process and often died as a result of overwork, poor nutrition, poor sanitation, abuse by guards, and so on). If you use the phrase, people tend to conflate it with the death camps (where people died as a result of being pushed into gas chambers or other mass-murder machines).

Part of this is probably linked to colonialism. A lot of the colonial powers used concentration camps before the Nazis and wanted a clear distinction between their human rights abuses and systemic genocide.

If you say 'concentration camp', a lot of people hear 'death camp' and will note that there are no gas chambers, no firing squads, and so on. I don't know a solution to this that doesn't involve teaching Americans about history, which is typically not an easy thing to do.

@david_chisnall @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

It might have been more efficient to go into the neighborhoods of the people they want to eliminate and simply shoot them in their homes. But, even hard-liners can see the "optics" of such an action would be unpalatable.

@david_chisnall @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

So first it's "we are deporting the worst criminals" then "we are deporting those who have broken any law no matter how minor" then "we are deporting anyone who seems like the kind of person who might have broken a law"

But, for many there is no destination, they are warehoused, concentrated. And now "look at how they are draining our resources" so maybe they are put to work, this is how you create a problem that needs a final solution.

@david_chisnall @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

It might have been more efficient to go into the neighborhoods of the people they want to eliminate and simply shoot them in their homes. But, even hard-liners can see the "optics" of such an action would be unpalatable.

@futurebird @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

The Nazis didn't do that even after they'd built their death camps, for two reasons.

First, shooting people isn't actually that cheap. You still need to dispose of the bodies. Killing a load of people in the same place makes it easier put them in mass graves.

Second, if you shoot people in the streets then, as you say, the optics are bad, but that matters for two reasons. People will be more likely to resist if they know that the alternative is death, and people are more likely to help people they know will die without help. If you keep up the fiction that they're 'just' being relocated, you can persuade a large portion of the population to not help them and convince them that resisting to the point of being shot is not worth it.

If you want to systematically exterminate people, letting them know that's what you're doing makes it harder, and having to do it where they are is expensive. Some of this has probably changed since the 1930s, because efficiency is no longer a priority for the folks who are trying to extract as much money from the government as possible without the constraints of basic ethical behaviour.

But my point is not that this isn't a concentration camp, it's that calling it one is historically accurate but in a way that can cause confusion due to over 80 years of intentionally ambiguous terminology. The good guys have internment camps, the bad guys have concentration camps.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

There are metal bunk beds in cages, toilets in the corner and gruel as food.

What more do you need?

This isn't supposed to be a prison (not that prisons being like this would be OK either) but it's not a "prison" which is for those convicted of crimes. It's a "holding facility" but set up like a human flesh warehouse.

That is an internment camp.

It is a place where people are gathered, concentrated. A concentration camp.

The end.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

The existence of our prison system has normalized treating people in this way so that my point about "these aren't criminals" is lost in the noise.

Which is why having prisons like these camps for any people warrants more resistance.

If we were a country where even "real criminals" were not treated this way this would stand out more clearly.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

I found it interesting (disturbing, upsetting) that the Florida concentration camp is a "men's only" facility. There is no reason why women and children couldn't also be sent there, there are many women and children in the same category but I think Americans have been desensitized to seeing adult men (mostly non-white) in such conditions by our prison system.

The people doing this are thinking about optics and how to desensitize the public to more and more violence.

@AnarchoNinaAnalyzes

Anyone who calls me hysterical for that last bit would have said I was hysterical about "they will set up camps" when I saw the "mass deportation now" signs.

Mass deportation isn't *possible* it's a euphemism. It always ends up being a euphemism.