You’re the only one here to be downplaying them as only racist policies. I didn’t think you’d need that much spelling out. My bad.
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I don’t think you’re getting it. I don’t see how someone can simultaneously admit the policies are racist and then complain that nobody has pointed out a target.
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This is a recent George Takei’s statement on Trump and how child separation compares with Japanese American internment. He says in many ways it’s worse, and I would tend to agree with that. Nowhere in this article does Takei imply, at all, that the Trump administration is gearing up for genocide.
But the conversation is specifically about whether the Trump administration is gearing up for genocide. There are multiple groups that have been targeted by Trump’s racist policies, and even more groups beyond that such as my own minority, Jews, that have faced additional threats and violence indirectly because of the environment Trump and his goons have fostered. But to some of us, anyway, that’s not the same as gearing up for genocide.
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Wait, George Takei is the only Japanese American who was imprisoned in the internment camps?! Boy, howdy, I had no idea.
https://jacl.org/jacl-condemns-border-concentration-camps/
And if you can’t draw the line for yourself between what Takei wrote, what the other survivors wrote, and the road to fascism and genocide, then no one can help you get there. But I an others here will still fight against this tide on your behalf, despite your insistence to keep your head in the sand.
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Well, why don’t you point out those groups representing interned Japanese Americans who have stated that the Trump administration is gearing up for genocide?
Here’s a statement and post about the organization Densho’s involvement with anti-immigrant incarceration efforts and protests. I do not see any implying that the Trump administration is gearing up for genocide. Every single aspect of their support of such protests and their characterization of what is happening with mass undocumented immigrant incarceration and child separation I agree with, to the core.
https://densho.org/photo-essay-day-of-remembrance-day-of-action/
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I gave you an example of something they’re not gearing up for, but already committing - throwing people in zeltlager and taking away their children. I’m sure you know which people that’s being done to. That’s not to say they’re not gearing up for hurting anyone else, but that’s the one that’s already started, while you wait for them to have camps with the precise words “Arbeit Macht Frei” on the gates before you acknowledge it.
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Exactly.
Potential (here’s hoping) historical parallel: If you look into it, there is no paper trail for Hitler ordering the Holocaust. Essentially it boils down to one vague, very short letter from Göring and the minutes of the Wannseekonferenz, and that’s about it.
(Incidentally, that’s the starting point for the plot of Robert Harris’s Fatherland.)
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That’s not genocide by my or the vast vast majority of people’s definition – and again, use of that word specifically is what this discussion is about – and you are simply bending the word to make a point, in a way that I think is extremely harmful to actual anti-genocide efforts, by doing so. We obviously disagree.
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Wait, you disagree with the UN definition of genocide? Must be nice to live on your planet.
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What precisely are you suggesting I’m waiting for? That my failing to use the word “genocide” to describe these awful things that I’m very much against, is the same as me supporting these things, and maybe by extension genocide itself, outright? It is a very, very poor argument.
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I see you didn’t actually read it. I did, and I agree with it. I do not see that the UN has equated Trump administration policies with their definition of genocide, or suggested that the Trump administration is gearing up for genocide.
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From that link:
Emphasis added. I know that’s not genocide by many people’s definition, because their definition is something Germany did during the 1940s, and they’re never willing to admit any such possibility in the beloved USA. But you might consider reading what you’re actually citing, and thinking about why they went with that and what it means.
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I actually do believe in the possibility that it could happen in the USA, which I said earlier in this thread. But I don’t actually see real evidence of it, and you are twisting the UN definition in a way that the UN obviously themselves are not and have not, both in terms of describing what the Trump admin has done to undocumented immigrants, or even much worse things happening around the globe that lead to mass numbers of people being hurt or killed.
By your interpretation, every time a child is taken away from parents to live in foster care, it is genocide. To some of us, words mean things, they are not just exclamation points.
From the UN definition:
The intent is the most difficult element to determine. To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Cultural destruction does not suffice, nor does an intention to simply disperse a group. It is this special intent, or dolus specialis , that makes the crime of genocide so unique. In addition, case law has associated intent with the existence of a State or organizational plan or policy, even if the definition of genocide in international law does not include that element.
Importantly, the victims of genocide are deliberately targeted - not randomly – because of their real or perceived membership of one of the four groups protected under the Convention (which excludes political groups, for example). This means that the target of destruction must be the group, as such, and not its members as individuals. Genocide can also be committed against only a part of the group, as long as that part is identifiable (including within a geographically limited area) and “substantial.”
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Going back to this for a moment. You are aware that many of Trump’s trusted advisors, and a big swath of his supporters, are extremist Evangelical Xtians who believe that all Jews must be in Israel and be annihilated in order to start the rapture, right? That’s not a conspiracy theory: it’s what they say and write.
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Trump gave rant after rant about dirty Mexicans coming to his country and filling it with drugs and rapists and murderers, no better than animals. His attacks on “undocumented immigrants” don’t seem to have involved ripping children away from too many Swedes who overstayed their visas, but there’s been a lot of work pushing Hispanics into the illegal category. And you’re honestly going to pretend we can’t really know if he is targeting anyone? What the hell is the point of such sophistry?
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So I guess Jared, Ivanka and their kids are on “the list,” huh?
As long as Turmp doesn’t order that members of specific groups must sew colored patches on their clothes, it can’t be genocide. So let’s wait for that. /s
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Well, it’s because you’re putting ridiculous words and statements in my mouth that I didn’t even come close to implying.
Trump’s racists policies have targeted legal immigrants and even visitors from majority-Muslim nations.
Trump’s racist policies have targeted undocumented Latinx immigrants.
Trump’s statements and many awful government policies have targeted black, brown and other minority people throughout the USA.
None of that is the same as genocide. It’s just not, no matter how many times people want to say it in order to make a point. Attacking people and putting words in their mouth, or trying to imply they are somehow pro Trump when in fact they are virulently anti-Trump, does not a strong argument make, even if maybe it wins some virtual friends who react well to the extremes of virtue signaling. And this is very much what I think is going on here. It’s actually kind of fascinating, from a cyber-anthropological perspective.
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Yup.
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