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Spotlight 11/2019 I ASK MYSELF

Watching

ourselves

Viele US-amerikanische Politiker und

Kommentatoren vergleichen die schlecht

geführten Internierungslager an der Grenze

zu Mexiko mit Konzentrationslagern.

ADVANCED US

I ASK MYSELF

AMY ARGETSINGER

is an editor at

The Washington

Post, a leading

daily newspaper

in the US.

t should not have been surprising that in 2019,

we would spend a day debating the definition of

“concentration camp.” This is how our politics have

devolved. It started when a Democratic congressman

launched an attack on the White House for packing

record numbers of illegal immigrants into over­

crowded detention centers along the Mexico border,

where conditions are deteriorating, and diseases are

spreading. “The fact that concentration camps are

now an institutionalized practice in the ‘home of

the free’ is extraordinarily disturbing,” said Represen­

tative Alexandria Ocasio­Cortez. “A presidency that

creates concentration camps is fascist, and it’s very

difficult to say that.”

Ocasio­Cortez is young, charismatic, and far more

liberal than the average Democrat. Republicans have

become obsessed with her — a mixture of fear and

fascination. They hang on her every word, dissect her

every public statement, and look for ways to under­

mine her. And in the eyes of many conservatives, her

statement gave them ammunition.

Representative Liz Cheney decided to take of­

fense to the use of “concentration camp” — a term

most associated with Nazi­run death camps like

Auschwitz. She argued that Ocasio­Cortez disre­

spected the six million Jews who died in the Holo­

caust by comparing their experience to those of to­

day’s detained migrants. “You demean their memory

and disgrace yourself with comments like this,” she

said. Ocasio­Cortez responded to Cheney directly on

Twitter: “What do YOU call building mass camps of

people being detained without a trial?” or the “mass

separation of thousands of children at the border

from their parents?”

This led to an all­day debate about the definition

of “concentration camp” and whether it was an

demean [di(mi:n]

, herabsetzen

detain [di(teIn]

, inhaftieren, festhalten

detention center

[di(tenS&n )sent&r]

, Internierungslager

deteriorate [di(tIriEreIt]

, sich verschlechtern

devolve [di(vA:lv]

, hier: herabsinken

disgrace [dIs(greIs]

, blamieren

dissect [daI(sekt]

, analysieren, sezieren

distract [dI(strÄkt]

, ablenken

obsessed [Eb(sest]

, besessen

offense: take ~ to sth. [E(fens]

, an etw. Anstoß nehmen,

etw. übel nehmen

seal off [si:&l (O:f]

, abschotten, abriegeln

undermine [)Vnd&r(maIn]

, untergraben

appropriate word choice. I found it frustrating. It dis­

tracted from the real issue — the condition of these

camps, whatever you want to call them, and whether

our nation is treating people in a fair, safe, morally re­

sponsible way.

Of course, the migrants in the border camps are

not being systematically sent to their deaths, as were

the victims of the Nazi concentration camps. But

as several scholars have noted, Auschwitz was not

Auschwitz at the start. Over the past century, many

governments have used detention camps to control

portions of the population. Even when the intention

is not to kill, it is a dehumanizing system that can lead

to greater abuses.

I was struck by a quote from Hannah Arendt that

one scholar offered. The German­American philoso­

pher, who spent time imprisoned in an internment

camp, argued that they all have one thing in common:

“The human masses sealed off in them are treated as

if they no longer existed, as if what happened to them

were no longer of any interest to anybody, as if they

were already dead...”

I