“When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp. It was like they’re experimenting with our bodies,” the detainee said.
Many Americans ask themselves, what would we have done if we were alive during the Third Reich’s early days? We like to tell ourselves a heartwarming story, that we would be able to spot the fascist before he consolidated power, and before the crimes that came later happened. We like to tell ourselves that we are the good guys. Well, welcome to that moment, because we are precisely at that moment. Our camps may not have names like Bergen Belsen. But we have camps where things are happening that are beyond the pale. They are part of a private prison industry that has contracts with Immigration services.
There are horror stories that emerge every so often from them. They involve family separation and now forced medical procedures. None of this is a joke, and most is happening under cover of darkness. Most actions are also happening without major media paying much attention to these stories. Partly, Americans are resistant to these horrors, and in this, I include major corporate media, Also we have a health crisis that is sucking the oxygen out of the air.
First, let me share the definition of genocide with you because not all means stacking bodies like cordwood. Yes, that is one type of genocide; others fit the United Nations definition that fits International Humanitarian law.
Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
We are already doing two of these markers. We are transferring children, and we are using forced sterilization. This came out today, and it should shock any American to the core, but I know many will continue to sleepwalk in the early stages of the nightmare. We are early in this collective descent into madness, and to be brutally honest, there is a precedent of this in American history, so it should not surprise us, but it should chill us.
Multiple women came forward to tell Project South about what they perceived to be the inordinate rate at which women in ICDC were subjected to hysterectomies — a surgical operation in which all or part of the uterus is removed. Additionally, many of the immigrant women who underwent the procedure were reportedly “confused” when asked to explain why they had the surgery, with one detainee likening their treatment to prisoners in concentration camps.
“Recently, a detained immigrant told Project South that she talked to five different women detained at ICDC between October and December 2019 who had a hysterectomy done,” the complaint stated. “When she talked to them about the surgery, the women ‘reacted confused when explaining why they had one done.’ The woman told Project South that it was as though the women were ‘trying to tell themselves it’s going to be OK.’”
“When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp. It was like they’re experimenting with our bodies,” the detainee said.
This fits the exact definition of genocide, and it is coming from an administration that is signaling that they are fine with this. We even had a meeting, Wanse, like, in 2018 to separate families, Which is also a crime against humanity. No wonder the president and his men (and it is mostly men, white men) have no issue with China’s actions with the Uighur. What they are doing is also genocide, but the president has mostly avoided the issue. He may happily call COVID the China flu, but calling President Xi directly over their genocide would be a tad on the hypocritical side.
Reportedly during the meeting, this happened:
“If we don’t enforce this, it is the end of our country as we know it,” (Stephen) Miller said, according to the two officials. It was not unusual for Miller to make claims like that, but this time he was adamant that the policy move forward, regardless of arguments about resources and logistics.
No one in the meeting made the case that separating families would be inhumane or immoral, the officials said. Any moral argument about immigration “fell on deaf ears” inside the White House, one of the officials said.
“Miller was tired of hearing about logistical problems,” one of the officials said. “It was just ‘Let’s move forward and staff will figure this out.’”
This is the moment we crossed into genocide. Incidentally, Miller believes that the country has to remain white and that we are enduring a Camp of the Saints like an invasion of brown peoples. He also believes in white supremacy. The fact that he is Jewish and his current hard-line policies would have condemned his relatives to concentration camps, and extermination is immaterial.
This is where we are as a nation. We live in a country where some police officers openly flaunt their allegiance to white supremacy groups. We live in a place where the talk of eliminating the enemy is no longer in the fringers. It has become mainstream and weaponized. Then there is QAnon and a new version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and blood libel. This is not a good place for any society. This is how we end up with mass murder.
The role that Fox News and others in the right-wing information bubble play are akin to state media. They do not question any of the actions of the state. They applaud them and have helped create an environment where the enemy is democrats, people of color, and immigrants. This is out of mind, where most of us can comfortably continue with our lives. We can still pretend that there is no problem.
Remember, Germans visited the camps near the end of the war under duress. General Dwight Eisenhower gave that order. Why? Many Germans still pretended everything was fine, and nothing was amiss. It was easy to do so, and perhaps necessary to keep their own hero story going. They were the heroes who were defeated in the field of battle by people like the Americans. They were not that bad.
It is time we stop pretending. We are in the early stages of mass murder. So if you ever wondered what you would do in Nazi Germany? We are there. The test is in the here and now. What would you do is no longer academic. Incidentally, for those of us who know the less heroic bits of American history and understand slavery and the Indian wars, this is hardly surprising. After this is over, it is time we confront the original twin sins: Slavery and Genodice.
