[danharaj]

> Calling this a concentration camp is like calling a terminal cancer ward a "death camp" because people go there to die.

No, it isn't. Concentration camps have existed throughout history and they haven't always been associated with genocide. But, you know, they do have a connotation of being associated with violations of human rights which is exactly what people are alleging about these detention sites.

The fact that it's not literally the holocaust doesn't mean it's not a concentration camp.

[neonate]

That's true. But post-holocaust, the term came to mean the holocaust camps. Growing up, I never heard it used any other way. For example I never heard the camps in which the US and Canada put their Japanese citizens in WWII called concentration camps, though in the original sense they were. Rather they were called internment camps, because by then "concentration camp" had come to be associated with the holocaust. So there's a semantic sleight of hand in people reviving the term for political use now. They're taking advantage of the extreme associations it now has, while protesting that they don't mean it that way.

[AnthonyMouse]

> No, it isn't. Concentration camps have existed throughout history and they haven't always been associated with genocide.

It still is, because a "concentration camp" even in that sense still isn't just any camp where people are concentrated. It implies internment without charges, which is exactly what isn't happening here -- there is every expectation that there will be a proceeding to determine their immigration status, resulting in either release or deportation and not indefinite internment in violation of habeas corpus.

> But, you know, they do have a connotation of being associated with violations of human rights which is exactly what people are alleging about these detention sites.

Then make that claim and not the other one. If they have no access to soap then assert that as the thing that needs to be fixed -- because at least that can be fixed. How do you make a detention facility not a "concentration camp" under a definition of "concentration camp" that just means any detention facility?

[danharaj]

> How do you make a detention facility not a "concentration camp" under a definition of "concentration camp" that just means any detention facility?

You might just have to accept that in order to enforce some laws you're going to have to put people in mass detention and you may as well own that instead of trying to get people to not call it what it is because the term for it makes you uncomfortable.