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Oh hey, what's up Twitter? I've been away on work trips. Oh, we're having a semantic fight about "concentration camps" instead of actually addressing the rolling horror of daily life in 21st century capitalism. Ok, let's start. /1
First, literally nothing that @AOC said about concentration camps is "insensitive" or "inaccurate." It is historically accurate (as about a billion historians and Jewish studies scholars have already pointed out on here, including my colleague @suzy_schneider) /2
@AOC @suzy_schneider whether "never again" refers only to Jews (a right-wing, nationalist position) or as an kind of grounding historical ethic is a political debate largely among Jews (and others) that has _nothing_ to do with antisemitism. It is only about politics, right and center vs. left. /3
@AOC @suzy_schneider But, I'd like to add, that after approx. 3 weeks on the road mostly teaching and participating in workshops on climate change and, well, yes, contemporary antisemitism, some other historical comparisons may be in order. /4
@AOC @suzy_schneider In both these settings, I've been getting a lot of mileage out of Mark Fisher's old wry phrase "Market Stalinism." /5
@AOC @suzy_schneider But as I've written before that phrase becomes less funny when you actually investigate the #'s. So, for example, present US incarceration rates (and this is true under Trump as it was under Obama) exceed the infamous Stalinist gulag by a few percentage points. Go USA! /6
@AOC @suzy_schneider And that's just the regular prison population. Not the *concentration camps* we've set up for undocumented migrants which by the end of the Obama administration were the largest in the world. /7
@AOC @suzy_schneider Trump is doubling down on the cruelty, the dehumanization, and the move to maximum opacity and secrecy. If anyone actually cares about *concentration camps*, humans in general, and these humans in particular, that's where your energies would be focused. /8
@AOC @suzy_schneider Not on demonizing one of the leading political representatives attempting to cast light on the situation. Nor on weaponizing antisemitism for cheap political gain against the Left. Not going to let it happen, sorry. /9
@AOC @suzy_schneider Furthermore, migration, even with the best climate mitigation and adaptation plan, is going to be _increasing_ in coming years by leaps and bounds. What we are seeing here is one many available already existing right-wing pushed (and center approved) "adaptation" models. /10
@AOC @suzy_schneider As I say frequently in my talks on climate change, everyone is not going to die, not even everyone is going to _suffer_. Just a whole lot of people are going to die and even more are going to live more miserably. I often calculate that in #'s of Holocausts. /11
@AOC @suzy_schneider Just as with Mike Davis' _entirely accurate and all too frequently forgotten_ labeling of late 19th century European capitalist/colonial projects as "Late Victorian Holocausts" (which not incidentally also involved the interplay of capitalism as an organizing agent in ecology./12
@AOC @suzy_schneider None of this is inevitable. Not only can we stop the immediate horror happening to migrants here in the US, we can adapt and mitigate and build a world in which we don't have to be counting holocausts or arguing about concentration camps. /13
But that starts with acknowledging the _reality_ of the horror of this 21st capitalist life and all it entails. Not trying to sweep them, and their messengers, away, because that reality is inconvenient for your worldview. /FIN
