The phrase “internment camp” calls to mind the Holocaust and imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
We like to believe they no longer exist, at least not in “civilized” democracies like our own.
However, support for rounding up Muslims and enslaving them in internment camps is intensifying among white nationalists in several major world powers–the United States, the United Kingdom, and, yes, even Germany.
New York Daily News writer Shaun King helped expose this shocking revelation in his June 7 piece, “Trump Supporters are calling for Muslim internment camps.” In it, he states:
“I’ve long since believed that Donald Trump and his staunchest supporters are bigots, but to hear some of them literally begin calling for Muslim internment camps is absolutely appalling. To be clear, they are using the words ‘internment’ and ‘internment camps’ to describe how they want to ’round up’ thousands and thousands of Muslims. Of course, the calls for these internment camps came first on Fox News, but have now spread far beyond Fox.”
After the spate of recent terror attacks in London, England, United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage stated during an interview on Fox News:
” If there is not action, then the calls for internment will grow.”
Farage supported President Donald Trump’s Twitter attacks against London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who is being accused of not following through on proposed illegal measures against Muslims.
British news outlet Leading Britain’s Conversation and frequent Fox and Friends guest contributor, Katie Hopkins, echoed Farage’s sentiments:
“We do need internment camps. Before, I would’ve bought the idea that, no, this gets more people radicalized. You know, that’s not the solution. But we’ve gone beyond the tipping point.”
Hopkins proposed a “final solution” to the Muslim “problem” in Europe following the bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester two weeks before.
This led to her talk radio show being cancelled and her dismissal from the British news source.
American right-wing talk show personality Michael Savage followed Hopkins’s example when he said:
“Why don’t you intern all of them before they run people over on a bridge or stab people in the street? It was done during World War II.”
The conversation has even spread to Germany, of all places, in large part due to support of the Holocaust-denying Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party.
In December 2016, former AfD lawmaker Claudia Martin admitted to Allgemeine Zeitung her party had been drafting legislation for a “Warsaw ghetto” plan calling for refugees’ and asylum seekers‘ mass imprisonment inside Germany before deportation back to their nations of origin, many of which would likely be hostile to them. Martin resigned from the AfD days before disclosing the plan.
The AfD plan advocates suspending myriad constitutional human rights articles contained in German Basic Law. It advocates proposed internment camps’ “inhabitants”–migrants, refugees and asylum seekers–be separated into separate “communities” and afforded “limited basic rights.”
Claudia Martin stated since Donald Trump’s election:
“[AfD has begun] Proposing solutions for the refugee crisis that bring the Warsaw ghettos to mind.”
The AfD tried to block state funding for German student field trips to former Nazi death camp sites intended to teach about the Holocaust, demanding instead the trips center around “significant German historic sites,” such as medieval castles, instead of teaching a “one-sided concentration” of Nazi crimes.
Of course, back home, we can’t ignore President Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric on the campaign trail and while in office, such as:
“We have a problem in this country; it’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one.”
“We are not loved by many Muslims.”
“If you have people coming out of mosques with hatred and death in their eyes and on their minds, we’re going to have to do something.”
“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
“I wonder if President Obama would have attended the funeral of Justice Scalia if it were held in a Mosque?”
“I think Islam hates us. There’s something there that — there’s a tremendous hatred there. There’s a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it. There’s an unbelievable hatred of us.”
“If you were a Christian in Syria, it was virtually impossible to come into the United States. If you were a Muslim from Syria, it was one of the easier countries to be able to find your way into the United States. Think of that. Just think of what that means.”
Fortunately, federal courts are keeping their fingers in the dike that is Trump’s repeated attempt to ban Muslims from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.
Still, we have fomented an atmosphere where one in three Muslims fear white supremacist violence.
Featured Image Via the Guardian
