Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez illuminated her relative lack of knowledge of human history yet again last night, this time telling her Instagram Live followers that the United States is "running concentration camps" on the southern border. Not only does Rep. Ocasio-Cortez cheapen the significance of the Holocaust with this remark, she also damages the Democratic Party who in previous years has caged illegal aliens children in the exact same detention facilities but more recently has denied billions of dollars in funding to address the migrant crisis.
The Washington Examiner's Jerry Dunleavy drew attention to this last night after AOC, who has stylized her modern-day fireside chats in the manner of Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (you know the hero of leftists who first put Japanese-Americans in the internment camps), made the absurd remarks to her followers. First, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez sat in her "ReMatriate the Land" tee shirt and began assembling a piece of furniture while slipping into a stream of consciousness thought regarding the economy and why she fights against President Trump. According to the freshman congresswoman, President Trump is an authoritarian and fascist because she says the detention facilities to house thousands of asylum seekers are modern day concentration camps.
"The United States is running concentration camps on the southern border. And that is exactly what they are. They are concentration camps," she said. "And if that doesn't bother you, I don't, I got nothing. Like we can have -- I wanna talk to the people who are concerned enough with humanity and that never again means something"
AOC accuses the United States of running concentration camps on the southern borderpic.twitter.com/OMQtmwWGe0
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) June 18, 2019
"And that the fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing. And we need to do something about it," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explained.
"This week immigrant children were moved to the same internment camps where the Japanese were held in the early twentieth century," she continued. Matt covered last week how these exact same leftists and Democrats were silent when President Obama placed illegal aliens and migrant children in the exact same military base during his presidency. The Democratic Party had nothing to say then, but now their standard-bearers warn that America is losing the values which made us America.
As AOC told her followers, "This is not even about a crisis, this is not just about the immigrant community being held in concentration camps and if America will actually remain America, or if we are losing to an authoritarian and fascist presidency."
"I don't use those words lightly, I don't use those words to just throw bombs. I use that word because that is what an administration that creates concentration camps is," she remarks before getting back to putting together a chair.
First, six million Jews and at least five million more non-Jews killed were killed in Nazi concentration camps in these via gassing, starvation, death squads, abuse, unsafe sanitary conditions, and more. Likewise, estimates are that a total of 17 million died at the hands of the Nazi regime during World War II. The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, while in some parts overcrowded, is nothing near that. In fact, it is arguably the exact opposite. Asylum seekers and detained illegal aliens are given meals, healthcare, clothing, shelter, and are released into America after a certain time period. Many are never detained in these facilities at all and are freely allowed to travel the country to generous cities like Portland, Maine where welfare programs are established for asylum seekers. It is a gross mistake of the Congresswoman to equate the problem at the southern border with Nazi Germany. Her comparison shows she is either flippant about the horrors of the Holocaust and does not take it seriously, or is severely ignorant about what truly happened.
But more to the point, it also seems that she is painstakingly unaware of what is happening within her own party today. As mentioned, there have been problems of overcrowding in certain facilities. However, House Republicans have tried 15 times this year to secure $4.5 billion dollars specifically to "feed and shelter migrant families and unaccompanied children, fund urgent medical care and transportation, and pay for growing overtime cost for DHS men and women on the frontlines." Whatever mistreatment of these migrant families that AOC says is proof of concentration camps is being caused by the Democratic party. Her party refuses to work with Republicans to provide the necessary funding thus resulting in the crisis.
For all the bluster from the left about how President Donald J. Trump's Twitter account is dangerous, it would appear that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Instagram feed is where truly delusional and harmful comments are flung onto the American people who are often young and impressionable followers who will actually believe her comments.
UPDATE: Rep. Ocasio-Cortez defended her position after initial backlash by claiming it was the Republicans who are actually morons on this subject for not understanding that by concentration camps, she did not actually mean the ones like in Nazi Germany rather she was referring to the technical definition.
And for the shrieking Republicans who don’t know the difference: concentration camps are not the same as death camps.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 18, 2019
Concentration camps are considered by experts as “the mass detention of civilians without trial.”
And that’s exactly what this administration is doing.