2019-08-05T17:31:42+02:00
In the US there is some controversy on what to call the “immigrant detention centers” where people are held who crossed the Southern US border and want to apply for asylum. Adam Hodges at Anthropology Nows provides his reflections on “What to Call US Border Detention Centers?” and if it is appropriate to name them as concentration camps:
If we could entertain the complexities of the type of historical comparison that [Emil] Kerenji suggests, we would recognize how the “banality of evil,” as described by Hannah Arendt, allows bureaucrats, border agents, and government staff to go about their jobs while eschewing responsibility for the policies they have been charged with implementing. We would recognize the role dehumanizing rhetoric plays in enabling the mistreatment of others, how that rhetoric coupled with the force of law and a sense of duty sways otherwise good people to do abhorrent things, and how that rhetoric keeps the public indifferent and silent in the face of atrocities carried out in their name.
