Concentration camps reveal the nature of the modern state • Hacker News Board

Re: Concentration camps reveal the nature of the modern state

#11

Post by jancsika » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 3:32 PM UTC

Aqueous wrote: post #2

This strikes me as a massive overgeneralization. States are just an organizational structure of institutions, tasked with operating a society. They are not intrinsically inclined towards building concentration camps any more than they are intrinsically inclined towards providing healthcare or delivering a basic income. States operating under an ideology of madness will operate as if mad. States operating under an ide…

> And for me at least, the main take-away from the image of the concentration camp is clear: elections have consequences, so take your vote seriously. Form a functional coalition with others to elect the least terrible person you can.

At least in the U.S. a potent mix of cynicism and tribalism with the two party system makes this extremely difficult. Lots of people take for granted that the system is broken. But when you actually begin to discuss policy they are likely to interpret criticism of their cynically chosen party's position as cynical politically motivated flak and defend accordingly.

In that kind of environment "least terrible" doesn't seem to function anymore.

I've wondered if one attack on this vicious cycle could be flippism. Exercising my right to vote for a randomly chosen candidate may be repulsive enough to most Americans that they may actually prefer to use their critical thinking skills to convince me not to do that. (I.e., I don't think most Americans are as cynical as they claim to be.)

Re: Concentration camps reveal the nature of the modern state

#12

Post by geezer » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 3:42 PM UTC

beloch wrote: post #7

What concentration camps reveal is that modern people are squeamish about killing. Consider the Mongol empire. While the Mongol empire had some things in common with a modern state, squeamishness about killing was not one of them. There are cases where they decided a city needed to be destroyed and they took great pains to make sure that destruction was total. Every man, woman, and child they could find was put to th…

People are and have never been squeamish about killing. They just don't like to witness gore in their own backyards while they are enjoying brunch with their families. Concentration camps eliminate the inconvenience of having your day ruined by unsightly executions by moving the fate of undesirables out of your sight.

And regarding Mongols, most of what you learn from history is greatly exaggerated. Mongols fought to conquer and the cheapest way to conquer is to intimidate the enemy. It was in their interest to spread terror through stories of murder and brutality and it was in the interest of their victims to spread the same stories to elicit sympathy.

Re: Concentration camps reveal the nature of the modern state

#13

Post by cowardlydragon » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 3:44 PM UTC

beloch wrote: post #7

What concentration camps reveal is that modern people are squeamish about killing. Consider the Mongol empire. While the Mongol empire had some things in common with a modern state, squeamishness about killing was not one of them. There are cases where they decided a city needed to be destroyed and they took great pains to make sure that destruction was total. Every man, woman, and child they could find was put to th…

aaa Ayn Randian true devotees won't let such squeamishness stop them from realizing their true potential. If anything, genocide is how you get rid of the lazy people that just drag you down and keep you from your fulfillment as a capitalist knight. Your swords of Rearden Metal shall purge them.

Re: Concentration camps reveal the nature of the modern state

#14

Post by abetusk » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 3:46 PM UTC

beloch wrote: post #7

What concentration camps reveal is that modern people are squeamish about killing. Consider the Mongol empire. While the Mongol empire had some things in common with a modern state, squeamishness about killing was not one of them. There are cases where they decided a city needed to be destroyed and they took great pains to make sure that destruction was total. Every man, woman, and child they could find was put to th…

It looks like the claim that the Romans salted the earth is "not supported by ancient sources" [1][2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carthage_(c._149_BC)

[2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/269786?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...

Re: Concentration camps reveal the nature of the modern state

#15

Post by olivermarks » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 4:14 PM UTC

tldr 20th century nation states are based on a world of fear and paranoia around mutually exclusive notions of ethnic and national homogeneity and territorial integrity.

Incarceration techniques employed in concentration camps were borrowed in a transnational framework. They aided each state in isolating the unwanted (racial, religious, etc) and controlling the rest of the population through the implied threat of ending up in a camp for not conforming.

Re: Concentration camps reveal the nature of the modern state

#16

Post by ghostbrainalpha » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 4:15 PM UTC

abetusk wrote: post #14

beloch wrote: post #7

What concentration camps reveal is that modern people are squeamish about killing. Consider the Mongol empire. While the Mongol empire had some things in common with a modern state, squeamishness about killing was not one of them. There are cases where they decided a city needed to be destroyed and they took great pains to make sure that destruction was total. Every man, woman, and child they could find was put to th…

It looks like the claim that the Romans salted the earth is "not supported by ancient sources" [1][2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carthage_(c._149_BC) [2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/269786?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...

That is something I have always been skeptical of as well.

We know that salt was an extremely precious commodity in the ancient world.

It seems like an extreme waste of wealth to ruin fields for the future generations of people you have already killed.

Re: Concentration camps reveal the nature of the modern state

#17

Post by throwanem » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 4:20 PM UTC

I approached this subject, most of a year ago, here in HN comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12568718

I'm glad to have such a clear opportunity to see the vast difference in quality of results achieved by a professional historian on the one hand, and an armchair historiographer like me on the other. I'm looking forward to reading his book.

Re: Concentration camps reveal the nature of the modern state

#18

Post by charles-salvia » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 4:25 PM UTC

beloch wrote: post #7

What concentration camps reveal is that modern people are squeamish about killing. Consider the Mongol empire. While the Mongol empire had some things in common with a modern state, squeamishness about killing was not one of them. There are cases where they decided a city needed to be destroyed and they took great pains to make sure that destruction was total. Every man, woman, and child they could find was put to th…

>> What concentration camps reveal is that modern people are squeamish about killing.

Well, there's a difference between exterminating a foreign and/or conquered city-state, and isolating/quarantining undesirable sub-groups from within a larger civilization (often for reasons that are more ideological than political). What the Mongols, Romans, Assyrians, etc., did was less like isolating an ethnic sub-group and more like inflicting punishment upon a city-state for not paying tribute. (Also, I think the Assyrians would also export the population of a city-state and resettle them elsewhere, to remove their national identity, just as often as they would kill and/or skin-alive everyone in a targeted city-state.)

It's probably worth noting that what happened recently to the Yazidis in North Iraq was closer to what used to happen in antiquity.

Re: Concentration camps reveal the nature of the modern state

#19

Post by gumby » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 4:30 PM UTC

Great little summary. It's a shame the author didn't get to / have space for the discussion of refugee camps, which are structurally little different from the german internal camps of the eRly 1930s or the DP camps at the end of WWII.

The nature of the Nazi/Soviet/cpc/nk camps provides "air cover" for the widespread and more pervasive networks of camps still in use around the world.

Re: Concentration camps reveal the nature of the modern state

#20

Post by Retric » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 4:32 PM UTC

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #16

abetusk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like the claim that the Romans salted the earth is "not supported by ancient sources" [1][2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carthage_(c._149_BC) [2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/269786?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...

That is something I have always been skeptical of as well. We know that salt was an extremely precious commodity in the ancient world. It seems like an extreme waste of wealth to ruin fields for the future generations of people you have already killed.

Using ocean water could 'work', though transportation would be more problematic unless you where figuratively destroying a small garden or something. It's presumably just as effective, and vastly cheaper.

PS: Salt was expensive because of transaction and transpiration issues plus the need for a lot of land as water only evaporates at ~1/8th inch of water per day. So at 3.5% concentration that's ~4/1,000th of an inch of salt per day. But, having soil absorb sea water would likely work just as well.