[Marxism] A Violent Tremor ? US Prison Camps

["Y. K." <ykleftis@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

A Violent Tremor ? US Prison Camps

This is an extremely disturbing development on the heels of the recent poll
(see my recent ?Polls and Camps? post for links). Daniel Pipes advances
historical justification for concentration camps in the US. For those who do
not know, D. Pipes sits at the heart of the rightist intellectuals who
promote a ?war on terror? for any US imperial urge. His voice carries great
power in those circles. Pipes is fully aware that ideas matter and he
continues to spearhead a series of forays into US political culture with a
cadre of fellow fascists.

Pipes is greatly respected. His campaign against non-rightist professors of
Middle Eastern studies continues to bear poisoned apples across the US. His
article implies clearly that many rightists have already discussed
concentration camps among themselves. The organizational infrastructure for
camps may even be in place if their justifying principles are now openly
proclaimed.

I strongly warn all of us on the left, Muslim or not, for Pipes is not even
a liberal. It would be a grave mistake to ignore this dangerous threat,
which may appear quite distant and small in the eyes of some. Use a natural
metaphor if you must: as the winds continue to blow rightward, this tempest
will advance from the horizon with surprising speed.

----

Pipes Favors Concentration Camps

That the Revisionist-Zionist extremist Daniel Pipes has fond visions of
rounding up Muslim Americans and putting them in concentration camps isn't a
big surprise. That a mainstream American newspaper would publish this
David-Dukeian evil is. Of course, this is also a man that President Bush
appointed to a temporary vacancy at the United States Institute of Peace,
after the Senate understandably balked at a regular appointment for him.

Pipes's little project requires him to attempt to justify the internment of
American citizens (of Japanese ancestry) during World War II, a violation on
several grounds of the Bill of Rights. I hope Asian-Americans realize that a
key wing of the Republican Party, i.e. the Neoconservatives, wishes them
ill.

If the American yahoos ever start putting people in concentration camps, I
think we may be assured that they won't stop with the Muslims or the Asians,
and Mr. Pipes will come to have reason to regret his imprudence and,
frankly, his demonic implication.

http://www.juancole.com/

----

Posted on Thu, Dec. 30, 2004

Why the Japanese internment still matters

By Daniel Pipes

Middle East Forum
For years, it has been my position that the threat of radical Islam implies
an imperative to focus security measures on Muslims. If searching for
rapists, one looks only at the male population. Similarly, if searching for
Islamists (adherents of radical Islam), one looks at the Muslim population.
And so, I was encouraged by a just-released Cornell University opinion
survey that finds nearly half the U.S. population agreeing with this
proposition.
Specifically, 44 percent of Americans believe that government authorities
should direct special attention toward Muslims living in the United States,
either by registering their whereabouts, profiling them, monitoring their
mosques or infiltrating their organizations.
That's the good news; the bad news is the near-universal disapproval of this
realism. Leftist and Islamist organizations have so successfully influenced
public opinion that polite society shies away from endorsing a focus on
Muslims.
In the United States, this intimidation results in large part from a
revisionist interpretation of the evacuation, relocation and internment of
ethnic Japanese during World War II.
Denying that the treatment of ethnic Japanese resulted from legitimate
national security concerns, this lobby has established that it resulted
solely from a combination of "wartime hysteria" and "racial prejudice."
As radical groups like the American Civil Liberties Union wield this
interpretation, in the words of columnist Michelle Malkin, "like a bludgeon
over the War on Terror debate," they pre-empt efforts to build an effective
defense against today's Islamist enemy.
The intrepid Malkin, a specialist on immigration, has re-opened the
internment file.
Her recently published book, bearing the provocative title In Defense of
Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on
Terror (Regnery), starts with the unarguable premise that in time of war,
"the survival of the nation comes first." From there, she draws the
corollary that "Civil liberties are not sacrosanct."
She then reviews the historical record of the early 1940s and finds that:
? Within hours of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, two U.S. citizens of Japanese
ancestry, with no history of anti-Americanism, shockingly collaborated with
a Japanese soldier against their fellow Hawaiians.
? The Japanese government had established "an extensive espionage network
within the United States" believed to include hundreds of agents.
? In contrast to loose talk about "American concentration camps," the
relocation camps for Japanese were "Spartan facilities that were for the
most part administered humanely." As proof, she notes that more than 200
individuals voluntarily chose to move into the camps.
? The relocation process itself won praise from Carey McWilliams, a
contemporary leftist critic (and future editor of The Nation), for taking
place "without a hitch."
? A federal panel that reviewed these issues in 1981-83, the Commission on
Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, was, Malkin explains,
"Stacked with left-leaning lawyers, politicians, and civil rights activists
-- but not a single military officer or intelligence expert."
? The apology for internment by Ronald Reagan in 1988, plus the nearly $1.65
billion in reparations paid to former internees, was premised on faulty
scholarship. In particular, it largely ignored the top-secret decoding of
Japanese diplomatic traffic, codenamed the MAGIC messages, which revealed
Tokyo's plans to exploit Japanese-Americans.
Malkin has done the singular service of breaking the academic single-note
scholarship on a critical subject, cutting through a shabby, stultifying
consensus to reveal how, "given what was known and not known at the time,"
FDR and his staff did the right thing.
She correctly concludes that, especially in time of war, governments should
take into account nationality, ethnicity, and religious affiliation in their
homeland security policies and engage in what she calls "threat profiling."
These steps may entail bothersome or offensive measures but, she argues,
they are preferable to "being incinerated at your office desk by a flaming
hijacked plane."

Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum. www.DanielPipes.org

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/10529596.htm?1c

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