Concentration camps are far older than Valeriano Weyler.
The British long ago had one of the biggest concentration camps and they called it “Ireland”.
She loves socialism. And the socialist have a nasty history of sending people they don’t like to the gulags (those who don’t get a quick bullet to the back of the head, that is).
A bizarre nit to pick, considering the whales of deceit in her claim. And it’s false anyway. Gen William Sherman’s actions were even closer to concentration camps they Weyler’s.
Someone might mention to Sra. Ocasio-Cortez that her forebears also introduced slavery to the Americas when they ran out of locals to do the farming on Hispaniola. Seems they worked them to death...
But of course, we must give the descendants of Weyler the same preferences we give the descendants of their victims!
It’s only fair, right?
Concentration camps have been around for a long long time.
I was about to correct you but looked it up. Weyler did precede the British by a couple of years. I do think the British coined the term. Many Boer women and children suffered in them.
Remind her of the Spanish inquisition.
No, “the Spanish” didn’t invent concentration camps, which weren’t directed at containing or controlling a conquered population that didn’t necessarily qualify as POWs, but at gathering together and killing a population sent to the camps. The Germans have always been racist - when the Visigoths conquered Spain, they brought anti-Semitic laws with them - and Hitler’s concentration camps were the final manifestation (the final solution) of the bizarre German obsession with Jews.
The Germanic tribes that conquered Rome and Roman Spain were not orthodox Christians, btw, they were Arians, as most Germans, Catholic or Protestant, are to this day even if they don’t know or acknowledge it.
In any case, I was glad to see that some big Jewish organization in NYC actually struck back at the idiot AOC for her misuse of the term.
“Spanish General Valeriano Weyler, according to the Progressive Broadcasting Service, is the first to set up concentration camps under the Spanish Reconcentration”
So what? What’s your point? Instead of debating on her ground - arguing over the definition and origin of concentration camps - we should be focusing on telling her there’s a mess on the border because ot unregulated inflows, and Congress needs to fix it.
AOClickbait
I thought it was the British during the Boer war.
The Spanish called them “reconcentration camps”. They were a tactic to suppress the Marti guerillas by removing their source of support. They divided the island into zones and shot anyone crossing from one zone to another without a pass. Then they herded the entire population into these camps. The Spanish army soon found that they didn’t have the logistical capabilities to support the civilians in the camps and there was mass starvation.
The model for the reconcentration camps were the US Indian reservations and the Spanish pointed to this when they were criticised. The population of Cuba was a lot larger than any North American Indian tribe though, and the model didn’t scale up too well.
The Marti guerillas were even worse, though it is unfashionable to say so now. They simply massacred any civilians who didn’t support them. It was a very bad war for the civilian population.
As a young officer, Weyler served as an observer on Sherman’s staff.
Enough medals?
FDR has them installed during WW2. Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. This order authorized the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones, clearing the way for the incarceration of Japanese Americans, German Americans, and Italian Americans in U.S. concentration camps.
Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. This order authorized the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones, clearing the way for the incarceration of Japanese Americans, German Americans, and Italian Americans in U.S. concentration camps.
Re Weyler -
My ancestress (from Cienfuegos, Cuba) was his lady-in-waiting (basically an unpaid social secretary) when he was Governor-General of Cuba. Her brother was his aide-de-camp in both Cuba and the Philippines.
Spain was very experienced in counterinsurgency by this time, having dealt with an awful lot of that for almost the whole of the 19th century. The Spanish army was extremely busy. Weyler was an expert.
Well liked by all who worked for him was the family story.
Clinton built camps at Guantamo where he sent thousands of Cubans and Haitians, thirty or forty thousand Cubans, maybe 12 thousand Haitians, for years in tent cities behind fences. This, until the political damage was impossible to ignore, upon which time he sent the Cubans to the mainland and sent the Haitians back to Haiti.
I’d much rather watch someone on the House Floor remind OAC that this is the second time she’s made an implicit racist remark towards ethnic mainland Americans- the first referring to Southern blacks as all having ‘ringworm,’ and now this instance: By labeling temporary detention centers ‘concentration camps’ she is by default classifying those that work there as gestapo, although she’s too much of a coward to say that word out loud. But that word would be our BP, which, contrary to her bubble world view of 100% white supremists with batons and snarling dogs she thinks she’s projecting, actually consists of a force of many ethnic Spanish men and women who serve on patrol, as translators and in providing emergency care to everyone from abandoned newborns to trafficked teens to critical care elderly migrants. Such blatant displays of ethnic racism should be publically called out and Censored by The House same as any other racist congresscritter would be.