Talk:List of concentration and internment camps/Archive 5

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RFC about U.S.-Mexico border camps

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Should the content discussing the camps at the U.S.-Mexico border be deleted from this article discussing examples of concentration camps? --Pinchme123 (talk) 01:24, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Survey

• No. Its inclusion is well-sourced from multiple expert scholars on the subject of "concentration camps" broadly. --Pinchme123 (talk) 01:29, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

• I realize now, this doesn't match the normal conventions. My vote is Keep. --Pinchme123 (talk) 05:09, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

• Yes, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem and others, have already reported on the use of this Holocaust Revisionism. It should not be here, especially if it wasn't here when President Obama was in office, because that will show a clear bias of Wikipedia and we wouldn't want that now, would we? No matter what you think of the conditions of the detention centers at the border, a temporary detention until you're adjudicated is not the same thing as a concentration camp, no matter how much some moron on Twitter says it is. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 01:43, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

The experts used as references in this section are historians and other scholars who are quoted in multiple sources. These include historian Andrea Spitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, historian Waitman Wade Beorn at the University of Virginia, and sociologist Jonathan Hyslop at Colgate University, to name a few in just one article already used as a reference. Certainly not the "moron on Twitter" Sir Joseph seems to be characterizing them as.

I don't see how it can be seen as bias to defer to scholars on the subject. I do however see it as bias to misrepresent statements by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in service of an argument. For the record, the aforementioned statement states "The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary." This statement does not contribute to a conversation about labeling of camps at the U.S.-Mexico border as "concentration camps," as this label is far more broad than the extreme Holocaust examples of such camps during World War II. To quote one expert I've already mentioned, Dr. Beorn, "Things can be concentration camps without being Dachau or Auschwitz."

--Pinchme123 (talk) 01:58, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

References

This is why it's wrong. Auschwitz wasn't a concentration camp. It would also help if AOC would be a cosponsor of HR 943 which is the Never Again Education Act [1], but she's not, so we know she's using this for political gain, like we saw with her photo-ops. Please don't respond to me again. I already made my opinion known about this Holocaust revisionism and I will not change my mind. And please don't badger people in the voting section, that's not what it's for. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 02:03, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Sir Joseph, please try to keep this discussion on topic. AOC's behaviour and the extent to which it may be for political gain is not the subject of this RfC. StudiesWorld (talk) 12:08, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

• Leaning against removal. The title of this article reflects concentration and internment camps, which seems broad enough to encompass a wider variety of circumstances, including those described with respect to these facilities. bd2412 T 02:08, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
• Delete I understand that WP:NPOV is frequently not observed around here, but putting Mexican border detention centers together with Buchenwald makes it a little too obvious what game is being played. In particular, the existence of Voluntary departure (United States) is a crucial difference. Seriously I was tempted to vote "keep because of WP:NPOV" as a joke, but I'd rather not get sanctioned for doing that. Adoring nanny (talk) 03:00, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
• Remove. While the political back and forth here is strong, it is not clear these meet the definition and will pass the WP:10YT test. I'd prefer to see actual published scholarship referring to these as concentration (or internment) camps - as opposed to tweets by politicians followed by TV appearances by one expert supporting this. It is quite clear this is a disputed label at present - given that United States Holocaust Memorial Museum contested this opinion - [2] . In short - this is a WP:RECENTISM based !vote - lets keep contemporary American-Politics off of pages unless it is clearly obvious that the label fits. We have enough American politics drama on other pages (e.g. including this back and forth (whether this is or isn't a concentration camp) should probably discussed first on Family immigration detention in the United States). Icewhiz (talk) 06:25, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
  • @Icewhiz: I have also looked at the statement of the Holocaust Museum; although it might speak to the use of the term "concentration camp", it would not address the classification of places as "internment camps". Perhaps the solution is to split this article between locations that were clearly concentration camps, and those that were/are merely internment camps. bd2412 T 17:30, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
    • @BD2412: - look at Internment - "internment camp" and "concentration camp" are interchangeable terms. The historical context is different in WW2 (different US vs. German terminology, though prior English terminology - British concentration camps was in this mold) - but it's the same thing AFAICT. The question here is more whether immigrant / refugee camps should be classified as internment/concentration camps (not a straightforward question) - muddled with a current AP2 issue (leading to harsh rhetoric from both sides here). I'd prefer to see published scholarship using this term in a consistent, and uncontested basis (or to precise - a clear majority opinion, say over 80%), as opposed to TV appearances and open letters. I'm relatively unimpressed by "X scholars signed open letter Y" - even when X is 400. I'd be far more impressed if we were discussing 3-4 journal articles. Icewhiz (talk) 07:01, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Icewhiz voices a concern that this section is an instance of RECENTISM - because it was based on tweets, not RS. Excising this section would be a mistake if the opinion voiced by the Holocaust museum is a fringe opinion. After taking a good look at the references I am convinced the opinion of the Holocaust museum is, at the least, a minority opinion. Icewhiz is an experienced contributor, so I know if I encourage them to pause, and consider the possibility their view looks like an instance of WP:IDONTLIKEIT, they will know what I am talking about. Here are some mainstream RS - ie not tweets - that are ready to call the camps concentration camps. One of those RS does refer to a tweet from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - but the criticism it is "just a tweet" is eroded, because, as the article notes, it links directly to one of the articles I listed below, that quotes a recognized expert on concentration camps. Geo Swan (talk) 22:37, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Emma Snaith (2019-07-01). "Jewish protesters block entrance to Trump administration's 'concentration camps' for migrants". The Independent. Retrieved 2019-07-17. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  • Michael Hiltzik (2019-07--15). "Column: The U.S. Holocaust Museum is wrong to deny that Trump's racism resembles Nazism". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2019-07-17. The museum further distinguishes a concentration camps from a prison in that the former "functions outside of a judicial system. The prisoners are not indicted or convicted of any crime by judicial process." These words from the museum are as precise a definition as you might wish of the camps maintained by the administration on the southern border. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  • Masha Gessen (2019-06-21). "The Unimaginable Reality of American Concentration Camps". New Yorker magazine. Retrieved 2019-07-17. Pitzer argued that "mass detention of civilians without a trial" was what made the camps concentration camps. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  • Jack Holmes (2019-06-13). "An Expert on Concentration Camps Says That's Exactly What the U.S. Is Running at the Border: "Things can be concentration camps without being Dachau or Auschwitz."". Esquire magazine. Retrieved 2019-07-17. But while the world-historical horrors of the Holocaust are unmatched, they are only the most extreme and inhuman manifestation of a concentration-camp system—which, according to Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, has a more global definition. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  • Charles Blow (2019-06-23). "Trump's 'Concentration Camps': The cruelty of immigrant family separations must not be tolerated". The New York Times. p. A25. Retrieved 2019-07-17. Last year, Fox News's Laura Ingraham compared child detention centers to "summer camps." These are not summer camps. They are closer to what Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called them: concentration camps. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
    • The sources above only convinced me to stand pat. The first is on 30 Jewish protesters protesting these are concentration camps. The second, third, and fifth are opeds (the New Yorker noting "the fight over the term “concentration camp” is mostly an argument about something entirely different."). The fourth is an interview with Andrea Pitzer in Esquire. What is entirely clear is that this is a political football between those opposed to current US immigration policies and those supporting those policies - and in this fight there is a battle over whether it is appropriate or inappropriate to use this terminology. What is actually lacking is any treatment of this in a non-political context. While I do see coverage of the debate over the use of this label - I don't see NEWSORGs choosing to use this label in their own voice (in their own reporting, not attributed - e.g. the NYT/WaPo/BBC/etc... reporting in a news item "Trump signed an order that would .... in the concentration camps along the border") - such use might be convincing for us to adopt this in our voice. NEWSORG reporting on a partisan squabble on whether this should or should not be used? That's clearly a no-consensus situation regarding the use of this terminology. Icewhiz (talk) 11:20, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
      • e.g. when I google-news for "Trump camps", and ignore op-eds, I get in mainstream NEWSORGs - "migrant camps" Independent, DW (which notes "The centers have been compared to concentration camps."), "detention camps",PBS. When I do see "concentration camp" - it is in quotes and/or attributed - not in the NEWORG's voice. Icewhiz (talk) 11:27, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
• Remove as politically partisan claim. Dahn (talk) 07:17, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
• Keep is sourced to reliable sources. // Liftarn (talk) 08:06, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
• Comment isn't this clearly out of scope of the article, per the lead? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:44, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
• Keep neither type of camp is the exclusive purview of any one country or regime, and by the same token varying degrees of similarity can exist between them. ——SerialNumber54129 09:33, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
• Keep per RS and Serial Number. Arguments against keep that use the Holocaust Museum's stance against comparing things to the Holocaust miss the point when the article already includes literal dozens of other examples that are not from the Holocaust. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:16, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
• Remove/Keep? - These are "concentration camps" by definition. But, as Peacemaker67 points out, the lede excludes camps set up to house refugees or those seeking asylum. I don't know how to square that with the fact that Australian asylum facilities operated on Nauru and Manus Island are included in the article. This seems to be inconsistent. If we are going to exclude discussion of the American refugee camps, why are we not excluding the Australian ones?--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 01:10, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

I am changing my vote to Keep. I think this would however require us to update the lede for consistency. The article already contains information about "concentration camps" housing refugees/asylum seekers (in Australia/Nauru/Manus Island). These American detention facilities satisfy the definition of "concentration camp" also. I agree with PraiseVivec's summary of the reasons people do not want use the term, and do not think any of them are a good reason not to include these facilities in the article.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 00:57, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

• Keep: The matter has been discussed a year back; sample:

These detention facilities for refugee children can rightly be labeled “concentration camps.” The Nazis do not own the term irrevocably, as it refers to prisonlike facilities where individuals are forcibly detained because of who they are.

Yes, you can call the border centers ‘concentration camps,’ but apply the history with care, Washington Post, by Waitman Wade Beorn, June 2018. More recently, 400 Holocaust and genocide scholars signed an open letter asking USHMM to reconsider their position: More than 400 Holocaust, Genocide Experts Think that Ocasio-Cortez Should be Allowed to Call Migrant Detention Centers 'Concentration Camps', Newsweek, July 2019. --K.e.coffman (talk) 01:18, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

• Remove. Putting extermination camps in one list with detention centers, refugee camps, jails and prisons does a disservice to the reader by muddying the waters. And this appears to have been done intentionally in service of political motivations. The next step should be to split up this list into two articles, List of concentration camps and List of internment facilities. Hecato (talk) 07:49, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
• Keep - As mentioned before, plenty of sources refer to these centers as concentrations camps, because that is what they are. People who are opposed to the use of the term seems to fall into three categories: People who think that "concentration camp" is the same as "extermination camp", despite the fact that the two terms don't mean the same thing, people who think using the word is demeaning to those who died at the hands of Nazi Germany, despite the fact that WWII was far from being the first time in history when such camps were used, and those who oppose the use of the term for political reasons (i.e. Trump supporters).. That being said, hundreds of Holocaust scholars have defended the use of the term, and so did several Holocaust survivors.. I believe that to not use the term to refer to the detention camps on the US Southern border is disingenuous, as the term has been used throughout history to refer to such camps and the American media would have no issue using the term if this was happening in any other country. PraiseVivec (talk) 11:11, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

References

• Keep concentration and internment camps by definition and backed by sources, despite partisan inclinations to remove it. Ribbet32 (talk) 14:20, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
• Let's actually review all the sources we have here: Of the 12 sources cited, only 6 make any reference to concentration/internment camps at all. Of these, one is a discussion of the use of a former Japanese internship facility, and does not refer to the detention facilities as internment/concentration camps. Of the remaining 5 sources, one is a response from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and another a discussion of responses to AOC's comments. We're then left with the NYRB article, which is an opinion piece, the Esquire article which discusses the view of one historian, and the Houston Chronicle article which discusses an online movement in support of this description. Of these, only the last two references give any kind of credible support for including this content, and this is weak at best (while the AOC and USHMM articles are fine as in-line references for AOC's comments and responses to the online commentary).

In all, I'm not seeing anything like the range of high quality references I would expect for the inclusion of content as bold and potentially contentious as this. Until I do, I feel this content should be removed. This has the appearance of WP:RECENT politics spilling over where it shouldn't (per User:Icewhiz's comments). Endymion.12 (talk) 09:55, 4 July 2019 (UTC):

• Remove per Endymion.12. It isn't politically neutral and only a few of the cited sources call it a concentration camp, far from the amount that would be needed to include a controversial example. Jdcomix (talk) 17:11, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
• Remove: the determination to classify detention centers as "concentration camps" is not up to petitions (signed by people of random backgrounds) on the internet, nor is it up to viral Twitter comments(of whatever politician).

Currently this controversy takes up more space on this page than Cambodia under the Red Khmers which is ridiculous!

Also, the claim in the listed Newsweek article (a source which, according to Wikipedia has not used fact-checkers since 1996) -- "400 Holocaust and genocide scholars signed an open letter asking USHMM to reconsider their position" is exaggerating the number of domain experts: more than 400 people did indeed sign the letter, but only about 13% (so far: 78 out of the 580 people who have signed the petition) are actually Holocaust Scholars (the rest occupy all sorts of non-expert positions in academia or administration). Here's the full list of signatories. Further more, there's no scholarly or legal consensus to support the designation yet.

Media stirred controversies should not matter here even if some scholars (not clear how representative their self-selected set is for the research field) are OK with the comparison.

Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Anti-Defamation League, The Simon Wiesenthal Center and others have criticized the move and urged caution in drawing comparisons with concentration camps, which sounds like the fair approach to take.

The letter does not call the illegal immigrant detention centers as "concentration camps" either, it just criticizes "the Museum’s decision to completely reject drawing any possible analogies to the Holocaust, or to the events leading up to it." which is something entirely different. Concentration camp analogies made by politicians are not proof of concentration camps. So far, this looks more like a Holocaust Revisionism controversy for the sake of scoring political points. Mcrt007 (talk) 20:58, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

• No. Not enough reliable sources to list in Wikipedia. Those who use the term are giving only their opinions. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 06:11, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
• Keep - I see a reasonable argument that they should be included and one good point that they shouldn't. We must way WP:RECENT against the sources suggesting inclusion. Given that, I think that we should provisionally keep it, but specify that it is disputed, with the expectation that in 3 or 4 years, we will discuss it again. StudiesWorld (talk) 12:12, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
• Keep, since the list is in prose and can provide appropriate context. There's extensive coverage among reliable sources that relates them to the topic, so regardless of whether, in the long term, those comparisons will be seen as apt, they are relevant enough to include in the list as a point of reference. Indeed, the sourcing for that section is better than several of the other items in the list. --Aquillion (talk) 04:50, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
• Keep: This was asked and answered a year ago, so this editor wonders why this year is so different from last year.; sample:

These detention facilities for refugee children can rightly be labeled “concentration camps.” The Nazis do not own the term irrevocably, as it refers to prisonlike facilities where individuals are forcibly detained because of who they are.

Yes, you can call the border centers ‘concentration camps,’ but apply the history with care, Washington Post, by Waitman Wade Beorn, June 2018. More recently, 400 Holocaust and genocide scholars signed an open letter asking USHMM to reconsider their position: More than 400 Holocaust, Genocide Experts Think that Ocasio-Cortez Should be Allowed to Call Migrant Detention Centers 'Concentration Camps', Newsweek, July 2019.Wzrd1 (talk) 05:32, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

• Just to note because people keep using the Newsweek article, the 400 scholars did not say that the detention centers are concentration camps, they just said that they want the USHMM to retract its letter that nobody can make the claim. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 22:54, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

• Remove per Endymion.12 Galestar (talk) 22:44, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
• Keep generally per SN54129. The border camps have been described by reliable sources quoting various experts as concentration camps. No claim is being made here that they are the same as Nazi death camps nor that any parallel to the Holocaust is occurring (not in Wikipedia's voice, I mean). Removing information because it doesn't meet some editors' own qualifications for what can and cannot be described as a concentration camp is not what encyclopedias do; we follow sources. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:24, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
• Keep, per the above comments. I think this should be a standalone article with a summary here. Gleeanon409 (talk) 03:51, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

• Remove. From Sir Joseph and my own findings, the border detention centers are not even close to being concentration camps. Hurledhandbook (talk) 20:27, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

  Your WP:Original research? Okay. starship.paint (talk) 08:36, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

• Remove. There is nothing accomplished by blurring this distinction. Concentration camps serve a different purpose from the detention centers that address the problems of the porous US/Mexico border. References to detainment centers as concentration camps is merely rhetorical. We should know the difference. Bus stop (talk) 03:31, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

• Include, but streamline the content of the subsection. Far too many of the comments above (on both sides) are utilizing arguments like that "Concentration camps do X, but these detention centers do Y". Respectfully (and we must respectful of opinions in such an emotionally charged area) this is pretty blatant WP:original research. It doesn't really matter if the centers meet the idiosyncratic notions of this or that editor as to what constitutes a concentration camp. What matters is what WP:reliable sources say on the matter. I see that there are at least a handful of RS that have expressly and directly engaged with the question of whether or not these centers qualify--that in itself makes any overly-broad moratorium on discussing the subject on this article a no-go under our policies, since there seems be more than sufficient WP:WEIGHT to the discussion within RS (which include news reports, scholarly works, and officials operating as primary sources).

Now, clearly, this being one of the newer applications of the term, the positions ought to be clearly attributed--which, from a review of the subsection, seems to be the case. There should also be room made for countervailing perspectives: this is also done in the current version. However, there should also be a limit on the amount of collateral detail that is brought in which seems like a borderline WP:SYNTH means of using Wikipedia's own voice to bolster the claim that these are concentration camps. In that respect, there are at least a few sentences/clauses that could be pulled out. Still, looking at the sourcing available here, I don't see how we can censor all discussion of whether these centers qualify from the article and still claim to be following this project's WP:NPOV policy. Again, I appreciate that this topic pushes buttons for people on both sides of this issue, but everybody needs to please try to remember that Wikipedia does not exist to echo your own perspectives on a topic in particular, but rather to contextually represent all perspectives, once they have established a certain degree of weight in the sources. Snow ^{let's rap} 19:03, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

• Remove These could be characterized as "concentration camps", but it's a contested politically partisan claim. Such claims should have no business in a stable list of concentration camps, but should be discussed in the ICE/detention camp article itself as a part of the controversy. --Pudeo (talk) 10:31, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

• Remove a.k.a. purge WP:COATRACK - it seems just being used as a WP:COATRACK rather disreputable editorializing in something supposed to be a list, and is not providing factual information about the supposed topic. While political speakers are willing to toss hyperbolic and emotional terms, per WP:LABEL this is "best avoided unless widely used by reliable sources to describe the subject, in which case use in-text attribution." Most of the content is not anything about the camps but instead is just WP:OFFTOPIC blathering on Sessions was nominated by Trump, (skipping over camps used by Obama), Fort Sill had history with Japanese, Holocaust Museum, that AOC tweeted a link to Nazis, saying the word "dysfunctional" near ICE, etcetera. This is not starting with or even showing any camp facts locations, numbers, years of operation, the commercial centers versus government ones, or what agencies run them. There is nothing here worth keeping. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 08:12, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

• Keep: Many reliable sources compare or outright call them concentration camps. Its not our job to question multiply reliable references because it goes against some editors political beliefs/bias. ContentEditman (talk) 13:52, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

• Keep - reliable sources have asked academics ... academics say: concentration camps. [3] This article is about ... concentration camps. Also, [4]. starship.paint (talk) 08:09, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Quotes from experts

Rachel Ida Buff, a professor of American studies who teaches history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, told Newsweek Ocasio-Cortez was "absolutely" correct to describe U.S. migrant detention centers as concentration camps. Sociology professor Richard Lachmann at the University at Albany, SUNY, agreed Anika Walke, an associate professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis told Newsweek she understood the sensitivity surrounding the term "concentration camp." ... But to say the term applies only to camps set up by the Nazi regime is incorrect and only signals "an ahistorical understanding of the Holocaust," she added. Jay Geller, a history professor at Case Western Reserve University ... would personally use terms such as "internment camps" Amy Simon, Michigan State University's William and Audrey Farber family endowed chair in Holocaust studies and European Jewish history, told Newsweek Ocasio-Cortez was 'completely historically accurate' in her use of the phrase "concentration camp." To Andrea Pitzer, author of “One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps,” it is possible, as long as the context is right. And at the southern border today, she said she believes it is. “Part of what the toll of the Holocaust did was to reset the bar [for atrocity] so that anything short of that wasn’t even in the same universe,” she told The Washington Post. But, she added, “what I can tell you is, across history, every single camp system has said, ‘We are not like those other camps. Also, these people are dangerous,’ or ‘these people deserve it.' Since the Nazi camps, since World War II, people don’t want to use ‘concentration camps’ because they don’t want to be associated with [Nazis.]”

• Strong Delete – The term "concentration camp", while used in some sources, is a partisan designation which makes a mockery of the historical reality of such camps. The lead of this article explicitly excludes refugee centers, so I don't see why this situation should be treated differently than Lampedusa or other places temporarily hosting refugees in Europe after they have crossed the Mediterranean. Sources have reported similar conditions of excess population and difficulty in ensuring supplies and sanitary conditions, except nobody calls them concentration camps. — JFG ^talk 09:54, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - No matter the outcome here, I think the opening of this article needs to be changed, per Darryl Kerrington. This list correctly includes a number of examples of concentration camps where refugees are/were held; see Australia, Canada: Internment of Jewish Refugees, Denmark: After World War II, Finland: WWII, France: Spanish Republicans, India: World War II, Netherlands. I'm not sure what I would propose for alternative wording, but if any description of exclusions in the lede remains, it should probably make clear the distinction between "refugee camps" as they are understood by entities like the UNHCR or other appropriate nongovernmental agencies, and concentration or internment camps whose internees are/were refugees. --Pinchme123 (talk) 16:11, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

No offense was intended by having discussion under a vote, so my apologies (some Wikipedia conventions are new to me). Since Sir Joseph responded to my comment there, I won't move it or their response, but I wanted open this area for any future discussions.

Again, I apologize for discussing things in the wrong location. If Sir Joseph wishes to move my comment and their response to this area without altering any of its content, I would of course not object.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 02:40, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

To support assertions that experts and scholars agree the camps at the U.S.-Mexico border should be called "concentration camps," I would like to highlight news about a letter delivered today to the director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (see also "Holocaust scholars ask DC museum to stop rejecting border camp comparisons"). This letter, also published as an open letter, specifically rebukes the museum's statement claiming that these camps shouldn't be compared to the Holocaust. Since having been delivered and made public, the number of signatories has jumped to over 300 so far (as noted at the bottom of the page where the letter is published). To quote from the letter:

By “unequivocally rejecting efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary,” the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is taking a radical position that is far removed from mainstream scholarship on the Holocaust and genocide.

— "An Open Letter to the Director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum" signed by hundreds of scholars

--Pinchme123 (talk) 03:53, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

That open letter does not say that the detention centers on the border are concentration camps. You are misleading the public if you are implying that is what is says. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 04:07, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

The statement from the director of the United States Holocaust Remembrance Museum does not say that the detention centers are not concentration camps. You are misleading the public if you are implying (in fact, outright stating) that is what it says.

What I am claiming is that, if other WP editors' arguments rely on pointing to the Holocaust to deny the label "concentration camp" that experts (that I've already referenced elsewhere) have ascribed to the U.S.-Mexico border camps because those WP editors think they aren't comparable and that the comparison is "revisionism," then at the very least it should be acknowledged that the mainstream position of scholars on the subject is that this comparison is absolutely appropriate.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 04:21, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

No, the open letter just says that people can debate if they want to, not that it is. You are using the open letter as an assertion that they agree with you that it is concentration camp, but the open letter says no such thing. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 04:24, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

I am not using the letter in this way, I am using it to refute any arguments that invoke Holocaust concentration camps as the reason why these shouldn't also be labeled concentration camps. It should be noted however, Newsweek, The Hill, CNN, the Huffington Post, and Jewish News Syndicate all interpret this open letter as the scholars supporting the use of the "concentration camp" label for the U.S.-Mexico border camps.

So, if you insist on disregarding the open letter from hundreds of experts, then the statement from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum should be disregarded entirely as well, as it does not claim that the U.S.-Mexico border camps are not concentration camps. And so should any other statement invoking the Holocaust to deny the "concentration camp" label be disregarded, because all such statements are inappropriately equating "concentration camp" with "Holocaust concentration camp," which is not relevant to the discussion here.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 04:50, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Misleading again, I just checked one of your sources, The Hill, and it said no such thing. Perhaps you should check your sources before pasting it to Wikipedia. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 04:56, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

The Hill: "More than 300 scholars have signed on to an open letter urging the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to retract its statement that rejects comparisons between migrant detention facilities and concentration camps." How else is this opening statement to be interpreted?

Because it sounds to me like your interpretation is, 'The Hill is saying that the scholars are demanding that the museum retract their rejection of the comparison, but please don't take that to mean that the scholars support the comparison.' Would you like to clarify?

--Pinchme123 (talk) 05:03, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

I'll say it for the last time, the open letter does not say that the detention centers are concentration camps, it says that the USHMM should retract the statement that you can't make any comparison or analogy ever. For you to now say that they say it is a concentration camp is SYNTH and putting words in their mouth. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 03:09, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

And I'll say it once again, the five news agencies I linked to are the ones who all interpret the letter. I am not putting words in anyone's mouths, I am noting that five news agencies have made the same specific interpretation - which is the purview of those news agencies to do. You can be angry that so many news orgs (correctly, in my opinion) interpret the letter this way, but your anger doesn't change those interpretations.

Feel free to provide links of your own that show alternative interpretations by relevant, reliable sources, to make a case for that alternative interpretation. But, as of right now, your own interpretation is unsupported and should thus be ignored. I look forward to reading your sources, should you find any.

By the way, the letter is up to over five hundred signatures.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 03:23, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

And yet nowhere in that open letter are the detention centers on the southern border mentioned. It's clear that you have an agenda to push. It's also clear that you are willing to violate Wikipedia policies and logic to do so. Other people here hopefully will see through your misleading use of sources. What the open letter says is not what you are saying it says. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 05:18, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

• Further to the above, the current paragraph is so out of date and biased, Sessions is not in office anymore, there is no zero tolerance policy anymore, the entire paragraph sounds like it was written by a partisan hack, not by someone editing a Wikipedia article. I do understand the need to make Trump look bad, I really do, but we should at least strive to make believe we are impartial when writing an article in Wikipedia. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 05:28, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
• How about we start an article entitled "Socialist and National Socialist politicians", with a focus on Bernie Sanders and Adolph Hitler. Both are clearly on topic, and hey, the names "Socialist and National Socialist" are similar, just like "internment and concentration" are in this article!Adoring nanny (talk) 11:49, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

If you can find enough experts linking "Bernie Sanders and Adolph [sic] Hitler" linking the two, feel free to do so. But I don't see how that blatantly-unsupported characterization is "just like 'internment and concentration' in this article," nor do I see how it contributes to the discussion here.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 14:08, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

It seems disingenuous to discount the NYRB article as opinion when the "opinion" writer is an expert on the subject and since it is not marked by the venue as an opinion piece (take as analogy the value of expert opinion in courts of law). It also seems disingenuous to place such little weight on the open letter, when the purpose of its inclusion in this discussion is to note the hundreds of experts and their expert opinions on the subject at hand (the current count of signatures is 580, verifiable on the main document for the signature process), as interpreted by several news articles (I added five to the discussion, at least), left out of the count. One source in the count, apparently not discussed above, includes interviews with three experts, which I have pointed out elsewhere on the talk page.

The text has not been substantively updated since just after the beginning of this RfC, save for one set of changes to include the Memorial Museum's statement and note that it does not directly speak to the label "concentration camp" broadly (and to include a statement by a single other, which I didn't delete because I didn't want to start an edit war on something that has an ongoing RfC). To find relevant sources to the discussion, one must look here, to the talk page, where this discussion has been happening. Here, I personally have included the aforementioned news articles to support and other editors have noted their own evaluations of the sources. Which is all to say, this section is well-sourced and well-supported, despite attempts by some to downplay and discredit perfectly acceptable sources. --Pinchme123 (talk) 14:04, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

I think we'll have the discussion here actually, rather than in the survey. The NYRB article is sufficiently editorialised to not be considered disinterested reporting. It represents the opinion of one person, expert or not. The open letter is fine as a source, but even if it were included, I still don't see the range and volume of high-quality sources making uncontentious reference to detention centres as concentration camps (and not as some kind of analogy) to justify a subsection in this article which is nearly as long as the section on Japanese, German, and Italian internship in WWII.

On a side note, would you like to account for how you are so familiar with Wikipedia processes having only made 82 edits to the site in total? Also, do not baselessly speculate about the motives of users, it will get you in trouble. Endymion.12 (talk) 15:15, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

"Also, do not baselessly speculate about the motives of users, it will get you in trouble" sounds like a fine bit of advice to direct at yourself, so thank you for stating it! My newness with written engagement does not preclude me from having built and understanding of processes by having been reading along for quite a while. I may be new to engaging, but I do know what disingenuous representation of sources looks like and have seen many times when other editors respond to such misrepresentation in a clear but civil fashion, including without veiled threats like the one I've quoted at the beginning of this response.

Your personal evaluation of an expert's written piece as "editorialised" is not sufficient enough to overrule the publishing authority's determination of that piece as not being "opinion," especially when that publishing authority's reliability is not in question. NYRB considers Pitzer's expertise sufficient enough to publish it without labeling it "opinion." It, plus the article that includes three separate experts using the label without it being an analogy, plus the five news articles I have provided describing the open letter as an argument in favor of using the label without it being an analogy, plus the open letter itself as a refutation of those who point to the Holocaust as a reason why the label shouldn't be applied, is more than sufficient RS to justify inclusion.

Finally, your emphasis on section length seems to indicate that this example should be included, but its relative size to others on the list is, to you, inappropriate. Should the RfC fail to find consensus for removal, it would be perfectly acceptable to include sources from this talk page but not yet in the actual article section to further support its material, thus justifying the longer length. It would also be perfectly acceptable to discuss which aspects of these concentration camps should be noted in the section, which would presumably affect the section's length as well; perhaps the portions of the section discussing the Holocaust should be excluded from this section entirely?

So at the moment, I'm being accused of attempting "to downplay and discredit perfectly acceptable sources", in some apparently cynical and conspiratorial way, based on the fact that I (1) neglected to mention a source/s you had posted on the talk page (which I had not noticed), and because I (2) referred to an NYRB article as an "opinion piece", which apparently wasn't consistent with your hairsplitting interpretation of what constitutes an "opinion article". It's acceptable to refer to any editorialised or non-news reporting as "opinion", even if this isn't indicated by the publication (the NYRB doesn't have an "opinion" section). This doesn't mean that it's invalid as a source, it just means it needs to be supplemented with other sources, especially non-editorial news/academic sources.

There is more than enough room for honest disagreement here. Your current approach is combative and inappropriate, and what's more reflects badly on you and any valid arguments you are making, so please refrain from doing it. It will get you in trouble, as I said.

On the final point, as this story develops and more sources become available, some of the content in this section might be appropriate for inclusion in this article, so long as it is given due WP:WEIGHT. Endymion.12 (talk) 16:24, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Dishonesty in representing sources should be civilly noted when it occurs. This is what I have done. I did not mention any sort of "conspiracy," nor did I invoke anything related to "cynicism," but instead noted your specific misrepresentations. These include a source - the Esquire piece - from the section of the article under discussion (where you took your 12 articles from), which you claimed only relies on one expert (as if "historian" is the only kind of expert allowed in this discussion), when it actually quotes three experts.

I am glad you have finally noticed the very large discussion with plenty of sources, occurring in the Discussion section of this RfC. I certainly hope others will notice the discussion and sources and take them into consideration before putting in their voice for or against consensus as well.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 17:08, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

@Mcrt007: could you please provide your source for the evaluation of credentials for those experts who have so far signed the open letter? --Pinchme123 (talk) 21:52, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

• @Pinchme123:As I've mentioned in my previous comment: the source is the original documented linked by the media (which originated with Aliza Luft, Tomaz Jardim, Eugene Finkel & co). It has been uploaded by its authors here which is the link quoted by RS. Academics & administrators of all types signed it (Law School, Sociology, History, Philosophy, Architecture, Religion, Music, etc). You can see who the Holocaust Scholars are by checking the document (they will show up with credentials in Holocaust Studies, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Holocaust Education, Holocaust Research, Jewish History and the Holocaust, Teaching about the Holocaust, Holocaust and Genocide Education, Holocaust Geographies, Holocaust History, Holocaust and History, Holocaust Courses, Holocaust and Peace Studies, Holocaust Testimonies, Holocaust Commission, etc). I've checked the document and separated all the Holocaust experts (about 78 people out of the 580 currently listed) from the other signatories and could provide a list of the names & credentials if needed (though that would flood this section, probably). Mcrt007 (talk) 22:19, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

@Mcrt007:So, you don't have a source for this determination and are instead relying on WP:OR? Without tracing each expert's name to determine why their stated titled did not include the term "Holocaust" (which isn't even the requisite credential for being able to sign the letter), it would not be possible to claim that those signatures are from people who don't match the description, so it's hard to take this Original Research as acceptable in even a non-Wikipedia setting if that hasn't been documented somewhere. Do you have that documentation?

The apparent original list of open letter signatures is archived here: Internet Archive: An Open Letter to the Director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Prior to being made public, the letter had 140 signatures. To avoid claims that non-scholars or non-experts are on the list, I suggest we take the conservative approach and evaluate the letter as if it had at least 140 experts, rather than get into a debate over some legitimate number and to avoid any Original Research. Should someone provide a reliable source with a more accurate evaluation, then this could be revisited.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 23:37, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

The source I've provided is as good if not better than the one you recommend and reading through it is no more WP:OR than reading the 140 names listed in the NYBooks article. There's no reason to assume the original letters had at least 140 experts just because 140 people signed it, especially since, among them you have obvious non-expert like: Paul Jaskot, Professor of Art; Brigid Cohen, Associate Professor of Music; Brett Kaplan, Professor of Literature; Laurel Leff, Associate Professor of Journalism; Tabea Linhard, Professor of Spanish, Comparative Literature; Stef Craps, Professor of English Literature; Aliza Luft, Assistant Professor of Sociology;Daniel H. Magilow, Professor of German; Debarati Sanyal, Professor of French; Diane Wolf, Professor of Sociology; Danielle Fosler-Lussier, Professor of Music; and many other non-experts who, overall, massively outnumber those who seem to be the genuine experts in the nybooks article. What's even more important is that "concentration camp" determinations are made by relevant research, investigations, studies and books, not by a handful of people signing random letters on the internet. Mcrt007 (talk) 00:14, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

While your lack of familiarity regarding expertise in any given subject and the field of study under which they fall can be set aside, what cannot is that you have decided yourself to count up those who you (wrongly) think are not experts in order to make an evaluation, which you have done on the original document collecting signatures. This is Original Research in plain terms. But yes, genocide scholars are found all over the social sciences and humanities, including music, literature, and language studies. And it's alarming you opted to put even a sociologist! on your list of supposed non-experts. You originally stated that you were excluding anyone who specifically did not include "Holocaust" in their listed credentials for their signature; are you now shifting your position?

None of us are in a position to evaluate the expertise of the list of experts, as they have been described as such by the original publication of the letter, as well as plenty of subsequent news articles. So, once again, unless you or someone else can provide an RS that calls into question the validity of the list of signatures, so far there are plenty of news articles that do not. The list I have previously provided: Newsweek, The Hill, CNN, the Huffington Post, and Jewish News Syndicate. Please do feel free to fill in with your sources stating the contrary.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 00:33, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

You're making lots of baseless claims which you can't back up or are contradicted by the sources you quote and even by the letter itself. The CNN article states: "nearly 150 scholars, many who teach about the Holocaust, urged the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to retract its recent statement". Yes, the CNN article says an ambiguous "many who teach about the Holocaust"; it does not say ALL the signatories are experts. The HuffPost article calls all of the signatories "historians" which is obviously false and sloppy journalism (and it doesn't even call them experts on the problem as you'd like to present them). Most importantly, you even lie about the letter which say nowhere that its signatories are "experts" on the subject. The letter (and its original version published on NYBooks) make claims similar to those in the CNN article, e.g.: "We are scholars .... many of us teach the Holocaust at our universities"! Nothing describes the 140+ original signatories as "experts" on the topic in the letter's arguments. Last but not least: the letter does not call the illegal immigrant detention centers as "concentration camps" either, it just criticizes "the Museum’s decision to completely reject drawing any possible analogies to the Holocaust, or to the events leading up to it." which is something entirely different: concentration camp analogies made by politicians are not the same as concentration camps. Mcrt007 (talk) 01:14, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Are you going to provide any sources of your own supporting your contention that the letter is signed by non-experts, or discuss your shifting position as to which experts you personally feel should be excluded? How about explaining why you left out the majority of the quote that you copied here, to downplay all the other ways the experts who signed the letter are, in fact, experts: "We are scholars who strongly support the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Many of us write on the Holocaust and genocide; we have researched in the USHMM’s library and archives or served as fellows or associated scholars; we have been grateful for the Museum’s support and intellectual community. Many of us teach the Holocaust at our universities, and have drawn on the Museum’s online resources." Clearly the letter states the many ways in which these experts engage with the subject matter at hand (because, it apparently needs to be said, there's more to being an expert than teaching at a university).

I stand by the sources I've provided and the way I have described them. You're falling into the same trap with the CNN article: just because not all the experts who signed do not teach about the Holocaust specifically at a university does not mean they are not genocide experts. But also, I specifically said these articles "do not" call into question the expertise of signatories, not that they confirmed their expertise. This is true for every one of the articles I provided and serves as plenty of evidence that their expertise is not questioned. And this is also why I asked for any sources that specifically do challenge the claimed expertise of those who signed.

For the sake of discussion, remove the Huffington Post article from the list; there are still four RS that do not claim those signatures come from non-experts. One even outright states they are all genocide experts. To replace that Huffington Post article, here's a news report from the University of Maine, which also outright states that all those who originally signed prior to publication are genocide experts of some kind. So, five articles in support of their expertise (three implicit and two explicit). Please provide relevant sources that refute this expertise.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 01:40, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

You provide yet other deflections, fallacies and non-points. Among your sources: The JNS does not call the signatories experts, it just calls them "academics". Similarly, The Hill calls them simply (generic) "scholars" and makes no comment on expertise. Business Insider makes similar comments to those in your CNN link. The letter itself offers no proof that all signatories are Holocaust experts, it only claims that "many" of them write or teach on the Holocaust. Truth is, with the evidence available so far, there's no reason to believe anything outside a minority of the signatories have any real expertise in the field. Putting your name on a petition does not automatically qualify you as an expert in the Holocaust. Mcrt007 (talk) 02:34, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Ok, so to be clear, there are no sources provided here refuting the multiple RS I've listed that state outright that those who signed the letter are experts on the subject of genocide (not limited to the Holocaust). I have also provided multiple additional sources that state those who signed are scholars and those sources do not question their inclusion.

Until someone can provide reliable sources questioning the expertise of those who signed, the multiple ones I've provided that explicitly states their expertise, along with the multiple ones I've provided that make no claim otherwise should be sufficient to uphold the validity of the letter as a refutation of any claim that people cannot label non-Holocaust camps as concentration camps (which has always been its stated reason for inclusion for this discussion). it should have been understood before, but unsupported Original Research isn't acceptable. --Pinchme123 (talk) 02:49, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, the original letter (probably the most important document here) does not support your claims. CNN, The Hill, The JNS, The Washington Post and Business Insider do not support your claims either (as mentioned above), Huffington Post is not exactly a RS and you're giving undue weight to claims in Newsweek (which, according to Wikipedia has not used fact-checkers since 1996) and a blog on umaine.edu which are not supported by the text of the original letter and make exaggerated claims when compared with much of the other RS. An article in PolitiFact, regarding Ocasio's claims, also states that many historians are skeptical of the "concentration camp" comparison Mcrt007 (talk) 03:09, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Every assertion you make here is false. Every one of those articles I provided support my claims, which is that 1) Reliable sources, the University of Maine short news report and the Newsweek article, both report the signatures as coming from genocide experts; 2) Reliable sources CNN, JNS, The Hill, and the Business Insider source provided by you all support the assertion that these two sources are correct to label those who signed as experts, since none of these news organizations even hint at a claim that they aren't experts; and 3) the entire purpose of the letter - not my claim, this is reported by all the aforementioned news outlets - is to defend others' labeling of U.S.-Mexico border camps as concentration camps from statements of rebuke by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

As for your provided sources, both come from before the letter was released, so neither speaks to the expertise of the those who signed. The WaPo article inappropriately conflates "concentration camps" with "Holocaust concentration camps," which is not only refuted by the letter in question here, but also the article this talk page is about, which is full of non-Holocaust concentration camps. If we follow that article's position, the vast majority of this Wikipedia article needs to be deleted.

The PolitiFact article reports a full three experts who disagree with using the label "concentration camp," and the article itself only claims they are different from concentration camps that existed before, up to, and including the Holocaust, but nothing about camps following the 1940s. Of the three scholars, two do not base their objection on using the term for the Holocaust. So we can reliably state that two scholars disagree with labeling the U.S.-Mexico border camps "concentration camps," and they're only found in a single source, which Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources only shows is seen as reliable for statements by politicians. Further, this article crucially did not make an evaluation of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's statement, "This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying. This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis." Despite two scholars disagreeing with the label, PolitiFact reported that the reason they couldn't dispute Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's statement is in-part because "[h]istorians we contacted said it was possible to make a case that the term 'concentration camp' is a more general term than just referring to camps in Nazi Germany." The other reason is because, they note, some scholars claim a "strong, longstanding association of the term 'concentration camps' with Nazi Germany," which again, is the improper conflation of "concentration camps" with "Holocaust concentration camps."

So, two experts from one source. Are there any other reliable sources that you'd like to provide?

--Pinchme123 (talk) 03:49, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

• You keep repeating the same nonsense for the most part. Saying that many of the 140-150 initial signatories teach/study about the Holocaust (like CNN, BI, etc do) is not the same as saying that ALL of the signatories (about 580 now) are domain experts. You're attempt to conflate the two is logically flawed and dishonest. If a news source does not say "you are not an expert" it does not mean you are an expert. If a source says "many" are experts (out of a group of more than 150 people) it does not mean all are experts (in fact, you don't really know how many in your group are experts when presented with such vague claims). If the source says a number of academics signed the letter you, again, don't know how many of them are experts on the subjects and how many are not. The umaine.edu article is not even signed and is a just a blog-post. You're purposely trying to be misleading here and back your assumption not on what data/sources say but on the bogus interpretations you try to sell. Mcrt007 (talk) 05:16, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

You write, "If a news source does not say 'you are not an expert' it does not mean you are an expert." Good thing I provided two reliable sources that do, in fact, explicitly say that those who signed are experts. Without reliable sources making the alternative claim that some, many, or most of those who signed are not experts, then the two reliable sources are the prevailing evaluations here, despite your claims to the contrary. Those prevailing evaluations are bolstered by strong, but imperfect, supporting reliable sources provided by both of us. Feel free to provide any reliable sources that say those who signed are not experts, should any exist.

I look forward to constructively discussing any reliable sources you are able to find.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 05:33, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Addendum: you appear to be editing your comments after I have responded. An example of such a post-response change. Please ensure you are properly tagging your additions with proper insert and delete tags and that you are noting your updates with an appropriate update signature. The example diff I've linked to is of one such addition, a claim about Newsweek's reliability that uses Wikipedia as the source. Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Further, Newsweek is reported as a reliable source on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 05:53, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

• I'll look up the tags you've mentioned. Also, the most recent discussions on the reliability of Newsweek depicts it as generally unreliable; and the wikipedia-article discussing Newsweek ditching fact-checkers is backed with proper links. Mcrt007 (talk) 06:23, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Per the linked discussion, IBT is currently rated as unreliable, but Newsweek is independent of IBT since 2018 and that nearly every entry in the linked discussion distinguishes between IBT and post-independent Newsweek in order to state that Newsweek separate from IBT is reliable. Again, this is well-represented on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources, where IBT and Newsweek's listings contain links back to this same discussion you've posted, and where Newsweek is listed as reliable.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 06:40, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

• There are about 7 votes on that last discussion thread: 2 editors say its bad/unreliable (wumbolo, Snooganssnoogans); one editor recommends applying extra caution (Abecedare) when citing recent Newsweek articles (which I did and found its story making claims that are not confirmed by other RS and, especially, are contradicted by the contents of very petition it quoted); another editor says "we don't know how it'll fare as a once again independent org so I wouldn't say that it continues to be reliable now simply because it's once again independent" (Barkeep49); and another editor says "Newsweek currently engages in poor editorial practices. I am split between "generally reliable" and "no consensus" "marginally reliable" for Newsweek" (Newslinger) ... Ohh, and those votes are from April-2019 :) Mcrt007 (talk) 07:24, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

• Just another comment because people seem to miss this, a detention center is for housing detainees, not prisoners. A concentration camps is for prisoners, as per the definition. I know that under Obama it was perfect so that we didn't need this definition and suddenly Jan 20, 2017 this all changed, but we should still read this and note that we should still try to be neutral. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 14:53, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, there are also Jewsih group that takes the "Never again" seriously.[5] // Liftarn (talk) 07:00, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

• I'm actually wondering if I need to set a calendar item for next year's vote. This was voted on last year, nothing has changed magically over the year and the Japanese - American citizen concentration camps were labeled by the US government as such, right until the Nazi death camps were discovered and there was a mad rush for white out and sign paint.Wzrd1 (talk)

• I think with this political back and forth discussion, it is split 50/50 on keeping and removing it. We should come to a compromise since neither side will budge. I don’t know what this compromise could be but if we remove it or keep it, it will make half the people angry. Hurledhandbook (talk) 16:10, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

I agree that a reasonable middle-ground solution makes sense, considering the deadlock and the content in question. The only compromise I think is feasible though, would be keeping the section but significantly reducing the amount of content. Since there's only a couple of paragraphs to begin with, this could be difficult to do while continuing to present multiple competing interpretations of the detention centers. But I do think it could be done. The second paragraph could probably go in its entirety. All things being equal, I'd just as soon retain it all, but if it will get things closer to a consensus that most could get behind, a-trimming we should go. Snow ^{let's rap} 11:51, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

On a side note, Hurledhandbook, you neglected to sign your !vote above; you should do that so that it can be taken into account if there is a formal close. Snow ^{let's rap} 11:54, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

None of us are WP:Reliable sources, so why act like it is our personal opinions that matter?

Bus stop added " References to detainment centers as concentration camps is merely rhetorical. We should know the difference." to their comment. This is similar to the comments of several other contributors. And, in my opinion, it reflects a huge lapse from policy.

I know I am not a WP:Reliable source, neither is Bus Stop, neither are any of us.

What we are supposed to do, what policy calls upon us to do, is to neutrally summarize, quote, or paraphrase the opinions of reliable sources. The Holocaust museum is just one source. And, from my reading, it seems, at least, to be a minority opinion - maybe even a fringe opinion.

What I found, in my research, prior to weighin in here, is that dozens of reliable sources quoted, or commissioned articles from Andrea Pitzer, the author of the well regarded One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps. When Chris Hayes introduced her, prior to interviewing her, he said she "literally wrote the book on concentration camps".

• Andrea Pitzer (2017). One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps. Little, Brown. ISBN 9780316303583. Retrieved 2019-07-17. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

After listening to several long and detailed interviews and reading her articles, I have got to say that she offers a detailed history of concentration camps, and explains why we should not solely use that term for the Nazi death camps.

The first camps, called Concentration Camps, were operated in Spanish Cuba, in the 1890s. Britain operated concentration camps during the Boer War. The USA operated concentration camps in the Phillipines. Various countries operated them during World War One.

Do some research people. Geo Swan (talk) 04:16, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

United States of America; Afghan War and the Occupation of Iraq; Discretion and Imagery

I am the original author of the section for USA: Afghan War and the Occupation of Iraq. Recently that section was edited to add an image from Abu Ghraib in 2003. All contributors should be aware that Seymour Hersh, the man who broke the story about relevant torture and abuses at Abu Ghraib, concluded that photographs of the torture and abuses were integral parts of the torture and abuse of the captives. Therefore, we have to consider whether by including one of those photographic images as an example of relevant abuses, we might also be inadvertently participating in the torture of the victims.

Seymour Hersh wrote in his book Chain of Command: The Road From 9-11 to Abu Ghraib that captives at Abu Ghraib were systematically photographed in humiliating positions (in stages of nakedness or homosexuality) in attempts to coerce captives into saying desired information: The captors would threaten to send these photographs home to the photographed captive's family, knowing that in the local culture, to be publicly exposed in such a way would necessitate either that the captive's family would have to kill the captive should they ever be released or that that the captive would have to kill themselves to avoid that dishonor. Those positions of nakedness and homosexuality photographed were designed to be viewed by the victims as such disgraces and abominations that they might even necessitate suicide regardless of whether a photograph of such was ever sent home to family.

Therefore, we should be very careful. If you were the man in the photograph and you were reading this article and came across that picture, might you be worried that someone could recognize you? Or might that picture cause you to feel and remember the great shame of that predicament?

I did not originally include such photographs out of discretion and sensitivity for the victims. I believe the aforementioned picture of actual torture should be reviewed and possibly removed if decided inappropriate.

Hambb (talk) 07:06, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

@Hambb: I concur, this image does not contribute enough to the section to outweigh the potential harm to the person in it, who does not appear to have consented to it being taken and disseminated. --Pinchme123 (talk) 16:45, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Article lede

With the RfC for the U.S.-Mexico border concentration camps completed, I would like to begin addressing consistency concerns that arose there. This article's lede contains language inconsistent with the rest of the article and must be addressed. Therefore, I propose the following new lede, which preserves the original intent of the changed second paragraph, while now allowing for a delineation between refugee camps (which are still excluded) and concentration/internment camps that intern(ed) refugees.

This is a list of internment and concentration camps, organized by country. In general, a camp or group of camps is designated to the country whose government was responsible for the establishment and/or operation of the camp regardless of the camp's location, but this principle can be, or it can appear to be, departed from in such cases as where a country's borders or name has changed or it was occupied by a foreign power.

Certain types of camps are excluded from this list, particularly refugee camps operated or endorsed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Additionally, prisoner-of-war camps that do not also intern non-combatants or civilians are treated under a separate category.

--Pinchme123 (talk) 21:14, 4 August 2019 (UTC)