This isn’t about Oskar Schindler, but relates to what he did.
Steven Spielberg made a movie about the man called Schindler’s List.
The short summary is that Oskar Schindler used slave labor in his factory as a way of keeping them from being sent to extermination camps.
There’s a lot to the story, and the film is worth watching. But I highlight the man to draw attention to a horror that is unfolding in front of us today. It is a horror that draws comparison to the death camps and use of slave labor by Nazis in the lead up to and during World War II.
The comparisons are fair, because the perpetrators have followed the same game plan, used the same exact language, and even showed reverence for that 20th Century evil regime.
While in Germany of the 1930s and 1940s, it was the Jews who were persecuted and who suffered from genocide (Yes, there were others who also faced this fate), the 21st Century victims are Latinos (And yes, others will suffer too).
This may seem like hyperbole at first glance, especially if you aren’t following the steps that are underway. I will connect the dots for you.
The parallels between the language used by the Nazis toward the Jews, and the language used by MAGA toward Latinos isn’t just similar, it is verbatim. Phrases like “Poisoning the blood,” “Animals,” and “Vermin,” are identical. This is the process of dehumanizing other humans, which makes it easier to justify killing them.
These are phrases that both Hitler and Trump have used in their respective generations. Not to mention the affection for Hitler and his regime that Trump shows, as has been demonstrated over time. Here I will mention that his first wife said Trump kept a copy of Hitler speeches on his bedside table; and his former Chief Of Staff, General John Kelly related a story of how Trump told him he wanted “Generals like Hitler had.”
General Kelly reminded Trump that those generals tried to kill Hitler, but Trump doubled down, explaining that he wanted the unquestioned loyalty and willingness to follow any order that he believed those generals held.
This is Trump referencing what he perceived as unquestioning personal loyalty by military leaders to the Hitler, and how he wanted the same thing.
Why would Trump want such loyalty? I mean, in the history of the United States, we have been extremely successful at waging war with the military remaining loyal to the Constitution and the country, versus giving that loyalty to the President personally. The value to Trump is that he isn’t interested in national loyalty, or in democratic norms. He is interested in personal power.
The gradual capturing of the Federal government by Trump, and the authoritarian shift in policy has mimicked the same pattern as was used by the Nazis during the 1930s.
The same attacks against the media, the same attacks against political opponents, the same attacks against education, labor, and minority voices are mirror images under Trump as they were under Hitler.
Students of history can all see this, and they are screaming the alarms.
Now, when it comes to Latinos in America, Trump intends to (and is currently implementing) mass deportations of not only undocumented foreign workers, but also those who are legally in the US, such as people with work visas, people who are here under refugee status, and even natural born citizens if their parents were not here legally when they were born. More recently, Trump has repeatedly suggested that “home-grown” and legal citizens could be deported.
And while a horrific and nationally damaging practice mass deportation is, it is where they are often being deported to that causes the greatest concern. Many of these otherwise harmless individuals are being shipped to brutal prisons in El Salvador and South Sudan, places where abuse is common.
But it is here in the US that I need to address, for it is here that concentration camps are being built, and where these people are being incarcerated.
The most recent of these to get national attention is in Florida, where Trump has referred to it as “Alligator Alcatraz.” It is a rapidly constructed system of cages in the Florida Everglades, where any attempted escape might become a meal for an alligator.
Trump himself has made this “joke,” and one of his personal advisors, Laura Loomer, offered that these alligators might have 65 million meals. This happens to be the estimated total number of Hispanic people in the United States, including all natural born citizens, even the tens of millions whose families go back centuries.
This is a call for genocide, even if the call was intended as a joke. And frankly, I can’t say that it was a joke.
In my state of Michigan, there is uproar and division over the building of a concentration camp in Baldwin, where a lack of economic opportunity has many wanting the prison for the jobs it will create. (Baldwin is in Lake County, where approximately three-fourths of the homes are only occupied during the summer season).
There are many other camps being erected for the purpose of housing millions of migrants of Hispanic descent, many of which are not being processed for deportation.
Meanwhile, farmers across the country (most of whom supported Trump) are upset because they have lost their workforce. In some cases, such as in Nebraska, where the MAGA farmers didn’t think Trump would go after their migrants, the migrants didn’t take the chance, and left the state voluntarily.
And in Texas, where ICE raids on farms have resulted in crops being left rotting in the fields for lack of workers.
There’s a separate story here about how MAGA farmers thought ending DEI programs would force black Americans back to the fields to do the crop-picking, but that is worth its own post.
Here I am going to point out the obvious next step, which is these private prison complexes hiring out the prisoners back to the farmers as forced labor. If this seems unconstitutional, you’d be mistaken. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime. This was how southern states populated chain gangs for decades. Convict a black man of vagrancy, public intoxication, or some other crime, and send him to a chain gang for a couple of years.
There is no reason to think the idea of profiting off of these prisoners has not crossed the mind of this corrupt administration, who already thinks of these people as less than human.
And what happens when you have millions incarcerated without places to employ them? Would these people who already view their prisoners as vermin get tired of feeding them at a loss?
How they would go about destroying these people is unknown, or even that they would. But the pattern is so similar, and the intentions are so similar, and every other metric can be seen today that was seen under the Nazi regime of the Third Reich, that considering it possible or even probable seems judicious.
Will Texas farmers let their farms fail to avoid using slave labor? What about the Nebraska farmers, or those in Kansas, or any other state? What about meat-packing plants that have been raided? Will they hire back those same people as slave labor, especially at a discount, or will they go under?
In Germany during the Third Reich, businesses accepted slave labor, and were happy to work them to death. And those that tried to protect the victims were so rare, that a future director made a film about one of them.
Don’t think it can’t happen here. And it is high time we recognized that it is happening here. We should not wait until gas chambers are being built before we stop them.
*Edit. As I prepare to post this, Trump has floated the idea of letting migrant farm workers remain on the farms working, but under the responsibility of the farmers. This sounds a lot like slavery. Remain picking vegetables, and return to your locked barracks at night.