If it Fits the Narrative, Tweet it

We are currently on day 10 of pretending that America's southern border is comparable to the Holocaust. A narrative that seems to have emerged from nothing more than the left and the media's compulsion to defend Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's every statement, no matter how asinine.

This story would be irrelevant by now if AOC had just abandoned her original statement, identifying it as a misstep. Instead, she insists upon digging herself deeper into this hole every day, encouraged by the unwavering support of the mainstream media and assorted blue checkmarks on Twitter. 

In response to the backlash to her statement that the U.S. has been running concentration camps on its border, AOC and supporters utilized two defenses: She actually wasn't referring to the Holocaust when invoking concentration camps, and also she was correct to compare the Holocaust to the U.S. border. If these two arguments seem contradictory and mutually exclusive, it's because they are. 

Even as two separate arguments, neither of them hold particularly well. 

First of all, the term concentration camp is almost exclusively used in conjunction with the Holocaust. Additionally, if she were referring to concentration camps as a general term, why did she invoke the phrase, "Never Again"? She was clearly referring to the Holocaust. 

So if she was referring to the Holocaust, was she correct to do so? 

If you've been on Twitter in the past week, you might be inclined to say yes. The narrative has moved far beyond AOC's statements towards a larger discussion regarding the inhumane conditions in the detention centers on our southern border. This has resulted in the circulation of photos of people sleeping on the ground, stories of older children forced to care for young children, and video of a hearing where a lawyer defends a lack of soap, toothbrushes, and beds as complying with the "safe and sanitary" standard. 

The narrative that accompanies this messaging goes like this: Border facilities are inhumane. These poor conditions are the desire of the Trump administration because he is an evil dictator who hates Hispanic people. This is similar to the Holocaust because Hitler forced Jewish people into inhumane concentration camps because of his hatred for their race. Therefore, in order to avoid another Holocaust, we must eliminate border facilities entirely.

This seems simple enough. Unfortunately, it is far too simple and also based on complete falsehoods.

Based on my current understanding of the conditions of some of the border facilities,  I don't believe that it is out of bounds to suggest that the conditions need to be improved. The border is currently underfunded, especially considering the record-breaking number of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border. 

This problem could be partially resolved if the Democrats in Congress would allow for the expansion of bed space in order to accommodate the increasing number of people that are detained as they cross illegally into the U.S. This fact is inconvenient for a narrative that would prefer to attribute the conditions on the border to the supposedly racist and malicious republicans. 

Trump and the congressional Republicans have no vested interest in creating a southern border that is ineffective or inhumane. Their only desire is to maintain the rule of law and prevent illegal immigration in favor of the legal route. There is no evidence that their motivation is racism or hatred or anything resembling that. They want to maintain our border in the same way that every other developed nation on the face of the earth does. The use of these facilities could be radically limited if we had a secure border in the first place. 

Holocaust-era concentration camps aren't remembered as evil because they didn't have toothbrushes or soap or enough beds. They weren't detention centers for people who broke the law. They were evil because their existence was predicated on the notion that an entire race of people needed to be exterminated. Concentration camps were a mechanism for the genocide of an entire group of people. 

You can criticize detention centers without attempting to draw an absolutely farcical parallel between them and one of the most egregious atrocities ever committed. If someone truly believed that there was a currently a Holocaust in the U.S., I would think that they would be doing more than tweeting about it. 

Nobody actually believes it. This narrative has one purpose only: villainize those who are in favor of having a border and enforcing the law as it currently stands. 

Our border needs to be strengthened and ICE needs more resources at the border to both enforce the law and maintain humane conditions. This is the Republican point of view. When Democrats argue that the southern border is like the Holocaust but also refuse to put pressure on their representatives to improve conditions by increasing funding, they are covertly arguing for zero enforcement at the border. 

If this is what they truly believe, they should be forced to argue this position. If not, they need to spend more time pushing for real solutions and less time molding their political narrative around defending every ridiculous statement made by AOC.