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GeePawHill
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago

I do wish folks would stop using "alligator alcatraz".

It is a concentration camp.

It is not intended as a form of punishment or deterrence for criminals. It is intended as a means of removing humans the government does not like from society.

It's not a joke, it's not a meme, it's not a t-shirt.

It's a concentration camp.

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gunstick
@gunstick@mastodon.opencloud.lu replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill
Germans like to abbreviate. So KZ it is. Or florida-kz
I don't know why KonZentrationslager was abbreviated like that.
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AnthonyJK-Admin
@AnthonyJK@mastodon.redgarterclub.com replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill

"Alligator Auschwitz" is a much better gloss.

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GeePawHill
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@AnthonyJK I am not looking for a better gloss.
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AnthonyJK-Admin
@AnthonyJK@mastodon.redgarterclub.com replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill

Auschwitz was an actual concentration camp where people were slaughtered and murdered. If you believe that the Everglades "holding facility" is indeed a concentration camp, then the gloss fits. I don't take my cues from corporate right-wing media, anyway.

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Mike Mol
@mikemol@pony.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill may I offer "Alligator Auschwitz"?
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GeePawHill
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@mikemol No thank you.
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Alpha Male Martha Stewart 🍉🌈
@fiend_unpleasant@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill Instead of complaining about naming conventions has anyone thought about sabotaging the building process so that no one ends up being detained there? How about liberating it once it's built? The keys are usually left in heavy machinery. You can learn to use one on youtube.
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Jamoteusz
@Jamoteusz@pol.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill

Very, very, very important observation.

... something like:
Stop calling the russian assault/invasion on Ukraine, a "special opperation"

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BardMoss the Bodhi Linux Guy
@zaivala@hostux.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill
Alligator Auschwitz
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Knut 🏳️‍🌈 🇳🇴🧸
@praetor@mstdn.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill based on this fucktarded post...I almost get the idea that you secretly have Nazi aspirations if you're trying to make concentration camps sound like something every polite society has. Stop minimizing what it is. So why not keep your Nazi leather fetish in the bedroom, ehe?
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ryan@hcommons.social
@ryan@hcommons.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill -- I refer to it by the name history should remember it by: Big Cypress Concentration Camp
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Preston MacDougall
@ChemicalEyeGuy@mstdn.science replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill People and #FailingMedia that feel the urge to use a ‘snappy’ alliteration should use #AlligatorAuschwitz to describe the #ICE#ConcentrationCamp in #Florida.
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Graeme 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿
@pa27@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill You are exactly right Call it what it is. I was going to link George Monbiot's article but someone already has. Don't accept any distraction. And call it Trump Concentration Camp One, if you need a name to tag it. It's his, and it's the first of many, in all probability.
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Tom Walker
@tomw@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill As a non-American, "Alligator Alcatraz" sounds absolutely horrific and not a meme.

I don't quite get the whole US discussion about it, which seems to imply that a very large number of people find the name "Alligator Alcatraz" amusing or fun, so a harsher name is required.

It's already a very, very harsh name!

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Eleanor Saitta
@dymaxion@infosec.exchange replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill
The Ochopee Concentration Camp will do nicely.
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🇺🇦 haxadecimal
@brouhaha@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill
Alligator Auschwitz
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Bargearse
@largess@mastodon.au replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill

Alligator Austwitz.

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Toni Aittoniemi
@gimulnautti@mastodon.green replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill Postmodernism actually hit harder on the right ever than they criticise the left about it. Just too dumb to realise it.
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Andrew
@Shivviness@beige.party replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill

The joking name is deliberate.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/10/right-progressive-societies-joke-glastonbury-starve-benefit-rod-liddle-lewis-schaffer

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GeePawHill
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@Shivviness Yes. That is why a counter-joke rename is a useless response.
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(Grumbling) “Mazar fakar”
@MrBirch@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill I’ve posted about calling it Auschwitz, not Alcatraz.

For me, it’s not about creating a meme. It’s redirecting THEIR attempt at making Alligator Alcatraz cool, make it a meme. To me, calling it Auschwitz is an anti-meme — see this thing you are trying to make cool? It’s evil, as evil as what the Nazis did.

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GeePawHill
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@MrBirch I understand. I feel differently. I think counter-memes are memes. I want a world in which memes are funny & interesting, but telling the truth matters more than being clever.
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James Cameroun
@ratel@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill @MrBirch exactly. Hard to see how making memes to say is truth is better than, well, saying the truth. The problem is, to say the truth, one has to be specific. And when one use memes, they doesn't have to be specific, they can always go "it's just a manner of saying that...". Plus, as far as Auschwitz is concerned, people take it for granted that everybody (including themselves) knows what it was bcse they know what it's called. Understanding is not innate. One has to study first.
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Byron Servies
@bservies@twit.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill As a regular donor to the Heart Mountain foundation (heart mountain.org) a Japanese interment camp, I agree.
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@iveyline
@Iveyline@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill Which will likely flood and drown all its prisoners when the next hurricane hits.
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ꜱᴛᴇᴇʟ ʀᴀᴛ ɢᴀᴍᴇʀ
@thesteelrat@social.tchncs.de replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill

never use the words of the enemy

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Áine
@princessaine@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill i feel like a big reason why it isn't being taken seriously is because Trump is rarely taken seriously. either people just make him into a meme or they outright fearmonger about him and there is 0 in between. he is a human being who is choosing to inact horrible horrible violence because Russia is paying him obscene amounts of money to. he's an incredibly horrible person choosing to do incredibly horrible things.
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GeePawHill
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago

I'm told by some respondents that "alligator auschwitz" is better.

1) Why are you fucking meme-ing concentration camps?

2) Why you think everybody knows what Auschwitz was?

3) Why I spozed to think you know the difference between Auschwitz and, say, Theresienstadt? Why I spozed to think you know who even invented concentration camps?

I ain't lookin' to be clever and cool, and I am definitely not looking to be funny. I'm lookin' to tell the simple and plain truth.

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Ursidinoj/The Bjornsdottirs
@ellenor2000@mastodon.top replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill It was the British, btw. No, we aren't proud of it. #lang_en
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GeePawHill
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@ellenor2000 I'm aware. Doubt most of the meme-rs are.
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Jimmy
@jhavok@mstdn.party replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill I guess that's why no one is calling it Allligator Thereseienstadt. Auschwitz is iconic enough that the majority of Americans recognize it as a symbol.
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Mario Guerra
@mguerra@mastodon.cr replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill Or Sachsenhausen. Or Leto, in Czechia, torment of the Roma people. This one. A mere cardboard reconstruction in an historic museum in Pisek, South Bohemia, had me in tears. So now, I will not have a foot in USA territory. For the same reason.
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Mario Guerra
@mguerra@mastodon.cr replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill They were a reality decades before Nazis. Leopold the Second, king of Belgium. Don't ever forget that. And because there is one full-fledged concentration camp in Florida, I'm completely avoiding the USA.
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Rob Williamson
@eswag@dju.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill

I think there's a legitimate case here. See what you think:
1) a concentration camp is really being built, memes spread and persist effectively, so meme'ing the concentration camp is an effective way to counter the lie that the camp is a prison.
2) because of the scale of WW2. This may be a mistake. Perhaps too many people have forgotten.
3) doesn't matter. The popular knowledge is that Auschwitz was a concentration camp, and alliteration helps the meme. The Spanish invented CCs.

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Dadbod AntiFa
@beckett@triangletoot.party replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill
1) Trump and his gang are literal Nazis. They are building concentration camps. Is not a funny meme.
2) More or less than knowing what Alcatraz is? Some people aren’t going to know either.
3) A USan who doesn’t know about the Nazi death camps and genocides has been failed by the education system. Possibly intentionally.
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GeePawHill
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@beckett 1) Not quite an answer. A non-funny meme is still a meme.

2) *Most* Americans aren't going to know either, I'll give you that.

3) Yes, definitely intentionally, and that is why a clever assonant meme is just more of the same, only on "our" "side" instead of "their" "side". Inevitably, when I pick up the enemy's weapons I become the new enemy.

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Dadbod AntiFa
@beckett@triangletoot.party replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill What’s your take on it?
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GeePawHill
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@beckett Not sure what you're asking. My original post was a crack at my take on it.
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Dadbod AntiFa
@beckett@triangletoot.party replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill “Alligator Buchenwald” doesn’t have the same ring.
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GeePawHill
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@beckett I am not looking for a "ring".
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Dadbod AntiFa
@beckett@triangletoot.party replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill A concentration camp is just a step away from a death camp. The Nazi camps killed as many people with disease, starvation, and brutality as in the gas chambers. The comparison is apt.
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canleaf08 ⌘ ✅
@canleaf@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@beckett @GeePawHill A concentration camp is a death camp. Trump and his goons at the ICE will kill a lot people. And it took 6 months to reach that point. We were at name calling for the past 25 years. We were at demonizing of trans people and they are now after other minorities. They started to falsify passports. They will put a lot of regime opponents into these camps. The US is no longer a trusted resource. They will lie about the victims, burn them and put them into unmarked graves.
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GeePawHill
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@beckett I'll wait for you to answer the questions before I respond.
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ceartas
@ceartas@mastodon.world replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill @beckett

Theresienstadt is/was a part of Auschwitz, and was also the name of a ghetto in Czechoslovakia, I think. This is Mastodon, not Twitter. Why do you suppose your audience is so ill-educated about the holocaust? I’m not in favor of giving a concentration camp a cute name, but when government officials are naming it Alligator Alcatraz, calling it out as Alligator Auschwitz seems apt.
#antifa #AntiFascist

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GeePawHill
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago

There's more important shit than internet memes.

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GeePawHill
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago

me: I don't think we should be making memes about concentration camps.

bros: This is a much better concentration camp meme!

Every single day I am reminded of how our educational systems have failed at building reading comprehension.

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Internet Rando
@mousey@mastodon.seattlematrix.org replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill true, however, as the proliferation of television made possible for the first time for Americans to see (and eventually oppose and stop) the Vietnam war, the proliferation of memes is helping spread awareness of fascism rising in America, and, I hope, they will contribute to stopping that spread. Memes are just units of ideation, packetized storytelling.. let them spread and educate, and punch Nazis!
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GeePawHill
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago

Strictly from an abundance of caution, I will have another beer.

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Su_G
@Su_G@aus.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill

One beer should never be allowed to get lonely. 🙂

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Grimm :bc:
@GrimmReality@beige.party replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill
I am in now way the first to point this out but Alligator Auschwitz is the preferred reframe.
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GeePawHill
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GrimmReality I don't think so, tho I'll give you that it's better than using their name.
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Jo-chin up, elbows up.
@JoBlakely@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill also this…
From Andrea Pitzer
https://youtu.be/stOiKF1Nzuk?feature=shared

She has other relevant videos too as an expert on global concentration camps.

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Karen Conlin
@GramrgednAngel@beige.party replied  ·  activity timestamp 3 months ago
@GeePawHill I've seen many calls for this to happen.

I don't see many stopping, which bothers me.

And calling it "Alligator Auschwitz" is just NO. FUCK NO.

It's the Florida concentration camp.

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