While I don’t disagree with the Elisée (forgot an i here bud) Reclus quote, it has no place in a post that peddles such blatant misinformation.
1) This tweet comes after a thread that starts like this :
2) Goes on to condemn the carceral framework of immigration policy as a whole :
3) And as for the tweet screencapped by op, it’s a response to this :
So here’s what AOC, quote-unquote “cannibal”, is actually saying in that tweet :
- no immigration facility should be carceral
- immigrant children who come in the country alone (which is a situation which has always existed and. will. always. exist.) and/or children who’ve been torn apart from their families should be taken care of in (separate) facilities which need to go through a tougher vetting process
- none of these facilities should be sub-contracted by the gvt
- and some facilities which have had problems in the past should maybe just be closed
- all of these solutions should be short term before a deeper reform can occur.
ALL. OF. THESE. ARE. VALID. AND. PERFECTLY. NORMAL. POINTS. TO. MAKE. NONE OF THEM ARE IN CONTRADICTION WITH AOC’S EARLIER TWEET.
Seriously some people have this idea that advocating for radical reform means you’re exempt from thinking about the meat-and-potatoes day-to-day inner workings of any policy. You’re all for immigration ? Great, me too. How do you plan to house migrants when they arrive ? What kind of facility would you need ? Who would run it ? How do you survey and vet the people running it ? What extra services do you need to provide for immigrant minors who come in unaccompanied and need to be protected in a country they don’t know ? And how do we deal with the damage already caused by the current system ?
AOC is absolutely not saying, as the framing suggests, that “concentration camps” would be fine with a few tweaks. She is saying that such a system is not okay and that deep change is needed, while providing concrete solutions to the most pressing issues with the current way the system works. These two statements are not incompatible.
I understand that we are basically all traumatized with the way we cannot trust any fucking politician, but behind every post calling out AOC as a “corrupted idol” I detect a real anxiety of being “ahead of the curve”, of denouncing progressives for “selling out” before they actually do, so we can’t be disappointed if and when these progressives water down their ideals. AOC is not perfect, nor should she be treated as such. But what’s happening in this post is disinformation, pure and simple. It’s twisting someone’s words for the pervert pleasure of making people feel disappointed and betrayed and dividing us. It pains me to see people fall for it when the tweets in actual context are only a click away. Be better. If we take this shit at face value and discard allies so readily, what chance do we have against people who actually want to cause us harm ?
