The same arguments are being tossed out by some for Russians living in the US now that were used to justify the Japanese internment camps back in the day.
They could be Japanese agents/spies of Hirohito, so it's better to play it safe!
Now substitute Russian and Putin in that sentence.
As long as it is a bogeyman, a spectre, that they hate/fear, then it's all good, despite the same (or at least similar) things, the same xenophobia, being manifested in the past against other groups that they happen to approve of/like/admire (thus sparking selective outrage for THAT historical abuse, whilst at the same time arguing for similar treatment for their non-preferred, non-approved-of groups).
It's sad to see this here on a self-proclaimed liberal/progressive board.
Hell, I wager some may well think I am perhaps a crypto-Russian agent just for bringing this up.
Some of the chatter here sounds a bit too much like what many Jews were told when they arrived in the US (and were turned away) in the 1930s/1940s:
The U.S. Government Turned Away Thousands of Jewish Refugees, Fearing That They Were Nazi Spies
In a long tradition of “persecuting the refugee,” the State Department and FDR claimed that Jewish immigrants could threaten national security
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-away-thousands-jewish-refugees-fearing-they-were-nazi-spies-180957324/
In the summer of 1942, the SS Drottningholm set sail carrying hundreds of desperate Jewish refugees, en route to New York City from Sweden. Among them was Herbert Karl Friedrich Bahr, a 28-year-old from Germany, who was also seeking entry to the United States. When he arrived, he told the same story as his fellow passengers: As a victim of persecution, he wanted asylum from Nazi violence.
But during a meticulous interview process that involved five separate government agencies, Bahr's story began to unravel. Days later, the FBI accused Bahr of being a Nazi spy. They said the Gestapo had given him $7,000 to steal American industrial secrets—and that he'd posed as a refugee in order to sneak into the country unnoticed. His case was rushed to trial, and the prosecution called for the death penalty. What Bahr didn’t know, or perhaps didn’t mind, was that his story would be used as an excuse to deny visas to thousands of Jews fleeing the horrors of the Nazi regime.
World War II prompted the largest displacement of human beings the world has ever seen—although today's refugee crisis is starting to approach its unprecedented scale. But even with millions of European Jews displaced from their homes, the United States had a poor track record offering asylum. Most notoriously, in June 1939, the German ocean liner St. Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all Jewish, were turned away from the port of Miami, forcing the ship to return to Europe; more than a quarter died in the Holocaust.
Government officials from the State Department to the FBI to President Franklin Roosevelt himself argued that refugees posed a serious threat to national security. Yet today, historians believe that Bahr's case was practically unique—and the concern about refugee spies was blown far out of proportion.
snip
Edit history
= new reply since forum marked as read
