Death Camps

It's come to my attention that this post may come across with a political charge. This is not intended, and the fear blog does not stand behind any party except science, including history. Please bear this in mind while reading. 

Genocide is not a new phenomenon to mankind. Records exist of genocides occurring well before World War I, including a German genocide of an African population with explicit orders to either shoot them all or drive the population into the desert to die. The definition has a little play because argument exists as to how direct an act must be to constitute a genocide; for example, some people argue that involuntary introduction of disease into a population while offering no medical assistance qualifies as a genocide. The definition also has play when it comes to quantity of people killed since there's no set number or percentage that must be reached first to qualify. Going with Wikipedia's list (take it for what you will), 39 separate genocides have been identified during and since WWI. Of those, few or none were completed in total secrecy, typically with some government policies that were known- sometimes even lauded- publicly.

In many cases, governments utilize propaganda against whatever people they intend to eradicate in order to maintain public support. A popular propaganda technique for these governments is a process known as pseudospeciation, commonly employed in military institutionalization, which teaches the subject population to believe that the targeted group is some other species, something less then human, or even outright animal. Pseudospeciation relies on exaggerating the differences in appearance, behavior, thought, language, diet, history, and culture of a given group to demonstrate to the public how different the target group is in order to scrub the public of any sympathy for that group on a human level. In other cases, the offending government preforms the genocide under the guise of re-locating a population or helping the public at large (such as segregating the Jews into the Ghettos, or the trail of tears to re-locate the American Cherokee population from the Southeast US to Oklahoma). Even in political genocides, there is a understanding that there is a real danger in speaking your mind, backed with real, publicized actions on the government's part, such as during the Stalinist purges that occurred in the 1930's USSR.

So, you can imagine my surprise when multiple people suggested that I cover the alleged FEMA death camps on the blog. Apparently, the source of the circulating 'knowledge' of the camps hails from YouTube- source of all things that are good and true in this world. People who share this information with me often speak of DHS strike teams that arrive at homes that have mailboxes marked with orange stickers to drag unwitting Americans off to FEMA internment camps where they are subsequently gassed en masse. Nevermind that local police can't have a SWAT operation without local media taking extreme interest, nevermind the simple solution of getting a PO Box (problem, government?), nevermind that I've yet to have a specific group consistently identified as being the targets of these internments (the answers range from Republicans to Veterans to gun owners to Christians to anybody at all). So, request accepted.

Honestly, I've wondered 'Why FEMA'? I think it's because they're an easy target for conspiracy theorists, since their popularity tanked in the face of the fiasco in post-Katrina New Orleans. I figure that if FEMA had handled that well, we would today be discussing USPS death camps. I'm not suspicious for an ongoing genocide of the US citizenship by its government for several reasons. First, some claims include witnessing shipments of something on the order of a half million coffins, but I notice a glaring deficit of people asking where their friends and family have suddenly vanished off to. Assuming the 500,000 wasn't a one-time event, I'm sure somebody would've noticed the entire population of Wyoming (or Fresno, CA) disappearing. I'm sure somebody would've seen the armored vehicles, gunfights, and people being forcibly taken out of their quiet suburban neighborhood. Second, when asking what the Department of Homeland Security needs with millions of rounds of ammunition, I would posit that the US Coast Guard is under the DHS, and crazy things tend to happen when departments of government have to use all of their budget or else get the excess cut next year. For those who point to alleged satellite photos of FEMA camps, I will point you to an excellent popular mechanics article on the matter that can be found here. The article points out that one of the alleged camps is legitimately a labor camp, but for North Korea, not the US. The irony should be striking for any Christians in the readership, since the North Korean government is legitimately persecuting its Christian population through incarceration.

Which leads me to what you should be scared of. Genocides happen, and they're still happening today. They've claimed millions of lives, and they're easily among the most heinous of human atrocities. Go look in a mirror. You, who carry and spread the rumors of death and devastation in our Homeland; you who are a capable, thinking, adult human being; you who are, in some cases, armed. If you honest to God believe that this is happening, there is no argument I could make to convince you that these FEMA camps are an outright hoax. It's too easy for you or the internet to say that I've been deceived, or I'm in the pocket of the government- it's too easy just to write me off as a naysayer. If you really believe this, though, why do you sit idly by and chat about it with the same dull tone as one might discuss last night's TV programming? How can you live with yourself, doing nothing while you honestly believe that there are people being killed en masse on your land? If you can accept these conspiracies as just another fact of life, all while in the same breath heralding the merits of the second amendment, you need to take some time for some serious soul searching. If you don't honestly believe it, then why are you spreading this crap? Of the millions dead by genocide, the burden of their death not only hangs from the necks of those who committed the atrocities, but also from the necks of those who knew better and still did nothing.

The simple truth is that while this bullshit entertains, it's simply a passing fancy that only serves to distract from real horrors that are really happening right now in other parts of the world. You don't have to make this stuff up, it's out there now, you just have to care enough to look. Right now, North Korea is intentionally starving its population, throwing people in prison camps indefinitely for saying one cross thing about their leader, or even for being Christian. So if you're really serious about wanting to do something about genocide and government atrocities, pay attention to the world beyond what you're bombarded with on a daily basis, learn something educate yourself, and share your knowledge instead of your youtube videos; support humanitarian organizations like the UN, US Military (believe it or not, a large contributor to humanitarian causes across the world) and the Red Cross; of course, support science and the men and women doing it that are helping to bring us closer every day to world where war and human suffering is no longer necessary.

As always, feel free to leave questions, comments, concerns, and suggestions here on the blog, or on our facebook page.