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Discussion » Questions » History » Hidden History: did you know that the US government ran its very own concentration camps decades before the Nazi Holocaust?

Hidden History: did you know that the US government ran its very own concentration camps decades before the Nazi Holocaust?

The whining and crying and lying about how wonderful this country was before the national nightmare of November 2016 needs to stop, people. 


  History is written by the victors. Its lessons in public education system  from elementary to high school and the textbooks they use propagate the bias of omission and subterfuge, leaving students uninformed as to fact over fiction. Private schools and universities, propped up by the agenda-driven backing of purse strings, also have vested interest in only telling the stories the way they see fit. 

   The supposed umbrage that some Americans take over real or imagined travesties of the current presidential administration is often portrayed as if this country has been a beacon of moralistic behavior on the world stage.  Few people have even heard of the Philippine Insurrection*, nor know the depth of atrocities the US government and US military crapped onto the Philippine people. Military action, starvation, disease, torture, rape, etc., were tools used by the liberty-loving Americans against the natives. 

   From the time of the Spanish-American War in 1899 to the years just prior to World War I, a brutal and lopsided war was fought in the Philippine Islands.  In addition to having killed or allowed to die 1,000,000+ human beings, the US government enslaved civilians in concentration camps to control movement, to restrict assistance to combatants, and to punish those who failed to fall in line with American goals. 





*It was dubbed an insurrection by whites, because they were stealing land, resources and labor from darker people whom they saw as inferior and backward. Gee, I wonder if that had ever happened before in human history . . .   Of course, 125 years earlier, when ancestors of those whites fought for their own freedom from an oppressor, they dubbed it the American Revolution and painted themselves as righteous. Filipinos wanted freedom from oppression, but the American government deemed them unworthy of it.  

Posted - September 29, 2019

Responses


  • 19942
    Never mind the Philippines; look what we did to the Native Americans.  
      September 29, 2019 10:39 AM MDT
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  • 52905
    Never mind”?  Yes, that’s right, it’s completely unimportant. 
      September 29, 2019 6:00 PM MDT
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  • 19942
    No it isn't completely unimportant.  It's the pattern of what we have done to any number of peoples in any number of countries since our inception.
      September 30, 2019 8:55 AM MDT
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  • 7919
    The US has a very long history of doing unfathomable and horrific things. I don't think there's a single group the US hasn't done terrible things to. 

    You mentioned the Philippines. Spunky mentioned Native Americans. We treated the Mexicans just like we did the Native Americans. And, we had camps for the Japanese. And, of course, the enslavement of African Americans. The list goes on. America is brutal. 

    I'd like to think that we know better now, and therefore make better decisions as a society, but the fact that our history books don't discuss these events and most people are blissfully unaware of them and/or their brutality/ lack of human decency speaks volumes.
      September 29, 2019 1:35 PM MDT
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  • 46117
    You are the worst.

    NO ONE IS SAYING THINGS WERE GREAT BEFORE 2016.

    No one is denying this happened EXCEPT YOUR GOP AND TRUMP.  

    Making up INSANE NONSENSE so you can spout an opinion is not gonna fly.

    This country  is totally hypocritical.  It is a work in progress.  PROGRESS.  You know what PROGRESSIVE means?  It means TELLING the truth first of all.

    I'm sorry your SIDE doesn't get the fact that people of color matter.

    Why are you defending the very people who put that yoke around the necks of the people in the picture. They are the ones denying the truth.  NOT THE DEMS.

    We want REPARATION. REMEMBER?

    DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT IS? REPARATION?  HOW COULD WE DEMAND REPARATION IF WE DON"T ACCEPT THIS HAPPENED BEFORE 2016.

    Think, man.   This post was edited by WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH at September 29, 2019 1:47 PM MDT
      September 29, 2019 1:43 PM MDT
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  • 52905
    Please be accurate. Rosie posts all the time how wonderful life has always been in the United States up to and until Donald Trump took office. She also blindly states that practically everything all previous presidents ever did was great and beautiful and jolly-gee-willickers-groovy-gravy.  Someone certainly IS claiming it. Before you embarrass yourself with your inaccuracies, re-read the corner posts and you’ll see it’s a common theme. 

      As for you ranting about wanting reparation, who is “we”, and for whom are you touting reparation?  You’re not of Philippine  descent, your ancestors were not placed in those concentration camps, were not slaughtered on Sulu Island, or Samar, or on Mindanao, or any of the other battle sites in the Philippines. 

      You are right about the progress the US government has achieved. Before this land was even stolen from the Native American people who lived here before white colonization began, those same whites deemed their skin color as the only valid one for considering who was a human being. Progress. Dark skin means slavery. Speak a language other than English, you’re a savage, so your language is disallowed. Progress. Believe in a religion not recognized by Christianity? You’re a heathen, so you need salvation, and your “pagan” beliefs are wrong. Progress. You don’t wear the same clothing that whites wear? Barbaric, you’re uncivilized, so your customs are now unlawful. Progress. Fast-forward to Jim Crow Laws, the origins of the Klu Klux Klan, cross-burnings, lynch mobs, literacy tests for voting, segregation of schools and living areas and military units, race-based employment opportunities, etc. Progress.  In the pie-in-the-sky wonderful America, all of this has taken place beginning over 200 years ago, yet sobbing about Donald Trump requires some people to pretend that no evil ever existed in government prior to him. 

      Crack open a history book, but not the ones put out by the myopic establishment. Look beyond your own fingertips to seek truth. Read for the sake of understanding, not just to find let’s-disagree-with-Randy fodder. If you re-read my post above and your so-called rebuttal to it, you’ll find that you’re as off-topic as anyone can be. This post was edited by Randy D at October 2, 2019 4:29 PM MDT
      September 29, 2019 6:02 PM MDT
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  • 16199
    To be fair, Rosie's family history in the USA only dates back to just after the First World War, when large numbers of Armenian Turks fled that genocide. Since then, the only war crimes America has committed didn't involve concentration camps - just mistreating German POWs in France in the immediate aftermath of VE, incinerating thousands of Japanese civilians in nuclear hellfire, doing the same to Vietnamese civilians with jelled gasoline (napalm) etc.
      October 1, 2019 4:04 AM MDT
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  • 14795
    No true ....The American government infected a towns black population with Syfilius and left them untreated for thirty years or so, just so they could study them...Clinton apologized to them while he was still in term...
    The American government tried out many chemical weapons on the public and also army personal while testing the first nuclear bombs in the Nevarda desert....hundreds of soldiers were placed close to where the bombs exploded....
    The American government paid them a paultry sum in later years as compansation....
    I think John Whanye was subjected to it to when america blew up an atoll in the Pacific Ocean....The whole atoll has a concrete cap over it and the people in close by islands are still suffering...
    England constructed the first concentration camps during the Boar War in Africa....They killed every man ,women and babies to.....
    Ariel Sharon did the same in Isreal in the concentration camps for the Palastinians....Nothing seems to be said about these attrossities though......Victors write the rules and also history books to it seems....
    The English introduced Smallpox to the tribes of American Indians....they did other terrible thing to to steal their lands.  
      October 1, 2019 4:40 AM MDT
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  • 46117
    To be fair, don't ever take what he says as accurate. I talk to Rosie every day. I talk to Randy every day. And Randy defends America and it's past WAYYYYY more than Rosie ever has.  
      October 1, 2019 7:26 PM MDT
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  • 52905

      That's not a question of fairness, it's more like selective memory. Anyone who says that things have ALWAYS been better in times past is merely ignoring truth or ignorant of truth. 
      October 2, 2019 9:18 PM MDT
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  • 46117
    Your first paragraph is totally opinionated hyperbole.  It is your approach to any argument.  Deflect. I did not ask you that nor did I say that in my answer to you.  I don't even remember what I said.  I didn't re-read it.  I just know me, and I remember your saying this like YOU NEVER USE THIS EXACT TACTIC YOURSELF.

    WHAT IS WRONG WITH AMERICA?  YOU ALWAYS HAVE THAT AS A MAJOR THEME. OH JUST LOOK WHAT THEY DID.  You are a perfect republican.  You live up to your name.  You say I am a lousy flirt?

    I can say the same for your debate skills.  Nonexistant.  
      October 1, 2019 7:25 PM MDT
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  • 22853

    I've never said that America was perfect.
    I've never whined and cried and lied about how wonderful everything was before November 2016. 

    Just because I do not like President Trump being the current president means precisely only that - - that I do not like him as president.

    Among many other not-so-wondrous aspects in American history, I was aware of the Philippines. And the Native Americans' treatment. And slavery. And other things.

    One day in my high school American History class, I remember finding out for the first time what the US government (I don't care who the president was at the time nor do I care what party we'll blame) did to American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. Sitting there in class, I remember getting overwhelmed emotionally. I literally started weeping loudly, with tears. Even though I knew of other low periods  and actions in our country's history, here I was, a highschooler hearing all of this for the first time, and, unbelieving of what I was finding out, I asked aloud several times, "This happened in the United States?" When I think of all of that, now, as an adult, I still feel pretty much the same way I did in that classroom. I fail to even find adequate words to describe that moment in my learning.

    I'm no expert but I  definitely know of some pre-2016 US history







    This post was edited by WelbyQuentin at October 1, 2019 4:42 AM MDT
      September 29, 2019 7:57 PM MDT
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  • 52905

    That first line in my post focuses on those who have been whining, not on those who have not. If you are not one of the whiners, you are not to whom I directed that reference. 
    ~
      September 30, 2019 10:12 PM MDT
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  • 22853
    I admit that before posting my answer I had just heard people in person making somewhat similar (vaguely similar, I should say) comments about anyone who opposed anything about President Trump, that there was something wrong with me if  I did not support everything the man says or does. 
    And I took your words as all people, not specific people. 
    I also know you're very particular about your word choices and I quickly read "people" as "all people."
    My answer may have been more of my own reaction to my own personal experience of hearing those other people and then almost immediately seeing your question. I let the timing influence me.
    Thanks for getting back to me.

    For what it's worth, my answer helped me work through some of my frustrations I've had with many people who live in my area.
    :)




    This post was edited by WelbyQuentin at September 30, 2019 10:51 PM MDT
      September 30, 2019 10:32 PM MDT
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  • 52905
    Thank you, pal. 

    :)
      September 30, 2019 10:51 PM MDT
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  • 22853
    You're welcome.
    :)
      October 1, 2019 7:06 PM MDT
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  • 14795
    Xxxxxxxx. :( 
      October 1, 2019 4:42 AM MDT
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  • 22853
    Thanks, Nice Jugs.
    :)
      October 1, 2019 7:06 PM MDT
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  • 16199
    So did the British during the Boer War. Doesn't make what His Royal Orangeness is doing any less heinous.
      October 1, 2019 3:58 AM MDT
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  • 14795
    You forget/forgot Hawiaii....:( 
      October 1, 2019 4:46 AM MDT
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  • 52905
    This example is only one of many that I have presented so far and will present of how life hasn’t been rosy and peachy-keen up until 2016; I haven’t forgotten anything nor any of them.  There’s a blatant lie being put out that paints an inaccurate picture, and I’m merely exposing truth in its face. 
    ~
      October 1, 2019 5:40 AM MDT
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  • 14795
    England and our royal family fare no better.....we were the most evil bastards ever trying to inflict out evil religious beliefs on every country we tried to steal for people....Just look at what we did to Australia and America ,Africa, Chaina ,India Arab lands and god knows where else...
      October 2, 2019 1:43 AM MDT
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  • Who wants popcorn?
      October 1, 2019 7:16 PM MDT
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  • 14795
    I do ...but not the salted type or if it's the one you microwave.....the microwave bags contain one of the worst cancer inducing chemicals ever.....:( 
      October 2, 2019 1:46 AM MDT
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