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I Don't Know How to Explain to You That You Shouldn't Buy Concentration Camp Merch

—Rafi Schwartz on The Discourse Blog

There is, of course, a American Holocaust Museum gift shop, and there is also an book store run by the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau Former German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp.

They both contain historical books, memoirs, etc.

I understand this.  It's part of their mission. 

That being said, the new US Everglades Concentration Camp T-Shirt being sold by the Florida Republican Party is something else entirely. 

It's a f%$#ing rock band tour t-shirt. 

Credit where credit is due: It turns out the federal government can still accomplish big things when it’s sufficiently motivated. That’s the good news.

Unfortunately, it seems like the only thing motivating the government these days is the overtly racist desire to purge the United States of whichever bloc of marginalized undesirables Stephen Miller is mad about on any given day. That’s the only possible explanation for how Florida was able to construct a massive migrant detention center on an infrequently used airport tarmac deep in the Florida Everglades in a single week.

“Clearly from a security perspective, if someone escapes, there’s a lot of alligators you’re going to have to contend with,” explained Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “No one is going anywhere once you do that. It’s as safe and secure as you can be.”

In spite of being dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, this remote facility has almost nothing in common with the infamous California penitentiary, which, although a notoriously cruel gulag, was nevertheless part of—and subject to—the laws of the federal penal system. This new Florida installation, on the other hand, seems totally detached from any sort of judicial oversight or pipeline, ostensibly serving instead as a semi-permanent receptacle for people kidnapped by (presumably?) ICE agents. So what do you call a massive “camp” of people “concentrated” together by the government outside the normal judicial system?

The t-shirts and other merch being sold by the Florida Republican Party show us who they are.

They are people who should have been drowned at birth.

They are people who will only make the world a better place when they die.

These are not people you can deal with.