DOUBLE STANDARD: Man Who Attacked ICE Facility Used AOC-Like ‘Concentration Camp’ Rhetoric. Media Remain Silent.
According to a local report, a man that authorities say attacked an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Tacoma, Washington over the weekend repeatedly used the same "concentration camp" rhetoric which socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) injected into U.S. politics last month, in a manifesto that he allegedly wrote.
The attacker, identified himself as part of the far-left extremist group Antifa in the document, according to CBS-affiliate KIRO-7. The attacker "was armed with a rifle and incendiary devices that he was tossing at the Northwest Detention Center early Saturday morning."
KIRO-7 adds: "Friends say he did make a statement in this manifesto he sent to them Friday night. In it he says, 'i regret that i will miss the rest of the revolution,' he wrote, 'doing what i can to help defend my precious and wondrous people is an experience too rich to describe. i am antifa.'"
KIRO-7's report included a link to the manifesto, where the attacker used the term "concentration camps" four times and referred to them as being "corporate for profit."
Ocasio-Cortez injected the rhetoric into the national political discussion last month after she made the dubious claim during an Instagram live video.
The mainstream media's silence on the similarity between the rhetoric of the terrorist and the rhetoric of Ocasio-Cortez highlights a serious double-standard: in past instances, the media have quickly leapt to connect violent incidents with supposed incitement from Republicans. CNN, for example, ran multiple articles on its website suggesting that President Donald Trump's rhetoric was responsible for the white supremacist terror attacks on the synagogue in Pittsburgh and the mosque in New Zealand; CNN does not have a single report on their website about the "concentration camp" rhetoric that the attacker in Tacoma used in his manifesto. NBC News ran multiple reports suggesting Trump was responsible for the white nationalist terror attacks on the synagogue and the mosque, yet has no reports about the attack on the ICE detention facility and the "concentration camp" rhetoric that was used.
WATCH:
Ocasio-Cortez falsely claims Trump is operating concentration camps, compares the situation to the Holocaust: “The U.S. is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are. … ‘Never Again’ means something ... we need to do something about it”
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"The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are," Ocasio-Cortez outlandishly claimed weeks ago. "They are concentration camps. And, um, if that doesn't bother you, I don't, I don't know, I like, we can have, okay whatever."
Ocasio-Cortez went on to directly compare the immigrant detention facilities to Nazi concentration camps when she used the term "Never Again" — a direct reference to the Holocaust.
In an interview with The Daily Wire last month, attorney Matthew J. O’Brien — who has over 20 years of experience in immigration matters, including in high-level government positions — debunked Ocasio-Cortez's false claim that immigrant detention facilities are "concentration camps."
"I think the point that Representative Ocasio-Cortez is missing is that a concentration camp typically refers to a detention facility where a totalitarian regime’s political enemies are kept and the purpose is to nullify them as political enemies," O’Brien said. "Internment camp is a general term that in international law and in typical usage refers to a place where people are held temporarily in a conflict because they are either from an enemy power, from a non-allied power, and there is some sort of national security concern or other internal security concern associated with them. Whereas, an immigration detention facility is where people are held pursuant to a democratically passed law because they have no authorization to be in the country and they are temporarily held there while the government is evaluating their claim to any kind of immigration relief and those facilities are regulated."
"The distinction between a concentration camp, which is usually regulated by the totalitarian government’s security forces, an Internment facility, which is usually regulated by the military or by a paramilitary security force, and immigration detention, is that immigration detention is monitored by the courts and anyone who is in immigration detention has access to the courts to contest any issues they may have with the detention," O’Brien continued. "So to contrast between a totalitarian government using the force of the state to terrorize its political enemies, the temporary internment of people who represent a national security threat ... versus a legal process that is designed to protect the safety and security both of the United States and of the people coming into the country because one of the reasons why we detain people in immigration detention is to figure out who they are so we can vet them but also so that we can determine what their purpose is here."
