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Comment by immibis | Hacker News Reader

Why?

Because you go to prison for breaking the law

Fun fact. There are more people in US prisons than there ever were in Soviet gulags

An interesting fact, though perhaps completely irrelevant since people were sent to the gulags for completely different reasons.

Fun fact. There are more people in the US education system than there ever were in Soviet gulags.

Just as irrelevant.

Or because you’re black.

This doesn't really mean much when those laws include "you're not allowed to expose crimes by government" not to mention drug laws and copyright. At the end it's not any less arbitrary than whatever excuses the chinese government uses to intern those they don't like.

The laws are known a priori.

There are also no laws against exposing crimes by the government. You’re just not allowed to break other laws just because you’re doing so.

People very frequently successfully expose corruption and abuse by governments in the US. It just doesn’t make significant news unless it’s a major national politician, and that happens multiple times a year.

It is known a priori that the laws are so vague that everyone is breaking several. If the government chooses to find out which one you are breaking, you go to prison. If you expose crimes by the government, you may find yourself suddenly being investigated for something unrelated.

That's just the government interring whoever it doesn't like, with extra steps. Or making a law that says "we have to like you" with extra steps.

So again, what's the difference?

No, the laws putting people in prison are not vague.

Sure they are. E.g. hate speech, antisemitism, threat to public order, threat to the integrity of the state. You know that Russian woman with the blank paper was also a threat to the integrity of the state.

You also go to internment camps for breaking the law. So I repeat: how are they different?

One is a failure of social order, product of greed, evil and stupidity. The other is the largest-scale arbitrary detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II.

No, you get sent to internment camps because you’re a prisoner of war or because of some basic property of your being.

The comparison would be the Japanese internment camps the US had in WW2.

There is nothing like that today where citizens are being locked up without breaking any laws.

In other words, for breaking the law, when the law says "don't be Japanese"

They also sent you to the gulags fog breaking the law.

No. While there were criminals also in gulags, most of people were there only because someone didn't like them or they happened to be wrong time in wrong place. That's it.

No. They found a law you broke.

The US defines what the law is. We've also got bucketloads of people sitting in jails prior to trial for nonviolent crimes.

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