If during COVID, you thought vax refusers should be denied employment and banned from society, you likely would have been receptive to the arguments given for internment (it’s mean, most of those people are innocent, but out of an abundance of caution, we need to suspend their civil liberties...)
I don’t think this is particularly likely, because people tend to put a lot of weight on the distinction between chosen/changeable characteristics (like vaccination status) and unchosen/unchangeable characteristics (like race or national origin).
“they could have chosen to be good Americans, but instead they keep to themselves, keep their Japanese names, speak their language, and read newspapers in Japanese, they’re barely Americans, of course they went over to the enemy immediately, they are the enemy”. -some politician in the ’40s probably
There, now it’s not about the shape of the eye, it’s about ‘culture’ and ‘choices’.
It’s a group of people who were not treated as individuals, being unjustly deprived of their civil liberties because a bunch of people were afraid for their own safety.
“they could have chosen to be good Americans, but instead they keep to themselves, keep their Japanese names, speak their language, and read newspapers in Japanese, they’re barely Americans, of course they went over to the enemy immediately, they are the enemy”. -some politician in the ’40s probably
There, now it’s not about the shape of the eye, it’s about ‘culture’ and ‘choices’.
No, the comparison still doesn’t work, and the distinction I pointed to still applies. Japanese Americans were interned on explicitly racial/national grounds. I’m sure there were people arguing that they collectively deserved it; this doesn’t change the fact that the criteria for internment were having Japanese origin or Japanese ancestry.
I am not asserting that both interning Japanese and depriving covid vax dodgers of their rights are morally equivalent by some objective standard.
I assert that the closest subjective experience for most readers of this post to ‘supporting Japanese internment as a member of the public’ and ‘participating in efforts by the state to intern Japanese people’ is ‘advocating for the deprivation of civil liberties to covid vax dodgers’ and ‘creating and enforcing policies to that effect’.
Culturally, Americans and Westerners in general are fine with stuffing groups into camps, the pow camps where demobilized german soldiers were housed (and many starved) after the second world war, are viewed as ethical by most Americans, like the pow camps during the American civil war.
History views Japanese internment as immoral, but after the US government paid a penalty, the issue is viewed as settled. The treatment of covid vax dodgers is recent enough that we can’t be quite sure how history will view it, but for the moment, plenty of people think we didn’t go far enough.
I don’t think this is particularly likely, because people tend to put a lot of weight on the distinction between chosen/changeable characteristics (like vaccination status) and unchosen/unchangeable characteristics (like race or national origin).
“they could have chosen to be good Americans, but instead they keep to themselves, keep their Japanese names, speak their language, and read newspapers in Japanese, they’re barely Americans, of course they went over to the enemy immediately, they are the enemy”. -some politician in the ’40s probably
There, now it’s not about the shape of the eye, it’s about ‘culture’ and ‘choices’.
It’s a group of people who were not treated as individuals, being unjustly deprived of their civil liberties because a bunch of people were afraid for their own safety.
Obviously, the accusations were without merit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/442nd_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)
No, the comparison still doesn’t work, and the distinction I pointed to still applies. Japanese Americans were interned on explicitly racial/national grounds. I’m sure there were people arguing that they collectively deserved it; this doesn’t change the fact that the criteria for internment were having Japanese origin or Japanese ancestry.
Thank you for helping me clarify my thoughts.
I am not asserting that both interning Japanese and depriving covid vax dodgers of their rights are morally equivalent by some objective standard.
I assert that the closest subjective experience for most readers of this post to ‘supporting Japanese internment as a member of the public’ and ‘participating in efforts by the state to intern Japanese people’ is ‘advocating for the deprivation of civil liberties to covid vax dodgers’ and ‘creating and enforcing policies to that effect’.
Culturally, Americans and Westerners in general are fine with stuffing groups into camps, the pow camps where demobilized german soldiers were housed (and many starved) after the second world war, are viewed as ethical by most Americans, like the pow camps during the American civil war.
History views Japanese internment as immoral, but after the US government paid a penalty, the issue is viewed as settled. The treatment of covid vax dodgers is recent enough that we can’t be quite sure how history will view it, but for the moment, plenty of people think we didn’t go far enough.