
IBM’s Technology Powered the Holocaust - tobr
https://kottke.org/19/10/how-ibms-technology-powered-the-holocaust
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tibbydudeza
IBM was the biggest seller of computers to the Apartheid regime in South
Africa which helped them to implement the system ... the infamous "dompas"
being one of them.

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swarnie_
Ok you had me up until this part.

> It’s not difficult to see the relevance of this episode today. Should
> Microsoft-owned GitHub provide software to ICE for possible use in the
> agency’s state-sanctioned persecution of immigrants and asylum seekers?

Comparing the mechanised murder of 6 million people to the processing of
criminals is a bit of a stretch.

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olliej
You realize that the victims of the holocaust _were_ criminals, as defined by
German law.

At the end of WW2 lgbt people “liberated” from the concentration camps were
immediately jailed for being LGBT, using evidence from the gestapo.

Aiding Jews, Romani, jehovahs witnesses, lgbt, communists, dissidents, etc
also made you a criminal.

Also, I’m fairly sure immigration law doesn’t carry the death penalty, yet
there are kids dying and being abused in the ICE concentration camps.

Here’s a simple counterpoint to ICE: what would the outcry be if Mexico starts
imprisoning and separating American overstayers in Mexico? What would happen
if Mexico then “lost track of” the children from those families? Would you
still be arguing it was not criminal?

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poiuyt098
The Jews did not willingly pile into the camps. They didn't send their
children across dangerous terrain with coyotes and birth-control pills. They
didn't have the option to go back at any time they wanted.

The grotesque analogies just polarize everyone more.

~~~
olliej
The detained immigrants didn’t choose to be piled into camps.

The hyperbole of all the immigrants arrested dashing through dangerous coyotes
is nonsense.

Many of the “illegal” immigrants were born in the US. Many don’t speak
Spanish. But sure, concentrating them in prisons and separating children from
their parents isn’t about punishing them for being Mexican.

Don’t come out claiming I’m advancing a polarizing description of what happens
with a claim that the victims of a deliberately racist camp system have chosen
this.

~~~
codycraven
I'm sorry, what? Anyone born in the US is a citizen, not an immigrant. Their
parents may be citizens or immigrants (legal or otherwise).

Section 1 of the 14th amendment: All persons born or naturalized in the United
States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce
any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

If you're saying law enforcement agencies are depriving US citizens of liberty
without due process I'm sure every news agency in the country would love to
run stories with your evidence.

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ryacko
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=us+citizen+detained+ice](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=us+citizen+detained+ice)

Cases such as you allege occur on a semi-frequent basis. People fall through
the cracks, and the mechanisms by which the news ultimately reports on the
truth is rather unfamiliar.

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simonblack
The Holocaust wasn't IBM's fault. It was the fault of the rubber-stamp ink
manufacturers, the fault of the railway wagon manufacturers, the barbed-wire
manufacturers, and so on.

The title is as misleading as the slogan 'Guns kill People.'

In truth, the Nazis did the Holocaust. Whatever those things the Nazis may
have used, the makers of those things were irrelevant.

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cafard
The favored light rapid-fire cannon of WW II were manufactured to designs by
neutrals, Sweden and Switzerland, licensed to manufacturers of both Allied and
Axis powers. Did Oerlikon power the Holocaust, the liberation of Europe, the
Greater Southeast Asia Co-Prosperity sphere, some or none of the above?

~~~
rasz
Did Oerlikon CEO receive Merit Cross of the German Eagle with Star?
[https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=26634](https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=26634)

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not_a_cop75
Generally the true winners in the war are the ones that supply both sides.
Numerous companies did this - some I surmise, with the blessing of the US
government!

~~~
not_a_cop75
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust)

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xwowsersx
Wow, what a ludicrous jump at the end there. Whatever complaints you may have
about ICE, there is no analogy between the mass extermination of 6M people by
the Nazis and what is happening at the border.

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Majromax
> Whatever complaints you may have about ICE, there is no analogy

I disagree.

The analogy may or may not be very good, but there _is_ an analogy that
deserves to be treated on its merits.

The Holocaust was evil and horrible, but the lesson we sought to take from it
wasn't that it was a singular evil that could never happen again. Instead, it
was about the banality of evil
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem)),
that great evils are often the product of thousands of small steps that
individually seem innocuous or trivial compared to what came before.

One point being made by the article is that providers of technology -- then
IBM, but here github and the like -- carry a moral responsibility for the
likely uses of that technology. If that point is correct and IBM is stained by
its initial provision of card sorting machines to the Reich (well before the
regime began mass killings), then Microsoft et al might carry the stain of
crimes that haven't happened yet.

~~~
xwowsersx
I agree with the idea that "great evils are often the product of thousands of
small steps that individually seem innocuous or trivial".

What I take issue with is these sort of insidious analogies (which, no
surprise, tend to be analogies to Hitler or the Holocaust) where none exists
except in the most circuitous of ways. Of course we need to be vigilant and,
yes, the Holocaust stands out in our collective memory as the best proof of
that. However, there is a vast difference between people going to the border
of their own volition (put aside the question whether they are doing so under
tremendous duress and exigent circumstances) vs the Jews during the Holocaust
who could do basically _nothing_ to escape persecution. Immigrants could avoid
whatever treatment they are receiving at the border by not going to the border
altogether or going by other means. What exactly could the Jews during the
Holocaust do? Nothing.

None of this is to say there aren't legitimate criticisms related to what's
happening at the border. But drawing an analogy, however loose it is, just
weakens the argument and serves to seriously understate what happened during
the Holocaust.

~~~
anoncake
Jews could leave Germany until 1941. In fact, they were encouraged to do so.
Finding a country that would take them was the problem.

~~~
ncmncm
> _Finding a country that would take them was the problem._

... was those Jews' immediate problem, just then. The problem was rather
larger.

We will be seeing huge waves of refugees as Global Climate Disruption renders
large areas of the globe newly uninhabitable. There are already Nazi-like
movements to "keep them out". Plenty of people will be found who would rather
they were killed or starved to death than allowed in.

