Actor and activist George Takei said Thursday that the United States is “operating” concentration camps, adding that he “was inside two,” referring to the Japanese-American internment camps he was sent to as a child.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., encountered controversy earlier this week after writing on Twitter: “This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying.”
Takei tweeted on Thursday: “I know what concentration camps are. I was inside two of them, in America. And yes, we are operating such camps again.”
He said in another tweet: “It is sad that there is so much outrage vented toward [Ocasio-Cortez] and [Taylor Swift] for speaking out on behalf of others, when that same energy and passion could be directed at those who made it necessary to speak out in the first place. Get your priorities right, folks.”
Ocasio-Cortez’ tweet came in response to an Esquire interview with Andrea Pitzer, the author of a book on the history of concentration camps, who said that the U.S. has “what I would call a concentration camp system, and the definition of that in my book is, mass detention of civilians without trial.”
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