Transcript
Jake Tapper (0:00)
I'm not a big fan of people using the term concentration camp to describe detention camps. That has a very specific meaning.
Andrea Pitzer (0:10)
Today's episode is based on a recent post for my newsletter, Degenerate Art. Several people mentioned that it had been useful to them.
Jamie Schweiz Nettle (0:18)
I understand that.
Andrea Pitzer (0:19)
And so it seemed like a good idea to do a podcast episode on it as well.
Jamie Schweiz Nettle (0:23)
I don't need to argue with you about it.
Jake Tapper (0:24)
Yeah, that's fine.
Andrea Pitzer (0:25)
I'm going to focus on people's frequent discomfort around using the words concentration camp. Avoiding the term often rises out of an honorable impulse, yet can have terrible consequences.
Frank Abe (0:37)
Even those who do learn from history sometimes seem destined to repeat it. Andrea Pitzer, our guest and today's speaker, understands this perhaps more acutely than most of us.
Andrea Pitzer (0:46)
I hope to come at the question from a different angle than the usual conversations, which sometimes fail to explore the issue in a deeper way. Tonight she's presenting her new book, One Long Night, A Global History of Concentration Camps. Why look at this issue now? History is full of moments in which hindsight provides the only clear view. This is not one of them. I watched a video from January in which a bookstore owner in Minneapolis was interviewed by Jake Tapper on cnn.
Jake Tapper (1:12)
One of those businesses participating is an independent bookstore in Minneapolis called Moon Palace Books, and the co owner, Jamie Schweiz Nettle, joins me now.
Andrea Pitzer (1:21)
Asked about the planned walkouts and shutdowns that day, the bookstore owner dove right into the crisis.
Jamie Schweiz Nettle (1:26)
Well, Jake, we can't do business as usual right now anyway because our city has been invaded by masked gunmen kidnapping family members and friends and neighbors of ours to send them to concentration camps.
Andrea Pitzer (1:40)
The bookstore owner talks about other businesses whose staff or customers are afraid to be out on the street.
