Illusions Revolt!

Immigrant rights advocates speak against Trump’s policies in New Mexico. AP Photo/Russell Contreras, File By   Nadia Rubaii , Binghamton University, State University of New York and Max Pensky , Binghamton University, State University of New York There are those who say that comparing President Donald Trump’s rhetoric to that of Adolf Hitler is alarmist, unfair and counterproductive. And yet, there has been no dearth of such comparisons nearly one and a half years into his term. Many commentators have also drawn parallels between the conduct and language of Trump supporters and Holocaust-era Nazis . Recent news of ICE agents separating immigrant families and housing children in cages have generated further comparisons by world leaders, as well as Holocaust survivors and scholars. Trump’s use of the word “infest” to refer to immigrants coming to the U.S. is particularly striking. Nazis referred to infestations of Jewish vermin, ...

US Customs and Border Patrol BY   Gordon Lynch , University of Kent After weeks of mounting pressure, Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 20 to stop his administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the southern border of the US. Putting the policy into a wider historical context of state-sanctioned policies of child separation helps to understand why some aspects of it were remarkably distinctive – and caused such international outrage. From the closing decades of the 19th century, an array of policies emerged across the Anglophone world which challenged assumptions about parents’ inalienable rights to their children. A transnational child protection movement led to the formation of child protection societies, beginning with the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1875. New legislation followed in the UK, Canada and Australia allowing the removal of children from parents on grounds of cruelty ...