• BendingUnit@midwest.social
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      2 years ago

      The gulag system in America is so fucking horrifying and crazy. Anyone who thinks this is a free country is drastically removed from reality.

      • vekku@sopuli.xyz
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        2 years ago

        Why would you call it a gulag system, when most people in the US are in prison because of crimes committed*, not political oppression? That is a defining characteristic of the term “gulag”. Is it because the pure numbers (per capita) are similar?

        * The drug war and the racism it’s built around are glaring exceptions, but still not anywhere near the totality of the gulag system

        • BendingUnit@midwest.social
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          2 years ago

          I call it that for several reasons.

          1. What constitutes a crime is often, and increasingly, political.
          2. What pushes/forces people into crime is almost entirely political.
          3. The for-profit prison industrial complex and the slave labor it provides are DEEPLY bound up in politics.
          4. The for-profit (gulag) prison system here in the states is bigger, crueler and even less necessary than the one I was told in school was SO scary and such a crime against humanity.
          5. Calling it a gulag system draws attention to the intentional cruelty that plagues this country, and (I hope) helps people consider that better methods are not only possible, they actually exist and work.
      • rysiek
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        2 years ago

        I wasn’t referencing you, I was referencing the USA flag and continental US outline in the meme you posted.