In South Africa during apartheid, pass books were used to regulate the movement of black citizens and segregate the population. Third, and perhaps most important, identification had a paralyzing effect on its victims. Second, it was an independent control measure in that it enabled the police to pick up any Jew, anywhere, anytime. First, the system was an auxiliary device that facilitated the enforcement of residence and movement restrictions.
The whole identification system, with its personal documents, specially assigned names, and conspicuous tagging in public, was a powerful weapon in the hands of the police. A prelude to the yellow Star of David badges, these stamped cards were instrumental in identifying Jews for deportation to death camps in Poland.Īuthor Raul Hilberg summarizes the impact that such a system had on the Jews: National ID card systems have been used before, by other oppressive governments, in the name of national security, invariably with horrifying results.įor instance, in Germany, the Nazis required all Jews to carry special stamped ID cards for travel within the country. This is how you pave the way for a national identification system.Īmericans have always resisted adopting a national ID card for good reason: it gives the government and its agents the ultimate power to target, track and terrorize the populace according to the government’s own nefarious purposes. Just recently, in fact, passengers arriving in New York’s JFK Airport on a domestic flight from San Francisco were ordered to show their “documents” to border patrol agents in order to get off the plane. So you see, when you talk about empowering government agents to demand identification from anyone they suspect might be an illegal immigrant-the current scheme being entertained by the Trump administration to ferret out and cleanse the country of illegal immigrants-what you’re really talking about is creating a society in which you are required to identify yourself to any government worker who demands it. The war on immigration will be yet another war on the American people, waged with roving government agents demanding “papers, please.” The war on terror turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with warrantless surveillance and indefinite detention. The war on drugs turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with SWAT teams and militarized police. Nothing is ever as simple as the government claims it is. Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now-whether it’s in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America great again-rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you. If you’re inclined to advance this double standard because you believe you have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, beware: there’s always a boomerang effect. You can’t expect to have your rights respected if you allow the government to treat whomever it pleases with disrespect and an utter disregard for the rule of law. You can’t claim to value freedom if you allow the government to operate like a dictatorship. You can’t live in a constitutional republic if you allow the government to act like a police state.
Papers please passport georige trial#
is incomparably the best for keeping a whole people in slavery.”-Hannah Arendt reporting on the trial of Adolf Eichmann They know that the system which succeeds in destroying its victim before he mounts the scaffold. It is not gratuitously, out of sheer sadism, that the S.S. demands that the tortured victim allow himself to be led to the noose without protesting, that he renounce and abandon himself to the point of ceasing to affirm his identity.
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