I’m sure you recall a few years ago when the right wing had one of their perennial meltdowns over the supposed plan to put conservatives in “FEMA camps.” I case you don’t here’s a brief recap:
The FEMA camps conspiracy theory is a belief, particularly within the American Patriot movement, that the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is planning to imprison US citizens in concentration camps, following the imposition of martial law in the United States after a major disaster or crisis. In some versions of the theory, only suspected dissidents will be imprisoned. In more extreme versions, large numbers of US citizens will be imprisoned for the purposes of extermination as a New World Order is established. The theory has existed since the late 1970s, but its circulation has increased with the advent of the internet and social media platforms.
The US government previously interned US citizens in concentration camps during WWII and developed, but did not implement, contingency plans for mass internment of US citizens in the 1980s.
This conspiracy theory had a huge revival during the Obama years and then died off when Trump came in.
But as you may have noticed from that Wikipedia entry,the plot really took off during the Reagan years because his administration actually did develop some sort of plan for … FEMA camps.
Rex 84B, short for Readiness Exercise 1984 BRAVO, was a classified scenario and drill developed by the United States federal government to detain large numbers of United States residents deemed to be “national security threats” in the event that the president declared a National Emergency. The scenario envisioned state defense forces rounding up 500,000 undocumented Central American residents and 4000 American citizens whom the US Attorney General had designated as “national security threats” as part of the secret Continuity of Government program. These people would be detained at 22 military bases in concentration camps run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
It’s a Republican thing.
Trump’s top henchman Steven Miller has been floating the idea of “deportation camps” and one of Trump’s big plans is to do sweeps in American cities and put the homeless into camps as well.
Camps are on the GOP agenda.
Now we have the laboratory of MAGA atrocities proposing the same thing:
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday endorsed a statewide strategy for dealing with homeless people that Republican lawmakers say is the first of its kind.
In short, put them in camps.
Legislators in the last week advanced bills that would require counties to ban homeless people from sleeping in public places and instead allow them to stay in designated camps with security, sanitation and access to behavioral health services.
Although the governor said the legislation is still a “work in progress,” he endorsed its goal of moving homeless people off the streets. He also said he was open to assigning money to help local governments treat and house them.
“We feel that if the Legislature is willing to lean in on this, that we want to be there to be able to offer support, but it’s got to be done right,” DeSantis said during a Monday news conference in Miami Beach.
“It’s got to be done in ways that is focused primarily on ensuring public order, ensuring quality of life for residents, ensuring that people’s property values are maintained,” he added.
And here I thought Florida didn’t have a homeless problem like these west coast hellholes…
Last year, Florida’s Council on Homelessness reported 30,809 people experiencing homelessness, up 9% from 2019. Of those, 15,706 were sleeping outdoors, in cars or in abandoned buildings, more than double the number from 2021. Hillsborough and Pinellas counties reported 4,144 people homeless last year, down about 300 since 2018.
According to this article there is actually some question about how this might work with some homeless advocates thinking it could be helpful if there was enough money to do it right. But most homeless advocates are rightfully concerned that there won’t be enough money to properly fund it and the idea that homeless people who don’t comply being arrested sounds like a recipe for disaster.
I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t trust Ron DeSantis to properly feed a dog much less show anything close to empathy for people who are in dire straits. You’ll notice that his priority is “ensuring public order, ensuring quality of life for residents, ensuring that people’s property values are maintained.” This is not a person who will be remotely concerned about the well-being of the people he’s incarcerating.