CECOT compared to Auschwitz based on aerial/satellite photographs

[Wetzelrad]

Air photos of the concentration camps are used by both sides of the Holocaust debate, sometimes with quite fallacious reasoning and interpretation, so it's interesting when internet "OSInt" guys do the same thing for current political issues. Currently the Trump admin is being slammed for deporting migrants to an enormous prison complex in El Salvador called Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT).

In that context, it's now being claimed based on these three satellite photos that the facility was killing or torturing people. X users are saying that the reddish brown parts of the image are "blood".



The post now has 52k likes. Some select responses:

@jou_rage: Blood?
@MenchOsint: Definitely

@DlugajJuly: It's an extermination camp dressed up as a prison.
@MenchOsint: Really looks like it, Bukulele doing the "dirty job" for Trump

@GrGuenter: Do we see Auschwitz 2.0 here?

@MemberBlasts: Undoubtedly something similar to what went down in the ORIGINAL Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Leaving aside the politics, do you see anything incriminating in these photos? I see that two outbuildings were built over two years. I see possible debris and dirt around. The dirt which is characterized as blood is actually less red than the dirt outside the prison (2% less by my measure), and it only stands out because there seems to be a footpath there.

cecot.jpg (257.56 KiB) Viewed 3410 times

If we follow along with the hypothesis that this is blood, then we need to ask what is the process here? Perhaps the bodies are stored in the shed until they can later be removed by truck along the northern road. But this explanation could equally indicate a mere trash disposal. An explanation must also be made for why red dirt also appears on the opposite (western) side of the building.

I think all this points to how bad interpretation of evidence can be. Are we really at the point where people will declare "extermination camp" over the color red in any low resolution photo? If they found a chimney or other roof feature on one of these buildings, would it become a gas chamber and a crematorium?

[Wetzelrad]

Here are some additional claims being made.

This Facebook post has 1.4k comments, many of them agreeing that it is a "death camp" just like Auschwitz.
Satellite images of the El Salvador detention camp.
https://www.facebook.com/story.php?stor ... 4280796927

A post in a Cheney/Kisinger group reiterates the claims above and says that "the ashes" need to be returned to the victims' families.
I apologize in advance for the graphic horror of this post.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1077620 ... 799882097/

This Instagram video with 2k likes claims there is "a mass pile of BODIES" also visible in the satellite photos.
CECOT: A Death Camp in Disguise?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DIeh02jui5x/

This Youtube video with 70k views admits "that could be just dirt", yet he also uses the most emotive rhetoric like "My intuition and soul is screaming at me that this is dark and horrific." He does some image adjustment and speculates that what he sees could be blood and bodies.
Satellite evidence of mass murder inside El Salvador giant CECOT prison??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6WW9cGnpQ8

This Reddit thread claims that in addition to "the supposed blood and bodies" there is also a "suspicious looking potential burn site" and dirt mounds near the prison.
More images from CECOT El Salvador
https://old.reddit.com/r/TheDeprogram/c ... _salvador/

A post on Threads approaches the subject more prudently, but still there are radical replies. One user claims to have found mass graves being dug and says it fits with a "Nazi germany take over".
https://www.threads.net/@x.bejeweled.x/post/DIdYXEPOodA

[Stubble]

It seems pretty obvious to me that is a waste handling station at the detainment facility.

So far as rocks being ashes, well, sometimes people see what they want to see. Those aren't burnsites.

If these folks were the old 4chan level of autistic, they would be using satellite radar imagery as it is open to the public through various programs from the European space agency, NASA etc.

I'm half tempted to promote the misinformation that it is indeed an actual death camp and use these provided links as proof so when the hoax is exposed, maybe by osmosis the mainstream holocaust narrative will lose some credibility. I won't though.

[Wetzelrad]

Yes, I can't say if it's a waste collection or any of a hundred other possibilities. I'm sure it could be quickly cleared up if I went looking for a ground photo or drone video.

I had the same thought of leaning into the hoax. I plan to compile all the evidence for a satirical post on X soon.

I forgot to make the point that all of this is happening within regular partisan politics. The people making these accusations are not wartime propandists but merely pro-immigrant or justice reform activists. So an entire death camp atrocity narrative is being fabricated without even the dire circumstances of a war to justify it. If a similar effort was made during WWII, the necessity of the circumstances would have made it much more intense and concerted than this.

In another Reddit thread, one user makes the argument that the berms around the buildings could be meant to block sight or even to stop bullets (from executions, naturally).
https://old.reddit.com/r/RBI/comments/1 ... s/mn0uqno/

I find this very similar to the claim that the presence of wicker fences at Birkenau, as photographed from the air beginning in 1944, are supposed to be how the Germans hid gassings from nearby inmates. In both cases there are simple, innocent explanations. Fences and berms are fairly ordinary architectural features.

The ultimate point is this. If all of the above evidence for extermination can be found for CECOT, how is it different for Birkenau or anywhere else? Couldn't you take satellite photos for any prison or inhabited place on Earth, hyperfocus on some details that are blurry and mysterious, and come to the same conclusions of mass murder? Won't excavation work always look like mass graves to people who want it to be?

[Stubble]

I heard a GOP rep lean in to it and say 'they have the death penalty there, it is not up to me how they choose to carry that out'.

I spit out my coffee laughing.

I'll look for the clip.

That no doubt triggered some people.

[Archie]

In thinking about atrocity stories, it is interesting to consider how things have changed over time. As you go back further in time, especially into antiquity, it would have been very hard to fact-check stories. This would make it very easy to spin up BS stories and make up whatever numbers you wanted. How would anyone call you out on it? At the same time, however, with limited or nonexistent mass media, you couldn't disseminate atrocity propaganda very effectively. The WWII era was perhaps the perfect storm for bogus atrocity stories. It was late enough that you had film and mass media (film in particular progressed a lot between WWI and WWII) but old enough that it was still fairly difficult to fact-check things.

In this day and age when there are cameras and satellites and everything you would think it would be impossible to pull off a large scale atrocity hoax. It seems like it would be too easy to falsify. However in the social media age, it seems we've entered a new era where there is such a glut of information that it has become easier in some respects to trick people. People seem to believe whatever they want.

I used to think that "another Holocaust" (in the hoax sense) would not be possible because it would be too easy to debunk. But now I'm not so sure.

[HansHill]

In thinking about atrocity stories, it is interesting to consider how things have changed over time. As you go back further in time, especially into antiquity, it would have been very hard to fact-check stories. This would make it very easy to spin up BS stories and make up whatever numbers you wanted. How would anyone call you out on it? At the same time, however, with limited or nonexistent mass media, you couldn't disseminate atrocity propaganda very effectively. The WWII era was perhaps the perfect storm for bogus atrocity stories. It was late enough that you had film and mass media (film in particular progressed a lot between WWI and WWII) but old enough that it was still fairly difficult to fact-check things.

In this day and age when there are cameras and satellites and everything you would think it would be impossible to pull off a large scale atrocity hoax. It seems like it would be too easy to falsify. However in the social media age, it seems we've entered a new era where there is such a glut of information that it has become easier in some respects to trick people. People seem to believe whatever they want.

I used to think that "another Holocaust" (in the hoax sense) would not be possible because it would be too easy to debunk. But now I'm not so sure.

Absolutely. Not to go too off topic but the COVID analogy here is telling. For all the advancements we have made in medical science, pharmacology, epidemiology, technology and communications etc, none of those advancements would prevent the world splintering into two factions who held nothing but utter disdain for each other, and neither willing to acknowledge let alone believe what the other was saying.

Having all the information in the world hardly matters most of the time, if ever. Some people still believe the holocaust for god's sake!