> When people used to say "disappearing people off the streets", they were trying to paint a picture out of Orwell's 1984, where the secret police not only drag someone off never to be seen again, but no one can or will acknowledge that they were ever born in the first place.
I don't know which people you are talking about who did that, but people I’ve seen doing it were more likely to be implicitly (or, fairly often, explicitly) referencing historical real-world authoritarianism like Pinochet’s Chile, not dystopian fiction like 1984, when they talked about governments disappearing people off the streets.
Though common to all three (authoritarian history, dystopian fiction, and the present American regime) is concealment of the fact of detention, the location of the detained, and sometimes the fact of the detained’s death
>but people I’ve seen doing it were more likely to be implicitly (or, fairly often, explicitly) referencing historical real-world
Covered by my short phrase "out of".
>Though common to all three (authoritarian history, dystopian fiction, and the present American regime) is concealment of the fact of detention,
Yes, which is why only you and I can talk about it. No one else here even knows about the detentions, since they're so concealed. Have you not noticed that not only are they not concealed, but that the detention centers get honest-to-god marketing names ("Alligator Alcatraz")?
I don't know which people you are talking about who did that, but people I’ve seen doing it were more likely to be implicitly (or, fairly often, explicitly) referencing historical real-world authoritarianism like Pinochet’s Chile, not dystopian fiction like 1984, when they talked about governments disappearing people off the streets.
Though common to all three (authoritarian history, dystopian fiction, and the present American regime) is concealment of the fact of detention, the location of the detained, and sometimes the fact of the detained’s death