{"id":108564,"date":"2018-04-02T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=108564"},"modified":"2018-04-01T12:24:08","modified_gmt":"2018-04-01T11:24:08","slug":"evidence-of-violent-extremism-of-little-interest-when-killer-is-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/04\/evidence-of-violent-extremism-of-little-interest-when-killer-is-white\/","title":{"rendered":"Evidence of Violent Extremism of Little Interest When Killer Is White"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Far-right attacks are an almost daily occurrence\u2013but of little interest to corporate news media.
(PBS NewsHour, 8\/13\/17).<\/p><\/div>\n

29 Mar 2018 – <\/em>Remember that Muslim mass murderer who belonged to an Islamic home-madrassa<\/em> called INTIFADA, where knife-wielding Shari\u2019a survivalists studied the Qur\u2019an, guns and dangerous chemicals? And how the liberal media fawningly portrayed him as a misunderstood and under-loved young man otherwise full of promise?<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t, because that never happened. But have you heard about of the Christian Texas child-killer from an all-white sect who slaughtered the president of a homeowners\u2019 association and a 17-year-old aspiring neurosurgeon, both on their own doorsteps and in front of their families? Both victims were African-Americans. This same murderer was a suicide bomber who blew himself up before police could arrest him and take him for a hamburger (as they did with Dylann Roof, the young white man who killed nine African-Americans at their church).<\/p>\n

Had killer Mark Anthony Conditt been a brown Muslim, it\u2019s hard to imagine corporate media not at least speculating that hateful ideology was a motive, and using (or at least debating the use of) the term \u201cterrorism\u201d to describe his crimes.<\/em> But because Conditt was a white, conservative, homophobic Christian, corporate media and police alike have been\u2014ahem\u2014generous<\/em> in their eulogies. Austin Police Chief Brian Manley even helpfully explained that Conditt never used the word \u201cterrorism\u201d in his 25-minute final recording, which was \u201cthe outcry of a very challenged young man talking about challenges in his own life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

If a Muslim bomber had received religious-based weapons training (Independent, 3\/22\/18), that would likely be the lead fact in every report on them.<\/p><\/div>\n

So what were Conditt\u2019s views, and who \u201cradicalized\u201d him? Conditt blogged about his opposition to abortion, his support of the death penalty, his desire that gay marriage should be illegal, and that terrorists were bad. (As with Conditt\u2019s defenders in corporate news and law enforcement, Conditt\u2019s command of irony was nothing compared to his command of lethal explosives.)<\/p>\n

According to the Independent<\/strong> (3\/22\/18<\/a>), Conditt belonged to a homeschooling, Christian survivalist youth group called RIOT (Righteous Invasion Of Truth); while its Facebook<\/strong> group is inactive, the website for its sponsoring church (Grace House Clinton<\/a>) shows photographs of an all-white congregation. RIOT taught the Bible and guns; Conditt\u2019s sister Cassia Schultz explained that many RIOTers carried knives and \u201cwould discuss chemicals and how to mix them and which ones were dangerous.\u201d She \u201ccould not recall\u201d if they ever discussed making bombs.<\/p>\n

If White Conditt were Brown Khalid, is it remotely conceivable that corporate news would have buried such a prima facie<\/em> case of violent extremism? As Qasim Rashid tweeted<\/a>, \u201cWhite male privilege is detonating 5 bombs, executing 2 Black men, & media calls you a \u2018quiet nerdy young man from a tight knit godly family.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

NPR (3\/21\/18) provides a character witness for a bomber who killed two African-Americans.<\/p><\/div>\n

Sympathy for the Devil<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some outlets managed to dramatize the whimsy behind capturing a Texan executioner, as with the New York Times<\/strong> headline (3\/21\/18<\/a>) \u201cLucky Breaks, Video and Pink Gloves Led to Austin Bombing Suspect.\u201d But to provide the most relevant psychological assessment of a serial murderer, NPR<\/strong>\u2019s All Things Considered<\/strong> (3\/21\/18<\/a>) helpfully sought Conditt\u2019s friend Jeremiah Jensen. Despite not having seen Conditt for four years, Jensen explained that Conditt was \u201cnot a psychopath\u201d (i.e., not a superficially charming, grandiosely self-important person utterly lacking in remorse for, say, bombing people at their homes).<\/p>\n

Jensen, a former intern at an NPR<\/strong> station in Dallas, said the serial murderer was \u201cshy, smart \u00a0and thoughtful.\u201d Despite being \u201cpretty rough around the edges\u2026dominant, pugnacious in nature,\u201d he \u201cattended church\u201d and \u201cstarted to soften\u201d enough that Jensen \u201cthought he was going to bloom into a productive person.\u201d Conditt was \u201ca deep thinker, very smart\u2026 funny and happy for the most part\u2026 [an] intense person and\u2026hard to love but\u2026a person. He was alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Via NPR<\/strong>, Jensen reveals Conditt as shy, like many \u201chomeschool kids,\u201d while struggling to visit with non-family members. \u201cI think that he might have isolated himself,\u201d says Jensen, who wishes Conditt would have shared his pain to avoid such a grim end.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for Conditt, his race and politics seem to have insulated him from being labelled a \u201csnowflake\u201d who refused to accept personal responsibility for his failures, and insulated his community from accusations of producing a super-predator who \u201cdoesn\u2019t value life the way we do.\u201d Conditt has posthumously embarrassed Jensen and Chief Manley, however; Reuters<\/strong> (3\/24\/18<\/a>) reports that Conditt described himself<\/em> as a psychopath in his final video testament (which Manley had already seen when he called the murderer \u201ca very challenged young man\u201d).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Meme based on Family Guy gag<\/p><\/div>\n

But surely NPR<\/strong> always doles out the sympathy when portraying murderers? Its story \u201cMan Who Killed Officers Told Passersby: \u2018Watch What I Am Going to Do\u2019\u201d (12\/21\/14<\/a>) concerned Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who\u2019d killed two police officers. NPR<\/strong> noted Brinsley\u2019s online \u201cpostings and rants,\u201d which showed \u201canger against the government,\u201d Brinsley \u201cburning a flag,\u201d and discussions of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, \u201cwho were killed in encounters with police.\u201d (Note the use of the passive voice.) While he had \u201c15 prior arrests,\u201d Brinsley showed \u201cno signs of radicalization.\u201d His Muslim family reported he\u2019d \u201cattempted suicide in the past, including trying to hang himself last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Too bad for Brinsley he wasn\u2019t friends with Jensen, who could have offered psychological insight into the link between mental illness and suicide. Countless memes and even Family Guy<\/strong> jokes highlight how Euro-American, Christian murderers get to be forgiven as \u201cmentally ill.\u201d One must wonder what magnificent cultural practices so perfectly inoculate African-Americans and Muslims from psychic maladies.<\/p>\n

Safe Spaces for Racist Terrorists<\/strong><\/p>\n

The word \u201cterrorist\u201d is certainly a loaded one\u2014used to justify everything from suspensions of civil liberties at home to drone strikes and even invasions abroad. But that makes it all the more important that media use a single standard for applying the term.<\/p>\n

So what makes one a terrorist? The US Military Guide to Terrorism in the 21st Century<\/em> (8\/15\/07<\/a>) defines terrorism by function, not identity, as \u201cthe calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious or ideological.\u201d But in the upside-down world of corporate media, the race of the terrorist, and the races of the people he\u2019s murdered, seem to matter more than the actions committed.<\/p>\n

Reality rarely offers laboratory conditions for neat comparisons, but the difference between coverage of the Austin Bomber and the Boston Bomber is striking. As FAIR (6\/19\/15<\/a>) reported, following two bombs that killed three people at the April 15, 2013, Boston Marathon, US newspapers tracked via Nexis news database ran 2,593 stories about the attack, and 34 percent of them cited \u201cterrorism,\u201d<\/em> or variants such as \u201cterroristic,\u201d<\/em> \u201ceven though the bombers, let alone the bombers\u2019 motivations, would not be known until days later.\u201d<\/p>\n

By contrast, in the case of Dylann Roof, who slaughtered nine churchgoers, only 7 percent of news stories the following day used the words \u201cterrorism\u201d<\/em> or \u201cterrorist.\u201d <\/em>Unlike the bombers, Roof never hid his ideology. He posed in numerous online pictures with Confederate flags, gave himself the nickname \u201cStorm\u201d (a common Nazi reference, as with the Daily Stormer<\/strong>, Stormfront<\/strong> and the original SS), and as The State<\/strong> (6\/18\/15<\/a>) reported, he told his victims before he shot them, \u201cYou rape our women and you\u2019re taking over our country. And you have to go.\u201d One of Roof\u2019s friends said he was \u201cbig into segregation\u201d and sought \u201ca civil war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Because he reminds me of myself, is the answer the Washington Post\u2018s Philip Bump (6\/19\/15) gives.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Washington Post<\/strong>\u2019s Philip Bump wrote a piece called \u201cWhy We Shouldn\u2019t Call Dylann Roof a Terrorist\u201d (6\/19\/15<\/a>), despite\u2014as even Breitbart<\/strong> (5\/20\/15<\/a>) reported (Breitbart<\/strong>!)\u2014Roof being \u201cracist, anti-American, antisemitic and white supremacist,\u201d not to mention murdering nine people at church. Bump admits that the murders themselves <\/em>were terrorist, but hey, apparently nine acts of terrorism do not a terrorist make, because:<\/p>\n

When I see Dylann Roof, I remember being a white male his age, barely out of my teenage years and experiencing weird anger in a difficult time\u2026. We can identify much more easily with who he is.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the day after Conditt\u2019s death (3\/22\/18), he was mentioned in 118 stories in US newspapers, according to a Nexis search. In only four of these stories (3 percent) does the paper or a source quoted by the paper call Conditt a \u201cterrorist.\u201d or his crimes \u201cterrorism.\u201d (The word \u201cterrorism\u201d appears in many more of these stories, mainly via quotes of Chief Manley saying Conditt\u2019s final message didn\u2019t \u201cmention anything about terrorism.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Some media \u201cgot\u201d Conditt and those describing him. The headline to Slate<\/strong>\u2019s piece, \u201cAustin Chief Baffled by What Could\u2019ve Motivated White Right-Wing Survivalist Bomber to Kill Two Black People\u201d (3\/22\/18<\/a>), sarcastically slices Chief Manley and selectively-colorblind media coverage. But even north of the border, the finger-waggingly \u201cwe\u2019re better than the Americans\u201d Canadian Broadcasting Corporation<\/strong> (3\/19\/18<\/a>) ran a story called \u201cMassive Investigation Unfolding After Texas Bombings: 2 Dead, 4 Seriously Injured After String of Explosions.\u201d Like the headline and CBC<\/strong>\u2019s national radio coverage on March 20, the story doesn\u2019t use the words \u201cterror\u201d or \u201cterrorist\u201d at all, not even to refute their applicability, and never cites racism as a possible motive.<\/p>\n

But why not? Because racist terrorists are such a minimal problem in the US? No. As PBS<\/strong> NewsHour<\/strong> (8\/13\/17<\/a>) reported last year, right-wing extremists (including Nazis) have killed 68 Americans since September 11, 2001, and stage an average of 300 violent attacks each year;<\/em> US law enforcement groups say \u201canti-government violent extremists\u201d are \u201ca more severe threat than radicalized Muslims.\u201d NewsHour<\/strong> guest Peter Bergen, a national security analyst for the centrist think tank New America, explained the government and media pretext for labelling some political crimes \u201cterrorist\u201d and not others:<\/p>\n

When a neo-Nazi carries out a violent attack, it\u2019s usually simply treated as murder or sometimes as a hate crime, but not usually as terrorism from a legal point of view, because there isn\u2019t an association with an international terrorist organization such as ISIS, such as Al Qaeda.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pointedly, this \u201cinternational terrorist organization\u201d qualification\u2014which is not part of the legal definition of \u201cterrorism\u201d\u2014explicitly excludes the most violent domestic terrorists of all, which, according to Nazi-doxxer Daryle Lamont Jenkins of One People\u2019s Projec<\/a>t, are Atomwaffen, the National Socialist Movement, the Traditionalist Worker Party and the Ku Klux Klan, the oldest private terror outfit in the US. In other words, the media definition of terrorism is a rigged game, designed to ensure that journalism provides a \u201csafe space\u201d for the \u201csnowflake\u201d Euro-American identity.<\/p>\n

Invisible Victims<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anthony Stephan House and Draylen William Mason were such exemplary human beings that had they been fictional characters, people would accuse their writer of creating unbelievable paragons of virtue. House and Mason were the type of \u201cperfect victims\u201d that corporate media supposedly loves: attractive, accomplished and American\u2014yet missing at least two identity markers that International Business Times<\/strong> (3\/20\/14<\/a>) and others associate with \u201cmissing White Woman syndrome.\u201d<\/p>\n

House was a 39-year-old senior project manager for Texas Quarries, and a former hedge fund manager at House Capital Management. A graduate of Texas State University with a degree in business administration, he was president of his neighborhood\u2019s homeowners association. Heavy.com<\/strong> (3\/12\/18<\/a>) reported that House was happily married to an elementary school teacher, and was preparing to take their 8-year-old daughter to school when Conditt slaughtered him.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

\u201cThe loss of a child with such conspicuous ambition, talent and determination is the cruelest kind of heartbreak,\u201d the dean of UT Austin\u2019s College of Fine Arts said of Draylen Mason.
(Atlanta Black Star, 3\/14\/18).<\/p><\/div>\n

But playing by the rules to pursue the American Dream was not enough to protect House from police suspicion that he <\/em>was a terrorist. As Effie Orfanides<\/a> wrote in her Heavy<\/strong> story, \u201cIn fact, police initially wondered if House had been making a bomb and it detonated inside his home by accident.\u201d Norrell Waynewood, who told Heavy<\/strong> he was House\u2019s brother, accused local authorities of attempting to \u201cframe\u201d House.<\/p>\n

Although he was just a 17-year-old boy, Draylen Mason was an accomplished bassist, an aspiring neurosurgeon, a karate instructor and an award-winning writer on racial profiling; he was also a Christian who played music for church services. As Atlanta Black Star<\/strong> (3\/14\/18<\/a>) reported, Doug Dempster, dean of the College of Fine Arts at UT Austin, called Mason a \u201cmost remarkable talent in a most remarkable youth orchestra program,\u201d the Austin Soundwaves, which teaches music for free to \u201cartistically underserved children.\u201d Dempster said Mason was devoted to helping younger, unsure students, and that his \u201cgentle confidence seemed to come from a conviction that hard work and talent was going to work for him. It did.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to a search of the Nexis database, 270 stories mentioned Mark Conditt\u2019s name in the days following his self-destruction. Of these,\u00a086 mentioned the names of one or both of the people he killed\u2014less than 1 in 3.\u00a0 Among the stories that didn\u2019t mention either House or Mason\u2019s name: the All Things Considered<\/strong> profile (3\/21\/18<\/a>) that described Conditt as \u201cshy, smart and thoughtful.\u201d<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

Research Assistance: Justin Anderson<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 fair.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

29 Mar 2018 – Remember that Muslim mass murderer who belonged to an Islamic home-madrassa called INTIFADA, where knife-wielding Shari\u2019a survivalists studied the Qur\u2019an, guns and dangerous chemicals? And how the liberal media fawningly portrayed him as a misunderstood and under-loved young man otherwise full of promise? You don\u2019t, because that never happened. But have you heard about the Christian Texas child-killer from an all-white sect who slaughtered the president of a homeowners\u2019 association and a 17-year-old aspiring neurosurgeon? Both victims were African-Americans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":108569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}