{"id":59950,"date":"2015-06-22T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2015-06-22T11:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=59950"},"modified":"2015-06-21T23:28:39","modified_gmt":"2015-06-21T22:28:39","slug":"refusal-to-call-charleston-shootings-terrorism-again-shows-its-a-meaningless-propaganda-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/06\/refusal-to-call-charleston-shootings-terrorism-again-shows-its-a-meaningless-propaganda-term\/","title":{"rendered":"Refusal to Call Charleston Shootings \u201cTerrorism\u201d Again Shows It\u2019s a Meaningless Propaganda Term"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dylann<\/a><\/p>\n

19 Jun 2015 – <\/em>In February 2010, a man named Joseph Stack deliberately flew his small airplane<\/a> into the side of a building that housed a regional IRS office in Austin, Texas, just as 200 agency employees were starting their workday. Along with himself, Stack killed an IRS manager and injured 13 others.<\/p>\n

Stack was an anti-tax, anti-government fanatic,\u00a0and chose his target for exclusively political reasons. He left behind a lengthy manifesto cogently setting forth his largely libertarian\u00a0political views (along with, as I wrote at the time<\/a>, some anti-capitalist grievances shared by the left,\u00a0such as \u201crage over bailouts, the suffering of America\u2019s poor, and the pilfering of the middle class by a corrupt economic elite and their government-servants\u201d; Stack\u2019s long\u00a0note\u00a0ended: \u201cthe communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.\u00a0The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed\u201d). About Stack\u2019s\u00a0political grievances, his\u00a0manifesto\u00a0declared that \u201cviolence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"IRS<\/a>The attack had all of the elements of iconic terrorism, a model for how\u00a0it\u2019s most commonly understood:\u00a0down to flying a plane into the side of a building. But Stack was white and non-Muslim. As a result, not only was the word \u201cterrorism\u201d not applied to Stack, but it was explicitly declared inapplicable<\/a> by media outlets and government officials alike.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u2019s\u00a0report<\/a> on the incident stated that while the attack \u201cinitially inspired fears of a terrorist attack\u201d \u2014 before the identity of the pilot was known \u2014 now \u201cin place of the typical portrait of a terrorist driven by ideology, Mr. Stack was described as generally easygoing, a talented amateur musician with marital troubles and a maddening grudge against the tax authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, said the Paper of Record, \u201cofficials ruled out any connection to terrorist groups or causes.\u201d And \u201cfederal officials emphasized the same message, describing the case as a criminal inquiry.\u201d Even when U.S. Muslim groups called<\/a> for\u00a0the incident\u00a0to be declared \u201cterrorism,\u201d the FBI continued to insist it \u201cwas handling the case \u2018as a criminal matter of an assault on a federal officer\u2019 and that it was not being considered as an act of terror.\u201d<\/p>\n

By very stark contrast, consider the October 2014, shooting in Ottawa by a single individual, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, at the Canadian Parliament building.\u00a0As soon as\u00a0it was known that the shooter was a convert to Islam, the incident\u00a0was instantly and universally declared to be \u201cterrorism.\u201d Less than 24 hours afterward, Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared it a terror attack<\/a> and even demanded<\/a> new \u201ccounter-terrorism\u201d powers in its name (which he has now obtained<\/a>). To bolster the label, the government claimed\u00a0Zehaf-Bibeau was on his way to Syria to fight with jihadists, and the media trumpeted this \u201cfact.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"prime<\/a>In his address to the nation the day after the shooting, Harper\u00a0vowed<\/a> to learn more about the \u201cterrorist and any accomplices he may have had\u201d and intoned: \u201cThis is a grim reminder that Canada is not immune to the types of terrorist attacks we have seen elsewhere around the world.\u201d Twitter users around the world en masse<\/em> used the hashtag of solidarity\u00a0reserved (for some reason) only for\u00a0cities attacked by a Muslim (but not cities attacked by their own governments): #OttawaStrong<\/a>. In sum, that this was a \u201cterror attack\u201d was mandated conventional wisdom before anything was known other than the Muslim identity of the perpetrator.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, other than the fact that the perpetrator was Muslim and was aiming his violence at Westerners, almost nothing about this attack had the classic hallmarks of \u201cterrorism.\u201d In the days and weeks that followed, it became clear<\/a> that Zehaf-Bibeau suffered from serious mental illness and \u201cseemed to have become mentally unstable.\u201d He had a history of arrests for petty offenses and had received psychiatric treatment. His friends recall him expressing no real political views but instead claiming he was possessed by the devil.<\/p>\n

The Canadian government was ultimately\u00a0forced to admit<\/a> that their prior media claim about him preparing to go to Syria was totally false, dismissing it as \u201ca mistake.\u201d Now that Canadians know the truth about him \u2014\u00a0rather than the mere fact that he\u2019s Muslim and committed violence \u2014\u00a0a plurality no longer believe<\/a> the \u201cterrorist\u201d label applies, but believe the\u00a0attack was motivated by mental illness. The term \u201cterrorist\u201d got instantly applied by know-nothings for one reason: he was Muslim and had committed violence, and that, in the post-9\/11 West, is more or less the only working definition of the term (in the rare cases when it is applied to non-Muslims these days, it\u2019s typically applied to minorities<\/a> engaged in acts that have no resemblance to what people usually think of when they hear the term).<\/p>\n

That is the crucial backdrop for yesterday\u2019s debate over whether the term \u201cterrorism\u201d applies to the heinous shooting by a white nationalist of nine African-Americans\u00a0praying in a predominantly black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Almost immediately, news reports indicated there was \u201cno sign of terrorism\u201d \u2014 by which they meant: it does not appear that the shooter is Muslim<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Yet other than the perpetrator\u2019s non-Muslim identity, the Charleston attack from the start had the indicia of what is commonly understood to be \u201cterrorism.\u201d Specifically, the suspected shooter was clearly a vehement racist who told witnesses at the church that he was acting out of racial hatred and a desire to force African-Americans \u201cto go.\u201d His violence was the byproduct of and was intended to publicize and forward his warped political agenda, and was clearly designed to terrorize the community he hates.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why so many<\/a> African-American and Muslim commentators and activists insisted<\/a> that the term \u201cterrorist\u201d be applied: because it looked, felt and smelled exactly like other acts that are instantly branded \u201cterrorism\u201d when the perpetrator is Muslim and the victims largely white. It was very hard \u2014 and still is \u2014 to escape the conclusion that the term \u201cterrorism,\u201d at least as it\u2019s predominantly used in the post-9\/11 West, is about the\u00a0identity of those committing the violence and the identity of the\u00a0targets. It manifestly has nothing to do with some\u00a0neutral,\u00a0objective assessment of the\u00a0acts being labelled.<\/p>\n

The point here is not, as some very confused commentators<\/a> suggested, to seek an expansion of the term \u201cterrorism\u201d beyond its current application. As someone who has spent the last decade more or less exclusively devoted to documenting the abuses and manipulations that term enables, the last thing I want is an expansion of its application.<\/p>\n

But what I also don\u2019t want is for non-Muslims to\u00a0rest in\u00a0their privileged nest, satisfied that the term and its accompanying abuses is only for that marginalized group. And what I especially don\u2019t want is to have this glaring, damaging mythology persist that the term \u201cterrorism\u201d is some sort of objectively discernible, consistently applied designation of a particularly hideous kind of violence. I\u2019m eager to have the term recognized for what it is: a completely malleable, manipulated, vapid term of propaganda that has no consistent application whatsoever. Recognition of that reality is vital to draining the term of its potency.<\/p>\n

The examples proving the utter malleability of the term \u201cterrorism\u201d are far too numerous to chronicle here. But over the past decade alone, it\u2019s been used by Western political and media figures to condemn\u00a0Muslims who used\u00a0violence against an invading and occupying<\/a>\u00a0force in Afghanistan, against others who raised funds to help Iraqis<\/a> fight against an invading and occupying military\u00a0in their country, and for others who attack\u00a0soldiers in an army that is fighting many wars<\/a>. In other words, any violence by Muslims against the West is inherently \u201cterrorism,\u201d even if targeted only at soldiers at war and\/or designed to resist invasion and occupation.<\/p>\n

By stark contrast, no violence by the West against Muslims can possibly be \u201cterrorism,\u201d no matter how brutal, inhumane or indiscriminately civilian-killing. The U.S. can call its invasion of Baghdad \u201cShock and Awe\u201d as a classic declaration of terrorism intent<\/a>, or fly killer drones permanently over<\/a>\u00a0terrorized villages and cities, or engage in generation-lasting atrocities in Fallujah<\/a>, or arm and fund Israeli and Saudi destruction of helpless civilian populations, and none of that, of course, can possibly be called \u201cterrorism.\u201d It just has the wrong perpetrators and the wrong victims.<\/p>\n

Then there is all the game-playing the U.S. does with the term right out in the open. Nelson Mandela, now widely regarded as a moral hero, was officially a \u201cterrorist\u201d in U.S. eyes for decades (and the CIA thus helped its allied\u00a0apartheid regime<\/a> capture him). Iraq was on the terrorist list and then off it and then on it based on whatever designation best suited U.S. interests at the moment. The Iranian cult MEK was long decreed a \u201cterror group\u201d until they paid enough influential people in Washington to get off the list<\/a>, coinciding with the U.S. desire to punish Tehran. The Reagan administration armed and funded classic terror groups<\/a> in Latin America while demanding sanctions on the Soviets and Iranians for being state sponsors of terrorism. Whatever this is, it is not the work of a term that has a consistent, objective meaning.<\/p>\n

Ample scholarship proves<\/a> that the term \u201cterrorism\u201d is empty, definition-free and invariably\u00a0manipulated. Harvard\u2019s Lisa Stampnitzky has documented \u201cthe inability of researchers to\u00a0establish a suitable definition of the concept of \u2018terrorism\u2019 itself.\u201d The concept of \u201cterrorism\u201d is fundamentally plagued by\u00a0ideological agendas and self-interested manipulation, as Professor\u00a0Richard Jackson\u00a0at the the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies in New Zealand has explained: \u201cmost of what is accepted as well-founded \u2018knowledge\u2019 in terrorism studies is,\u00a0in fact,\u00a0highly debatable and unstable\u201d and is \u201cbiased towards Western state priorities<\/strong>.\u201d Remi Brulin is a scholar who specializes in the discourse of \u201cterrorism\u201d and has long documented<\/a> that, from the start, it was a highly manipulated term of propaganda more than it was a term of fixed meaning \u2014 largely intended to justify violence by the West and Israel while delegitimizing the violence of its enemies.<\/p>\n

What is most amazing about all of this is that \u201cterrorism\u201d \u2014 a term that is so easily and frequently manipulated and devoid of fixed meaning \u2014 has now become central to our political culture and legal framework, a staple of how we are taught to think about the world. It is constantly invoked, as though it is some sort of term of scientific precision, to justify an endless array of radical policies and powers. Everything from the attack on Iraq to torture to endless drone killings to mass surveillance and beyond are justified in its name.<\/p>\n

In fact, it is, as I have often argued<\/a>, a term that justifies everything yet means nothing<\/em>. Perhaps the only way people will start to see that, or at least be bothered by it, is if it becomes clear that not just\u00a0marginalized minority groups but also their own group can be swept up by its elasticity and meaninglessness. There is ample resistance to that, which is why repulsive violence committed by white non-Muslims such as yesterday\u2019s church massacre is so rarely described by the term. But that\u2019s all the more reason to insist on something resembling fair and consistent application.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Photos: Dylann Roof: Charleston County Sheriff\u2019s Office via Getty Images; IRS building:\u00a0Tony Gutierrez\/AP; Harper: Adrian Wyld\/AP Photo\/The Canadian Press <\/em><\/p>\n

Email the author: glenn.greenwald@theintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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

Terrorism: a term that justifies everything yet means nothing \u2014 other than \u201cviolence we want to delegitimize.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59950","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=59950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59950\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}