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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIf the Las Vegas Killers Were Muslims, We'd Call Them Terrorists
If a 22-year-old Muslim man stabbed his roommates to death in their sleep, embarked on a killing spree, and claimed in written and video manifestos that he acted to teach hated women a lesson, there's little doubt that many would label him a terrorist. That label was scarcely appended to the Santa Barbara killer after his murders.
And if a Muslim couple stormed into a fast-food restaurant armed with a duffel bag full of military gear, shouted, "This is the beginning of the revolution!" and pinned a flag associated with their political movement to the dead bodies of the police officers they executed at point-blank rangethen killed another innocent person and carried out a suicide pact rather than being taken alivethere is no doubt that many media outlets would refer to the premeditated attack as an act of terrorism. With a few exceptions, that's not how this week's news from Las Vegas played out.
When mass killers are native-born whites, their motivations are treated like a mystery to unraveled rather than a foregone conclusion. And that is as it ought to be. Hesitating to dub the Santa Barbara and Las Vegas murder sprees "terrorist attacks" is likely the right call. The label casts more heat than light on breaking-news events. Americans typically respond more soberly and rationally to mass killings than to "terrorist attacks." And while both sprees obviously targeted civilians, the varying degrees to which they sought to influence politics is unclear.
That said, the pervasive double-standard that prevails is nevertheless objectionable. As Glenn Greenwald once observed, "terrorism" is "simultaneously the single most meaningless and most manipulated word in the American political lexicon. The term now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity."
And if a Muslim couple stormed into a fast-food restaurant armed with a duffel bag full of military gear, shouted, "This is the beginning of the revolution!" and pinned a flag associated with their political movement to the dead bodies of the police officers they executed at point-blank rangethen killed another innocent person and carried out a suicide pact rather than being taken alivethere is no doubt that many media outlets would refer to the premeditated attack as an act of terrorism. With a few exceptions, that's not how this week's news from Las Vegas played out.
When mass killers are native-born whites, their motivations are treated like a mystery to unraveled rather than a foregone conclusion. And that is as it ought to be. Hesitating to dub the Santa Barbara and Las Vegas murder sprees "terrorist attacks" is likely the right call. The label casts more heat than light on breaking-news events. Americans typically respond more soberly and rationally to mass killings than to "terrorist attacks." And while both sprees obviously targeted civilians, the varying degrees to which they sought to influence politics is unclear.
That said, the pervasive double-standard that prevails is nevertheless objectionable. As Glenn Greenwald once observed, "terrorism" is "simultaneously the single most meaningless and most manipulated word in the American political lexicon. The term now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity."
THE REST:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/if-these-killers-were-muslims-wed-call-them-terrorists/372472/
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If the Las Vegas Killers Were Muslims, We'd Call Them Terrorists (Original Post)
Triana
Jun 2014
OP
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)1. If the Las Vegas killers were liberals, they'd be called terrorists.
They explicitly sought to deliver a political message. Deranged, of course, but still clearly swimming in the familiar soup of paranoid, gun-crazy, rightwing hatred peddled specifically by the likes of Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, and Sovereign Citizens' movements, AND the Tea Party. The wanted to "die for liberty."
They delivered the Tea Party's favored FLAG for Pete's sake.
And that has barely been addressed outside of political blogs. No one wants to point at the Tea Party flag and the NRA stance on guns and Beck and Jones' claims about the "tyranny" of the government and admit the obvious connection.
Had an Occupy kid or an anarchist delivered a lefty manifesto and left some progressive symbol on the bodies of his murder victims, all we'd ever hear, FOREVER, would be how liberal groups are "just as dangerous." That's all it would take.
But instead, here comes Alex Jones to claim it was yet another "false flag" operation fiendishly designed to make rightwing gun fanatics paranoid about government look like ... rightwing gun fanatics paranoid about the government. It's okay because no one listens to him ... except for the huge numbers of people who apparently listen to him.
It would all be funny if the violence wasn't real. We could laugh at the gullible loons loading their guns in fear of FEMA deathcamps and Obamacare deathpanels and Mooslams and whatever else is in the wingut stew this week.
But it is real. It just doesn't count, apparently, because conservatism is the default American cultural position and isn't considered scary and offensive like long-haired kids with protest signs, or, you know, taxes.
IronLionZion
(45,442 posts)3. Hell even if some Muslims didn't do any of those things
many on the right would still call them terrorists. Too many innocent folks were shot after 9/11 just for wearing a Sikh turban, for example.