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So, let's talk about [Terrorism]
The Ender
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
15 years ago, hijackers crashed passenger jets into the World Trade Center towers & Pentagon. A 4th plane was also aimed at an unknown target in Pennsylvania (most reasonable guesses are that it was the White House), but the passengers of that plane became aware of their likely fate and saw to it that the vehicle was crashed into an empty field.
9/11 rewrote the global paradigm. The old Cold War rivalries were forgotten almost overnight, and the mechanisms that created that old Red vs Blue grudge were re-purposed into creating the War On Terror. We lied to ourselves that the terrorists wouldn't change who we were, and then immediately changed who we were.
In something of a cruel twist of fate, 11/9 of this year saw a xenophobic presidential campaign crowned champion of the free world; adjacent to that has been the ongoing crisis of Brexit, with plain overlap in terms of rhetoric & key political players. There are many converging factors that have led to the political conditions enjoyed by President-elect Trump & Nigel Farage, but one key factor that I haven't heard much discussion about - either on the campaign trail or in the post-mortem period - is terrorism. There has been talk of it, of course, but talk almost entirely dominated by one side; perhaps because it is a difficult topic to discuss with nuance, and/or perhaps because it feels unethical to bring recent tragedies into politically charged conversations.
We have talked about modern Salafi terrorism at length this past year on these forums, with what I thought was fairly reasonable (...for the most part), sensitive & level headed discussion often backed by both expert sources & stories by people who have lived through / are still living through the turbulence of sectarian wars in the Persian Gulf. Scott Atran has been my own favorite source on this topic; my favorite educational experience stemming from the discussions on these forums was reading this article, authored by a gay man struggling to make sense of his world & identity in a political climate that seeks to use stories like his to push for foreign policy directives.
But I have a feeling that those conversations never left places like this discussion board. Certainly I don't recall seeing anything like them during the breathless 24 hour election coverage on any news outlet, or from the competing political camps who mostly debated (perhaps quite sensibly) on domestic issues related to the economy. At best we heard some fierce rejections of proposed bans on Muslim immigration within the context of how such bans are an affront to multiculturalism... which is fine, but does not directly address the elephant in the room, nor does it explicitly reject the association of Islam with modern terrorism.
We need to export these conversations. All polling very strongly suggests that a fundamental part of the wins currently enjoyed by ideological reactionaries is due to wins they are scoring over the narrative battle regarding terrorism. This is an absolute disgrace and must change.
I would like to talk about how to make this export possible; how to get people engaged on this topic in a constructive way. We can also have more discussion about the topic itself if so desired (although, for the love of God, if we could please avoid having another pages long discussion about the sometimes nebulous definition of 'terrorist' that would be nice! We have thoroughly beaten that dead horse many times already!), but my personal aim here is to have a talk about how to talk about terrorism, because clearly we have a lot of work to do on that front.
Experience & academic study has taught me that citing expert sources & statistics are, roughly, the worst thing ever to use when attempting to export constructive information / dialogue, because humans brains are poorly built. So... most of the tools I rely on are out the window here. How can we build an understanding of the separate worlds that Islam & terrorism inhabit, about where those worlds intersect, about the fundamental goals of groups like ISIL and how things like the 'War On Terror' are not helpful, etc, without falling back on the numbers & professional publications which have proven to be ineffectual communication tools?
9/11 rewrote the global paradigm. The old Cold War rivalries were forgotten almost overnight, and the mechanisms that created that old Red vs Blue grudge were re-purposed into creating the War On Terror. We lied to ourselves that the terrorists wouldn't change who we were, and then immediately changed who we were.
In something of a cruel twist of fate, 11/9 of this year saw a xenophobic presidential campaign crowned champion of the free world; adjacent to that has been the ongoing crisis of Brexit, with plain overlap in terms of rhetoric & key political players. There are many converging factors that have led to the political conditions enjoyed by President-elect Trump & Nigel Farage, but one key factor that I haven't heard much discussion about - either on the campaign trail or in the post-mortem period - is terrorism. There has been talk of it, of course, but talk almost entirely dominated by one side; perhaps because it is a difficult topic to discuss with nuance, and/or perhaps because it feels unethical to bring recent tragedies into politically charged conversations.
We have talked about modern Salafi terrorism at length this past year on these forums, with what I thought was fairly reasonable (...for the most part), sensitive & level headed discussion often backed by both expert sources & stories by people who have lived through / are still living through the turbulence of sectarian wars in the Persian Gulf. Scott Atran has been my own favorite source on this topic; my favorite educational experience stemming from the discussions on these forums was reading this article, authored by a gay man struggling to make sense of his world & identity in a political climate that seeks to use stories like his to push for foreign policy directives.
But I have a feeling that those conversations never left places like this discussion board. Certainly I don't recall seeing anything like them during the breathless 24 hour election coverage on any news outlet, or from the competing political camps who mostly debated (perhaps quite sensibly) on domestic issues related to the economy. At best we heard some fierce rejections of proposed bans on Muslim immigration within the context of how such bans are an affront to multiculturalism... which is fine, but does not directly address the elephant in the room, nor does it explicitly reject the association of Islam with modern terrorism.
We need to export these conversations. All polling very strongly suggests that a fundamental part of the wins currently enjoyed by ideological reactionaries is due to wins they are scoring over the narrative battle regarding terrorism. This is an absolute disgrace and must change.
I would like to talk about how to make this export possible; how to get people engaged on this topic in a constructive way. We can also have more discussion about the topic itself if so desired (although, for the love of God, if we could please avoid having another pages long discussion about the sometimes nebulous definition of 'terrorist' that would be nice! We have thoroughly beaten that dead horse many times already!), but my personal aim here is to have a talk about how to talk about terrorism, because clearly we have a lot of work to do on that front.
Experience & academic study has taught me that citing expert sources & statistics are, roughly, the worst thing ever to use when attempting to export constructive information / dialogue, because humans brains are poorly built. So... most of the tools I rely on are out the window here. How can we build an understanding of the separate worlds that Islam & terrorism inhabit, about where those worlds intersect, about the fundamental goals of groups like ISIL and how things like the 'War On Terror' are not helpful, etc, without falling back on the numbers & professional publications which have proven to be ineffectual communication tools?
With Love and Courage
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For most people that don't have an academic interest in terrorism, this is going to be difficult. The majority of people are going to see Islam and terrorism as linked or not linked, depending on how they lean, without any deeper understanding.
And any nuanced and researched explanation of Islamism and Islamist terrorism is probably going to reinforce the idea that they are linked edit: when you explain to them without showing your work. And this will come from the key role Islam and Qutbism play in the ideology of militant Islamist groups.
There are terrorists of all religious persuasions yes, but specifically with Islamist groups an important part of their ideology is the idea of bringing the world to the light that is Islam. That doesn't mean infiltrating the US government and attempting to enact Sharia law. In fact the ideological base for the militant Islamist groups that would come from Qutb (and be built upon by others) was more a rejection of Western interference in the affairs of Muslim states and the secularization of Muslim states. In Qutb's view the fight was eliminating the Western secular political thought and jahiliyyah (ignorance of the divine) from Muslim governance, and it was the responsibility of the ummah as a whole to conduct jihad to eliminate jahiliyyah and enact the Islamic "manifest destiny". He also had a lot of criticisms of the US from his stay here, but chief among them the idea of religion solely as a component of identity. Of course his writings were controversial at the time. Some in the Brotherhood were more militant after the round of arrests by Nasser's government and some were still concentrating on (relatively) peaceful political change.
But to anyone without a deeper interest this sounds like Islam = Terrorism.
I honestly don't know how you "export" a more enlightened discussion of terrorism. Even if you get the average white middle class midwesterner to acknowledge the fact "not all Muslims are terrorists", the immediate response is going to be "ok but there's enough of them that we can't take the risk".
How do you argue rationally with that kind of attitude?
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Well, I figured I'd give asking a shot anyway.
And, well... I don't know. Thus the question. If nobody knows, then we need to figure it out, because this is a real problem that is only likely to get worse if that gap isn't bridged.
- It is interesting to me that the geographic areas of the U.S. that appear to harbor the most resentment over the attacks are not what you would intuitively expect. NYC & Washington D.C., the places most directly targeted, are some of the places you find the greatest resistance to a policy of vengeance. Meanwhile, more rural places that hold coastal cities in contempt - a theme we've explored this whole election cycle - seem to also harbor the strongest resentment about the attacks, which targeted places they otherwise claim to hate & have probably never even seen. This is kind of weird! I wonder why this is?
- There was something of an illusionist trick involved in the attacks; the scale of the spectacle invokes a want for an actor of equal scale. Bin Laden's central organization probably never encompassed more than 30~ participants at its peak. That desire for an actor of equal magnitude and not finding a real one cut in a lot of different directions; the endearing 9/11 Truth mythos, the War On Terror, the invasion of Iraq and the association with an entire religious identity with terrorist actions. Because we couldn't accept that one small group of terrible people could do something so colossally awful.
Several years of official propaganda telling every small town yokel that they could be a target so "if you see something say something", hasn't helped matters.
Add in the fact that rural or suburban whites seem to think any shift in demographics is an existential threat.
It's not terribly surprising that we still have the problem of simultaneously underestimating the abilities of overseas terrorist groups while overestimating the actual level of threat they pose.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I recall seeing a graph somewhere of world-wide terror attacks over the last 40 years and Europe and the former Soviet Union states were an absolute shit show. It was reflected in popular action movies of the time. When the Munich Olympics happened, it all sort of changed. The drama wasn't in the cold-war anymore. I remember seeing True Lies and thinking "is anyone else seeing this shit?" even as a 12 year old it seemed excessive. It was hailed as a return to "real action movies" for Arnold and it was a full 8 or so years before 9/11.
Christian Terrorism specifically in the US seems to be built around the Christian Identity movement. And it seems very much "defensive" in the vein of, for example, Qutb's earlier thoughts on bringing the governments of already existing Moslem nations to the light of Islamic governance.
As in their driving goal is to reestablish white (specifically white anglo-saxon protestant) dominance politically and socially where it historically existed. There is overlap between Christian Identity folks and White Supremacists, but when attributing motivation you have to assume until you know otherwise that their motivation is what they say it is.
If Dylan Roof walks into a black church with the intent of starting a race war because of his white supremacist beliefs (and no mention of Christian Identity anything), it's not really accurate to say he was a "Christian Terrorist" in the same way it would be disingenuous to label a PKK member an "Islamic Terrorist" even if they are Moslem. That doesn't mean it isn't terrorism (and I've discussed IRL and argued that it does fit within the framework of repressive terrorism), but that labeling something a certain way to make a political point doesn't help when discussing it.
I'm looking through some sources now, and I'll be making a comparison for my own interest, but I can post it here if anyone is interested.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Agreed. But the goal is different in a fundamental way from Islamist terrorists. They are attempting to stop what they believe to be an evil act. Islamist terrorists seek to eliminate the barriers of jahiliyyah (ignorance of the divinity of Islam, essentially spreading Islamic governance).
That doesn't make them not terrorists, but it does mean people will have a different response to their goals. Because most people don't work at abortion clinics or are doctors who perform abortions. But most people in the US do fall into the group that is distinctly living in jahiliyyah. When a Christian terrorist who bombs abortion clinics says "I want you to stop performing abortions" they think "I'm already not performing abortions" if they think anything beyond that the act is simply reprehensible and we probably shouldn't legalize bombings or murders. When Abu Bakr al Baghdadi (not that he's specifically said this quote, or that he's the first militant Islamist to believe in the "manifest destiny" of Islam) says "We must bring Islamic governance to those who aren't living in Islamic governance" they think "wait, I'm not living under Islamic governance!", and you suddenly have Americans on the look out for "Sharia Law Zones" and talking about CAIR conspiracy theories.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/tenn-man-plotted-ny-mosque-attack-won-face-terror-charges-article-1.2971801?utm_content=bufferbd292&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=NYDailyNewsTw
(Guilty in everything else, at least)
Also in South Carolina, BTW
These guys getting these connections & hooking-up with each other in prisons is a thing. Most of America's white supremacist terrorists network from prison and/or become part of a network while there.
Being thrown at us brown people too.
I think terrorist is fast becoming the modern communist or nazi.
a conveniently scary label to throw on people who are a hindrance to your obviously terrible plans (cause no decent human beings going to call peaceful protestors god damn terrorists), or to use as a last ditch verbal assault when you've irrecoverably lost a argument via having all your points systematically debunked with verifiable facts.
Not sure what the forums protocol is on this sort of situation.
(Actually, I guess it was started earlier, but was last active more recently. :eh: )
Unfortunately I haven't been able to do any large updates to the OP because I'm getting ready for grad school. I'll have more time to write on it this summer, but I'll try to throw some smaller updates into the thread.