I find it totally unacceptable the way some Democrats, liberal columnists, new media, and leftwing bloggers are screaming about "violent political movements in America" and branding the Tea Party movement as "a terrorist movement." (I'm alarmed to see there are already um...six...tacks in the "interactive map of U.S. political violence". These people should study the rest of the world the way I do for a living.)
The New York Times has led the pack on the incitement, with Frank Rich ranting about "The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged" -- the most recommended article on the times currently -- invoking both the Nazis and Reagan's "Axis of Evil" with the use of the word "Axis". There's been scarifying article after scarifying article in the Times and other papers where hundreds of enraged and hysterical comments have been allowed to collect in outrageous indignation when other articles don't even get comments opened -- all to portray the conservative movements and any criticism or opposition to Obama in the worst possible light as really scary stuff. I was glad to finally find some pushback on Rich from two conservative lawyers on Powerline -- you might not agree with their politics, but you can't argue that their opposition to Rich's screed is reasoned and fact-based -- just the sort of thing that should have appeared in the Times in the first place.
But that's sedate compared to Twitter and the blogosphere where you get people branding all teabaggers, as they call them to give them a sexually perjorative tag (say, that Wikipedia page on that term is NSFW!) as terrorists, and not even grasping the difference between terrorism and political violence, some of which can be orchestrated, and some of which is random.
I was horrified to hear that Louise Slaughter's window got a rock thrown through it and she had nasty threatening phone calls. She's a Democrat from New York State, and represents upstate, and as it happened by coincidence, years ago I was in elementary school with one of her daughters. So the thought of a PTA mom and neighbour getting a rock thrown at her for doing her job really hits home. I share some, but not all of her political viewpoints and would likely vote for her if I still lived in that area. I am not in the Republican Party, not in the Tea Bag movement, and voted for Obama, and I think it's right and proper for people who *are* leaders of the conservative movements and formal Republic party to condemn the violence. And they have done so -- although it's never enough for Huffpo.
But wait a minute. What's going on now is that there is a tidal wave of hysteria claiming that "those losers who had to turn to guns and religion due to their loser status" (remember when Obama said that?) are all that make up the Teabaggers, and that they are a violent, hate-inciting movement that is responsible for all these acts and approves them. Yet there is hardly any evidence for that, and making the claim, from the isolated liberal sanctuaries of New York and San Francisco, is to be utterly out of touch with America. TONS of people are not happy with the health care bill passing. LOADS of people who voted for Obama are *angry*. LOTS of people turned tea-bag in Massachusetts enough to vote in a Republican to replace the iconic liberal Ted Kennedy. You can't say all those soccer moms and insurance salesmen dads are throwing rocks in windows or even golf-clapping those who are.
The problem with the left is that they got all hysterical even at some people raising their voices at townhall meetings -- they had never seen *their own tactics used on themselves* (the famous "Saul Alinsky" tactics).
Did you know there was a member of congress who had a rifle shot through his office window this week? He is Republican, and also happens to be Jewish. Did you read about that in your twitter feed? Eric Cantor is absolutely right in calling on Democrats to stop fanning the flames, because they only incite more hatred. Naturally the Daily Kos is trying to spin this away now. So, Daily Kos has proof that every incident raised by the Democrats isn't random, either?
I find in Second Life, on Twitter, on Facebook, there's also a lot of muddle and just outright stupidity about all this because people just don't have inquisitive minds, unless of course it's their relentless pursuit of the "gotcha" and the "exposure of hyprokisy" -- which is about all that passes for debate with most SL types. Cyndy Ecksol, for example, questions my questioning of the hysteria, which I see being whipped up by liberal tech journo Mitch Wagner. She confronts me and cites cases of rocks through windows. Isn't that terrorism?
Of course not. Do people really have that poor a grip on facts and reality? Terrorism is violence aimed for political (or one can argue, social or religious) reasons that directly target civilians *not* related to the terrorist's actual beef. For example, let's say he's angry at the government of Israel. He targets not only Israeli civilians, who may or may not agree with their government, but also people in the U.S., who may or may not agree with U.S. foreign policy. That's what terrorism *is* -- random but direct murder or mayhem designed to instill fear in people so that they will do anything to stop it -- so that they become a leverage, an instrument of pressure on the government that has the policy the terrorist doesn't like. A terrorist just permits violence for violence's sake to sow confusion and chaos, "the propaganda of the deed".
A rock-thrower who lobs a rock into a congress person's office is targeting the actual official he has a beef with. He's not blowing up a bomb or targeting random civilians.
We've had some very serious post-911 terrorist acts that the news media has had a real hard time calling a terrorist act, suffused as it is with a kind of unwillingness to be seen as politically incorrect and suspecting of any Muslims, even though there are a minority of radical Muslims who in fact do plan and execute violent acts. They seem unable to separate the need for tolerance of all Muslims and civil rights for all with also a robust condemnation of violent Muslims when they do in fact commit violence. So you get a case like Fort Hood, planned, executed, deliberate terrorism against a military building with soldiers in it plotted for maximum deaths, and you get too many people saying that this is a psychiatric and not an international terrorism case.
You get people who worked with the perpetrator who heard and saw his violent thoughts and plan, but were *afraid* of saying anything or reporting it, because *they could lose their jobs due to charges of bias and discrimination*. Government may be slow, but once the federal bureaucracy decides they will do something like enforce anti-discrimination laws, boy, they are thorough. So in this case, the inability of people to feel enough freedom to report what was actually a violent and radical Muslim really planning terrorism led *directly* to the deaths of many people. That's just AWFUL.
And yet you still find people endlessly debating whether this was an isolated crazy or part of some franchise of terrorism with an international angle. The shoe bomber, the pants bomber, they come and go, and people have trouble connecting these dots, shirking from the fact that some of these incidents connect to each other and to a larger movement of incitement worldwide. People argue whether they are really terrorists, or just criminals with a lousy idea -- and yet when it comes to some reactionary who has become unhinged by the Obama revolution throwing a rock in a window after hours -- suddenly, they believe it's "terrorism".
Oh, but what about the murder of abortion doctors? someone is always quick to say (I've heard this argument used about 10 time in the last week on various forums). I'm amazed at how often this case is trotted out even by those apologizing for the radical Muslims (as if abortion doctors would get very far in their own conservative states!)
There have been four doctors in the U.S. murdered by anti-abortion crazies in the last 17 years, and you can read the following statistics on Wikipedia: According to statistics gathered by the National Abortion Federation (NAF), an organization of abortion providers, since 1977 in the United States and Canada, there have been 17 attempted murders, 383 death threats, 153 incidents of assault or battery, and 3 kidnappings committed against abortion providers. Contrast that with Russia, where just in one category -- migrant laborers from the Caucasus and Central Asia -- there have been about 64 people murdered by members of various skinhead, extremist, etc. groups or individual haters -- not to mention the 52 journalists killed in Russia for their work -- and the dozens of human rights activists. The numbers for situations like this in countries from Columbia or China will simply put the American numbers into perspective: this is a democratic country under the rule of law in which political rivalries generally take place in institutions of government and civil society. You may not appreciate it; I do.
All serious, but let's look again at what excites people the most, and makes them holler on forums that there is a "right wing death squads" in America: four murders. That is not to say, like Stalin, that one person's death is a tragedy, but many people's death is a statistic.
It is merely to *put into perspective what terrorism is and what it means*. For example, in Iraq, numerous incidents occur with 25, 50, 100 people bombed to death in marketplaces and other public spots by terrorists. See the difference? Big difference! 4,644 people were killed mainly by terrorists in Iraq in 2009. Did you hear about them, or did you hear way, way more about the roughly 1,000 killed in Gaza, not all of whom were civilians? Indignation is awfully selective on the left.
You want to know what real political violence and terrorism both are, where terrorists and violent movement both wreck havoc, sparking more violence from the communities they target, so that communal violence and state police violence? It's not Kent State. It's not a rock in a congressman's window in New York State. It's Nigeria, where hundreds and hundreds have been slaughtered among both Christians and Muslims, and with moderate Muslim clerics calling for help from people abroad to stop the violence of radicals in their midst, and nobody paying much attention to them, their eyes riveted to Gaza or some other drama that fits their prejudices better.
America is a country with pretty violent politics at times, even if you never hear about any congressmen slapping or shooting each other. In my lifetime, one president has been assassinated likely for political reasons, although people still argue to this day about it; another was shot and wounded by a crazy. A number of other political figures have been assassinated. Of course, this isn't Iraq, Nigeria, Sri Lanka. But you would never know, from reading the hysterics on Twitter. A country with an open and free press and human rights lawyers can afford to obsess about four people killed; a country with a closed press and dead human rights lawyers is different -- and you don't hear about it.
The rush to judgement and belief that there is this evil movement out there that will go to any lengths of course has a mirror image on the right. While the left frets that 1/3 of Republicans believe Obama doesn't have a valid American birth certificate (the "birthers"), the right points out that 1/3 of Democrats believe 9/11 was an inside job by Bush (the "truthers"). Both draw inspiration historically form the "Know-Nothing" movement that could turn pro- or anti- immigration as it wended its populist way through the states.
I find on the right, there is more of a recognition -- a resignation -- that there is a left, and that it will exist, and will always have a liberal establishment in think-tanks, universities, schools, public service, unions, and will always rule the media, new or old. People see the task as removing leftists from *power* or *office* or *influence* but not from existence. But on the left, I find much more a tendency to want to stamp out and eradicate and delegitimize completely the right. To have it become extinct, to disappear. To imagine, as even the reputable Nicholas Christoff has implied, that it is a brain or evolutionary problem. There isn't a recognition that if someone is a Bible-toting, SUV driving shot-gun-owning believer in creation, they don't need to die, they need to be compromised with.
You can spare writing rabid comments here because the anonymous "Johnny B" of Boston has already said it all for you in comments to this NYT blog -- it's so typical of the rabid, uneducated rants that appear in the comments even of the Times that I would hope that I don't have to explicate it -- here's a guy who would deport a legal resident and strip him of his property, communist-like, just to win his political fights, which he imagines occur because of media bias:
What hypocrisy! Sooner or later, I believe the very worse case, nightmare scenario is going to happen in our country because of this out of control public hatred and scorn the right holds for our government. And the blame will lie squarely with the GOP and the mainstream media. The GOP because it is actively promoting violent mob behavior that borders on domestic terrorism, as witnessed by last week's events in Washington and the window smashing rage that it manufactured. The GOP because its leaders like Sarah Palin promotes violent electioneering tactics (via violent terroristic language) to achieve change she wants. And the GOP for cynically splintering off the most violent and unstable part of its base and presenting it to the nation as a grassroots (sic) movement (Tea Baggers aka former Wallace DIxiecrats, KKK, Birchers, Moral majority religious outlyers, survivalist militias, conspiracy theorists at al). These are the same people who were yelling "kill Obama" and Slap the "B word" in reference to Hillary Clinton during the GOP primaries. This is not a movement! It is the angry, hatred filled mob at the center of the GOP, that has always blocked the path to positive change and a better society. The GOP, for cynically hiding its wholly owned, hateful, partisan propaganda machine (Fox News) behind the mantra of Freedom of the Press. And for allowing a foreigner, (Rupert Murdoch) to infiltrate our system, so as to blatantly undermine our Government. In my personal view, Murdoch's citizenship should be revoked. He should be forcibly deported back to Australia, from whence he came. And all of his USA press certifications, USA based media properties should be dissolved, dismantled and redistributed to honest news organizations. When you have a major political party actively promoting and protecting fringe groups within its base, that advocate violent overthrow of our elected government or secession, a very bad end game is not very far behind.
The mainstream press is also a major enabler of this potential disaster in waiting. They absolutely refuse to report truth about the nature and evolution of this emerging domestic terrorism threat. This threat is much more dangerous than Al Qaeda because it is embedded within the second largest political Party in the Republic. Just imagine the nuclear trigger in the hands of people like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, G. Gordon Liddy, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Tancredo and the host of other hate merchants and you get the picture. These are the very people who are sending coded messages daily along with FoxNews to a demented mob of proxies to "Kill Obama!Care, Kill Pelosi!Care, Kill Stupak!the baby killer, Smash Democrat's Windows at home and in their offices!, bring firearms openly to Democratic events, Spit on Democrats!, Disrespect Democrats!, Ignore laws sponsored by Democrats!, break in Democrat's offices and steal phone and other messages!".
Is Johnny retarded? Can he grasp the difference between, oh, Hamas, or the Sudanese government, or Kadyrov in Chechnya, or Akhmadinajad wishing to remove Israel from the map, and...Sarah Palin? Can he even see that the nuclear button now isn't in Palin's hand, it's in Barack's? Shouldn't he be worried about "bombing Iran"?!
Can he recall the hackers that *hacked into Sarah Palin's email?" Where was his outrage for such acts *then*?
Can he detect any differences between the KKK, random survival nutters, and the Tea Party movement? And how could he, when Wikipedia has gone into fearful lockdown because of disagreements among their lefty editors of how critical to be about this movement? You may not care for Newt Gingrich, but he's a speaker at Tea Party events and you can't call him a terrorist. You may not like the ideas of this young girl on Twitter named Liberty Belle who is an ordinary worker in a midwestern state who simply got tired of feeling "disintermediated" by the leftist media and political machine and began organizing protests. But you can hardly call her a terrorist.
Here's a guy who likely blame Israel for all problems in the Middle East and would love for Obama to suspend aid to Israel, and thinks...Sarah Palin with a nuclear button is scary and somehow fails to find the Iranian president a problem. What can you do with freaks like this?!
I'll tell you what the "mainstream press" is not covering: the authenticity of this movement and the resonance it has from people who in no way use or condone violence, even if they are angry, and frankly are going to the ballot box, not the bullet box, to express their unhappiness with Democrats in their cities and states and guess what -- that's why the left is trying so mightily to discredit them.
I saw one twit today reference a blog where there were "gun sights" on a map that referred to elections being watched by Palin and supporters. This gun-sight graphic was suddenly "proof" that the right is "inciting violence". Use of the term "reloaded" was also suddenly supposedly a nod and wink from Palin to shoot people (!). The "fire Nancy Pelosi" page with fire flame is suddenly "a violent movement inciting political violence". A lot of hysterical, self-indulgent infantile children. It really makes me angry, because I know what *real* political violence is: my friends being shot dead in Russia for testifying against fascist killers in court or taking up the cases of human rights victims. I know what *real* terrorism is: my fellow parishioners blown up to smithereens by fanatical Islamists. Hello!
Are these bloggers on tablets?! When Obama was targeted over his association with William Ayers, he never did the right thing and condemned the violent group and violence committed by William Ayers -- instead, he and his supporters reiterated that Obama was too young to have been significantly influenced by this homegrown American terrorist (which *is* what you call people who plot to blow up people and kill policemen) and that he wasn't any close associate but merely crossed paths with him through education ties. When Holder backed up the release of the Black Panther defendants, the left had nothing to say.
Funny how a lone disgruntled tax nutter who flew a suicide mission into the IRS building is a harbinger of a mass violent movement of Teabaggers, yet the killer in Fort Hood, who planned to kill multiple people, was associated with radical religious figures and who talked about the need to revenge U.S. military action in Muslim countries is just a one-off isolated crazy...
This big, um, movement of support of the IRS plane guy, who, I'm surprised to learn (because I read mainly liberal media!) actually cited the Communist Manifesto in his death letter, is a...Facebook group founded by a high-school kid who works in a deli.
Says Powerline, noting Frank Rich's incitement:
But these leaders do have a consistent ideology, and that ideology plays to the lock-and-load nutcases out there, not just to the peaceable (if riled up) populist conservatives also attracted to Tea Partyism.
This is the kind of slur you can get away with if you're only accountable to editors at the New York Times who share your paranoid liberal ideology. I dislike Ron Paul and am not a fan of Glenn Beck, but how do their ideas "play to the lock-and-load nutcases out there"? If either of these gentlemen has done something to encourage violence, as Rich unambiguously implies, you might think that he would tell us what it is.
Indeed.
So basically, we shouldn't worry about it until it gets far out of hand? heh.
I think the fact that people think bringing guns to political rallies to intimidate the people they disagree with is not somthing that should simply be ignored, until after the first massacre.
You see that in news stories all the time, "why didn't anyone see the signs, and step in before this tragedy occured?" Well, I guess you're damned if you do and if you don't.
There is just no valid reason to bring guns to an idealogical debate, period. If you can't win your debate with words, bringing a gun isn't doing you any favors.
Once one side starts raising the stakes like that, if it's not stopped, then it's incumbent upon the other side to raise up too. And when both sides start waving guns around, well, it's no longer a civil debate, it's the makings of another civil war.
Posted by: Darien Caldwell | March 25, 2010 at 07:18 PM
the "press" your assailing-- they are what they eat.
the "reality of virtuality" - the illusion of the singularity by many in a world that still has many.:)
"Media Induced Psychosis" MIPS
its now in the blood of those plugged in for 40 years..
Is it any surprise that Sarah Palin had the JOB of VP candidate Chosen FOR her, and Reality TV host- the choice she made.
She was a communications major in the 80s..;)
What will all those GAME DESIGN majors in 2010 choose do at 40?
scary eh?
Posted by: cube inada | March 25, 2010 at 08:01 PM
No. We should look equally at the left as well as the right, for starters, dear.
I don't see anybody putting in a pushpin for Mumia? For the Black Panthers let out? For any number of violent, antisemitic attacks on Jews?
Did you know that there are more hate crimes committed against Jews than Muslims in the United States, according to FBI statistics. Startling, eh? Doesn't work like you think.
I'm use to "seeing signs". There were all those black churches burned down, and people constantly saying this was a racist right-wing plot. Turned out not to be.
There was that federal worker who was hung and people said it was inbred southerners lynching a G-man -- but it was the guy himself staging a suicide.
Er, could you please show me a debate where someone brought a gun? Shooting a gun by a window isn't bringing a gun to a debate. If someone *has* brought a gun, can you show me where it has been used to kill some politician?
You're crazed, like a lot of people on the left, and that fans the flames, as Eric Cantor rightly said. Goo for him.
It's incumbent on the left to stop being some infantile childish assholes. Their president is in power. They need to focus on promoting his agenda peacefully instead of continuing to win the election.
Civil war! Gosh, honestly. You are not credible. And we'll be seeing 8 more years of Bush-like stuff soon enough because of your idiocy.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | March 25, 2010 at 08:02 PM
"yet the killer in Fort Hood, who planned to kill multiple people"
Let's not hold back, shall we:
A fat radical Palestinian who was repeatedly rated as unqualified to remain in the armed forces or practice medicine.
I'm surprised that Obama hasn't pardoned him and replaced George Mitchell with him.
-ls/cm
Posted by: Crap Mariner | March 25, 2010 at 08:22 PM
I've started playing a game with myself - can I recognize if a post is by cube before I read the poster's name? So far I'm 10 for 10 :->
Also Prok, I disagree with your definition of terrorism, in that random civilians need to be the target. Any attempt at intimidation for political means is, essentially, terrorism. Beyond that, we're debating details.
And finally, please don't delete my post. I've noticed a couple in the past have gone missing.
Posted by: Katelyn Manamiko | March 25, 2010 at 10:15 PM
Oh, so sorry Crap! The guy in Fort Hood might not be a terrorist you know! After all, he didn't kill too many, only 12, and if he didn't kill "masses" Prokofy's own definition on Twitter says he isn't a terrorist. And we'll never know what his state of mind was -- could be that he really believed those people were somehow directly related to his "issues" in which case (again by Prokofy's own definition on Twitter) he couldn't be a terrorist. I guess maybe he'd just have been making a "political statement" or something. Kind of like the folks who target doctors who perform abortions.
Do tell us more about what terrorism isn't, Prok! Inquiring, naive, ignorant minds want to know how a sophisticated mind like yours REALLY works!
Posted by: CindyEcksol | March 25, 2010 at 10:20 PM
WOOOOOO
Civil War II yeehaw!
I'm so unimpressed by the lack of integrity within the mainstream media. All they do is feed the ignorant so they have something to say the next day at coffee break.
I also find it ignorant to toss bricks through windows for any reason. Gimme a fucking break. Fight fire with fire using emails, blogs, twits, hand written letters (remember those??) and hitting the voting machines.
Posted by: Edward Orendorff | March 25, 2010 at 10:23 PM
Yea. Poland invaded Germany too. That is what the fucking Nazis reported as an excuse to start WWII.
Wake up dumbasses. You are being made a fool of.
Posted by: AnnOtooleInSL | March 25, 2010 at 10:56 PM
One of the reasons why the countries have a difficulty negotiating an agreement on the definition of terrorism is that there is never a shortage of countries, especially Islamic and communist, who want to define down terrorism to freedom fighting, and leftist NGOs who want to make sure no victim of human rights violations who may use violence but didn't have due process would be unfairly branded a terrorist. So it makes for a bad business.
I stand by my definition of terrorism, which in fact was said by a human rights leader I know in our conference call in the days after 9/11 discussing what kinds of statements to make to help prevent more violence and backlash.
Terrorism is attacking innocent people with whom you don't directly have a beef.
The Fort Hood shooter killed 12 and wounded 31. Of these, some were military, some were civilians, some were relatives of military, so indeed he killed not only mainly the soldiers representing a military power he was attacking, but the bystandards. In fact, it was opportunistic; he killed a soft target, people coming with families to a graduation ceremony, not high officials, because that was what he could reach.
And when someone kills lots of people in this fashion, that certainly qualifies as terrorism, and when he kills from an extremist belief system that justifies the killing, that also can be part of terrorism.
The Christian who killed the abortion doctor isn't in a sect of Christianity that actively organizes and plans and executes killings around the world, like Al Qaeda or Hamas; he's a Christian, but not in a group that is planning and executing terrorist act. No doubt some lefty secularist looking to play moral equivalency games will try to roam the planet looking for a Christian sect, or a Jewish sect (perhaps there is one) that plans and executes terrorist acts. The reality is, terrorist acts are by and large planned by communist or fascist groups or Islamist groups. I haven't heard of any Jewish or Christian suicide bombers lately, but again, do enlighten me, I don't get out much. Hassan shouted Allahu Akhbar as he killed people at Fort Hood. Did the murderer of Dr. George Tiller cry "Jesus Saves?"
In the Wikipedia article, the doctor compares the Christian murderer of the abortion doctor with the Muslim Fort Hood shooter, describing them both as having psychoses taking the form of ideological extremism. I find this objectionable on a number of counts. First, there's moral equivalency between two cases, even though one has methodically planned a terrorist act to kill multiple numbers of people without consideration of bystanders, indeed targeting them too in a soft target; the other is an extremist kook who has committed a vengeful murder in a spasm of self-righteousness believing to be taking a symbolic stand against the killing of unborn babies. Both have committed crimes but I'd view the Fort Hood shooter as the more severe crime with the more ideological and extremist underpinning tied to a world extremist movement. The shooter of the doctor might have a set of extremist beliefs, but it's not an organized sect and he has targeted only one person.
It's funny how people aren't willing to make judgements like this that are obvious. They are shackled with great fear of seeming not only politically incorrect but hard-hearted. I don't think it's right to kill abortion doctors, even personally opposing abortion. It's wrong to use or incite violation of any kind. But I can surely say that of two crimes, one is worse, one is more ideological and massive, one is terrorism, and the other is first-degree homicide.
The media, and the military under Obama, want you to forget Fort Hood, to think of it as a tragedy of mental illness. It's not, except in the sense one can argue that extreme cults are always in some degree about mental illness. The blogosphere doesn't want you to forget about abortion doctor murders, even though the list is a short one compared to the list of victims of Islamic terror around the world -- they want you to overemphasize these and beat your breast in guilt over such horrible things happening in America, because ultimately, they don't want morality of any sort to intrude on their personal lives, and certainly not on their sexual lives. It's the hallmark of their times.
Both murderers could justify their crimes by a sense of righteousness and justice and a perception of themselves as valiant fighters for purity and vindication of innocent victims. Let's put it this way: Hassan had lots of company with those sentiments. Roeder, the abortion doctor murderer, did not as much company.
So yeah, I think I do have a bit more sophistication on pondering these awful events than Cindy Ecksol, whose only interest is in somehow having a spasmodic and gleeful "gotcha" attack at somehow guilty of "Hyprokisy". An old story.
Even Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Hood_shooting), with its political correctness and its moral equivocation on abortion doctors, hunting for the perfect balancing act, has to say that the Fort Hood shooter was hooked up to an international extremist movement, directly in touch with al-Awlaki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki)
Roeder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Roeder) also was said to have ties to and belong to extremist groups in the U.S.
When you look at some of them, such as the Montana Freeman, you don't see that they don't specifically seem to have an agenda of committing anti-abortion violence, the way Al-Qaeda has an agenda of killing civilians always and anywhere where they can make a point; they have a different extremist agenda, overthrowing the government. They were charged with bank fraud.
Meanwhile another extremist group, Army of God, was reported as advocating the killing of abortion doctors. But Roeder's fellow Army of God member told him not to kill the doctor. It does not appear that the mission of this group was to plan and execute killings of doctors.
Let's look around now and see the map of the world with push pins in it wherever terrorist attacks occur.
How many can you book to Al-Qaeda, and how many can you book to the Army of God? You don't want to justify either, but comparing the two and noting that one appears to be more organized, deadly, and more a serious threat than the other is just what rational governments and civil societies would need to do, if they weren't to dissolve into hysterical misleading statements that would cover up an Islamic attack murdering 12 people and wounding 31, and call it "a psychotic episode," but then decide to characterize tens of thousands of demonstrators against Obama all around the country as either tacitly supporting murder of abortion doctors, or ready to endorse such crimes, and ready to "lock and load".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Roeder has a list of all kinds of organizations, from Christian to Jewish to anti-abortion like Operation Rescue, which condemned the murder.
Lots more of those statements on this case than Muslim clerics denouncing the murders at Fort Hood.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | March 25, 2010 at 11:11 PM
Katelyn, um, sorry to rain on your gleeful gotcha parade and daily spasm of self-righteousness, but your posts aren't deleted. If you provide a first and last SL name that is recognizable, or a valid RL or bloggers' name, you are allowed to post any old hateful piece of shit you like. Be my guest.
That's rule no. 1.
Rule number 2 is you can post any hateful, malicious, libelous, false, etc. post you like about me with your name, as long as you do not *incite or cause damage to me in RL or SL*. That means you can't call me up at home in RL; in means you cannot crash my sim in SL.
I think most people will find my threshold for the concept of damages is pretty high; IBM's Dale Innis took about 235 posts badgering and heckling me and posting deliberately mischievous JIRAs and hate pages about me and blasts of me on outside blogs before I finally said, hey, this is enough.
So post away Katelyn, typepad eats posts sometimes. Can't help you. I find my own posts mysteriously missing or in the spam file at times; I don't always have time to go looking through it all to retrieve things.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | March 25, 2010 at 11:24 PM
when talking about "terrorism" one can also examine the weapons - not the bullets or c-4- but the "Actors" used "for the cause".
I do believe that the mental conditioning that breaks down the individuals internal compass and levels of self preservation in the face of a desire to find approval from an ideoloigical leader is leveling between the so called 3rd world and our 1st world.
THIS is an affect of the electric network media and its standardizing interface of machine needs. Mcluen meets Drupal.
Left or Rt- the message has become so mediated, that those drowning in the flow--- are in many ways becoming the same.
Im afraid the number of "american idol" grown who choose terrorist methods will be growing.. who their gurus are, well thats up to the programming they get.
Posted by: cube inada | March 25, 2010 at 11:55 PM
"Er, could you please show me a debate where someone brought a gun?"
I used the wrong word. Rally, not debate. But problem is the same.
http://jmpetersen.blogspot.com/2009/08/guns-and-political-rallies.html
http://www.examiner.com/x-1390-Religion--Culture-Examiner~y2009m8d18-When-gun-lovers-become-bullies-at-political-rallies
http://www.aolnews.com/story/guns-at-obama-appearances/626038
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/mantisbot_x/2009/08/carrying-guns-to-political-ral.php
http://brotherpeacemaker.wordpress.com/2009/08/18/guns-and-political-rallies-dont-mix/
And why should we wait for one to shoot somebody?
Posted by: Darien Caldwell | March 26, 2010 at 01:01 AM
Well, that's an important difference, dear. When you say "debate" that sounds like *a town hall meeting in a government building*. That's quite a different thing to bring a gun to than a "rally," which could be a tractor pull on an empty lot, or on someone's private property, or all kinds of things, not necessarily with a permit.
The problem for you in your effort to incite hysteria on this one is that guns are legal to carry in some states. So if someone comes with a gun into Starbucks, the left can cringe at their icon of the lib latte-sipping life appearing next to somebody exercising their right to bear arms, but it is legal.
I'm glad all you leftists are suddenly newly sensitive to the concept of how guns, even if "they are right, aren't right" (as the blogger said) and how inciting violence, and creating situations where hate leads to violence are all despicable and politically irresponsible acts. So can we count on your to end your infatuation with Mumia now, for example? Or do you still need to indulge in that awhile longer?
Can we count on you to denounce Palestinian violence even just a little now? You never do.
How about Fort Hood, can you raise a tear for the families of the victims now? Or do you still have to keep explaining that it's psychosis and not radical Islam.
If you don't like guns -- I sure don't -- then lobby to have laws changed so that they cannot be carried in public places.
Don't whip up hysteria by imagining that people carrying weapons in public legally plan to use them as a political message-bringing.
Their main political message is that they have the right to bear weapons and don't want Obama to take it away from them.
You keep sounding this alarmist and self-righteous note that works like this:
"OMG, can't you see how serious even one incident is and you can't wait for it to get worse and how dare you minimize it! You scoundrel!"
But I don't give in to emotional blackmail of that sort, and I rationally respond to it: but this isn't terrorism, it's not a mass political movement with violence as its credo (like the Black Panthers); it's not even small sects like the Army of God or something in Montana.
Failure to distinguish among kinds of violence and movements and the wish to blend them all together helps incite more hatred and confusion. The left is infuriated when someone can't tell the difference between a communist, a socialist, and, oh, Obama. Yet the left is in a rabid fury now imagining that Sarah Palin is telling her followers to shoot people.
cube, once again, you're talking in hippie obfuscatory talk, that you imagine as you write it is a clear-as-bell epiphany, but which comes out looking like what you wrote while on an LSD trip, and then realized after you "came down" was...nonsense.
Worldwide, historically, and in America, far, far FAR more violence, mass murder, and crimes against humanity have come from the left than the right.
This is something that left finds especially hard to stomach and admit, and while like tantruming children, they keep chanting "Bush lied, people died," even if Iranian-backed terrorists and Al Qaeda are doing all the terrorist massacring in Iraq. It's pretty nauseating, the chasm of moral blindness.
You're far too facile in merging left and right and generations and pretending America is "levelling down" to the third world.
Try to hear that a rock through a congressman's window and hundreds of dead people laid out on the grass in Nigeria are very, very different things. If you can't tell the difference, I can't help you.
Of course, in America, people have very high standards. They don't accept people being gunned down in stadiums and react sensitively at the least threat going in that direction. In a way, that's why you don't have to worry about America, given all those people on their toes.
But what Frank Rich is doing is horribly irresponsible and just plain *a lie* and *wrong* -- and that's what worries me, when the liberal newspaper of record can't sound better than Workers' World sectarian nutters.
Speaking of sectarian nutters, it's helpful to find out that Cindy Ecksol, getting into such a lather on twitter and accusing me of contradictions because she can't distinguish between terrorism, a more serious mass crime, and political violence leading to murder, is one of the freaks from the CDS that happily merged into the Islamic sim Al-Andalus -- despite her claims to "First Amendment rabble-rousing in SL" (!).
Wonder where she was when dissent was being raised against the forced imposition of a religious theocracy in SL.
BTW, here's a good example of the sort of distortion, hysteria, tendentiousness and moral blindness that this set-up induces:
Here's Jamie Palisades instructing the comrades, er, the...faithful, I guess we have to call them now, in how to ignore that Hater, Prokofy:
"Ignore haters and let history be your guide. Haters *usually* prefer separatism to ecumenism. Accordingly to the overwhelming report of diverse professional historians, the "Arab" values in the Andalusian period were a model of tolerance and cooperation ... and the reaction of Prok's beloved "Judeo-Christian ethics" was the culture-smashing, genocidal torturefest called "the Spanish Inquisition", which made George W. Bush look like an amateur."
If you have any sense of critical mind and knowledge of history, don't you have to marvel how the empty-headed sectarians like Jamie go roaming through history, selecting out of the thousands of years whatever fits their cramped vision? So out of thousands of year of Christianity, they pick only the Spanish Inquisition, universally condemned, and hold *that* up as the hallmark of Christian culture, of course, ignoring entire other centuries of enlightenment, peace, and prosperity, and then, while on that historical fishing expedition, lurching around, they dredge up a very utopianized and idealized Al-Andalus out of the bin, and present *that* as emblematic of all Islamic culture and history, patently ignoring some very bloody and brutal chapters that of course continue on in our time.
So, um, the Spanish Inquisition and George Bush, amateur torturer that he was, are our "take-home" from the millenia of Judeo-Christian civilization, but as for the "take-home" for Islam, we're to patently ignore all the "special features" of Sudan, Saudia Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran brutalizing and murdering masses of people, we're to forget all that, look the other way, and peer into the dim past to fashion an, um, harmonious culture where...let's see...there are daily prayers by Muslims, but for some reason, I don't see Gwyn's weekly talks on esoteric Christianity.
Where are those, er, "Arab values" today that are a model of tolerance? Are we going to develop a theory of "hostile Christian encirlement" like the Soviets did about hostile imperialist encirlement to explain away why they couldn't manage to reach their socialist ideas, ever?
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | March 26, 2010 at 02:50 AM
Here's a good legal discussion of "Roeder as terrorist" by Jack Balkin who is a respected legal scholar. I find him sometimes to be too far left in his views on certain things but he has a huge following:
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2009/06/terrorism-domestic-and-foreign.html
Here's where I don't agree with him:
his claim that terrorism is a method, not a religion.
But terrorism *is* a religion, and is an entire embedded belief system. The concept of holy war and jihad to be used against those perceived as a threat *is* religious and an integral belief. It is a more organized and networked belief system among radical Islamic sects than you can claim is the case among fundamentalist rightwing Christians.
There is a huge, worldwide, significant, dangerous terrorist network, not necessarily united or coordinated always, but sharing many similar beliefs, and responsible for killings of thousands of people all over the place.
No matter how you stretch it and try to force-fit the facts, you can't come up with a Christian equivalent.
The line about the fellow in the sect that Roeder was in who *tried to talk him out of killing the doctor* says it all; it wasn't a core, integral belief of this sect in the way killing of infidels is.
I see a horrible laxness on this in European thinking in particular, but of course on the American left. There's a huge, felt, pressing need to try to "match" the abortion doctor killing cases to Islamic terrorism, so that they can argue backward to several key propositions:
1. That there should not be a war on terrorism, but only a series of separate police actions and criminal prosecutions
2. That treating terrorists as combatants in a war is to fuel them.
3. That violence in America is morally equivalent to violence in Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan; we are "no better".
and so on.
But you don't need to believe that Roeder and Hassan are morally equivalent in order to safeguard the rights of terrorist suspects. You can have a healthy respect for reality, and acknowledge the difference between religious extremists gone over the edge to murder, killing four doctors in 17 years and wounding or threatening hundreds of others, and the kind of mass slaughter that the Taliban and Al Qaeda and the Janjaweed are guilty of.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | March 26, 2010 at 03:10 AM
"cube, once again, you're talking in hippie obfuscatory talk, that you imagine as you write it is a clear-as-bell epiphany, but which comes out looking like what you wrote while on an LSD trip, and then realized after you "came down" was...nonsense."
nope, no lsd, no hippie trips, all very lucid.
Frank Rich is/was a drama critic. Now a NYT OP Ed writer-- That's the leveling, . Your blog, more of the the same. you should get that.
These killers were dancing to the beat, they were not reading the lyrics.
big borgs dont cry.
Posted by: cube inada | March 26, 2010 at 04:55 AM
Prok, do you ever re-read yourself?
Posted by: Prokofaux Nympho | March 26, 2010 at 05:01 AM
No one definition of terrorism has gained universal acceptance, however in the USA we have :
The USA PATRIOT Act
The USA PATRIOT Act defines terrorism activities as "activities that (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the U.S. or of any state, that (B) appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping, and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S."
No mention here of how the body count is any part of the definition.
" I haven't heard of any Jewish or Christian suicide bombers lately, but again, do enlighten me, I don't get out "..some might say that Jews and Christians have no need to perform suicide bombings, the reason?, they can "influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion" using airplanes, tanks, and long range missiles. Of course they are the good guys so this is OK.
Be it a single rock, or a medium sized nuclear warhead. Its all terror.
Fear is the mind killer.
P.s. Awesome post earlier Cube (i did not know it was from your hand until i read the posters name ;P (i like having to interpret a post, rather than having a post that tries to bludgeon me with an opinion)).
Posted by: Micha Sass | March 26, 2010 at 05:23 AM
In relation to Islamic extremism you stated :
"No matter how you stretch it and try to force-fit the facts, you can't come up with a Christian equivalent."
IRA? Orange Volunteers? Iron Guard? Lord's Resistance Army? KKK? Army of God?
Checkout http://www.repentamarillo.com/ for some wholesome all American freedom fighters. Oh no, we already said freedom fighters are terrorists.
Posted by: Micha Sass | March 26, 2010 at 07:40 AM
http://www.repentamarillo.com/map.php
If you live in Amarillo and run a shop selling books on Wicca..Army of God is gonna get you.
Posted by: Micha Sass | March 26, 2010 at 07:44 AM
True, these guys are more of a push-back against what they hate (gays, wiccan), than a real paramilitary. But the vibe is all there. They are organised, they have soldiers (only for prayer at this time), and they preach a hatred about people they see as the enemy. The moment these people begin to use violent force, then the USA has a huge network of very hateful people, twittering and blogging and connected. They are already bristling with guns quite legally.
I just pray they stick to prayers and not use their guns instead.
P.S. very sorry about multiposting..no edit here.
Posted by: Micha Sass | March 26, 2010 at 08:01 AM
Perhaps one major problem in all of this is.....
Well the correct term might be a lack of education, not school education but the education one receives by becoming a member of the world community. Being a little old fashioned I prefer "stupid".
I don't remember the stats now but I remember being shocked at the number of people that can't find Iraq on a map.
Why on earth would I expect them to have a reasonable discussion about anything.
Posted by: Brinda Allen | March 26, 2010 at 11:51 AM
As I noted, countries argue endlessly at the UN over the definition of terrorism, and as a result, there isn't a definition in international law, and as a further result, international human rights groups can become unacceptably vague and inactive on this grave form of human rights abuse.
I'm not an expert on this issue, but U.S. doesn't refer to "body counts" because mass crimes against humanity, which *is* accepted in international law, and is in U.S. law by virtue of having ratified the genocide convention, *does* provide for responses to mass crimes.
I recall at the time of 9/11, the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, Mary Robinson, said that the killing of 3,000 people was a mass crime against humanity. Of course, this has never been adjudicated by any international court. This concept never got too far, even by its original articulator because human rights groups got more preoccupied with looking for human rights violations they believed were caused by the "war on terrorism".
It might be a good idea to try the 9/11 suspects at the ICC rather than the U.S. where they are unlikely to get a fair trial and where some countries will go on second-guessing it unless it is internationalized. They certainly can't get a fair trial in New York City, where it will become a spectacle.
Generally in international and domestic law people don't make crimes that have multible body counts in them as a way of making the crime more severe; they simply make multiple charges, a person then faces 10 counts of murder and has an impossibly long sentence then.
I'm interested in moral definitions of terrorism, because morality is what I can work on right now. I stand by my moral definition of terrorism: it is when a person kills others not directly related to the target of his grievance and when he deliberately attempts to kill large numbers of people.
While Jack Balkin may find that U.S. law helps you characterize the abortion doctor killer as a terrorist, I don't see that the FBI and courts have made that determination, and I don't see that this is due to some kind of "ideological bias".
I think it's highly important to make moral distinctions between targetting and killing one person with whom you have a beef, and randomly killing others, especially in large numbers. It's important because a) it *is* an intellectual distinction anyone can see and admit if they are not lacking intelligence or if they are not trolling and arguing insincerely b) it does go to the heart of the matter, which is intent.
Intent can be very hard to determine without violating other rights yet nevertheless, criminal law has the concept of premeditated murder and so on and so it does look at gradations of planning and method and such.
U.S. law, created to deal with international terrorism as its intent and scope (which is why you don't see a struggle to define domestic terrorism) has a principle:
"appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion"
The abortion doctor murder is an attack on a specific doctor who commits abortions to "execute" him because the murderer believes he is doing wrong, and in order to stop what he sees as the greater crime of killing the unborn, "intervention" is needed.
He is not using terrorism, trying to kill many more other people who are bystanders, or uninvolved people -- perhaps even people who happen to oppose abortion -- because he is trying to target one person. The killing of one abortion doctor doesn't frighten the whole population; it might specifically frighten other abortion doctors or women going to a clinic. Meanwhile, once you have successfully terrorized an army base by killing 12 people and injuring 31, you've significantly instilled fear in the military and the general population.
Obviously people might argue endlessly on whether Hassan really was a successful terrorist or a terrorist at all, and Roeder was in fact a more ambitious political violence perpetrator who got a terroristic effect from his act.
But I'm arguing my position, which I believe helps to have moral and ultimately legal clarity on these cases.
A key reason for why I'm interested in separating cases where people deliberately kill those uninvolved with their direct grievance, innocent civilians not directly the target of their beef, versus those people who commit political violence, including assassination, of a specific individual directly associated with their grievance, because I think that those who cannot make this distinction are setting themselves up to decide whether a person is a terrorist not by a moral boundary like this, but by whether they like the cause, and whether they think the cause is just.
So, a lot of people hate the anti-abortion movement, hate the idea of anyone interfering with their privacy and sexual enjoyment and reproductive choice, so they perceive the cause of the violent anti-abortion activists as one that defines its terroristic quality.
Meanwhile, the cause of opposing Israel, or supporting the Palestinian people, or opposing the U.S. anywhere it does anything, are causes that leftist like, so they tend to excuse the political violence and terrorism used in this cause, which they feel is just.
These leftists then apply their morality on the question of the nature of the cause, deciding if it is just or not, not on the morality of the act, deciding if it has a greater, more deadly scope or not.
Inevitably they are morally blind and selective in this kind of application; they also don't have company in believing the cause of killing the unborn or destroying Israel is just.
Those who then insist that no, they see *both* types of violence as equal and equivalent and are not exonerating the terrorist with the "otherwise just cause" have in fact succeeded in inducing moral equivalency favouring the destruction of Israel as a moral injustice over the killing of the unborn. They do this because they have made equivalent two kinds of acts even though one kills more people and more people accidently who are uninvolved -- and simply fails to look at that dimension of the problem.
Everyone can see that Hassan killed more people, and people who are merely rank and file soldiers or civilian workers or relatives; he did this to reach the maximum number of victims to "make a point" regardless of whether they were actual "decision makers" or "leaders" (i.e. unlike someone who attacks an actual leader). Roeder followed the career of George Tiller and targeted him specifically to literally stop what he was doing. He may succeed in intimidating other abortion doctors or clinic users but not the general population.
The argument that Cindy keeps making is that "you can't say one is less even if it is less" and that "unless you condemn the smaller act it can grow".
But I think you have to acknowledge scope and scale, and say that if something is less, it is less, and is not morally equivalent. You have to save the moral outrage for the morally worse act. And you haven't deprived yourself of acting by making this distinction, because you can still condemn and vigorously prosecute an abortion doctor murderer without pretending, for political aims and incitement of hatred in a polital war, that "Americans have domestic terrorists and should shut up about international terrorism".
That's of course ultimately the aim of this equivalency and insistence on equalizing outcomes and arguing back from them without distinction -- to minimize international terrorism and maximize domestic political violence to give it the same sinister hue as international terrorism.
An intended consequence of this position is then ultimately to minimize international terrorism as committed by people either with unhappy childhoods or who have "poverty" or "injustice" issues that they feel justify their killing.
A person with the moral equivalency position ends up reducing the importance and significance of international terrorism and makes it merely a political struggle in which regretably, violence is used. It saves the "terrorism" scare word mainly for those who fight what he doesn't like, i.e. anti-abortion causes, and gets squishy if it is terrorism against Israel.
Applying the word "terrorist" to describe any sort of political violence run by anybody anywhere, the leftist doesn't end up making the crimes against Israel just as bad as the anti-abortion killers; instead, they have the opposite effect; when all acts of political violence are terrorism, the meaning is watered down, and then people begin to distinguish their priority as greater or lesser evils by implying that the content of political causes is all that matters.
The chief purpose of people rushing to call domestic violence "terrorism," and not only to call abortion doctors "terrorists" but merely anybody throwing a rock through a window, is to minimize and delegitimize the focus on international terrorism, to reduce it in significance (the way Jamie Palisades and Gwyneth Llewelyn are always scornfully implying that there are only a tiny number of radicals within Islam and it's not a problem -- as if the terrorist attacks in Europe itself haven't been enough to convince them that it goes deeper and wider!).
But with my position, you don't accept either, and you don't minimize either because both are condemned. Whether political violence or terrorism, it is wrong legally and morally.
The reason I call Cindy "ignorant" and "morally blind" is not merely to be petulant but because she couldn't even see any distinction between someone who kills a direct target and someone who succeeds in blasting a public building and killing more people, or having a rampage that kills 12 and wounds 31. She just couldn't see any difference, which is stupidity and blindless.
One could argue against my position:
1. Claim that differences in intent and outcome don't require distinct categories of "political" versus "terrorism" because both are wrong and illegal and prioritization should not be made (or made to focus on the domestic rather than the foreign).
2. Claims that in fact the abortion doctor killer, in intimidating other abortion doctors and clinic users is instilling more fear in people beyond his actual traget whom he had identified with his grievance, and therefore is achieving a terrorist-like end that should be recognized as such, even without scaring of the general population as such.
But these arguments aren't used by Cindy; instead, she denies there is a difference at all, even though everyone knows the difference viscerally between someone targeted directly and someone accidently hit, resulting in more fear.
It's one thing to say "yes, there's a difference but it doesn't matter and here's why" but it's another not even to see a distinction, and imagine that to make this distinction is "a contradiction" or "failure to incorporate U.S. legal defitions".
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | March 26, 2010 at 12:43 PM
It's interesting that despite having legal guns (which doesn't make it legal to randomly kill people or target political figures with them) and having these networks of hate groups, the U.S. doesn't produce waves of violence as in other countries, whether the Philippines or Uzbekistan. Now, why do you think that is? Because most people abide the law and even if they oppose abortion or didn't vote for Obama, do not believe in using force to get their way.
Even in the wacky "Army of God," a fellow member was found to try to talk Roeder out of actually killing the doctor. Interesting, that. Is there a similar equivalent in the organization of Al-Qaeda? It doesn't seem so.
Micha, if you are the praying sort, despite being a secular humanist, I'd suggest you pray about Great Britain. There's a distinct threat there from both radical mosques and mullahs and angry Muslims with a beef as well, in ways that you simply don't find in the U.S., where frankly, there is more toleration for immigrants and more economic opportunities for immigrants.
Your prayers on behalf of the prevention of more rocks in the window or another killing of an abortion doctor are all helpful, I'm sure, but since prayer life is limited, you might want to focus on the larger looming events of the liklihood of another attack on the tube, and the presence of a networked Hizb-ut-Tahir that wishes to establish a caliphate, and is vague about how that will be done if people won't convert.
Again, let me stand by my position:
""No matter how you stretch it and try to force-fit the facts, you can't come up with a Christian equivalent."
People might come up with this little sect group here or there, like "the Army of God," which might have people in a compound in Montana and likeminded "survivalist" groups it is in touch with, but is not a mass worldwide movement, the way Al Qaeda and its various sub-franchies are.
The IRA may have Catholics in it, but it is not a tenet of the Catholic religion to commit political murder, and the IRA doesn't even invoke the Catholic concept of a just war (Islam's "just war" concept goes a lot further than the Catholic concept itself and its application).
The IRA doesn't say that its political violence is religiously justified; they don't incite religious benefits from political killing; there are no virgins waiting in heaven. Instead, they simply have a political philosophy that their killing of symbols of oppression is politically just.
The Lord's Resistance Army is a good example of a group engaging in political violence, which then eventually crossed frontiers and become a "threat to international security" such as to have the Security Council take it up," and which eventually became classified as a "terrorist," because of large numbers of kidnapping and killing large numbers of people, and of course involuntary servitude of child soldiers.
The IRA also began with a specific beef with political violence and moved to become a terrorist organization proscribed by the UK government.
The KKK may have conservative Christians in it, but it is not a religious ideology but a political ideology of hate. KKK members do not claim religious advantage or imperative to put a cross on a lawn; they claim social and political imperative.
The problem with the "Christian violence is terrorism just like Islamic violence is terrorism" is that it is much harder to demonstrate a logical and direct line between the Christian faith and the ideologies of the sects that use violence. The sects themselves tend to take political forms rather than religious forms, or when they take religious forms, it is of the delusional type like "God told me to kill this person."
The Islamic terrorists on the contrary draw from a rich vein of belief about martydrom and vengeance (the Shi'ites) and about jihad as a form of violent struggle (yes, we all know that it can mean "struggle against vice" as well as an individual reilgious act but it is also widely used in war on infidels).
One of the key ways you can see this problem play out is in the scarcity of condemnations by Muslims of Muslim violence. That is one of the things that aggravates interfaith dialogue and ecumenism.
For example, in the debate with the Muslim or pro-Muslim (he doesn't give an identity) on democracy.net, he refuses to acknowledge that any Muslim religious organizations should be required to denounce violence at the extreme end of their religious spectrum because this would be like a MacArthyite loyalist test.
Meanwhile, I as a Catholic don't have any hesitation in denouncing the use of violence to pursue the abortion cause, or attacks on gays or blacks by some wacky religious sect also invoking some of the symbols of Christianity like crosses. I don't suffer a crisis of legitimacy by condemning any and all forms of violence made in the name of any belief system including my own.
The Muslim has a much harder time doing that. Why? I suppose it is because it induces a crisis of legitimacy in a religious movement that doesn't brook dissent.
For example, I believe the Pope should resign over the current scandals of child predator priests. I don't view that as inducing a crisis of legitimacy in my faith or inducing a weakening of the Catholic Church; if anything, I see it as strengthening the legitimacy of the organization founded by Jesus Christ.
Checkout http://www.repentamarillo.com/ for some wholesome all American freedom fighters. Oh no, we already said freedom fighters are terrorists.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | March 26, 2010 at 01:03 PM
I think if you read even the Wikipedia history of the KKK, you'd have a hard time justifying it as a religious, rather than a political organization that also has likeminded religious group members in it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan
It describes the history of the use of the cross from Scottish clan insignia.
You can also read about how historically, U.S. courts defined the KKK as "terrorists," and given the huge numbers of people killed and intimidated, that seems like a fair definition to apply to the KKK, morally and legally. They are terrorists because they killed a lot of people and intimidate large numbers of people even beyond their initial targets of people they don't like, which is a large list of blacks, government officials, Catholics, Jews, journalists, etc.
Again, I see a useful tool of moral clarity here in whether or not people can condemn a sect like the KKK as terrorist, and make a distinction between that and a mainstream or even an alternative religion. I and millions of other Christians have no hesitation in denouncing the KKK. Rather easy to do.
But the Muslim hesitates. He does not condemn as a matter of immediate morality. He begins to argue either that he should not be required to condemn violence; he begins to hedge and explain that it is justified in the case of Israel or when U.S. troops have murdered his fellow Muslims; or maybe he is even silent, agreeing that it is wrong but fearing retribution from the violent fellow believers.
I think this is a key difference: Christians have the readiness to condemn and work to prevent violence among their own ostensible fellow believers, or a clearcut distinction that despite the symbols of commonality they are *not* fellow believers but a crazy sect they can easily disassociate themselves from and robustly condemn. Muslims have that reticence and equivocating and silence and even belligerence about Islamist violence. To be sure, there *are* Muslim clergy who *do* condemn violence but then they themselves are under pressure, and even killed themlves. This is really, really telling and I think it's a useful moral distinction..
The need to make the KKK a distinctly religious organization; the need to describe it as a violent arm of Christianity did not rise as a descriptive of its actual role in the Christian communities of the U.S. or as an actual description in courts of law or the media. Instead, it was a felt politically-correct exigency to cast around and find an equivalency in the U.S. to Islamic terror that would somehow force Americans to minimize their concern about Islamic and international terrorism, and tell them they should "sweep around their own door first".
It's a moral equivalency gambit, ultimately designed to discredit all of American culture and Christian culture, and exonerate the violent extremes of Islamic culture in a "just cause". I find that reprehensible, and I'm not interested obviously in endorsing it or being bullied into conceding it. I think it's important to go on making a key moral distinction between civilizations that lead to mass killings and civilizations that don't lead to mass killings. The mass killings of Europe were made overwhelmingly in the name of communism, which also opposes any religion, and in the name of the pagan cult espoused by Nazism. That Christians, even Catholic bishops enabled or failed to condemn the Nazis does not make Nazism a Christian movement.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | March 26, 2010 at 01:07 PM
"Now, why do you think that is? Because most people abide the law and even if they oppose abortion or didn't vote for Obama, do not believe in using force to get their way."
This is what Im not seeing as the "Amercian" trend. And as any tech geek can tell ya. Numbers can change real quick with a faster processors sold with cheaper value.
Posted by: cube inada | March 26, 2010 at 03:04 PM