Mt Two Cents: Terrorism

We need to get our words right.

In the wake of that mass hooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, last week we need to learn our words: terrorist.

See, I’ve noticed that when a brown man takes out an assault weapon and shoots up an office in San Bernardino, or a couple of brown men open fire at the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, they are called terrorists.

But when a white man murders fifty people in New Zealand, or a white man slaughters nine black people in a church in Charleston … or a white man shoots at concert goers, or movie goers or shoppers in a mall or students at school, when white people slaughter dozens they are called in the press, gunmen.

They are not. They are terrorists.

Slaughtering people is terror. People gathering to worship, or dance, or to listen to music, and who are murdered for no apparent reason other than hatred are victims of terror, no matter what the skin color is on the hand that pulls the trigger.

And we need to hold the press accountable; we need to remind the media that terrorism isn’t committed solely by brown-skinned people, but that most of the terror attacks, at least in this country lately, have been committed by white men.

Now, that doesn’t mean all white men are terrorists, but it does mean we need to broaden our scope and our language as to what makes a person a terrorist.

It isn’t who you shoot, it’s that you shoot.

It isn’t where you shoot, it’s that you shoot.

It isn’t the color of your skin, it’s that you think you have the right to take human life because you hate people.

It’s hate; and it’s hate speech. So maybe we need to start by combating hate speech, and that’s not so hard to do. When someone says something within earshot that is hateful, say something; call them out on their hate, their racism; shine a light on it. Cockroaches and racists run from the light.

But what do we do when the hate speech is coming from positions of power?

We have a president who has said that Muslims are terrorists, that Muslims hate “us,” that Muslims cheered in New Jersey on 9/11 as the towers came down. We have a president who has said that some white supremacists are “nice people,” even as Heather Heyer was being laid to rest after Charlottesville.

There are good people on both sides, he said, when people shouted death to Jews.

And, both men responsible for the mosque shootings in Quebec and Christchurch actually credited an American president for his views on Muslims. Those two men in opposite corners of the world, singled out the president, and his views, his opinions, his statements, as part of the reason why they opened fire and slaughtered innocent people.

That’s also terrorism.

Our president, while he may not carry a gun, and may not actually say the words, ‘Go out and kill,’ suggests that people are coming for us, to take our lives, our jobs, our loved ones, our country, and when a terrorist strikes, he has no anger toward the terrorist who echoes his white supremacist leanings, in fact he almost has to be coerced to even condemn the violence.

And then his words of sorrow weren’t for the people murdered, they were for New Zealand, because he couldn’t be bothered to say the word ‘Muslim’ lest he offend his base. In fact, as they were cleaning up the blood in that mosque in Christchurch, he said he didn’t think there was a rise in white supremacy at all, at least not in this country.

He’s forgotten Charlottesville, Quebec, Pittsburgh; he’s forgotten Las Vegas, Charleston, Orlando; he’s forgotten Parkland, Newtown, Christchurch.

He’s forgotten that, while the FBI defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, not including the suspect, are killed, that there over 20 mass shootings in this country in 2018 … almost two a month. And there have been eight mass shootings in 2019 … and it’s only March. And that doesn’t include shootings where less than four people were murdered.

That’s terrorism, and until we start calling it by its real name, no matter the skin color of the perpetrator, we’ll never find a way to stop it. And that’s the greatest terror of all.

It’s not over ….