We watch news coverage of terrorism because we think it'll make us better informed about how to keep ourselves safe. But what if it does the opposite?
Donald Trump is inheriting the scariest tools of aggression imaginable. A new book explores their dark legacy.
The following excerpt is the Foreword to America's Addiction to Terrorism. Portside is pleased to share this with our readers. In the U.S. today, the term "terrorism" conjures up images of dangerous, outside threats: religious extremists and suicide bombers in particular. Harder to see but all the more pervasive is the terrorism perpetuated by the United States, itself, whether through military force overseas or woven into the very fabric of society at home.
There is no such thing as "international terrorism". To declare war on "international terrorism" is nonsense. Politicians who do so are either fools or cynics, and probably both.
For Baghdadi to call his band of human traffickers, rapists, drug smugglers, and looters the “Islamic State” is rather like a Mexican drug cartel adopting the moniker “the Vatican,” and our adopting that term thereafter (“The Vatican kidnapped 30 people today”) when reporting on its violence. Journalists would resist such linguistic coercion in the case of Catholics; they should resist it in the case of Muslims as well.
People and groups have been labeled terrorists by the Philippine government, the U.S. government and other countries at the behest of the U.S. government. The Philippine government engages in - red tagging - political vilification. Targets are frequently human rights activists and advocates, political opponents, community organizers or groups struggling for national liberation. Those targeted for assassination are placed on the order of battle list.
Reasonable people cannot deny that the Charleston shooting was a racially driven act of terror. To deny the connection between Roof’s actions and extremist rhetoric that tells young people like him that black people are inherently violent and criminal is to be complicit in the actions that such rhetoric inspires.
They are offended by the idea that states are putting people to death on their behalf, for the benefit of their healing, or their revenge. “There’s a false promise that this is going to heal you. This trial, this execution is going to make you feel better.”
The tragic massacre in Paris will undoubtedly give fuel to the traditional xenophobic far-Right and the danger is an increase in racism, marginalization and exclusion of people of Muslim descent in Europe and further. We do not want to witness "anti-Muslim witch hunts". One way to commemorate this terrible event and memorialize its victims is to unequivocally defend universal human rights, including the right to freedom of expression, and they apply to all.
Inside the American Terrordome, the chorus of hysteria-purveyors, Republican and Democrat alike, nattered on, as had been true for weeks, about the "direct," not to say apocalyptic, threat the Islamic State and its caliph posed to the American way of life. The media, of course, continued to report it all with a kind of eyeball-gluing glee. The result by the time I met that woman: 71% of Americans believed ISIS had nothing short of sleeper cells in the U.S.
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