If the Las Vegas Killers Were Muslims, We'd Call Them Terrorists

[Zarvan]

Reuters
If a 22-year-old Muslim man stabbed his roommates to death in their sleep, embarked on a killing spree, and claimed in written and video manifestos that he acted to teach hated women a lesson, there's little doubt that many would label him a terrorist. That label was scarcely appended to the Santa Barbara killer after his murders.

And if a Muslim couple stormed into a fast-food restaurant armed with a duffel bag full of military gear, shouted, "This is the beginning of the revolution!" and pinned a flag associated with their political movement to the dead bodies of the police officers they executed at point-blank range—then killed another innocent person and carried out a suicide pact rather than being taken alive—there is no doubt that many media outlets would refer to the premeditated attack as an act of terrorism. With a few exceptions, that's not how this week's news from Las Vegas played out.

When mass killers are native-born whites, their motivations are treated like a mystery to unraveled rather than a foregone conclusion. And that is as it ought to be. Hesitating to dub the Santa Barbara and Las Vegas murder sprees "terrorist attacks" is likely the right call. The label casts more heat than light on breaking-news events. Americans typically respond more soberly and rationally to mass killings than to "terrorist attacks." And while both sprees obviously targeted civilians, the varying degrees to which they sought to influence politics is unclear.

That said, the pervasive double-standard that prevails is nevertheless objectionable. As Glenn Greenwald once observed, "terrorism" is "simultaneously the single most meaningless and most manipulated word in the American political lexicon. The term now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity."

argued that the reluctance to label acts perpetrated by non-immigrant whites as terrorism is partly due to an awareness of what might happen next. When counterterrorism is invoked, many Americans give their assent to indefinite detention; the criminalization of gifts to certain charities; the secret, extrajudicial assassination of American citizens; and a sprawling, opaque homeland-security bureaucracy. Many have also advocated policies like torture or racial profiling that are not presently part of official anti-terror policy.

White terrorists call the de-facto exemption of whites from these tactics into question. Had the Las Vegas killer pinned a flag with Islamic associations to the body of the dead police officers, the American right wouldn't hesitate to support aggressive FBI investigations of other Americans who've posted the same flag to Facebook or Instagram.

Instead, the killers adorned their victims with the Gadsden flag. Tea Partiers insist that should not implicate their movement or its typical adherents. They're absolutely right. Tea Partiers should not now be subject to intrusive surveillance, for example. The American majority's unwillingness to extend the same logic and courtesy to Muslim Americans helps to explain policies like the NYPD's decision to embed undercover agents among Muslims for no reason other than their religion.

Civil-liberties abrogations often affect disfavored groups exclusively or most intensely in the beginning, but are later turned on Americans generally. I expect that will be the case with counterterrorism unless the country gets off of war footing soon. "After these killings in Nevada, and the murders at a Jewish community center in Kansas, and the murders at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, andmultiple murders by members of the 'sovereign citizens' movement in the last few years, it’s worth remembering that since 9/11, right-wing terrorism has killed many more Americans than al Qaeda terrorism," Paul Waldman writes in the Washington Post.

The Department of Justice has recently declared its intention to focus on homegrown terrorists. What would happen in the aftermath of another Oklahoma City?

The threat of right-wing terrorism shouldn't be denied any more than the threat of Islamist terrorism. These are real phenomenon. But as Brian Beutler points out, neither sort of terrorism has killed very many people in the United States since 9/11. "Among causes of death in the U.S., right-wing violence must rank near the bottom," he writes, even though it has killed more people than Islamic terrorism in that period.

Going forward, things could go either way. The panicked, civil-liberties-abrogating way that America reacts to Islamic terrorism could be applied to non-Muslims; or the relatively sane way we respond to white mass killers (and the innocents who share their ethnicity) could inform our approach to Islamist terrorism and the multitude of innocent Muslims who don't deserve to suffer because of it.
If the Las Vegas Killers Were Muslims, We'd Call Them Terrorists - Conor Friedersdorf - The Atlantic
@Aeronaut @Oscar @Fulcrum15 @Slav Defence @RAMPAGE @HRK @PWFI @Icarus @Xeric @balixd @Rafi @Kaan @Yzd Khalifa @Arabian Legend @al-Hasani @Manticore @Arsalan @ajpirzada

 

[Kompromat]

Its ludicrous how the western media reported the Brivik episode till they realized that he was a native 'aryan' -- oops.

 

[Slav Defence]

Western media is god damn double standard.The rape and murder incident are also observed in US.Women are also beaten up in west by their husband and teenage girls also commit suicide in west.
But in Asia,especially in muslim country if same crime is observed then whole western media begains to teach us humanity etc
So,I find this useless to debate

 

[Zarvan]

Western media is god damn double standard.The rape and murder incident are also observed in US.Women are also beaten up in west by their husband and teenage girls also commit suicide in west.
But in Asia,especially in muslim country if same crime is observed then whole western media begains to teach us humanity etc
So,I find this useless to debate

Sir 3000 women are killed on average mostly by boyfriend or husband and they call it passion killing and out of every 5 women 1 women is rape victim and these stats are from their own reports not some Muslim conspiracy theorist

 

[Black Widow]

Sir 3000 women are killed on average mostly by boyfriend or husband and they call it passion killing and out of every 5 women 1 women is rape victim and these stats are from their own reports not some Muslim conspiracy theorist

WTH u are talking about?

 

[Slav Defence]

Sir 3000 women are killed on average mostly by boyfriend or husband and they call it passion killing and out of every 5 women 1 women is rape victim and these stats are from their own reports not some Muslim conspiracy theorist

crime toll is high in other EU countries....but no,only we the world's most uncivilized, disoriented people,our religion makes us beast (nauzubillah) and we are the world's most insane people who didn't understand anything.
And some of our so-called libralist follow them blindly and reject the truth by assigning every justification as mullah logic.Please tell them for not to be so open minded that their brain falls out.
@Akheilos can sketch better picture of such hypocricy as she has spend her best years in EU.

 

[PlanetWarrior]

Title 22, Chapter 38 of the United States Code (regarding the Department of State) contains a definition of terrorism It reads:

"Definitions ... the term 'terrorism' means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents "


This crime occurred in the USA. I really don't see the full definition of "terrorism" as determined by Title 22 being applicable to this crime

 

[notsuperstitious]

Neo-Nazi terrorist jailed for plotting to blow up Merseyside mosques | UK news | theguardian.com

@planerwarrior thats a fair definition.

 

[Zarvan]

crime toll is high in other EU countries....but no,only we the world's most uncivilized, disoriented people,our religion makes us beast (nauzubillah) and we are the world's most insane people who didn't understand anything.
And some of our so-called libralist follow them blindly and reject the truth by assigning every justification as mullah logic.Please tell them for not to be so open minded that their brain falls out.
@Akheilos can sketch better picture of such hypocricy as she has spend her best years in EU.

Sir their brains are already out and liberals are so ashamed that even if west abuses them they feel proud as for few Mullahs who never bother to read Islam properly also create fasad what Iqbal said was Deen e Mullah fi sabilialah fasad but we have to see what thing is said by Mullah and what are orders of HAZRAT MUHAMMAD SAW so we don't indirectly abuse HAZRAT MUHAMMAD SAW orders

WTH u are talking about?

I am talking about what happens in west lady these stats are given by west and inf fact come from justice and FBI figures

 

[Dubious]

As Glenn Greenwald once observed, "terrorism" is "simultaneously the single most meaningless and most manipulated word in the American political lexicon. The term now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity."

So true!

"After these killings in Nevada, and the murders at a Jewish community center in Kansas, and the murders at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, andmultiple murders by members of the 'sovereign citizens' movement in the last few years, it’s worth remembering that since 9/11, right-wing terrorism has killed many more Americans than al Qaeda terrorism," Paul Waldman writes in the Washington Post.

None got as much fame as the Boston one though...selective reporting and hyping of media?

But as Brian Beutler points out, neither sort of terrorism has killed very many people in the United States since 9/11. "Among causes of death in the U.S., right-wing violence must rank near the bottom," he writes, even though it has killed more people than Islamic terrorism in that period.

denail at its best! and people read and post such denials as facts!

Going forward, things could go either way. The panicked, civil-liberties-abrogating way that America reacts to Islamic terrorism could be applied to non-Muslims; or the relatively sane way we respond to white mass killers (and the innocents who share their ethnicity) could inform our approach to Islamist terrorism and the multitude of innocent Muslims who don't deserve to suffer because of it.

Worth thinking...an act of terror should be independent of the identity of the attacker when people learn to do that then they will be called matured!
The part in blue is the first ever acknowledged properly by media!

Maybe @VCheng can start denying everything

 

[VCheng]

Maybe @VCheng can start denying everything

Not at all. Right-wing white supremacists are just as much of a menace to civilized society as the terrorists.

 

[Dubious]

Title 22, Chapter 38 of the United States Code (regarding the Department of State) contains a definition of terrorism It reads:

"Definitions ... the term 'terrorism' means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents "


This crime occurred in the USA. I really don't see the full definition of "terrorism" as determined by Title 22 being applicable to this crime

so terrorism is everything imported never happens in USA...Good denial strategy!

Neo-Nazi terrorist jailed for plotting to blow up Merseyside mosques | UK news | theguardian.com

@planerwarrior thats a fair definition.

of course its fair...everything is fair in denial mode

Not at all. Right-wing white supremacists are just as much of a menace to civilized society as the terrorists.

but are not terrorist......gotcha!

 

[PlanetWarrior]

so terrorism is everything imported never happens in USA...Good denial strategy!

Nope. That isn't what the definition of terrorism is per Title 22 of Chapter 38. Read it again and you will note that for yourself

 

[VCheng]

but are not terrorist......gotcha!

You can call it whatever you like. This danger is well-recognized and dealt with just the same as any other threat:


Opinion: In U.S., right wing extremists more deadly than jihadists - CNN.com

U.S. right wing extremists more deadly than jihadists
By Peter Bergen and David Sterman
updated 5:29 PM EDT, Tue April 15, 2014

Frazier Glenn Cross, a 73-year-old Missouri man with a long history of spouting anti-Semitic rhetoric, is seen in a police car Sunday, April 13. He is suspected of fatally shooting three people: a boy and his grandfather outside a Jewish community center in Overland Park, Kansas, and a woman at a nearby assisted-living facility.

(CNN) -- On Sunday, a man shot and killed a 14-year-old boy and his grandfather at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City and then drove to a nearby Jewish retirement community where he shot and killed a third person. Police arrested a suspect, Frazier Glenn Cross, who shouted "Heil Hitler" after he was taken into custody.

Cross, who also goes by Frazier Glenn Miller, is a well-known right wing extremist who founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Patriot Party, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Now let's do the thought experiment in which instead of shouting "Heil Hitler" after he was arrested, the suspect had shouted "Allahu Akbar." Only two days before the first anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings, this simple switch of words would surely have greatly increased the extent and type of coverage the incident received.

Yet the death toll in the shootings in Kansas is similar to that of last year's Boston Marathon bombings, where three people were killed and the suspects later killed a police officer as they tried to evade capture. (Many more, of course, were also wounded in the Boston attacks; 16 men, women and children lost limbs.)

In fact, since 9/11 extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right wing ideologies, including white supremacists, anti-abortion extremists and anti-government militants, have killed more people in the United States than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology. According to a count by the New America Foundation, right wing extremists have killed 34 people in the United States for political reasons since 9/11. (The total includes the latest shootings in Kansas, which are being classified as a hate crime).

"Since 9/11 extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right wing ideologies...have killed more people in the United States than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology." By contrast, terrorists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology have killed 21 people in the United States since 9/11.

(Although a variety of left wing militants and environmental extremists have carried out violent attacks for political reasons against property and individuals since 9/11, none have been linked to a lethal attack, according to research by the New America Foundation.)

Moreover, since 9/11 none of the more than 200 individuals indicted or convicted in the United States of some act of jihadist terrorism have acquired or used chemical or biological weapons or their precursor materials, while 13 individuals motivated by right wing extremist ideology, one individual motivated by left-wing extremist ideology, and two with idiosyncratic beliefs, used or acquired such weapons or their precursors.

Opinion: Why do racists and anti-Semites kill?

A similar attack to the one that Frazier Glenn Cross is accused of in Kansas occurred in August 2012 when Wade Michael Page killed six people in a shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Page was a member of a white supremacist band and associated with the Hammerskins, a white supremacist group. Page committed suicide during the attack.

Page is not, of course, the only right wing extremist to have used lethal violence to achieve political ends. In 2009, for instance, Shawna Forde, Albert Gaxiola, and Jason Bush raided a house in Arizona, killing Raul Flores and his daughter Brisenia. The three attackers sought to use the burglary to finance their anti-immigration vigilante group, Minutemen American Defense. Forde and Bush were convicted and sentenced to death. Gaxiola was sentenced to life in prison.

Also in 2009, Scott Roeder murdered Dr. George Tiller, who ran an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas. In 2010 Roeder was convicted of first-degree murder. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Roeder not only had ties to the extreme anti-abortion movement, but he also had been pulled over while driving with a fake license plate bearing the markings of the Sovereign Citizens, a movement of individuals who deny that the government has authority over them.

deadliest terrorist attack on American soil prior to 9/11 was the Oklahoma City bombing, which was masterminded by Timothy McVeigh, a man with deep ties to far-right militant circles. McVeigh killed 168 people when he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building on April 19, 1995.

Despite this history of deadly violence by individuals motivated by political ideologies other than al Qaeda, it is jihadist violence that continues to dominate the news and the attention of policy makers.

Some of this is quite understandable. After all, on 9/11 al Qaeda's 19 terrorists killed almost 3,000 people in the space of a morning. Since then al Qaeda's branch in Yemen tried to bring down with a bomb secreted on a passenger an American commercial jet flying over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 and al Qaeda's branch in Pakistan tried to launch bombings on the New York subway system a few months earlier. Luckily those plots didn't succeed, but certainly if they had the death toll would have been on a large scale.

Yet the disparity in media coverage between even failed jihadist terrorist attacks and this latest incident in Kansas is emblematic of a flawed division in the public's mind between killing that is purportedly committed in the name of Allah and killing that is committed for other political ends, such as neo-Nazi beliefs about the need to kill Jews.

Part of the reason for this disconnect might be that when a Department of Homeland Security report warning of violent right wing extremism was leaked in 2009, it generated a substantial political controversy.

In a 2011 interview with the Southern Poverty Law Center, Daryl Johnson, the leader of the team that produced the report, argued that following the controversy, DHS's examination of such threats suffered, stating "Since our report was leaked, DHS has not released a single report of its own on this topic. Not anything dealing with non-Islamic domestic extremism—whether it's anti-abortion extremists, white supremacists, 'sovereign citizens,' eco-terrorists, the whole gamut."

The threat from al Qaeda and its associated forces has changed significantly since 9/11. Today, almost 13 years after 9/11, al Qaeda has not successfully conducted another attack inside the United States. And since 2011, no individual charged with plotting to conduct an al Qaeda-inspired terrorist attack inside the United States has acted with more than one accomplice. This demonstrates the difficulties today of forming a jihadist group sufficiently large enough to conduct a complex attack anything on the scale of 9/11, and is a tribute to the success of law enforcement agencies in detecting and deterring jihadist terrorist activity.

Today in the United States, al Qaeda-type terrorism is the province of individuals with no real connection to foreign terrorists, aside from reading their propaganda online. Given this, it becomes harder to explain, in terms of American national security, why violence by homegrown right wing extremists receives substantially less attention than does violence by homegrown jihadist militants.

Tyler Hite contributed research support for this article.

 

[Dubious]

"Since 9/11 extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right wing ideologies...have killed more people in the United States than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology." By contrast, terrorists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology have killed 21 people in the United States since 9/11.

You can call it whatever you like. This danger is well-recognized and dealt with just the same as any other threat:


Opinion: In U.S., right wing extremists more deadly than jihadists - CNN.com

U.S. right wing extremists more deadly than jihadists
By Peter Bergen and David Sterman
updated 5:29 PM EDT, Tue April 15, 2014

Frazier Glenn Cross, a 73-year-old Missouri man with a long history of spouting anti-Semitic rhetoric, is seen in a police car Sunday, April 13. He is suspected of fatally shooting three people: a boy and his grandfather outside a Jewish community center in Overland Park, Kansas, and a woman at a nearby assisted-living facility.

(CNN) -- On Sunday, a man shot and killed a 14-year-old boy and his grandfather at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City and then drove to a nearby Jewish retirement community where he shot and killed a third person. Police arrested a suspect, Frazier Glenn Cross, who shouted "Heil Hitler" after he was taken into custody.

Cross, who also goes by Frazier Glenn Miller, is a well-known right wing extremist who founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Patriot Party, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Now let's do the thought experiment in which instead of shouting "Heil Hitler" after he was arrested, the suspect had shouted "Allahu Akbar." Only two days before the first anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings, this simple switch of words would surely have greatly increased the extent and type of coverage the incident received.

Yet the death toll in the shootings in Kansas is similar to that of last year's Boston Marathon bombings, where three people were killed and the suspects later killed a police officer as they tried to evade capture. (Many more, of course, were also wounded in the Boston attacks; 16 men, women and children lost limbs.)

In fact, since 9/11 extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right wing ideologies, including white supremacists, anti-abortion extremists and anti-government militants, have killed more people in the United States than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology. According to a count by the New America Foundation, right wing extremists have killed 34 people in the United States for political reasons since 9/11. (The total includes the latest shootings in Kansas, which are being classified as a hate crime).

"Since 9/11 extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right wing ideologies...have killed more people in the United States than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology." By contrast, terrorists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology have killed 21 people in the United States since 9/11.

(Although a variety of left wing militants and environmental extremists have carried out violent attacks for political reasons against property and individuals since 9/11, none have been linked to a lethal attack, according to research by the New America Foundation.)

Moreover, since 9/11 none of the more than 200 individuals indicted or convicted in the United States of some act of jihadist terrorism have acquired or used chemical or biological weapons or their precursor materials, while 13 individuals motivated by right wing extremist ideology, one individual motivated by left-wing extremist ideology, and two with idiosyncratic beliefs, used or acquired such weapons or their precursors.

Opinion: Why do racists and anti-Semites kill?

A similar attack to the one that Frazier Glenn Cross is accused of in Kansas occurred in August 2012 when Wade Michael Page killed six people in a shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Page was a member of a white supremacist band and associated with the Hammerskins, a white supremacist group. Page committed suicide during the attack.

Page is not, of course, the only right wing extremist to have used lethal violence to achieve political ends. In 2009, for instance, Shawna Forde, Albert Gaxiola, and Jason Bush raided a house in Arizona, killing Raul Flores and his daughter Brisenia. The three attackers sought to use the burglary to finance their anti-immigration vigilante group, Minutemen American Defense. Forde and Bush were convicted and sentenced to death. Gaxiola was sentenced to life in prison.

Also in 2009, Scott Roeder murdered Dr. George Tiller, who ran an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas. In 2010 Roeder was convicted of first-degree murder. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Roeder not only had ties to the extreme anti-abortion movement, but he also had been pulled over while driving with a fake license plate bearing the markings of the Sovereign Citizens, a movement of individuals who deny that the government has authority over them.

deadliest terrorist attack on American soil prior to 9/11 was the Oklahoma City bombing, which was masterminded by Timothy McVeigh, a man with deep ties to far-right militant circles. McVeigh killed 168 people when he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building on April 19, 1995.

Despite this history of deadly violence by individuals motivated by political ideologies other than al Qaeda, it is jihadist violence that continues to dominate the news and the attention of policy makers.

Some of this is quite understandable. After all, on 9/11 al Qaeda's 19 terrorists killed almost 3,000 people in the space of a morning. Since then al Qaeda's branch in Yemen tried to bring down with a bomb secreted on a passenger an American commercial jet flying over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 and al Qaeda's branch in Pakistan tried to launch bombings on the New York subway system a few months earlier. Luckily those plots didn't succeed, but certainly if they had the death toll would have been on a large scale.

Yet the disparity in media coverage between even failed jihadist terrorist attacks and this latest incident in Kansas is emblematic of a flawed division in the public's mind between killing that is purportedly committed in the name of Allah and killing that is committed for other political ends, such as neo-Nazi beliefs about the need to kill Jews.

Part of the reason for this disconnect might be that when a Department of Homeland Security report warning of violent right wing extremism was leaked in 2009, it generated a substantial political controversy.

In a 2011 interview with the Southern Poverty Law Center, Daryl Johnson, the leader of the team that produced the report, argued that following the controversy, DHS's examination of such threats suffered, stating "Since our report was leaked, DHS has not released a single report of its own on this topic. Not anything dealing with non-Islamic domestic extremism—whether it's anti-abortion extremists, white supremacists, 'sovereign citizens,' eco-terrorists, the whole gamut."

The threat from al Qaeda and its associated forces has changed significantly since 9/11. Today, almost 13 years after 9/11, al Qaeda has not successfully conducted another attack inside the United States. And since 2011, no individual charged with plotting to conduct an al Qaeda-inspired terrorist attack inside the United States has acted with more than one accomplice. This demonstrates the difficulties today of forming a jihadist group sufficiently large enough to conduct a complex attack anything on the scale of 9/11, and is a tribute to the success of law enforcement agencies in detecting and deterring jihadist terrorist activity.

Today in the United States, al Qaeda-type terrorism is the province of individuals with no real connection to foreign terrorists, aside from reading their propaganda online. Given this, it becomes harder to explain, in terms of American national security, why violence by homegrown right wing extremists receives substantially less attention than does violence by homegrown jihadist militants.

Tyler Hite contributed research support for this article.

Yet to hear a white Terrorist been called a terrorist unless of course Whites dont scare / instill terror into Americans!


"Since 9/11 extremists affiliated with a variety of far-right wing ideologies...have killed more people in the United States than have extremists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology." By contrast, terrorists motivated by al Qaeda's ideology have killed 21 people in the United States since 9/11.