ViewPoints
Terrorism LIVES in America & it’s NOT ISIS
Violence, intimidation, extremism, radicalism, bombing, sabotage, assassination and kidnapping are all tools of political terrorism. Although many “Americans” like to believe terrorism is only associated with the “Threats to the Homeland” by radical Islamists (as they say) connected to recent terrorists attacks in Paris, Syria, Nigeria and Kenya, these types of tactics have long been associated with the United States of America and its citizenry. This terrorism is homegrown, not from “outside forces” or agitators, or from individuals or groups communicating with radical extremists encamped in the deserts of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or Syria. No. These terrorists are born and raised right here on American soil. The homegrown terrorists, of whom I speak, have not infiltrated our borders illegally or created terrorists cells hidden from sight. They are in plain view and most of them consider themselves to be patriots, taxpaying participants in the “American Dream,” dedicated to the home of the free and the brave built by “their” forefathers as a shining beacon of freedom, liberty and justice to the world. Terrorism lives in the United States of America, and it is NOT ISIS.
Ted Kaczynski, called the Unabomber, terrorized the nation between 1978 and 1995 by mailing bombs to universities and airlines, killing three people and injuring 23 more over several decades. Timothy McVeigh was convicted of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, in which 168 people died including many women and children. It has been called one of the worst acts of domestic terrorism in American history. However, when we look more specifically at domestic terrorism in the U.S., we cannot ignore the lynching of African Americans and state-sponsored terrorism sustained over a period of multiple decades. Bryan Stephenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, has detailed how from 1877-1950 in the United States, over 4,000 men, women, and children were murdered as a form of racial terrorism called lynching, which was used to intimidate and terrorize the African American community in the struggle for equal justice under the law after slavery was abolished. The United States of America has a long history of legalized racial terrorism from The Indian Removal Act, to the Chinese Exclusion Act, to the Japanese Internment, to Sundown Towns (places where African Americans were not welcomed “after the sun went down” and were subject to extreme violence and even death if caught). We need not look to ISIS, Al-Qaida or Boko Haram as the barbaric terrorists they are without, also, acknowledging the brutality, extremism and radical forms of terrorism in which Americans and the government of the United States has engaged throughout our history.
In the decade since America was attacked on 911, there have only been 24 Americans killed by “terrorism” (perpetrated by people “we call” terrorists), while 280,024 Americans have been killed by gun violence. About one-third of the world’s mass shootings have occurred in the United States and, including the recent shootings in Oregon, there have been 994 mass shootings in the last 1,004 days alone. Our response to this violence has become routine, predictable and commonplace. Violent extremism and terrorism continue to be as much a part of daily life in contemporary America as it has historically been. It is no longer a rare occurrence to see on video tape or on social media police killings of unarmed black and brown people, beatings and killings of LGBTQ people, escalating attacks on and intimidation of Muslim Americans, and continuing murders, violence and threats of violence on the lives of people and organizations who provide women’s healthcare and abortion services. All of which proves, that the terrorism we should fear comes from within our borders more often and with more virulence than the terrorist acts we most often SEE covered in the news.
Up Next Week: “A little leaven, leavens the whole loaf”
