Threats Foreign and Domestic: a Manchester Bombing and a Maryland Murder

Threats Foreign and Domestic: a Manchester Bombing and a Maryland Murder May 23, 2017

This is a post about terrorism. It has no artful nuance. No snarky edge, no hilarious sarcasm to offset a painful truth, and probably not even a little bit of poetic syntax to make it go down easier. I’m just going to say some things that are true.

Last night, kids were killed in a terrorist bombing. Kids at a concert. This was a callous act of violence, perpetrated by extremists who have no regard for the sanctity of human life. They are blinded by their hatred and find some sick form of empowerment in killing innocent people.

This happened in another country.

Two nights ago, a young man was killed on a college campus. He was a good student, a faithful church-goer, a U.S. Army Lieutenant… and he was black.  The whole thing is caught on tape. This young man was also killed by a terrorist. It was a callous act of violence, perpetrated by an extremist who has no regard for the sanctity of human life. One who was blinded by his hatred, and who sought some sick form of empowerment in taking an innocent life.

This happened in our country.

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I do not draw this comparison to minimize the horror of what happened in Manchester last night. It was a tragic and senseless loss of human life, and I am heartbroken for the victims and their families. I also have great empathy for all who feel rattled this morning because this one “hit so close to home.” We all know that feeling these days, because no matter where you live now, terror has hit close to home at one time or another. And it just keeps coming.

Because terror takes on many forms. The killing of Richard Collins the III in Maryland this weekend was just as tragic, just as heinous, and just as clearly motivated by hate and extremism.

It’s not a contest. One does not cancel out the other. But I’m drawing the comparison because others will not. In the media, and in the public response of our elected officials, these will be treated as very, very different kinds of events. While in reality–other than the body count–they are exactly the same.

The perpetrators of the Manchester attack were Islamic extremists. They killed a large number of people. So the story will be “terror attack.” Opportunistic politicians will use this as an attack on the entirety of Islam. The narrative will be, we must eradicate this threat from the planet. There will be undertones of genocide; a justification to bomb the shit out of something, anything, and to meanwhile ban Muslims from entering our country. This will all contribute to growing fear and mistrust of our Muslim neighbors. There will be confusion about the difference between Islam and terrorism; confusion about the difference between those who practice Islam, and those from other cultures that wear head coverings; a blurring of lines between those from the Middle East and “all other foreigners who are kind of brown.”

Even though this attack happened in another country, it will contribute to the turning inward of America… Our collective xenophobia, and the continued insistence on a Christian-centric nationalism, even as the world grows more diverse and multi-cultural. And while I heard echoes of this destructive narrative in the president’s statement this morning, we cannot blame him entirely for its existence at the center of our national identity. We’ve been heading this direction for awhile now.

DJT just figured out how to use that fear and ignorance as a path to the White House. So of course he’ll keep that door open for next time. Perpetuate the myths and stoke the hysteria.

Meanwhile… the incident in Maryland will play out as an isolated incident, a random act of violence. Yes, authorities are investigating it as a hate crime. But there will be no sweeping generalizations of white supremacists as a threat to our safety. There will be no targeting of fundamentalist strongholds, no war declared on the overtly racist underbelly of America. We will not see mugshots of KKK leaders on the evening news. There is no growing urgency to the conversation about homegrown terrorists.

We will not be securing our borders against this particular threat. The hijab will always, somehow, seem more ominous than the white hood.

Like I said… no powerful punchline coming here. I just can’t un-see the similarities between these two tragic acts of violence; nor can I pass by the striking discord between how each story plays out, in the aftermath.

We need to know this about ourselves. We need to sit with the uncomfortable truth: that fear of the unknown sells papers and wins elections. But when the threat is “people who look like us,” we will always choose to see it as a one-off, a lone crazy person; but never a call to battle.

This is why we never declare war on racism in any meaningful way. We remain perfectly content to wage our wars against Other, and Elsewhere.

So never looking in a mirror, we come to live in this vicious undertow

of violence and mistrust

with no end

in sight.


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