I’ll wager that as soon as you heard the word “terrorist”, you instinctively added the word “ISIS” or “Muslim”. If you did, you’re the victim of a regular diet of sound bites.
Fundamentalism, whose modern name is “Sound Bites”, has a long pedigree, but essentially it is: (a) the reducing of a complex situation to a few simplistic half-truths; (b) the identifying or creating of an “enemy”; (c) the frenzied cultivating of xenophobia; and (d) the unleashing of the dogs of war on the by-now-less-than-human “others”. At various stages the “others” have been called: pagans, gentiles, infidels, heathens, barbarians, niggers, queers, papists, communists, terrorists. . . Pick any culture or any era of history and you can harvest a barn-full of “others”.
Our own times are typical. Even a cursory perusal of the current national political debates assure us that fundamentalism is alive and well in our own country. So let me pick just one of these issues and examine it. I’ll pick “terrorists”.
I’ll wager that as soon as you heard the word “terrorist”, you instinctively added the word “ISIS” or “Muslim”. If you did you’re the victim of a regular diet of sound bites. But when you really think about it or research it a little, you realize two things: (a) terrorism is as old as our reptilian brain; and (b) terrorism comes in a huge variety of flavors. Let me treat you to a few scoops.
(A) Religious Terrorism
Despite the fact that each religion has its origins in a mystical impulse, it quickly adapts to the pathology of the second and third generation leadership and becomes a powerful way to control “the faithful”. The love-based supertanker of the charismatic founder will be turned by the tugboats of theology and dogma through 180 degrees, until it preaches and practices the antithesis of the original loving message. Fear replaces love, obedience replaces awe-filled curiosity, and goose-stepping gullibility replaces personal seeking.
God stops talking directly to Her children and, instead, whispers revelations to infallible pontiffs and jihad-pronouncing ayatollahs. And these whispered revelations become darker and uglier until the unwashed sinners are told that the divinely appointed leaders have control not just of their Earthly lives but of their eternal destinies as well. That’s enough to lick 99% into shape.
The 1% who still aren’t convinced can be shown the error of their ways by a one-way visit to the Inquisition. As for those “outside the fold”, a few well-armed, well-financed, genocidal crusades can do wonders to establish the merciful message of the founder.
By any other name, this is terrorism.
(B) Economics
Older even than religion, economics are a powerful tool of either the evolution of human society or the corrupted control of it. Beginning around 3,000 BCE, when mechanized agriculture replaced horticulture’s digging stick, and the invention of glazed pottery allowed us to store great amounts of food in waterproof and rodent-proof jars, it became possible to hoard food and even to weaponize it. It is no accident that the invention of the ox-drawn plow came at the same time as the first empires, the subjugation of women and the great expansion of the slave class.
Burning his granaries or salting his fields was a very effective way of defeating the enemy; while hoarding the local food supply and doling it out only to “the faithful” (that phrase keeps coming up!) was a way of controlling the citizens of the empire. And the emperor lives on; he may still have no clothes, but he has lots of patents. His modern name might be Monsanto, Syngenta or DuPont; and now he claims ownership of life itself.
And corporatocracy completes the picture. The average pay ratio of a CEO to the median worker was 204-to-1 in 2014. And these worker bees are merely resources to be hired, fired or relocated as profits dictate.
By any other name, this is terrorism.
(C) The Military
There is probably no “tribe” anywhere on planet Earth which isn’t living on land that was stolen from earlier occupants. And each group has taken it at the tip of a cudgel, spear, arrow or fighter-bomber. The response of the lesser armed has always been guerilla tactics. These people are called “freedom fighters” if they win and “terrorists” if they don’t.
As the self-appointed World Policemen, we feel it our right to grab any resources we need (oil, precious metals, food…) while pretending to be spreading democracy. Each Tuesday morning, while most of us are at work and retirees are walking the dog or playing bridge, the “leader of the free world” is identifying people half ways across the globe who are to be dispatched to their Maker that day, courtesy of drones financed by our tax dollars. “Collateral damage” is simply an unfortunate byproduct.
The National Security State – a screen to hide all kinds of vicious and deadly crimes – works at the behest of the economic puppeteers to ensure an interrupted flow of goodies to the elite.
By any other name, this is terrorism.
(D) The Law
According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, by the end of 2013 the USA had the highest incarceration rate in the world – 716 per 100,000 of its citizens – or 2.3 million people. We are only 4.4% of the world’s population but account for 22% of the world’s prisoners. By 2007, it was already a $74 billion industry – and I do mean industry.
From the 1920’s to 1980 the figure was less than half a million, but that number had doubled by 1990 and redoubled by 2000. Between prison, probation and parole there are now 7.5 million Americans under some kind of criminal justice control. And, of course, Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately represented in this rise. If you’re Latino, you’re almost three times more likely to be imprisoned than if you’re White; and if you’re Black, you’re almost seven times more likely.
Three factors have led to this meteoric increase. The first was Nixon’s “war on drugs” beginning in 1970. The second was Reagan’s Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1980 which led to mandated longer sentences. And the third salvo was the emergence of the Prison-Industrial complex. In 1980 private prisons did not exist in the USA; now, as an example, Louisiana – which has the highest incarceration rates in the world – “houses” most of its prisoners in private, for-profit facilities. A 2013 Bloomberg Report states that in the previous decade the number of inmates in the for-profit prisons had grown by 44%. These corporations – such as the Correction Corporation of America – negotiate deals whereby the states guarantee to fill at least 90% of the prison beds or else reimburse the companies for the short fall.
The final indignity is that these corporations then use their profits to lobby at the state and federal levels to introduce legislation such as “three strikes”, longer sentences and expanded definitions of “crime” to ensure a steady supply of client-inmates. For the lawbreaker crime may not pay, but for the jail masters it pays handsomely.
By any other name, this is terrorism.
Conclusion
Jesus famously said, “Before you attempt to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye, first remove the log from your own”. The self-righteous West, which points the finger at middle-Eastern terrorists, has enough logs in its own eyes to stock a lumberyard.
It’s time for cultural ophthalmology.
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