I’m pretty sure there are people out there who’d say that Fox News isn’t racist. But it’s pretty obvious, when you look at how they report things.
This isn’t just a Fox News problem. It’s an “American Media” problem. Check this out:
None of them say: “White Supremacist planned mass shooting at Walmart store.” None of them. I think I have seen a few headlines that include the “White Supremacist” bit but there’s way too many headlines downplaying it. Why? The only reason to downplay it is – what – to keep from hurting the feelings of other white supremacists? To keep from making people who want to shoot up Walmarts feel bad about their desires? Why the hand-wringing about how it’s bad to want to shoot up Walmarts, but not pointing out that the guy’s reason for wanting to shoot up Walmart is, sadly, plain old stupid common-or-garden white racism? Do these journalists want to spare white people’s feelings? I think it’s probably a lot of that – white people are uncommonly touchy, especially when someone points out how generally shitty they are toward everyone else when they get their imperialism on.
Then, when you scroll down, you get this [fox]
That’s not “radical ideology paraphrenalia” that’s “white supremacist paraphrenalia” – There’s The Turner Diaries, a neo-nazi flag, a confederate flag, a Tshirt with SS runes on it. Yeah, this jackass is a white supremacist/nazi sympathizer. I am completely comfortable saying that, and I’m 100% sure that I’m 100% right about his belief system. I could imagine a skeptical/liberal owning a copy of The Turner Diaries, for example – because they want to do a blog posting about how stupid the book is – but that whole collection sends a different message, entirely. The point is that that collection of symbology is intended to send that message. Our boy, here, is a racist white supremacist who is sporting the plumage of a racist white supremacist because he wants his friends (assuming he has any) to know where he’s coming from.
He did not plan a mass killing at Walmart because he does not like the draperies that they offer – he is telegraphing clearly why he planned a mass killing. Now, that said, he’s an idiot: how does he think that shooting a few people at a Walmart is going to accomplish his great racist/white supremacist goals? What is his great plan? He’s just going to take himself out of the gene pool, and make his fellow racist/white supremacists shake their heads in dismay because even they’re going to realize that he’s just made them look bad.
We should all be able to acknowledge that those aren’t “radical ideology paraphrenalia” – they are a threat indicator. Someone who keeps that shit around them has something wrong with them and they are probably dangerous. Why can’t the news reports say that? These are the self-posted signs of psychological disease.
I’m in favor of free speech, in case some racist/white supremacist wants to jump on here (wouldn’t that be a laugh?) and say that our gomer has a right to that stuff. But we also have a right to say “there’s something wrong with that guy” and the news reports should also be saying that. If they’re not saying that, they are abetting racism and white supremacy by downplaying it. This guy took his racism and white supremacy so seriously that he was apparently planning to go to a Walmart and kill a bunch of complete strangers over it. There’s not just something wrong with the guy – he’s a menace to himself and his society, because of those “radical ideology” beliefs.
What the fuck about this is not obvious?
The US Government has to play a dancy dancy woo woo dance to define “terrorism” in a way that it only applies to Hamas and the Taliban, and not to the CIA and IDF – so it’s hard for the government to talk about “terrorism” in a meaningful way. But everyone else can. And they should also be discussing terrorism from a rational perspective when they write articles about guys like this. In my opinion this guy is not a “terrorist” because he’s not planning or advocating the use of violence and fear to alter a political process. The US is already racist and white supremacist – he was not planning anything that would move a single socio-political dial in any direction, at all. Terrorists seek to perform meaningful acts, and this guy was not planning anything meaningful at all. Perhaps one of the things, here, is that the media ought to also be mentioning that such an act as shooting up a Walmart is ineffective and pointless and that this guy is not a terrorist he’s an “idiot.” But they can’t even bring themselves to call him a white supremacist/racist or terrorist. They’re pussy-footing around even that. And people wonder why we’ve got a problem, here?
By the way, I have a 1st edition of Madison Grant, and also The Lost Cause. Those are “research materials” not radical ideology – I keep a few such books around because I want to look at them and try to understand them. I’ve owned my copy of Grant for 2 years and I owe you all a posting about it, but it doesn’t even make enough sense to dissect and laugh at. It’s a really interesting wad of brain-fart, basically. The Lost Cause is not: it’s one of the most cunning pieces of propaganda I have ever read – it’s just relentless – every aspect of The Civil War is spun and twisted so it’s not the south’s fault and none of it had anything to do with anything like slavery. It’s all the glory of southern arms and stuff. And it’s very dense and long.
The US Government has to play a dancy dancy woo woo dance to define “terrorism” in a way that it only applies to Hamas and the Taliban, and not to the CIA and IDF …
Does it? Back 18 years ago already, the US population got saturated with talk of “Shock & Awe”, and how our eager display of ruthless mass murder of civilians would bring Iraqis to clamor for surrender – and only us marginalized mutterers in the peace movement noted how that exactly matched the definition of terrorism used by the Busheviks. I doubt most members of the corporate media even noticed their own mental suppleness in keeping the concepts from colliding.
The field of the linguistics of terrorism certainly seems as if it could use some study. There is “military terrorism” — terror as an ancillary to a military campaign in order to demoralize a civilian population, eg. the French resistance in WW2, which was arguably effective. Would it have done anything to stop the Nazis if the Allied military had gone down in flames? Consider me dubious. Syrian rebels used both traditional military and terror tactics against Assad, and a fat lot either one did for them.
Then there is air terrorism, the US weapon of choice — using uncontested air superiority to bomb the shit out of a civilian population in order to advance policy goals. Someone with more knowledge of recent military and political history than I possess can state how well that works for us. There was Desert Storm, but the bombing was followed up by a conventional ground campaign that probably would have done the job even if we hadn’t flattened half of Baghdad. Kosovo/Serbia, maybe? I can’t think of many other examples where blowing up stuff from the air has gotten us what we want.
Finally there is the terrorism that most people think of — blowing up and shooting random civilians on the ground to advance a policy. Radical groups have been doing this for centuries, but has it ever worked to get them what they want? The American labor movement used some terror tactics, but it was the strikes more than the violence that got management to listen. Decades of bombs have not advanced the Palestinians one inch towards freedom.
I’d say that practitioners of all three forms of terrorism described above are idiots, in ascending order of idiocy. Terror of all sorts has simply proven itself to be an ineffective tactic. You can’t use it to change the path of government policy, because a) most people have enough resilience in their psychology that being a terror victim makes them crave revenge more than desire to give in, and/or b) even democratic governments don’t care enough about what happens to their citizens that civilian deaths will make them change their path. Take your pick.
Finally there is the terrorism that most people think of — blowing up and shooting random civilians on the ground to advance a policy. Radical groups have been doing this for centuries, but has it ever worked to get them what they want?
Terrorism worked for white southerners after the US Civil War in defeating attempts to establish civil and political rights for Blacks.
By the way, yesterday I noticed that Msnbc had about four articles about the Tulsa massacre anniversary, so I went over to Fox to check their coverage. Crickets.
True. It also worked for, say, the cossacks against the Jews. So it’s a winning strategy when used by a group with social and political power against an out-group. But can anyone think of a time when it’s worked in the opposite direction?
The theory of modern terrorism is that a population that is fat, happy, and comfortable will roll over and give in once their comfort level is threatened. I see no real-world evidence to support that theory.
I believe they call them “customers”.
Terror of all sorts has simply proven itself to be an ineffective tactic.
Terrorism alone yes but terrorism as part of a coordinated campaign seems to have worked in Algeria, the former Rhodesia and probably a bit in South Africa. And a single terrorist attack in Lebanon seemed to get the US forces out of Lebanon.
The French resistance during and after the Normandy invasion made valuable contributions but would have been no more than an annoyance without the invasion forces.
I would have thought a White Supremacist would be some kind of a fundamentalist christian. If so that Saudi flag in the photo looks a bit out of place. Still since Trump & son-in-law are Saudi fans he may have considered the Saudis as honorary citizens or something.
When I was in college, I was working in the library one summer, and ran across a copy of the turner diaries (I’m not going to capitalize or italicize that dreck). I recognized the name, and flipped through and red a few paragraphs. It was bad (like, poorly executed concept bad, but it was also morally repugnant). By far the worst written shit I’ve ever read.
If anyone really needs to know more about it, I believe ThoughtSlime on Youtube did a video summarizing it, and it’s about what you would expect from people who think an inclination to getting sun burns is their best quality. tiny-minded death cultists.
I’m not entirely convinced as to the probity of materials such as flags and pamphlets, particularly the books. I’m not saying the man is not a white supremacist or that his intentions were not in furtherance of that cause.
Back in the 80s I was active within the on-line Survivalist community. I followed the newsgroups, the blogs and was an active contribute to several on-line interactive groups and have written quite a few articles and guides on various topics. My angle was usually to seek to de-emphasize and provide counter arguments for common assumption within the community.
Frequent targets were assumptions about: The need to flee cities and move, or bug-out, to remote areas in emergencies. The utility of focusing on guns. How the poor and homeless are the often better models for survival than the big names in the community. How groups act in disasters and how popular depictions in books and movies are wrong; there will be no Golden Hoard.
Studying the issues meant taking in and processing survivalist materials that clearly showed their authors inadequacies. Mixed in with the materials on survival there were white supremacist riffs, jabs at POC, self-serving tales of those not ‘pure’ debasing themselves.
So yes, I’ve read sections of “The Turner Diaries”. One day soon I’ll read it cover to cover. I’ve read stuff by John Wesley Rawles. Fact is I’ve read most of the commonly cited materials.
Most of the writing is pretty bad. Most of the writers have quirks. Rawles peppers his books with what amounts to a combination of advertisement and tool fetishism. He doesn’t just stab with a knife. The hero plunges the 12″ Ka-bar with a 9″ Parkerized blade with deep blood grooves, leather-washer handle with hammer pommel deeply into her guts pommel tenting the back of her shirt. The racism, misogyny, contempt for the weak and liberals is thick. Then again if you wish to understand a community you have to be able to process the poisons.
And, to answer the obvious question: being exposed to that much racism, misogyny, hate hasn’t made me racist, a misogynist, or particularly hateful. I look back and the people who screwed me over the worse were all white and male. Most of the major problems in the US were originated, or made much worse, by wealthy white males.
That said I’m not sure what people might think if someone looked closely at my bookshelves, and who I’ve communicated with 40 years ago I might be mistaken for someone and something I’m not.
Of course humanity has always had issues identifying the good guys and the bad. In the 40s cowboy movies the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys black. If only it was that simple.
Yes, it’s all part of the mix.
brucegee
“Finally there is the terrorism that most people think of — blowing up and shooting random civilians on the ground to advance a policy. Radical groups have been doing this for centuries, but has it ever worked to get them what they want?”
It’s working great for Israel.
jrkrideau:
Asatru.
WMDKitty — Survivor@#12:
It’s working great for Israel.
One of the problems with “terrorism” is the question of when it applies to the actions of a state, or if it’s just non-state actors. When the CIA fires a knife-missile into a wedding in Afghanistan, that’s ‘state policy’ not ‘terrorism’. I think that’s an important distinction because if it’s ‘terrorism’ then it implicitly lets Israel or the US off the hook – the government can try to say it’s rogue actors or a mistake, or whatever.
This is why I think it’s a problem when states use the rhetoric of ‘terrorism’ – it’s extremely hard to separate out the normal actions of a state from the actions of a terrorist. It gets worse because some states, like the US particularly, have tried to creat another category called ‘state-sponsored terrorism’ – well, does that apply to the CIA or not? I’d say yes but the CIA would say no, it’s statecraft since it’s under the direction of the executive branch. Of course, it’s ‘state-sponsored terrorism’ when an Iranian does it. It brings on a crisis of linguistic nihilism in me: I conclude that the word is meaningless, and just means “bad things we do for good reasons.” That justifies nothing; it’s still bad things.
I guess terrorism never works for the same reason that treason never prospers.