The title of the article is the
first sign something is deeply wrong: “Let’s
hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American.” The subtitle clarifies it and for the first
time makes it clear how deeply racist (and religiously bigoted) the article is:
“There is a double standard: White terrorists are dealt with as lone wolves,
Islamists are existential threats.”
This was of course written on
April 16, when we had no proper idea who
the person or persons who bombed the Boston Marathon were. So it was ironic when we had the shootouts
and finally we had one living bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who—what do you know?—is
a white American!
I mean let’s break it down. Tsarnaev is actually from the Caucus region,
so he is literally a Caucasian and he is also an American, having gained his
citizenship last September 11. Yes, the
same September 11 on which Ambassador Stevens was murdered. The slaps to this country’s face just keep
coming.
And yet, this “white American” is
also what Sirota would surely call an “islamist terrorist.” (I prefer the term “islamofascist” so it is
clear that we are not talking about all of Islam.) The point is that revealing Dzhokhar as the
terrorist proved in one fell swoop how bigoted Sirota’s title and subtitle
were. There are indeed white American
Islamofascist terrorists. These are not
mutually exclusive terms.
But if you dig into the piece,
there is an even deeper bigotry going on here:
Likewise, in the context of terrorist
attacks, such [white] privilege means white non-Islamic terrorists are
typically portrayed not as representative of whole groups or ideologies, but as
“lone wolf” threats to be dealt with as isolated law enforcement matters. Meanwhile,
non-white or developing-world terrorism suspects are often reflexively
portrayed as representative of larger conspiracies, ideologies and religions
that must be dealt with as systemic threats — the kind potentially requiring
everything from law enforcement action to military operations to civil
liberties legislation to foreign policy shifts.
“White privilege is knowing that even if
the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for your group to be
profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening or
threatened with deportation,” writes author Tim Wise. “White privilege is
knowing that if this bomber turns out to be white, the United States government
will not bomb whatever corn field or mountain town or stale suburb from which
said bomber came, just to ensure that others like him or her don’t get any
ideas. And if he turns out to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won’t
bomb Dublin. And if he’s an Italian-American Catholic we won’t bomb the
Vatican.”
Notice first, how he keeps
retreating from his untenable headline.
First, it it “white non-Islamic.”
Then he comes up with the term “developing world terrorism.” Its like as if, after writing the title he
suddenly remembered that American Muslims exist.
And his follow
up continues his bigotry. Look at
how he treats what O’Reilly said:
As O’Reilly put it, “If this is an
international terror attack, the repercussions will be severe,” but, he added,
“if it’s home-grown” that will just “be another stain on American history.”
In stating such an obvious truth,
O’Reilly has (inadvertently) spotlighted the double standard that drives so
much of our public policymaking and our cultural attitudes toward national
security.
As he said, if the bomber ends up being
a foreigner there will be a “severe” response — and if history is any guide,
that means potentially a full-scale mobilization of military assets, passage of
draconian civil liberties legislation, police surveillance of entire
demographic groups and even perhaps a scuttling of the pending immigration
bill. By contrast, if the bomber is one of the many “home-grown” — read: white
domestic terrorist — attacks we’ve seen in recent years, it will merely be
chalked up as “another stain on American history,” but will not necessarily
prompt any kind of societal mobilization against any one particular group.
You got that? In David Sirota’s mind, a “domestic”
terrorist is a white one. Indeed he
forgets the possibility of a white Muslim domestic terrorist. While I don’t believe we have seen it yet,
there can be the possibility of a person who happens to be a Muslim, who commits
terrorism that is spiritually and factually unconnected with the various Islamofascists
who are trying to destroy this great country.
To show you how bigoted all of
this really is, let’s imagine a hypothetical.
Imagine you are have been challenged to a game of basketball, 3 on
3. The other side has chosen its players
and you have four possible players to choose from. And these are your choices. First up we have David Sirota himself. Here’s his picture:
And then just to be random,
choice number two is my friend Lee Stranahan:
And then your third option is
Kobe Bryant:
And your final option is
Shaquille O’Neal:
So you get to choose only two of
these guys. Going just on what you know
now—and without the benefit of any tryouts—which do you choose for your
basketball team? (And let’s stipulate
you want to win this game.)
Duh, you pick Bryant and O’Neal.
By David Sirota’s logic, however,
your decision is racist. I mean look at
that! You picked the two black people
when there were two white people you could have chosen from. Why not one black dude, one white dude! Oh my God, that is soooo racist.
Except in fact if you didn’t pick
O’Neal and Bryant, it would seem kind of racist. After all, we know that Bryant and O’Neal are
professional basketball players and very good ones at that (okay, O'Neal retired in 2011, but you get the idea). And I don’t know anything about Stranahan or
Sirota’s ball playing skills but even putting aside any anti-white stereotypes...
…you would have to figure that
just by the law of averages, they probably aren’t in the same league. Bryant and O'Neal are the obvious choices.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said
it was his dream that his children would be judged by the content of their
character rather than the color of their skin.
And as ball players, the content of Bryant and O’Neil’s character is
that they are impressive athletes. And
Stranahan and Sirota probably aren’t nearly as impressive. I doubt they would even be offended by my saying that.
So if you criticize the decision
to pick O’Neal and Bryanet over Sirota and Stranahan, as racist, you are
refusing to see anything about any of these men except their skin color.
And if you think the only
difference between these two men...
...is their skin color or
professed religion, you are seeing nothing
but their color and professed religion.
The reality is that we are at war
with a group, called al Qaeda. They
claim to be Muslims although many good Muslims I know would claim they are not
Muslims at all. I’ll leave that
philosophical question to others, and as noted above, I will fall back on the
term “Islamofascists.” But we are at war
with al Qaeda and its members at least claim to be Muslims and they are
certainly Islamofascists. And they have
state sponsors all over the world.
For instance, we invaded
Afghanistan not simply because the guys who attacked us were Islamofascists. We invaded because the Taliban government
made a deal with al Qaeda, saying that they would offer them safe harbor from
which they could attack the U.S. if they did some of their dirty work suppressing
the Northern Alliance that was seeking to unseat them. Indeed, the Taliban specifically bartered
over 9-11: that is, they said al Qaeda could do 9-11 without losing their safe
harbor, if they also murdered the head of the Northern Alliance. Al Qaeda did exactly that, hiding a gun in a
camera and pretending to be a news crew to do it, if memory serves. That cleared the way for September 11, 2001.
Racism is found when you hire the
less qualified white guy over the more qualified black man (unless there is
some other explanatory difference, such as the white dude is the son of the
company’s president). Or if you hire 50
secretaries and they are all white, when there were equally qualified non-white
candidates. Or for that matter, if you
hire 50 Asian American secretaries when there were equally qualified non-Asian
candidates. That is when it is time to start suspecting racism is involved
(indeed, in the latter two cases, it’s hard to imagine it isn’t). But when you treat two individuals of
different races, religions, etc., differently, when there are other independent factors that adequately explains the
difference, then it becomes bigotry to cry bigotry, because it proves you
see nothing but those traits.
Indeed let’s look at that picture
again, and study it in more detail, because as you would see going back to
Sirota’s original editorial, that is what they use to headline the piece:
The one on the left is Tim
McVeigh. He personally set off a single
bomb that killed over one hundred and fifty lives including nineteen children
under the age of six.
By comparison, the one on the
right is Osama bin Laden, who has never personally bombed or otherwise
personally killed anyone to the best of my knowledge. I don’t say that to excuse or minimize what
he did, but to point out that there is a difference, that he was not a "footsoldier" like McVeigh. Instead, Osama bin Laden was the head of an organization dedicated to terrorism in
the name of Islamofascism, which carried out multiple terrorist attacks for
which he is rightfully blamed. He is
rightfully held responsible for the deaths over well over three thousand
Americans in a string of terror attacks including September 11, the attack on
the Cole. And we are still trying to
figure out if the Boston Marathon is part of al Qaeda’s reign of terror.
And this picture holds them up as
though we should think they are the same except for color and religion. But only a true bigot thinks they are the
same. Only a true bigot sees only the
slightly darker color of bin Laden’s skin, and their professed religion as the
only difference for why the terror carried out by one was treated differently than the terror committed by the other. It’s like
pretending that the CEO of Budwiser is the same as some guy Tennessee making his own
beer. You are missing some really
big and highly relevant differences.
It all reminds me of years ago
when I watched the very first episode of The
Sopranos. In it, the Tony Soprano’s daughter
asked her father whether or not he was in the Mafia. Of course he was, but he denied it. And futher, he cynically decried the
suggestion that he was in the mafia as the product of stereotyping, and declared
that the Mafia was a myth.
There can be no doubt that some Italian
Americans have been unfairly stereotyped as being in the Mafia or otherwise
criminal. But at the same time, there
was a reason why Al Capone was not treated just like some guy using an illegal
still in his backyard at around the same time.
There is and was a real organization called the Mafia, and it was in the
business of selling alcohol and harming anyone who got in the way of their
profits, including rival Mafia organizations.
And the fact that its members were overwhelmingly Italian was owed to
their racism, rather than the racism of people who fought to shut them down like
Elliot Ness.
Likewise, David Sirota apologizes
for evil by claiming we are unfairly stereotyping Islamofascists as being a
more serious threat, even when they belong to an actual terrorist organization
that does actually present a much more serious threat. I suppose next he will claim al Qaeda is a
myth, too. It’s Tony Soprano’s defense
to the charge of Mafia inclusion and the only question is whether Sirota is being as
dishonest as the fictional gangster.
Or is he stupid enough to actually believe it?
Finally, his ostensible reason
for wishing the bombers were white (Christian) Americans is so that no one will
commit hate crimes against any other group as a result. Oh, except Muslims aren’t uniquely subjected for
hate crimes. In fact, it
is more dangerous to be a Jew in America than a Muslim. But why let facts get in the way?
But as is often the case when
liberals make false cries of racism or other forms of biogtry, it is in fact
the groups he is professing to protect that he would be hurt the most if his
reasoning was followed—if we ignored the unique threat al Qaeda poses, as is
his ultimate goal. Al Qaeda has killed
many Americans, but non-American Muslims have suffered more murders at the
hands of al Qaeda than Americans of any faith have. They are their primary victims. Likewise, the “unnecessary” wars he laments brought
freedom to fifty million people who were primarily Muslims and largely darker
skinned than Tim McVeigh. But the
important thing to Sirota isn’t the Iraqis who were no longer being murdered by
their own government, but the lives of “American” soldiers, which Sirota has
already indicated means “White Christians” in his mind. It is a strange concept of help that says we
should turn our backs on a people crying out for freedom. And it is a strange sort of tolerance when we
do it because of their religion or the color of their skin.
---------------------------------------
My wife and I have lost our jobs
due to the harassment of convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin, including an
attempt to get us killed and to frame me for a crime carrying a sentence of up
to ten years. I know that claim sounds fantastic,
but if you read starting here, you will see absolute proof of these claims
using documentary and video evidence. If
you would like to help in the fight to hold Mr. Kimberlin accountable, please
hit the Blogger’s Defense Team button on the right. And thank you.
Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing,
mostly for snark and site updates. And
you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent
History here.
And you can read a little more about my novel, here.
---------------------------------------
Disclaimer:
I have accused some people,
particularly Brett Kimberlin, of
reprehensible conduct. In some cases, the conduct is even
criminal. In all cases, the only justice I want is through the
appropriate legal process—such as the criminal justice system. I do not want to see vigilante violence
against any person or any threat of such violence. This kind of conduct is not only morally
wrong, but it is counter-productive.
In the particular case of Brett
Kimberlin, I do not want you to even contact him. Do not call him. Do not write him a letter. Do not write him an email. Do not text-message him. Do not engage in any kind of directed
communication. I say this in part
because under Maryland law, that can quickly become harassment and I don’t want
that to happen to him.
And for that matter, don’t go on
his property. Don’t sneak around and try
to photograph him. Frankly try not to
even be within his field of vision. Your
behavior could quickly cross the line into harassment in that way too (not to
mention trespass and other concerns).
And do not contact his
organizations, either. And most of all, leave his family alone.
The only exception to all that is
that if you are reporting on this, there is of course nothing wrong with
contacting him for things like his official response to any stories you might
report. And even then if he tells you to
stop contacting him, obey that request. That
this is a key element in making out a harassment claim under Maryland law—that
a person asks you to stop and you refuse.
And let me say something
else. In my heart of hearts, I don’t
believe that any person supporting me has done any of the above. But if any of you have, stop it, and if you
haven’t don’t start.
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