There is something that Americans don’t seem to appreciate. When a Muslim fanatic goes on a murderous shooting rampage, he is a terrorist. When a white gun fanatic goes on a murderous shooting rampage, he is not described as a terrorist. Very often he is found to be of a low IQ or mentally ill. But nobody calls him a terrorist.
Yet the terror struck in ordinary decent folk by both types of killer is just the same. Gun toting white Americans have mowed down primary school kids and infiltrated a black church congregation, then massacred those who trusted and welcomed them. This last crime was perpetrated by a young white supremacist in Charleston, South Carolina, whose fanatical hatred of blacks was widely known among his friends and family. But after he had killed nine people and badly injured three others, he was called a criminal. He was not called a terrorist. Nor, as it happens, was there any serious enquiry into why this hate-crazed lunatic was not reported to the authorities by his associates and investigated for earlier racist acts.
The latest terrorist crime in the US on Sunday saw a lone white gunman in the Michigan city of Kalamazoo go on five-hour killing spree which led to the murder of six people and injury of three others. But no one has called this a terrorist act, even though that is precisely what it was. Now, it could be argued that the demented Michigan taxi driver was following no distorted belief, honoring no crazy principle that he had gotten into his head. The argument continues that the “real terrorist” — for which read “Muslim terrorist” — follows a blasphemous and despicable belief pattern. On that basis therefore, the racist killer in Charleston should also have been called a terrorist.
But then again if the United States characterizes this young killer as mad, should they not be considering that Muslim terrorists are no less unhinged? The savage brutality of all these mass killers, regardless of the color of their skins, is something that crosses all moral boundaries and then goes on way further from civilized behavior. There is no basic difference between the Charleston terrorist and a merciless thug of Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS).
Both are motivated by a primitive bloodlust. They are wrapped up in themselves. They care nothing for others. Almost all mass killers are obsessed by the deeds of terrorists who have gone before them. They glory in violence and destruction. In order to defeat an enemy, it is necessary to understand him. The United States has been the victim of terrible militant atrocities before and after 9/11. It has also experienced the atrocious impact of gun crime, year in, year out. Indeed, thanks to almost non-existent gun-control legislation, many more Americans have died in America at the hands of killers, armed courtesy of the US Constitution’s Second Amendment, than have ever been murdered by militant bigots.
Yet each sows terror. Each takes an insane pleasure in destruction. Each and every one of them is a terrorist. As long as Americans do not appreciate the amoral equivalence between their own callous killers and butchers of Daesh, they are trammeling their ability to understand and confront the evil of terrorism everywhere.
