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Terrorism: It’s in the Eye of the Beholder
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Paulette Sankofa, W A M M
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The word ‘terrorism’ is served up to the public like a blue plate special.
The word “terrorism” has become daily fare on the media menu. The word is served up to the public like a blue plate special with those labeled as “terrorists,” or even “potential terrorists,” changing daily. It is clear that the continual use of the word is meant to evoke fear of cataclysmic actions of physical violence. And the perpetrators of such acts are “those people” who just hate the United States and its people. After September 11, 2001, we were told that “those people” are just jealous of our wealth and way of life, and that is why “they” are trying to bring us down.
The word “terrorism” is so ubiquitous, one might even think there is a single, authoritative definition of the term, or that the concept of terrorism and acts of terrorism are something new since September 11. Noam Chomsky, in Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, poses the questions, “What constitutes terrorism? How does it differ from aggression or resistance? . . . Terrorism is what our leaders declare it to be.”
“Terrorism” is a subjective term, and within recent years in the international arena the focus has been on hijackings, abduction of foreign dignitaries, and use of “weapons of mass destruction.” Those viewed as “terrorists” have been those who vehemently oppose and resist global dominance, imperialism, and exploitation of natural resources by the United States and its economic cronies.
If we shift the paradigm to also include, in addition to physical violence, domestic acts of serious social violence that threaten quality of life, health, well-being, and safety, then the field of “terrorists” widens. Under this definition, the Ku Klux Klan, the 311 Boyz, Enron and Halliburton executives, the proponents of welfare “reform,” students and instructors of the School of the Americas, and those who committed the 48 unsolved racially motivated bombings in Birmingham, Alabama, between 1848 and 1957 are all terrorists. And anyone who has experienced domestic violence knows all too well about ongoing terroristic threats. Will our nation begin a war on these acts of terrorism?
Instead, our government seeks out those waging resistance to environmental degradation, calling them “eco-terrorists.” We shouldn’t be surprised—back in 1988, the Pentagon labeled Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress as “terrorists.”
Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I think the word “terrorism” should not be used at all. It’s just that I wonder if the way in which the term has come to be used isn’t an act of terrorism in and of itself. |
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© 2004 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete February 2004 Index - click here
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