The ol' blog has been silent for some time now, assuredly bringing great disappointment to its tens of readers. But I was overseas all summer and had more important shit to do. More important than rant on the internet? I know, crazy but true. Anyway, it's fitting to come back on something somewhat related to the work that kept me away for so long.
By now, you have of course heard of the shootings in Las Vegas. As per usual, we know the identity of the killer, but none of their motivations or much other reasoning.
But one thing we do know: this is definitely not an act of terrorism. Or it is obviously an act of terrorism, and not referring to it as such is an injustice. I'd be willing to wager I could predict which of these responses you'd chose if I asked you how you feel about Colin Kaepernick. My take? It's not an act of terrorism because there is no meaningful conception of what an act of terrorism is.
As many before me have thoroughly demonstrated, the term "terrorism" is completely meaningless. Well, actually it does have a meaning (which I'll get to in a minute), but it's not the meaning everyone is thinking of when they argue about whether the Vegas shootings are or are not examples of it.
Take a trip with me in ol' wayback machine to the heady days of late 2001. Truly, a simpler time: Donnie Darko gave college sophomores the rare opportunity to pretentiously espouse about the state of, like, the world man, Shaggy was instructing us in the ways of gas lighting our lovers, and of course, Joe Piscapo remained a national treasure. But they weren't all happy days, as the US government was busy readying a War on Terror.
Except there's a problem -- if you're going to declare war on an abstract concept, you need to define that concept in some way. So Top Men Of The Day set to work on what exactly "terrorism" is and they came up with something about using force or the threat of force to try to push people into following particular political/governmental dictates. Except these same folks were also busy reading the invasion of a sovereign nation in the event that nation's head of state didn't quit and leave the country. Which would pretty directly be the threat of force to push people into following our political dictates, which would be our literal definition of terrorism. So they worked it a bit more and added some stuff about the targeting of innocent people. Except the entire concept of Shock and Awe, which was going to guide this invasion of a sovereign nation, was premised entirely upon hitting civilian-heavy areas so the cowed people would do what you want them to. Which, again, was literally terrorism according to their own definition.
So long story short, they gave up on trying to define it and we went to war against a concept we couldn't even define. It is not going particularly well, in case you haven't had a chance to check the news in the last 14 or so years.
Because the problem in trying to define terrorism is that terrorism isn't really a thing that exists. War exists. Mass murder exists. But the concept of "terrorism" isn't a thing. Seriously, try it for yourself, I'll wait. In fact, take all the time you need, as I am not literally speaking to you, so I'm not actually waiting on you...
Are you back? Here's a test for your definition -- would any "legitimate" act of war not fall under your definition of terrorism? Because pretty much every definition I've ever seen of the word is something about using force or the threat of force to get some group of people to follow your political dictates. Which would describe every war ever. Which, if you want to go the super-radical route and declare all wars acts of terror, hellz yeah, I'm down for that. But that still makes the term rather useless, as it describes not only every war, but really the majority of acts of violence. And again, I'm totally down if you want to call all acts of violence terrorism, but that again renders the term pretty meaningless.
But I said earlier there is a meaning to the term. And that meaning is "violence committed by Brown People against white people." Think about that big act of terrorism that kicked all this off -- the 9/11 attacks. Remember the places they attacked? The World Trade Center, which housed various CIA offices, the Pentagon, the central command center of our armed forces, and reportedly the last plane was headed for the White House, the seat of our executive authority. The problem? Those pesky definitions again! According to our own military's guidelines for attacking other nations, those would all be considered legitimate military (not civilian!) targets. Which would mean that, again, by our own official definitions, the 9/11 attacks were not terror attacks. Well, they wouldn't have been if we had done it to someone else. Take, for instance, our ongoing drone wars (Thanks Obama!) -- the Pentagon fully admits that we don't know the identity of 90% of our drone strike victims. 90%! 9 out of 10 people we kill with a drone are likely innocent people. If a suicide bomber killed 10 soldiers and 90 innocent people, we probably wouldn't consider that a justified act of legitimate warfare.
And therein lies the rub -- what distinguishes "terrorism" from acts of war or just regular ol' violence is that it is violence done to us by "them." And of course, the "them" in this equation is largely Arabs and/or Muslims, though it can be expanded to other Brown peoples as the situation warrants.
The point of the term is to heighten the "otherness" of the violence of brown people; that is, it serves to make their violence somehow different than our violence (which, of course, it is not). This allows you to drone innocent people all day and chalk it up to breaking freedom eggs for a democracy omelette, while at the same time locking up a child in an indefinite torture center for the "terrorist" crime of allegedly throwing your own grenade back at you.
So it's a super meaningless word, one that falls apart pretty much the second you put any thought into it. Why do so many people want it applied to the Vegas case?
My guess would be out of some sense of fairness -- if every time someone with any level of melanin above 0 kills someone it instantly gets labeled terrorist, well then it's only fair that when a white person kills a bunch of people we also reflexively label that terrorism. It strongly reeks of trying to bargain some benefit out of resigned acceptance of this horrid, racist term: "Sure, you created that term as an excuse for you to murder and torture by the thousands. We'll let you keep it as long as you let us call the people we don't like by it as well."
But where does that argument go? As in, what do we possibly gain from calling Vegas an act of terrorism? Are we going to secretly extradite the shooter to Bulgaria so he can be tortured in a secret location? Are we going to ban all white men from getting on planes? Are we going to launch a war on this guy's hometown? Because that's what happens when we successfully label something a terrorist act. In all seriousness, what do we gain other than a false sense of equality by getting a white guy called a terrorist on the news?
Because I submit that warm fuzzy of useless equality that comes from the (meaningless!) label of terrorism finally being applied to a white person for once is the only outcome of that. That's about it. Which not only is not a terribly gainful outcome in and of itself, but would serve to only further justify the use of the term, what with all these voices of people calling for the label to be used, even though I strongly suspect those same people would not be so happy to use this label in most other contexts.
What I humbly suggest would be a better tact would be to fight to get rid of that term. Vegas was certainly bad, but calling it terrorism does nothing to help us stop it from happening again. Just as the 9/11 attacks were very bad, but calling them terrorism has gotten us no closer to (and indeed, it could be argued, much further away from) preventing more instances of this particular form of violence.
Unless the term terrorism helps us understand and prevent further violence (and it most assuredly does not), then there's little utility in spreading its use.
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