3/20/2018 Terrorism and 'White Privilege' - Quillette

Terrorism and ‘White Privilege’

written by Dale Claridge

On 1st October, Las Vegas suffered one of the worst mass shootings in US history. One of the most
celebrated cities in the United States saw at least 58 people killed and over 500 injured in what appears to
have been an act of mindless slaughter. In trying to make sense of the carnage, many people are
expressing indignation that the gunman, an elderly white male, is not being described as a terrorist as,
say, a Muslim shooter might have been in similar circumstances. This discrepancy, it is alleged, is
evidence of ‘white privilege.’

Considering that white Americans have been culpable for more deaths in 2017 and more successful mass
shootings than Islamists, it is understandable that some people struggle to make sense of the fact that
attacks labelled ‘terrorism’ get a disproportionate amount of coverage. They protest that, due to the
nation’s racial biases, white assailants of all sorts are probed for personal circumstances and psychological
issues which might protect them from the unique stigmatisation attached to the word ‘terrorist.’ In this
subtle but important way, it is alleged, the media and political classes are white-washing the most
despicable of crimes.

It would be helpful at this point to define precisely what is meant by the word ‘terrorism.’ However, this is
easier said than done because there is no universally agreed-upon definition of terrorism. However, for

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the purposes of this article, we will rely upon the definition given in Title 22 Chapter 38 U.S. Code §
2656f, which is an act of “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant
targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.” This captures the three elements identified by
Israeli terrorism expert Ariel Merari (1993) as present in US, British, and German law:

1. The use of violence.

2. The pursuit of political goals.
3. The aim of spreading fear among the target population.

The claim that white assailants are never labelled terrorists is subject to at least three objections.

The first objection is that some of the most notorious mass murders are committed by a category of white
perpetrator whose designation as ‘terrorist’ is the subject of legitimate debate. A racist mass murderer
such as Dylann Roof certainly meets Merari’s first condition and the FBI’s requirement of attempting
to: (i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population. Roof clearly expressed his desire to instigate a “race
war” and was motivated by his own racial bigotry. This certainly sounds political, but it also
unambiguously fits the definition of a hate crime. Although he was described as a terrorist in a minority of
instances, many people–including then FBI director James Comey–disputed that his crime
was sufficiently political to qualify as an act of terrorism.

It is worth considering that terrorism is often set up in opposition to the state. Roof was aiming to murder
a particular category of citizen rather than overthrow or undermine the state itself, and this contributed to
the way that the political nature of his crime was perceived and understood. An argument could still be
made that Dylann Roof is a terrorist, but what is also clear is that there is a practical and categorical
difference between working on behalf of a group that wants to effect identifiable changes in government
model or policy, and acting out of personal hatred for a group of people within a society. This, however, is
not a moral difference. Dylann Roof is no less evil than Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Bomber, and
people like Dylann Roof are treated no less harshly by the media or courts as a consequence of their
designation as mass murderers or perpetrators of hate crimes. The cross section of US citizens who
consider racially motivated mass murder less despicable than terrorism is a small one; sufficiently small
that Roof was sentenced to death on Federal Charges.

The second objection relates to confusion over the causal role played by a perpetrator’s politics in his or
her crime. Craig Hicks, for instance, had expressed contempt for religion on social media, including
contempt for Islam. So when he murdered three young Muslim Americans, Hicks’s crime was widely
assumed to have been motivated by this animus, even though no evidence has yet been produced in
support of this theory. It seems more probable that this was a mass murder, distinguished from countless
others by the identity of the victims (who happened to be Muslim) and not by the motives of the
assailant. Which is not to say that Hicks could not have been racist or deliberately targeted Muslims, but
there is scant evidence to support such a theory and some evidence that contradicts it. Hicks’s wife
has insisted that the triple murder was the result of a dispute over a parking space, and law enforcement
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sources indicated that the investigation was proceeding on this basis. Additionally, Hicks had stated in
Facebook posts that he would have no objection to a Muslim American becoming president of the United
States and had expressed his further belief that people of all religions should be at liberty to live and
practice their faith freely. Even if anti-Muslim bigotry does turn out to have played a causal role in his
crime, it would still not qualify as terrorism given the absence of a political objective which terrorists are
invariably eager to make plain, for obvious reasons.

The third objection is that there are some clear counter examples of non-white mass killers who
have not been reflexively described as terrorists by either the media or law enforcement authorities, such
as One L. Goh, Byran Uyesugi, and Seung-Hui Cho. One might object that the discrimination in the media
is targeted specifically against Middle Eastern, Arab, and Pakistani people or any individual who ‘looks’
Muslim. In which case, it would be more honest for critics to either admit that this is a specific ‘anti-
Muslim’ bias or, alternatively, evidence of ‘non-Muslim’ privilege as opposed to ‘white’ privilege. But this
theory becomes less plausible when we consider shootings committed outside of the United States. In
Germany, a young man from Kosovo committed a mass attack, but there is no indication that this was an
act of terrorism since it did not meet the conditions outlined in the definition above. And, of course, white
assailants are categorised as terrorists when the conditions of that definition have been met. Anders
Breivik’s murder of 77 people, many of them children, has always and widely been considered an act of
terrorism on this basis. He used violence to strike at civilians in an attempt to both terrorise the people
and to effect a change in Norwegian policies on immigration and multiculturalism. In fact, from ETA to
the IRA, terrorism in the 20th century was a crime overwhelmingly and uncontroversially committed by
white European groups.

The personal grievances and murky motivations described above contrast starkly with the Islamist
terrorist attacks which have become increasingly common in the contemporary West. When a suicide
attack is accompanied by a declaration of faith, “Allahu Akbar,” the motives and allegiances of the
attacker are hardly a mystery. A number of international terrorist organisations pour lives and money into
tailored propaganda to enlist volunteers in their suicide crusade. When these people commit these acts,
many aspects of their lives are laid open to scrutiny, such as their social isolation or history of mental
illness. Nonetheless, it is prudent and intellectually parsimonious to accept that they are acting for the
reasons they have freely offered, namely that they believe their heavenly bounty will be greater for the
severity and method of their martyrdom.

Whilst it may be the case that most jihadists in the West come from a small group of ethnicities, the
reason that they are identified so quickly is because their own words and modus operandi have made it
clear that they are jihadists. The identity, religion, and ethnicity of a perpetrator are only relevant so far as
they tell us about their motivations, and in the case of the Las Vegas shooting, the gunman’s race and
religion tell us very little.

It is beyond dispute that Islamic terrorism can be held up as a bogeyman, and that this can be used to
mobilise hatred and suspicion against those who are, or might look like, Muslims. Certainly, the fight

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