INTRODUCTION
This is the second terror attack to rock Paris in just under a year. The first was on January 7th of this year with the Charlie Hebdo attack and now a multi-pronged attack on Parisian civilians that represent the quintessential essence of Terrorism. Now, with ISIS claiming responsibility, the racist media machine is in full swing and with people (once again) asking the wrong questions and being outrage (in an improper way) by this tragedy; I felt it necessary to pause (as I sometimes do) from the regular focus of this blog to give my sociological analysis of these past events in hopes to provide some insight and as a form of catharsis.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Whenever, individuals talk about terrorism and terrorist attacks, usually one single narrative is dominant. That narrative is one of shock, surprise, outrage, fear and grief. While this is understandable from an emotional standpoint, and forecasting data supports the unlikelihood of most people being caught in such a horrific event. We need to understand this from a historical perspective; especially we Americans. For it has been our Foreign Policy doctrines, global presence and practices over the last 25 years (especially after 9/11) that has lead to these groups gaining increasing strength and militancy. In fact, we've had a long 30+ history of training our next enemies (much like we've done with ISIS). A history that started with arming Afghani rebels in order to fight a proxy war with Russia (sound familiar?) and giving weapons to Saddam Hussein to help his conflict with Iran. Therefore, this a pattern of negligence (at the very least) on the part of the US authority that has lead to the current tragedy, and most likely, given our history, future ones.
One of the many reason why this is such a common occurrence is because our US foreign policy is radicalized by our isolated geographic location. Since we are generally isolated from the rest of the world (partly because our country takes up almost a 1/3rd of a continent), we can have a global presence without seeing or experiencing direct consequences of our actions; what the military call "blowback". This has given us free reign to do as we please militarily (continuing colonialism and manifest destiny) and economically ( treating the rest of the world like our own personal labor farm). However, what we have to own, is that these actions have drastic effects for others without such protections.
SOCIAL ANALYSIS
The false notion of online activism
As I turn to a more immediate social analysis and reaction to the current events, my cynicism gets the better of me. Even though there is an public outcry on social media and a welcoming solidarity that makes people feel warmly unified (e.g. the above image); the data shows a starker reality. That reality is that online support, especially from the comfort of home in a wealthy industrialized first world country, leads to a lack of meaningful action and activism (not to be hypocritical, I do include myself in this critique), because through (re)blogging, (re)tweeting, liking, swiping and sharing; we feel we have completed our necessary civic duty. Therefore, with our guilt assuaged, we can go back to looking at pictures of cats and/or complaining about Luke Skywalker not being in the marketing of Episode VII.
This is what Slavoj Zizek describes as our current form of Cultural Capitalism (not to be confused with Bourdieu).
This is also understood through the ideas of "I-pod Liberalism"
If we add to this "slacktavism" the ubiquitous vitriol that accompanies any social event playing out on social media; ignorance and and a lack of empathy are on full display. You need to look no further than the anti-refugee tweets that have sprung up just after the Paris attacks and those who have used this to further their own political agenda such as Ted Cruz, Ben Carson , Jeff Duncan, and Donald Trump.
This one's for "The Donald."
More guns and not the solution Donald, Closing the borders is not a solution, because the refugees are not the problem.
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| At least some people on social media have it right. |
The Problem is our foreign policy and our inability to see the real issues because we are blinded by our racialized image of terrorism.
The Continued Racialization of Terrorism
Since 9/11 the United States has racialized brown skinned middle eastern looking individuals to be terrorists, just as they have racialized brown skinned mexican looking individuals as undocumented (but they would use the word "illegal" even though you can't be an illegal person) and dark skinned Blacks as more criminal. Thus, this racialization is historically common.
Here is an example:
This has two important outcomes:
1) It causes us to not define acts of domestic terrorism as such because a majority of these acts are committed by young white males (e.g. mass shootings) that invisibility is a form of white privilege.
2) We tend to only care about those victims that are predominantly white or westernized.
We are currently seeing this being played out in the lack of media attention on the bombings in Beirut. Because, due to the racialization of terrorism, and "good victims" being unofficially defined as white and western; we assume that bombings in that part of the world are common place and there are no undeserved victims of the attack because, they too, look like the perpetrators.
CONCLUSION
These recent events have been a tragedy. It is however, unfortunate that we are not learning the lessons from it that we should, just like we have not learned before. This is because we are asking the wrong questions. The United States Government, and may of its citizens have such a warped perception of the causes of world events, its staggeringly ignorant. So let me be clear: These attacks were no the fault of refugees or the countries that harbored them, and more guns wouldn't have helped a damn thing. Instead, these attacks were the product of a long history of genocidal western foreign policy, and an inability be diplomatic and compromise.
Therefore in closing I leave you with a chillingly accurate speech about war from Peter Capaldi as The 12th Doctor
Amazing.
