White Homegrown Extremism is Terrorism, Too
I woke up this morning to hear some horrifying, yet not entirely unpredictable news. “White Supremacists Shoot 5 Black Lives Matter Protesters.” It happened in Minneapolis, on American soil, last night as a group of peaceful protesters gathered to voice their outrage over a police shooting of yet another unarmed and, by most eyewitness accounts, handcuffed black man, Jamar Clark.
My initial response was one of dread and sadness, then the anger quickly set in. Why aren’t we calling this act of violence what it is — domestic terrorism. The FBI Terrorist Research and Analytical Center in 1994, defined domestic terrorism as “the unlawful use of force or violence, committed by a group(s) of two or more individuals, against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”
This particular act of terrorism was committed by domestic citizens (not unlike most terrorist acts in our country) to further racist, political objectives by way of attempted murder of American citizens who were peacefully gathered. If the government’s terrorism definition confuses you, let me put this into perspective. In light of the Boston bombings and the recent Paris terror attacks, this should be quite easy to describe. Let’s keep the circumstances identical and simply swap out the actors in this gruesome Minneapolis case.
For a moment, let’s just role play that the group of protesters were instead a group of white American citizens who were gathered around the memorial of a white boy who had been the victim of a drunk-driving hit and run incident while crossing the street to go to school. While friends, family, and supporters of the victim are standing around voicing their grievances in a peaceful manner, asking for a stricter sentence for the reckless drunk driver or the addition of a traffic camera, a group of 4 brown-skinned individuals wearing ski masks and acting suspicious suddenly walk up to the mourning group. One of them, when asked by a vigilant bystander why he was there, suddenly draws a weapon and begins shooting into the crowd, wounding and nearly killing 5 white people. Later, we discover that the same 4 brown-skinned people, Americans I might add, made a video of themselves on the way to the protest where they were wearing military uniforms, balaclava masks covering their faces, and brandishing weapons, while saying things like, “We’re locked and loaded,” “We’re going to knock this shit out… a little reverse-cultural enriching. Let the fire rise,” and ending with “Allahu Akbar.”
Motive is clear, intent is verbalized, and the means to carry out a deadly attack are all memorialized in the video and clear in my mind. The motive is ideological and, based on the language, is hate related. The intent is to kill innocent people. And the means, the proud and bombastic waving of a semi-automatic weapon that will be used to carry out the attack in the offenders own words, is a no brainer clincher. When they get there, after some bystanders push back against them because they clearly seem out of place and are threatening, the gunmen open fire wounding 5 innocent people — law-abiding Americans. So why aren’t we calling this domestic terrorism? Any logical person can see this was a near-fatal act carried out by a group of people in the name of a violent ideology. Terrorism, right? Then why isn’t the media reporting it as such. Why isn’t our government conducting a press conference condemning the attack and pledging support to eliminate the threat?
Simple, the gunmen were white and the victims were black.
There can be no other explanation as to the lack of popular outcry. The gunmen in this case, in fact, were white not brown. The terror intent was apparent in the video, where the shooters clearly outlined their intended actions and brandished a weapon, and the ideological motive was crystal clear — replace “Allahu Akbar,” with “Stay white,” as the gunmen did in this case and it is clear cut in most Americans’ minds. Terrorism. But because the roles were flipped, we balk and dismiss it as either some “crazies” or that the Black Lives Matter protesters deserved it. Trump might even hail these stains of human terrorists as American heroes. Nothing surprises me anymore.
What’s more disturbing, the live streaming video of the gunmen outlying their plans surfaced before the attacks were committed and nothing much was done about it. Had it been that the gunmen in the video were brown-skinned and not white, I guarantee you we would have seen the full capabilities of the National Guard in force to take control and diffuse the situation before it began. But it didn’t happen. And the unsettling fact that this happened in front of a police precinct would lead you to believe that at least the local police would be on site to counter and diffuse the situation. They weren’t. In fact, after the gunmen opened fire and got away, in the melee, the cops came out and actually started macing and detaining the BLM protesters instead of providing aid to the victims who’d been shot.
In this flipped scenario that I’ve laid out, 4 brown-skinned terrorists publicly lay out their plans to commit a murderous act, arrive on site unhindered, and shoot 5 innocent Americans gathered legally to pay tribute to a fallen victim. Had it happened this way, America would be outraged. In fact, the world would likely join in our outrage and we’d be superimposing our nation’s flag over our Facebook profile photos. We’d be inundated by Vine-style footage of the incident on every news channel and Republican presidential hopefuls would be calling for the head of every brown-skinned refugee and person on Earth. But it’s not happening. And it’s not happening because the actors were white, not brown or black. It’s not happening because the group that was terrorized was Black Lives Matter protesters, and not light-skinned Western world coffee shop patrons. Folks, we have a serious problem.
First, we need to call this what it is — terrorism. Domestic terrorism. Until we recognize it under the auspice of terrorism and dedicate resources to combat it, it will continue to happen. Second, we need to recognize that we have a terror problem within our own borders and stop the blanket blaming of outsiders and refugees and immigrants for that problem, when little to no evidence exists that they are a threat. Immigrants and refugees are not ISIS, and even if in the rare case that some are, the existing screening process for refugees to enter the U.S. is so stringent that it’d be highly unlikely any “bad guys” could get through.
So, what is the threat? Since 9/11, more Americans have been killed on U.S. soil by white, racist, American terrorists than by any other foreign or domestic terrorist (ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and Taliban) group combined. Think of the 9 murdered in a Charleston church by a “lone wolf” white supremacist. The 6 innocents killed in an Oak Creek, Wisconsin Sikh Temple by a neo-Nazi gunman. The DC Holocaust museum shooting. The gunman who opened fire in a Jewish day school parking lot. Black churches are burning across the South on the regular. The list of headlines goes on and on and on, yet it disappears after a short news cycle, if any, and then goes away never to be discussed again. When does it stop? When do we wake up and call out the murderous extremists in our own backyard for what they really are? Terrorists. Has the white supremacy that built our nation and is engrained in the very fabric of our society taken over control of the hearts and minds of even the most compassionate and empathetic Americans? Or, are we so comfortable in our own bleeding-heart “white privilege” that we don’t get involved out of sheer exhaustion and can’t muster the courage to point out the utter injustice that takes place every single day to people of color? Where are our political leaders on this? Has our own Islamophobia and fear of the unknown, our own ignorance, clouded our judgment and been justified by hate?
“Home of the Free, Land of the Brave” doesn’t mean a damn thing until we are all truly equal and free from injustice, and we find the courage to be brave Americans whose primary mission is to stand up for what is right and just for people of all colors and creeds, both at home and abroad. Until we recognize and deal with the terror that exists on our home soil — and on our city streets — and denounce those in potential leadership positions who irresponsibly fan the flames of hate, we are doomed to suffer the increasing “normalization” of terror attacks within our own borders, by our own people. I am not okay with that.
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Christian Picciolini — @cpicciolini
After leaving the white supremacist skinhead movement he helped build in the 1980s and 90s, Christian Picciolini graduated from DePaul University and became a respected entrepreneur and artist. He launched Goldmill Group, a global entertainment media firm and in 2010 and 2011, he was nominated for three regional Emmy Awards for his role as executive producer of JBTV, one of America’s longest-running music television programs. Most notably, in 2010 he co-founded Life After Hate, a nonprofit dedicated to helping others gain the knowledge necessary to implement long-term solutions that counter racism and violent extremism. In 2015, Picciolini published his memoir, Romantic Violence: Memoirs of an American Skinhead, where he details his involvement in the early American white power skinhead movement and the steps he took to ultimately save his own life and build an existence of understanding, compassion, and empathy.