Domestic Terrorism at Planned Parenthood

By: Rachel Forrester

This weekend, a pro-life terrorist killed three people and injured nine others at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Although using the label of “terrorist” to describe a man who brought an assault rifle and tanks of propane to a health care clinic and shot twelve people should not be contentious, there has been remarkable amounts of denial and refusal to use the term terrorist among the media and public figures.

To provide some clarification, the FBI defines domestic terrorism to, “ Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law [and to] appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; [or] (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion… [and to] occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.”

By this definition, there is no denying that the shooting in Colorado springs was an act of domestic terrorism. The shooting fulfilled the first condition by illegally causing injury and death. The second condition, which provided three ways (one of which was omitted because of irrelevance) by which the act could be shown to have political motivation, was fulfilled by the statement made by the shooter about there being “no more baby parts” as a result of his actions. The third condition is fulfilled by nature of the crime having occurred in the U.S.

One should observe that the definition of terrorism is independent of any qualifications of race or nationality. A act of terrorism committed by a white Christian man is as much an act of terrorism as an act committed by a minority group. Despite right wing insistence that the US is at dire risk of terrorism committed by Muslim extremists, the vast majority of domestic terrorism in the last few years has been perpetrated by Christian extremists motivated by hateful conservative rhetoric.

Among the various responses to the shooting, one of the most striking was presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s claim that the killer was a “transgendered leftist activist”. This statement is incredibly problematic because Cruz appears to simply be slating the shooter into every group that a white man could be part of that his conservative constituency hates and fears. Tactics like Cruz’s lead to situations like Houston’s recent rejection of LGBT anti-discrimination laws in which non-fact based fear mongering about transgender people lead to negative impressions upon public opinion and additional harm to an already marginalized group.

While the mainstream media has not gone nearly as far as Cruz has in warping the identity and intentions of the shooter, it has not been quick to label him as a terrorist either. Although the shooter has been cited as having made many political comments after the attack ranging from the heavily cited “baby parts” comment to inflammatory remarks about President Obama, there is almost no question that his actions were at least in part politically motivated. By the definition discussed earlier, this makes the shooting a definitive act of domestic terrorism and leaves no reason why most major news sources have shied away from using the word terrorism to describe the shooting. The best explanation that has appeared so far is that there is a strong association in American culture between terrorism and Islam. Many suggest that if the shooter had not been a white man, the media and public would have been much quicker to condemn the shooting as an act of terrorism.

Although the exact ideology that led the shooter to kill three people may be blurry, it is clear from his comments that he was influenced by his political beliefs and that therefore, the shooting was an act of terrorism. Americans must recognize that terrorism is not necessarily a foreign threat and that a terrorist does not always fit a certain profile determined by post-9/11 culture and fears.

While it might be easier to pretend that terrorists are solely a product of foreign indoctrination, in reality our domestically indoctrinated terrorists are far more prevalent and dangerous to American society than foreign ones have been or ever will be.