For Klan read Islam?
[ by Charles Cameron — headlines, McVeigh, mea culpa, Breivik, media, guessing games and blame, puns, great tweet ]
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That’s yesterday’s Charlotte Observer‘s headline and opening paras for an article they reposted from Slate, which had more cautiously titled it What’s on a Ku Klux Klan Membership Application?
We’ll come back to that headline later.
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Okay, seriously.
Educated guesses can prove wrong in retrospect. Educated guesses can lay considerable blame. Educated guesses can have pernicious side effects.
When a bomb ripped through the Federal building in Oklahoma City, many people’s first reaction — including my own — was that it was probably the work of Al-Qaida “Muslim terrorists”.
The media initially broadcast the “Islamist” theory of the bombing quite extensively, and one of the results, according to Penny Bender Fuchs in an American Journalism Review piece titled Jumping to Conclusions in Oklahoma City? was:
A Muslim woman who suffered a miscarriage in her Oklahoma City home said she was afraid to seek medical attention because a crowd of people was throwing stones at her house.
Two more clips from that article:
Within hours of the bombing, most network news reports featured comments from experts on Middle Eastern terrorism who said the blast was similar to the World Trade Center explosion two years earlier. Newspapers relied on many of those same experts and stressed the possibility of a Middle East connection.
The Wall Street Journal, for example, called it a “Beirut-style car bombing” in the first sentence of its story. The New York Post quoted Israeli terrorism experts in its opening paragraph, saying the explosion “mimicked three recent attacks on targets abroad.”
“We were, as usual, following the lead of public officials, assuming that public officials are telling us the truth,” says John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper’s magazine and author of a book on coverage of the Persian Gulf War. He believes the media overemphasized the possible Middle Eastern link and ignored domestic suspects because initially the police were not giving that angle much thought.
“Reporters can’t think without a cop telling them what to think,” MacArthur says. “If you are going to speculate wildly, why not say this is the anniversary of the Waco siege? Why isn’t that as plausible as bearded Arabs fleeing the scene?”
Most news organizations did mention other possible culprits. They noted the bombing took place on the second anniversary of the government raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, suggesting that homegrown terrorists might be responsible. But that angle was buried in most stories.
And:
Jim Lobe, bureau chief for Inter Press Service, says tying the bombing solely to the Middle East “was in a sense a comforting story for Americans.”
Inter Press, a small wire service for papers in the Third World and development agencies in Europe and Canada, was perhaps the first news outlet to raise the possibility that domestic paramilitary fanatics carried out the bombing.
“Of course the Middle East has to be considered,” Lobe says. “But when you considered the weight of all the evidence, it takes you a different direction.”
Lobe, who is familar with militia groups, says many news organizations failed to notice a big clue: traffic on the Internet detailing bomb recipes and talking about the need to avenge the government’s attack on the Branch Davidians. He says the bombing coverage offers “a major lesson for the profession.”
Will that lesson be heeded? MacArthur doesn’t think so. The media are doing a poor job covering Timothy McVeigh and the militia groups around the country, he says. “They are going to turn them into oddball crazies, caricaturing McVeigh as a trailer park terrorist, which is no better than the caricature of the Arabs.”
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Something similar happened in the immediate aftermath of the Oslo bombing, as this account from the media watch-dog group FAIR details:
On news of the first round of attacks–the bombs in Oslo–CNN’s Tom Lister (7/22/11) didn’t know who did it, but knew they were Muslims: “It could be a whole range of groups. But the point is that Al-Qaeda is not so much an organization now. It’s more a spirit for these people. It’s a mobilizing factor.” And he speculated confidently about their motives:
You’ve only got to look at the target–prime minister’s office, the headquarters of the major newspaper group next door. Why would that be relevant? Because the Norwegian newspapers republished the cartoons of Prophet Mohammad that caused such offense in the Muslim world…. That is an issue that still rankles amongst Islamist militants the world over.
CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank (7/22/11) took to the airwaves to declare that “Norway has been in Al-Qaeda’s crosshairs for quite some time.” He added that the bombing “bears all the hallmarks of the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization at the moment,” before adding, almost as an afterthought, that “we don’t know at this point who was responsible.”
On Fox News Channel’s O’Reilly Factor (7/22/11), guest host Laura Ingraham declared, “Deadly terror attacks in Norway, in what appears to be the work, once again, of Muslim extremists.” Even after Norwegian authorities arrested Breivik, former Bush administration U.N. ambassador John Bolton was in disbelief. “There is a kind of political correctness that comes up when these tragic events occur,” he explained on Fox’s On the Record (7/22/11). “This kind of behavior is very un-Norwegian. The speculation that it is part of right-wing extremism, I think that has less of a foundation at this point than the concern that there’s a broader political threat here.”
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Peter Bergen, who wrote the book more than once on Bin Laden and his demise, recently discusses the topic, Right-wing extremist terrorism as deadly a threat as al Qaeda? for CNN — some key findings for perspective:
The word “terrorism” in the United States usually brings to mind plots linked in some way to al Qaeda, while the danger posed to the public by white supremacists, anti-abortion extremists and other right-wing militants is often overlooked.
Militants linked to al Qaeda or inspired by jihadist ideology have carried out four terrorist attacks in the United States since September 11, which have resulted in 17 deaths. Thirteen of them were in a shooting incident at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009.
By contrast, right-wing extremists have committed at least eight lethal terrorist attacks in the United States that have resulted in the deaths of nine people since 9/11, according to data compiled by the New America Foundation.
And if, after investigation, Sunday’s attack on the Sikh temple in Wisconsin is included in this count, the death toll from right-wing terrorism in the U.S. over the past decade rises to 15.
The shooting suspect, Wade Michael Page, posed with a Nazi flag on his Facebook page and has played a prominent role in “white power” music groups. The FBI is investigating the case as a “domestic terrorist-type incident.”
Here’s a link to the SPLC’s updated roster: Terror From the Right: Plots, Conspiracies and Racist Rampages Since Oklahoma City.
And there are no doubt other threats, some from potential left wing sources — and some from other half-crazed wingless entities who roam among us on two legs.
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I said we’d come back to that Charlotte Observer headline later. Here we are:
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That tweet from friend JM Berger — think about it, “veil” suggests “Muslim”, doesn’t it? — and “hood” means “KKK”? — that’s really quite a double-barreled pun — and, given the context, it makes so much more sense!
JM gets my Tweet of the Month award.
August 15th, 2012 at 12:04 am
JM Berger pointed out to me that I almost certainly wasn’t thinking of “Al-Qaida” in 1995, although I might have been thinking of “Muslim terrorists” — so I made a correction in my post above. But I’m now left wondering — and don’t have a quick search methodology to check — whether it was the OKC event or the Oslo bombing that I first thought of as likely an Islamist / AQ event.
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I’m beginning to think it was probably Oslo, since my interest in religion-related violence really got under way with the events in Waco (1993), and I don’t think I really expanded my horizons to include Islamism and AQ until bin Laden issued his fatwa in August 1996.
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Either way, I know I’ve been guilty of jumping to conclusions myself, and am hardly in a position to criticize others if they’ve done the same.
August 15th, 2012 at 12:24 am
Hi Charles,
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Good post. Confirmation bias plagues us all—I truly believe it is a common human trait, simply because it is easier than the alternatives.
August 15th, 2012 at 12:44 am
you were probably thinking “hezbollah” – most of the world was, which is why Iran offered an unprompted denial of responsibility for Oklahoma City
August 15th, 2012 at 1:35 am
The total number of people killed by Right Wing extremists in the the USA in ten years is the number of people killed in an average two week period in Chicago. Terrorism of this sort is barely worth mentioning compared to drug-related and gang-related killings.
August 15th, 2012 at 2:17 am
LG,
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Well said.
August 15th, 2012 at 2:59 am
Perhaps we would get real law enforcement action on Chicago street gangs – right now the bloodiest in the nation – if we started calling them “death squads” instead
August 15th, 2012 at 3:24 am
Hi Lex:
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Well, yeah — Right, Left, Crazed or Islamist, the whole thing is overblown if you compare terrorism with other causes of death.
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Once you bring up the question of comparative morbidity stats – hope that’s the word – you’re off to the races… I have to admit to a fondness for Wired’s 10 year figures, which include 2001 and thus 9/11, and their quote, “your appendix is more likely to kill you than al-Qaida is.”
They’ve even color-coded their results.
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Then there’s the ThinkProgress chart from 2011, with its comment:
Finally, there’s Richard Jackson, Deputy Director of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, New Zealand, who writes:
I was already collecting pages like these for a possible post as it happens, because they do give us an interesting sense of risk — but of course there are other factors in play, and the real risks include the whole complex realms of geopolitics, ecology and psychology.
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Thinking along these lines gets to be book-length pretty fast!
August 15th, 2012 at 3:40 am
Zen:
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Is there any known cross-over between Chicago gangs and Mexico / the cartels?
August 15th, 2012 at 6:35 am
Yes, though I am not well informed about it, MS-13 is here as are narco-cartel distribution agents both of whom keep a low profile. What makes Chicago gangs different from the Crips or New York posses is that they are very entrenched, multigenerational, sophisticated orgs with tight discipline whose reach streteches into Illinois jails and prisons (while on the West Coast, most Hispanic gangs have to defer to the Mexican Mafia prison gang while incarcerated). Much closer to organized crime but not quite on the level of the Outfit or the Russian/Polish mafiya.
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There’s 100,000 verified gangbangers in Cook county, so an MS-13 guy or zeta, no matter how vicious, can’t waltz in and takeover a Latin King or Maniac Latin Disciple crew the way a Russian Vory (Vory v. Zakone “Thief-in-Law”, sort of a roving “capo” proconsul rank in the Russian mafiya) can arrive in Brooklyn or Budapest and instantly lay down the law to local ethnic Russian gangsters. The zetas seem to build strategic alliances with local gangs and the MS-13 are useful out of town hit men. John Sullivan and Robert Bunker would know more on the Maras and Zeta activity in the US
August 15th, 2012 at 2:40 pm
I wonder if a large portion of the Klan’s membership consists of FBI informants? Speaking of MS -13, they are well represented in the Washington, DC suburbs. In Northern Virginia you have an interesting situation. There are MS-13 areas, right up the street is a mosque where three of the 9-22 attackers worship and a bit further north is a large Asian community, mostly Vietnamese, with their assorted gangs. An interesting posible combustible mixture but one which must be conscious of the heavy federal law enforcement presence in the area.
August 17th, 2012 at 9:35 pm
“I wonder if a large portion of the Klan’s membership consists of FBI informants?” Turner worked for the FBI. A fact the SPLC crowd loves to ignore when hyping the threat of ‘right wing terrorism’. Not for nothing does the Infowars crowd suggest that the Establishment’s preferred boogeyman has shifted from an AQ sitting in a cave to a dude with a John Deere hat.
August 17th, 2012 at 9:44 pm
To clarify, if you want an example of the new BigSis worshipping/SPLC friendly Right, see one of J.M. Berger’s followers (not blaming Mr. Berger for this): @ReginaldQuill. His whole Twitter feed is one giant trolling of skeptics (including Trombly and Foust of the) U.S./NATO arming of Syrian rebels. He’s also obsessed with the notion that there’s a vast Kremlin conspiracy behind Ron Paul and the ‘Ronulans’ are plotting to restore the Old Confederacy (think of it as Russian mirror imaging of ‘Plan Kavkaz’, the Channel One documentary film in Russia that interviewed a repentant terrorist who claimed the Turks and the CIA were behind the whole Chechen insurgency). Pro-Establishment conspiracy theorist Reggie even manages to work in that somehow goldbugs are responsible for South African police shooting striking miners.
I would imagine if BigSis keeps buying up .223 like there’s no tomorrow and Tula works .223 becomes more common at Wal Marts across the U.S. (Izmash the legendary AK maker has already admitted their whole business strategy now depends on the U.S. semi auto export market), that @ReginaldQuill will say that’s proof Russians want to arm American bitter clingers to fight their own government. If Israel bombs Iran tomorrow via Azerbaijan air space, they’ll also be denouncing the Russians for cynically using the Israelis as proxies to raise oil prices. The only certainty with certain Twitterers I’ve noticed is:
1) The no. 1 enemy is always domestic.
2) Russia is always foreign enemy no. 1, to the point that they see no contradiction between denouncing Russia Today TV for airing 9/11 truthers while alleging in J.R. Nyquist ‘truther’ fashion that Russia somehow was linked to 9/11.
The good news is these people are becoming so predictable it’s easy to anticipate their spin well in advance, and their audience is still admittedly tiny. But the talking points seem to be under beta testing in case of some serious SHTF scenario or major terror attack to be blamed on domestic groups.
Does anyone here have a link to Safranski’s take on the ludicrous ‘Tea Party Insurrection of 2016’ piece? Is it part and parcel of Adorno suggesting the Army may have to be used domestically? Telling their masters what they want to hear?
August 17th, 2012 at 9:50 pm
Sorry, links here:
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/15/business/a-kalashnikov-factory-in-russia-survives-on-sales-to-us-gun-owners.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
NYT A Kalashnikov factory in Russia survives on sales to U.S. gun owners
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/7/the-civil-war-of-2016/
Washington Times editorial slamming the authors of the 2016 think piece in Small Wars Journal for writing pro-Establishment war porn
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http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/full-spectrum-operations-in-the-homeland-a-%E2%80%9Cvision%E2%80%9D-of-the-future
The SWJ piece that set a thousand blogs alight with speculation about martial law in America
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and another link here, to a U of H professor who’s convinced the top 1,000 (U.S.) trafficked website Zerohedge is a front for the Bulgarian KGB: http://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=6173#comment-89527
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Anything and everything to avoid facing the truth that some segments of the U.S. elite want a police state.
August 17th, 2012 at 9:55 pm
And frankly, I think the SPLC are a bunch of ‘hate pimps’ who wildly overhype the threat from domestic extremists and ignore the single largest false flag terrorist attack of our time, Operation Fast and Furious.
August 18th, 2012 at 2:15 am
My take on the SWJ “Full Spectrum” article is that it was idiotic – which appears to be part of a wide consensus.
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I have also been informed that the real driver behind the pernicious idea is a bureaucratic effort to grab budget away from DHS for the Army.
August 18th, 2012 at 5:51 am
From a post I wrote on Sept 11, 2008:
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This morning I found a great story about John O’Neill told by Alan I. Baron in his 2003 review of Murray Weiss’s The Man Who Warned America. Baron met O’Neill in 1987 when he was named special counsel to the House of Representatives for the impeachment proceedings against then-federal judge Alcee Hastings. The men remained friends for the rest of O’Neill’s life. Baron recounts:
August 18th, 2012 at 3:41 pm
Excellent Story, Miss P. !
August 18th, 2012 at 6:44 pm
It is a fine story, isn’t it? — thanks, Pundita.
August 18th, 2012 at 6:56 pm
I’ve been holding off on writing about the recent turn of the conversation towards both SPLC and SWJ’s Full Spectrum piece, because I hadn’t read the latter — I have, now! — and needed some time to reflect.
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A 140-character tweet isn’t enough for a subtle and nuanced analysis, any more than a sound-bite is enough for a symphony — but I do think Adam Serwer had a point the other day when he tweeted:
I may come back to that in a later post…
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I hadn’t read the SWJ piece because my main area of focus has, at least until recently, been on religious drivers of, and sanctions for, violence – and the title of the piece didn’t suggest that “my” topic would be likely to intrude. Now that I have read it, though, I see that it has to do with scenario planning – another interest of mine – so I’d like to offer some comments.
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My main reaction is this: I think the question of what scenario to put forward to discuss military responses to a possible insurrection is a vexed one.
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It’s easy to say this with hindsight, but I hope that by now I’m savvy enough that I wouldn’t have chosen a scenario that identified Tea Party, Occupiers, or any racial or belief group as “the insurgents” – even if thinly veiled under a generic name, though the use of a generic name would seem only prudent – and would hope that I’d have proposed a matrix of scenarios, balanced so that it was clear that no particular group was being attacked, even by implication.
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A delicate matter.
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Bearing that in mind, and giving the SWJ writers the benefit of the doubt, I’m guessing they wanted a scenario in which some members of the police and perhaps military might well have sympathies with the insurgents over and beyond a more general deep distaste for firing on one’s fellow-citizens — because that’s the sort of thing that would make an already delicate situation even more so, and a decent scenario should make even some of the blacker swans look pale gray… so that “all eventualities” have been explored ahead of time.
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And there is in fact an organization for members and ex-members of the military and law enforcement who, once having taken the oath “to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic” intend to keep it – the Oath Keepers.
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None of which means the scenario in question is predicted, or expected to occur — or, for that matter, that the writers intended to provoke it…
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It is instructive to read the Oath Keepers’ own Declaration, which I think it is fair to say embodies the founding principles of the group, and which specifically describes Orders We Will NOT Obey.
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Given that the grand excuse given for war crimes at the Nuremberg tribunals was “I was only obeying orders” and that Nuremberg Principle IV states:
a clear statement of the kinds of orders the group would refuse to obey can hardly be faulted.
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And yet it can also be viewed as an indicator that there are a fair number of people either currently members of, or veterans of, the military and law enforcement who suspect, in the words of the Oath Keepers’ website, that the need for such a statement is “near at hand”.
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Many Oath Keepers may have strong religious convictions, many may be atheists or agnostics, but I don’t see them as a group that invokes divine sanction for violent acts or is attacked violently on account of their religious beliefs. They’re not in the field I’ve been studying, in other words, and I am only peripherally aware of them.
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I do have one vet friend whom I pointed in their direction, and who thanked me for it — I’m probably closer to a Quaker or a Buddhist standpoint myself.
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After reading the Full Spectrum piece, however, I did think it might be worth checking to see what the Oath Keepers had to say about it, because from my POV they are “what’s interesting” about the choice of scenario. And indeed, they have a page devoted to the topic, in which they suggest:
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I’m not a Tea Partier nor an Occupier, and I’m more interested in conflict resolution than in conflict — a position that to my mind mandates that I have an open ear for all parties and points of view. But the thing that really catches my attention here is the sense of urgency — “Such a time is near at hand again” and “It is a real wake-up call” — which remind me forcibly of the rhetoric of imminent apocalypse. And I hear the same sense of urgency from those in the global warming camp — and in other places, too.
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Even my beloved poet William Butler Yeats thought the Second Coming was at hand — but that was almost a century ago, and the Rough Beast doesn’t seem to have slouched all the way towards Bethlehem yet.
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Let’s not build an echo chamber of reverberating accusations and counter-accusations. Let’s depolarize, take a pause and listen to one another.
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Peace heals.
August 22nd, 2012 at 10:45 pm
“book-length”: that sounds like a call to Pinker’s Angels work, which is both impressive and a fine example of the kind of death calculus you’re engaged in, Charles.
August 22nd, 2012 at 11:53 pm
Interesting, Bryan — “is war decreasing” is a very tough question to tackle, isn’t it? I’ll take your encouragement and try to get hold of the Pinker (and my own better nature).
August 27th, 2012 at 2:54 am
Pinker’s book is overwhelming, Charles, not least from its relentless statistical onslaught. But it’s pretty convincing.
Weakest point is WWI-WWII; not sure I’m fully on board with his reasoning.
If we think of policy and social issues based on relative death tolls, all kinds of new ways can open up.