White Terrorism

For my Fall Semester, I took a course on the sociological concepts on violence. For our final paper we had to choose any topic regarding any type of violence. So me, being me, decided to write about what I believe is the true face of terrorism: white people. So I titled my paper "White Supremacy and Terrorism". I hope you enjoy.

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September 11th, 2001 was the day when four airplanes were hijacked by militants associated with the Islamic terrorist group Al Qaeda and crashed into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and in a rural field in Pennsylvania. The September 11th Attacks, otherwise known as the 9/11 attacks, is regarded as one of the worst terror attacks in United States history. President at the time George W. Bush decided to lead the counter-terrorism campaign “War on Terror” as a response to these attacks. In order to increase domestic efforts, the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002 in order to fight against terrorism, border security, immigration and customs, and cyber security. However with such an emphasis on fighting terrorism, it could be said the word has been misused through tout the years and our views on it has been distorted to see it in only one approach, especially when media coverage on terrorism has four times more coverage when the perpetrator is Muslim rather than non-Muslim. Terror acts has often been associated to be carried out by those who identify as Muslim rather than just anyone. It was just this year, 2019, that the Department of Homeland Security decided to add white supremacy to their list of priority threats. Acting secretary Kevin McAleean stated that the rise in recent mass shootings “galvanized the Department of Homeland Security to expand its counter-terrorism mission focus beyond terrorists operating abroad, to include those radicalized to violence within our borders by violent extremists of any ideology.” Terrorism that inflicts white supremacist views is not something that is particularly new to the United States, being that there has been a exceedingly violent history regarding those who believe in white people being the superior race, however it took a long time for it to be recognized as an actual threat. That in itself explains the connection between white supremacy and terrorism, two words that are often seen as mutually exclusive terms and not mutually inclusive.

White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to others because of their race. It is a part of far-right extremism. Those who believe in this ideology has multiple names such as white supremacist, white nationalist, white extremist, sovereign citizen, neo-Nazi, and skinhead, with the list continuing to grow as more white terror events happen. It is difficult to define far-right actions on a global scale, being that there are different interpretations, but in regards to white supremacist events happening specifically in America, it is rarely labeled terrorism but moreso labeled a hate crime. The Global Terrorism Database’s definition of a terrorist attack is “the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation.” Yet this definition does not legitimately apply when it involves those who are non-Muslim. With research into the systematic biases in accurately covering terrorism, it shown through an experiment done by Erin Kearns, a criminologist at Georiga State University, that if the perpetrator is Muslim, the participants were much more likely to consider their actions an act of terrorism. The same goes for the media. When terrorism is used in the media, it is purposely used in a manner to shift public opinion and assists in presenting an unbalanced view of what terrorism is and creating a definition that only pertains to one specific group, this group being Muslims. However Kearns saw that from 2011 to 2015, only 12% of attacks were done by Muslim perpetrators whereas over 50% of attacks were done by those who identified with the far-right yet terrorism is most always correlated with Islam. In all, the definition of terrorism is a one that is constantly changing to fit the mold of someone’s or something’s own bias. However for the purpose of this paper, the definition of terrorism will be the definition used by the Global Terrorism Database.

The El Paso Shooting happened on August 3rd, 2019 where 21 year old Patrick Wood Crusius, a white man, opened fire outside and inside the Walmart resulting in 20 individuals dead and 26 injured. At first, the mass killing was treated as a possible hate crime, being that in that specific area it is majority Hispanic Americans, and as an act of domestic terrorism. It was later proven that the mass killing was indeed a hate crime, because of the suspect authoring a four page manifesto posted on the message board 8chan. The manifesto speaks on fighting against a “Hispanic invasion” and promotes the replacement theory. The word “invasion” was similarly used by President Donald Trump in the same context on multiple occasions. Trump has tweeted out about wanting a stop “all these people”, people referring to migrants, invading the country. In a statement by Trump himself, he states “As everyone knows, the United States of America has been invaded by hundreds of thousands of people coming through Mexico and entering our country illegally.” However Crusius did note in his manifesto that Trump should not be blamed for the mass killing. The replacement theory is the belief that “racial mixing (i.e sex and reproduction between people of different races) weakens the fabric of our society and is an imminent threat to the stability of majority-white, western nations – as well as the world”. Altogether, Crusius believes that if the Hispanic population in the United States continues to increase then it will mean the Democrats will soon be in control. The mass shooting was a scare tactic so Hispanics would leave the country and understand that they are not wanted. And although the manifesto did not only focus on the perpetrator’s racial reasoning and white supremacist ideology, it was for the most part about it. With that being said, based on the GTD’s definition of terrorism, is the El Paso Shooting an act of terrorism? Was there threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence? Crusius murdered individuals as well as injuring them with a semi-automatic civilian version of an AK-47, an illegal act of violence. Was it completed to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation? Crusius wanted to stop a Hispanic invasion to prevent the Democrats from being in political control of the United States, a political goal, by scaring them to stay away from the United States, a fear and an intimidation tactic.

It can be argued that the El Paso Shooting opened the nation’s eyes on white supremacist terrorism in the United States being that it was shortly after the shooting that the Department of Homeland Security decided to put white supremacy as a priority threat. However, it can also be argued that white supremacist terrorism has been a part of the United States’ history for longer than people believe it has. The talk of white supremacist terrorism has been one for awhile on social medias such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and how it, white terrorism, has actually been covered up with the explanation of mental illness. Dylann Roof is an example of this. Dylann Roof killed nine Black churchgoers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Social media was in an uproar when it was revealed that police bought Roof Burger King after being arrested, and when it was being argued that Roof suffered from mental illness and that was the reason for his crime. Despite the evidence that shows that he carefully planned out the massacre, where “he'd downloaded books about the Klan, he'd made lists of other nearby African Methodist Churches, [and] he'd weighed the pros and cons of shooting up a church versus a black cultural festival…”. This is not the first time mental illness has been used as an excuse for actions, and it has been seen to benefit more white people accused of crimes than non-whites. Nonetheless, with the talk of white supremacy being the real face of terrorism and it being swept under the rug for so long, it can be forgotten that before mass shootings that has explicitly shown white supremacist tendencies, there was a period in history where white supremacy (explicitly) ruled the nation. This period is slavery and the Jim Crow Era.

The transportation of Africans to the United States and the enslavement of Africans in the United States began in the early 1600s and was officially abolished in 1865, with a preliminary emancipation issued in 1863 for slaves who were in the states of rebellion will forever be free. Although at the time slavery was not illegal, if we look at it from today’s standpoint slavery could be said to be a terrorist act in the sense that there was both an illegal threat and use of violence towards a whole race that was used to attain an economic goal through fear, intimidation, and coercion. The economic goal of slavery was using slaves as a way to farm tobacco, cotton, and sugar cane in large surpluses, thus assisting the South in becoming a essential part of the economy at the time. Lynchings account for the fear and intimidation tactics done by white supremacists in order to terrorize and keep Blacks as slaves for so long. When slaves attempted to escape to the North, but failed, some were lynched in an area where other slaves can see the consequences of trying to be free. Some were whipped until they bled and flesh was seen. This being said, slavery as a whole was an ongoing terrorist act for more than 200 years. Taking a step further, what classifies it as a white supremacist terrorism is that slavery was used as a way to uphold the notion that the superior race was the white race. What happened in the post-slavery era, Reconstruction and Jim Crow, further proves this point. The making of the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) was during this time, in the mid to late 1800s, and targeted non-Whites, primarily Blacks, in order to purify the nation as much as possible and using violence in order to suppress and further oppress Blacks. An example of this is the bombing of the Freedom Riders’ bus in Alabama.

The Freedom Riders were civil rights activists made up of both Blacks and whites during the civil rights movement that rode buses in order to protest the segregated bus terminals in the year 1961. These were called the Freedom Rides which was organized by the Congress of Racial Equality, abbreviated to CORE. These rides were done in the South, where segregation still occurred, and protesters used, moreso attempted to use, whites-only facilities. Before the bombing of the Freedom Riders’ bus, the first violent incident happened in Rock Hill, South Carolina where three Riders were attacked for attempting to use a whites-only waiting area. On May 14th of that year, the Riders were at a stop in Anniston, Alabama where they were stopped by a mob of white people and a bomb was thrown on the bus. Luckily the Riders escaped the burning bus but were beaten down by the mob. That same day a second bus traveled to Birmingham, Alabama which was also met and beaten down by a mob of white people. Then the incidents would happen again twice, one a week later, and one right after the third attack. Because of the first two incidents, regarding the bombing of the bus and the mob beating down the activists in two different cities in Alabama, federal marshals were called in by U.S Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to protect the Freedom Riders All of these acts are considered a hate crime but if we use the definition of terrorism it can also be said that these acts are better labeled as acts of terrorism. An illegal force of violence was used to attain their (political) goal of preventing the Riders to reach their own political goal of stopping the segregation of bus terminals through fear, intimidation, and coercion. In sum, there was hatred against the activists who wanted the segregation of bus terminals to end because of the belief that white people deserved their own separate spaces from the race considered the bottom of the barrel.

White supremacy and terrorism are two words that often find themselves on opposite sides of the spectrum. It is constantly associated with hate/hate crimes, and while this is not incorrect in any way, shape, or form, it is unfair and a form of partiality to condemn it from being considered terrorism because of preconceptions. The day of September 11th was the day where the definition of terrorism started to form, pertaining to one specific group of people, and the day where the media assisted in creating an unbalanced and biased view of what terrorism is and how it only applies for terror acts done by specific people.