The Narrative of Terrorism

On the heels of the murder-suicide of Andrew Stack, the tax protestor who flew a plane into the Internal Revenue Service building on February 18^th, newly elected Tea Party hero Scott Brown offered his opinion of the event. During the interview with Fox News reporter Neil Cavuto the senator appeared to be empathetic to Scott’s motives. He cites the incident as an example of the frustration that many Americans are feeling with the government and says that it is obvious the government needs to do better. Essentially, Brown trivializes the event to the point where it is comparable to the annoyance an American feels for having to serve on jury duty, or wait in a long line with the DMV.

However the annoyance or frustration that most people feel does not cause them to fly a plane into a building with the intention of killing themselves and others. As it turns out, Scott Brown is not alone in his perception of the event. Many other politicians have expressed similar sentiments, including Representative Steve King, a Republican of Iowa, who even rationalized Stack’s crime. “It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary. And when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the I.R.S., it’s going to be a happy day for America.”

This cavalier attitude and response to the event greatly astonishes me for several reasons. For one, had Andrew Stack been of Middle Eastern descent I have no doubts that the media and the government immediately would have jumped on the terrorist bandwagon. There would have been finger pointing and accusations like “fanatic”, “evil” and “deranged”, and all the other usual favorites used to describe terrorists. Whether or not Stack could actually be considered a terrorist is irrelevant for the same reasons that if a Middle Eastern man committed the same act he would automatically be considered a terrorist. My point is that while what Stack did does not fit the technical definition of terrorism, neither have the acts committed by other people we consider to be terrorists-but that hasn’t stopped us. Therefore, the only reason why they are labeled as terrorists and Stack was not is because their ethnicity or nationality fits our cultural definition of a terrorist. The narrative that the government, with the help of the media, has constructed, packaged and sold to the public is that terrorists are all foreign and evil lunatics who hate America. Surely, Stack’s actions as well as his rambling suicide note could be considered crazy and evil. He certainly had a political motive and were intended to hurt people and generate fear. But because he is missing the most important point on the terrorist checklist he does not fit with the way in which the American public views terrorists. So instead, he is painted as just a misguided and frustrated average Joe, someone who warrants empathy and understanding. He is someone that everyone can relate to. Politicians are clamoring to sympathize with Stack and to use the entire event to blame the government. It is astonishing how much the perception of the act is dependent upon one little variable. In this case, Brown, King and other politicians are shifting the blame from Stack and to the government, saying “we need to do things better.” It is interesting to consider the position America would be in today if we had looked at actual terrorist attacks in the same light. In cases that are actually determined to be terrorism, as opposed to Stack flying a plane into a government building, it seems ridiculous to suggest that the American people should try to understand the terrorists perspective, or to look at it as evidence that the government is doing something wrong and that is why the attack occurred in the first place. These suggestions are laughable when framed from the perspective of terrorism, and yet astonishingly enough they are the very same suggestions being put forth now.