To clarify, white people are actually slightly underrepresented in terrorism per capita; they simply constitute a significant majority of the population and therefore do most of the terrorism. Therefore, while this tweet is technically correct, it should not be taken to mean that white individuals are more likely to be terrorists—it’s an ironic reflection on the skewed, racially motivated reality presented to us by media and politicians.
Source:
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/fbi-releases-lone-offender-terrorism-report-111319
https://www.statista.com/chart/19968/the-race-ethnicity-of-lone-offender-terrorists/
https://www.theroot.com/are-white-men-americas-biggest-terror-threat-we-checke-1830175112
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/14/fbi-and-dhs-warned-of-growing-threat-from-white-supremacists-months-ago/
Gruesomely mass murdering civilians using bombs to get the rest to comply with your will is only “Terrorism” if the bombs were placed on the ground and then exploded, not when they were dropped from the air.
Hence the smaller per-capita representation of white people in the count of terrorists.
HAHAHA this is such good analysis.
That covers land and air. What about sea?
A similar statistical anomaly is that more men are sexually assaulted in the armed forces than women, but it’s just because there are much more of them overall. An individual woman is still more likely to be assaulted than an individual man.
As always, the takeaway is that demographics are not what must be addressed when addressing violence. The systemic artifacts that enable and foster terrorism or SA are the problem, never simply structures like gender or race.
The conservative mindset ignores this and just introduces more violence to the equation, saying “let’s ban women from spaces” and “let’s deport brown people.” And act surprised when those solutions make the problem worse, not better.
And when they do raise issues like sexual assault against men, it’s pretty much only ever as a counterpoint to derail discussions about sexual assault against women and avoid doing anything about either, which I would argue is also pretty disrespectful towards men.
Absolutely. “Men can be victims too” is such an important truth and it’s nauseating when the phrase is leveraged in support of radical apathy toward SA.
What do you mean by systemic artifacts? Real question, id like to understand better
Great question! With that I refer to structures, attitudes, policies, norms, or institutional practices. Here are some examples.
For SA:
- societal attitudes like rape culture/“boys will be boys”
- institutional coverups that protect perpetrators rather than victims
- weak or bad laws that discourage reporting
- sex education failures
- support and recovery system failures
- economic failures where victims may be unable to escape abuse due to financial dependence or other inequities
- harmful media representation
- and more
For terrorism a lot of what radicalizes people has to do with alienation—people who feel violently disconnected from their social context are more likely to act violently:
- corruption
- poverty
- educational failures
- overly agressive counterterrorism like mass surveillance
- racism
- religious or ethnic discrimination
- human rights abuses
- mental health treatment failures
- physical health treatment failures (look at Luigi Mangione)
- and more
Just like how “boys will be boys” never excuses SA, of course, none these systemic artifacts excuse the resulting violence. These artifacts are simply what a society needs to address in order to mitigate the violence and protect its people.
Thank you for writing that out. Mission accomplished
Yay! Glad to help.
That’s because we don’t do terrorism, we do mental health issues
*stands outside house and claps in appreciation.*
“There. If that doesn’t solve our issues I dont know what will.”~ Tory Government, circa not long ago.
What did the whites do? We only murdered a shitload of minorities. Oh shit, do minorities also care if you murder their family?
whites went to other people’s land, mass murdered almost everyone and then tortured the survivors for centuries.
next to that, ISIS may as well be a group of shoplifters
Have you heard of jokes?
yea? I was just continuing on what you said
Re your subtext, you have to account for what actually gets labeled as terrorism. A brown, bearded, muslim looking person could pee on the side of the road and have it classified as terrorism
Obviously they were trying to destroy the Western civilastion as whole, it’s not like sometimes people end up pissing outsie because you can’t find free public toilets anyfuckingwhere!
I once heard that the key to a good joke is it needs to be both unexpected and inevitable. This is a good joke.
Question: do we attribute Russia’s actions to terrorism? I would wager yes, as it can easily be labeled as a terrorist state at this point. In that case, I think we can give them lots of credit, right?
Ummm I don’t really know what actions you mean.
In any case, by most standards Russian individuals would be called white, haha.
I think that’s the point. Also, I think they are referring to Ukraine and interference with elections of other nations.
Ah I see. I don’t know that many definitions of terrorism include invasion and election interference—that’s another category of crime as far as I am aware.
TBH, I don’t know any definitions of terrorism that are self consistent (that being, including everything that is definitely terrorism while discluding everything that definitely isn’t.)
Ken Cheng is the true princess of our hearts.
For it to be terrorism it has to be motivated by political or religious ideology. So all the highschool kids who snap and murder a bunch of their classmates: not terrorism. However: the IRA or Timothy McVeigh or the Unabomber: definitely terrorism.
I think that’s an unnecessary splitting of hairs, because both the Unabomber and the school shooter become political in the aftermath
So if someone has a heart attack while driving and their car plows into a busy shopping street. Then whether or not they are regarded as a terrorist depends on whether or not someone tries to ban old people from driving because of it?
Or to ask a different question, how would you define terrorism? Because the Oxford English dictionary definition is:
“The calculated use of violence or threat of violence to inculcate fear. Terrorism is intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.”
That last bit sort of discounts the majority of gun violence generally. And yes in terms of the result, it is splitting hairs. But, knowing the motivation behind a crime is important. You’re going to have more success preventing school shootings by investing in mental health services than you will in anti terrorism policing.
Also if two separate people wake up one morning and person A decides to kill the first person he sees. Person Bdecides to kill the first black person he sees. They both end up killing a black man, and both end up in prison. During rehabilitation, if you treat both as a hate crime, then you’re not properly addressing the violent impulses with person A and if you only address the violent behaviour then you aren’t addressing the underlying racism in person B. Motivation matters in how things are handled generally.
This is not quite accurate. One definition of terrorism from the FBI:
International terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored)
Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature
You are correct that many (not sure about percentage) school shootings would not be considered terrorism by this definition, though, and I agree with you on that. White people do a lot of terrorism outside of schools though and that’s the point of the post.
My point is that noone is looking at the IRA and crying mental illness. Furthermore, if you look at the Wikipedia pages for people like Anders Behring Breivik, Ted Kaczynski, and Timothy McVeigh, they all refer to them as terrorists. Whereas people like James Holmes are listed as mass murderers because their crimes were not politically motivated.
