The Color White

Trey Smith

For all the endless chatter — and endless rights erosions — over the threat of Terrorism from Muslims, the reality is that there have been more Terror attacks on U.S. soil in the past decade committed by white, “right-wing extremists” than by Muslims. Philosophy Professor Falguni Sheth today provocatively argues that this spate of racially-motivated violence is directly connected to the decade-plus-long War on Terror that the U.S. has perpetrated.

Sheth begins by pointing to a mosque in Joplin, Missouri that yesterday was burned to the ground – the third fire on its property and “the second fire to hit the Islamic center in little more than a month” — and argues that our perceptions of violence are overwhelmingly dependent on the identity of the perpetrator (“those white guys are loners; those young white/Asian men are troubled and deranged loners. Those brown men are terrorists. Those black men are hoodlums and gangmembers”)...
~ from Unintended Causation by Glenn Greenwald ~

I think back to the heyday of the Occupy Movement -- it seems so long ago, doesn't it? -- when the police would come out in massive force to bludgeon and pepper spray all those "dangerous" peaceful protesters. The authorities in this country seem so frightened of young people carrying signs, masses of people shouting as they walk down the street and even those "bloodthirsty" Quakers, yet you rarely hear of these types of folks committing heinous crimes. When was the last time you heard of a pacifist committing mass murder?

While the police and Homeland Security are busy trying to infiltrate multiracial peace organizations, scant attention appears to be paid to neo-Nazis, skinheads and other hate groups. These are the people most likely to commit atrocities. These are the people who see nothing wrong with using massive amounts of force to get their point across.

As Greenwald aptly points out, the vast majority of terrorist acts carried out in this country are by white males, not shadowy foreigners bent on destroying America. Some, though not all, of these white males are fundamentalist Christians, not Muslims.

It would appear that we're spending the vast majority of our resources and manpower targeting the wrong groups and individuals. A good deal of the people and groups the authorities target are the ones least likely to terrorize!