Multiple Varieties of Terrorism

[queerbychoice]

Just when I was trying to figure out how to cope with the combined facts that (a) I didn't really want to leave something as big as yesterday's London bombing entirely unacknowledged in my journal, but (b) I really had nothing to say that many others hadn't already said far better all over LiveJournal, I came across this blog entry, which, although it's yet another instance of somebody else having already said it better than I ever could, is from a non-LiveJournal blog, and therefore probably hasn't been seen by so many LiveJournal people already.

"Terrorism" is the act of instilling terror in people. Go look at the picture in that blog entry, and tell me: do you think that guy is making the passengers less terrified, or more terrified? (And don't go telling me, if you're a middle-class white person, that he can't be causing anyone any serious fear just because you wouldn't feel any serious fear of him.)

Don't get me wrong: I think there are plenty of security measures to defend against terrorists that are extremely good ideas, and extremely important to undertake. And even the very bad defensive measures rarely, if ever, horrify me nearly as much as the very bad offensive measures like mass-murdering Iraqi and Afghan civilians.

But really. The chance of murder weapons being on U.S. passenger trains is a very bad thing, but putting murder weapons definitely on U.S. passenger trains is not necessarily an improvement, especially not when they're in the hands of non-cops who probably have little or no training, much less experience, in how to avoid becoming trigger-happy at the slightest fright. Furthermore, even if we can trust this guy to use his gun safely, couldn't he be issued one a little smaller and instructed to keep it holstered or possibly out of sight entirely and draw it only if he sees an actual problem, to avoid scaring passengers needlessly? Issuing him a much larger gun than police officers normally carry and having him march around with it drawn at all times smells distinctly of those in charge wanting to increase people's terror.

And yes, I know the people who instituted this would probably say the idea is to terrify terrorists into not terrorizing. But terrifying everyone for the sake of hoping to terrify some possible terrorists along with them is like the U.S.'s policy in Iraq of just throwing everyone they found in a whole geographic region into Abu Ghraib in the hope that they'd get a few guilty people along with the many innocent ones.

Comments

[chisparoja.livejournal.com]

i think terrorism is something many of us live with every day. it is only a change of pace for a small elite.

i suspect the American government does want to terrorize ordinary people as this helps to control dissent.

[pure-agnostic.livejournal.com]

Yep, and the elite who own America have perfected an insidious form of terrorism in which the terrorized become willing accomplices. (2nd best implementation of the Stockholm Syndrome that I have ever seen.) And if terrorism did not exist already, Bush would have invented it just to have an excuse to pass the Patriot Act.

"Modern media--A way to spread panic far more efficiently."

[heron61.livejournal.com]

That's an absolutely horrifying image. The US is in far more dire straits than most people are willing to admit - totalitarianism gets closer every day.

[nouveau-prole.livejournal.com]

At the moment the London terrorists are suspected to be "home grown". So what do you do about that one Blair, invade Birmingham and Bradford?

[yareach.livejournal.com]

Middle-class white person, and I'd be scared shitless if I saw him on my train. Guns, I don't care who's carrying them, make me anxious.

And I'm with chisparoja: I'm not so the idea is not also to terrorize everyone else as well.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Wow. I didn't get one of those on my train yesterday. (Perhaps because I was coming from a very middle-class-white area...?)

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

Military police armed with semi-automatic weapons have been a fixture on the transit system in Athens since it was first opened, supposedly in response to 17 November. The cops in Paris routinely carry similar weapons, especially in working-class neighborhoods. These facts in no wise excuse its introduction; in fact when I first saw it, during my July 2001 visit to Athens, it freaked me out. But the simple fact of having seen it in Athens already meant that I was less astonished by the introduction of similar personnel and methods in New York two months later. What is going on is not incipient fascism, but the naturalization and routinization of state terror--which is quite bad enough.

my very favorite definition:

[disi.livejournal.com]

"Terrorism - a synthesis of war and theater, a dramatization of the most prescribed kind of violence--that which is perpetrated upon innocent victims played out before an audience in the hope of creating a mood of fear, for political purposes."

cindy c. combs

[pure-agnostic.livejournal.com]

When I lived in Egypt, I saw young men armed with machine guns on just about every street corner. (And I was inside big crowds of people in Cairo, Luxor, and Hurghada.) These men were hired off the streets to become participants in the police state. I kept thinking, "What if just one of those guns goes off accidentally?" "What if the police hired somebody from a terrorist cell and gave that person the task of guarding me?" "What if some young recruit panics and fires by mistake?" IMHO, guns and crowds just don't mix well.

When I was in Egypt, I actually felt far safer living among the Bedouin nomads in the desert than on the streets of Cairo or Luxor. The Bedouin have a very long tradition of providing hospitality to anybody. (and I do mean anybody) There was nobody for dozens of miles around except my partner and me, 2 dozen nomads, a few camels, and some sheep.

[princesswitch.livejournal.com]

What really struck me were the passengers' faces! They didn't look even remotely comforted!

The possibility of that man being overpowered and stripped of his weapons by people who do *not* mean well, or someone who doesn't mean well being *hired* for that position, also occurs to me.

My paternal grandmother, an nice Southern white lady, had a son who was a cop for a few years. He had to change out of his uniform before visiting her. She had "stress periods" (I did the same thing before learning other ways to manage my fears through therapy), and would have one whenever seeing a cop in uniform, even her own son, come to her home or car.

I hope nobody like that rides that bus...

[lintilla.livejournal.com]

Holy fuck.

I'm glad I don't live in the States right now. :/