The news this week was dominated with the headlines that we are all accustomed to at this point: “Russia! ISIS! Comey!” One story that is continually ignored is what I would like to call, white, male, supremacist, neo-nazi terrorism. Instead of covering these acts of terrorism, we are all consumed with stories about Russia and ISIS. These acts of domestic terrorism by our own citizens are arguably more important than the usual headlines and they continue to grow in frequency.
First let’s discuss why such acts are often ignored in exchange for 24 hour coverage of ISIS attacks. This past week, there was another terrorist attack in Manchester that killed 22 people at a concert. As per usual, the media immediately politicizes the attack and shows us loops of screaming victims accompanied with photos of the killer. This is sensationalism that has only one goal under all of the empty rhetoric: fear. Rather than having a discussion on why we continue to see terrorists kill innocent people, we bask in the voyeuristic pleasure of watching people scream in terror. Perhaps we could discuss the fact that we regularly kill hundreds of civilians in middle eastern countries? Or maybe we could talk about the fact that we just elected ISIS’s number one source of propaganda: Donald Trump? These are the type of conversations that the mainstream media will never have because it doesn’t serve the interests of the military industrial complex. Now that we are under the leadership of an authoritative neo-fascist, living through fear is the last thing we can afford to do and the media always falls victim to it. When Donald Trump bombed Syria, the media, for the first time, hailed him…he will remember that.
Now on to the more important stories this week. Two people were murdered by a white male terrorist in Portland because they bravely intervened when the terrorist, who doesn’t deserve a name, was spouting anti-Muslim hate speech at two young women. This was just days after a black man was stabbed to death by another white terrorist in Maryland. The lack of attention to these stories is disheartening, but not surprising. America has always refused to acknowledge its own evils. From slavery to these terrorist attacks, we continue to turn away and direct our energy onto foreign adversaries like ISIS, disregarding facts, because we are “exceptional.” If the media really wanted to take down Donald Trump, they would cover these stories and discuss how such acts have been growing exponentially since the election of Donald Trump. These acts have become normalized; we refuse to look in the mirror as a country because if anyone criticizes the history of our country they are deemed as anti-American or the “enemy of the people.”
Some facts (Trigger warning for snowflake Trump supporters) :
White, male terrorists have killed more people THIS WEEK than refugees have in the past 40 YEARS. You are more than twice as likely to be murdered by a white terrorist than an ISIS terrorist. These facts need to be remembered when the media has a field day with an ISIS attack or when Trump decries that refugees shouldn’t be allowed in this country. I by no means mean to diminish the importance in fighting against ISIS or dealing with Russia’s interference in our 2016 election. All I want to suggest is that if we continue to give into fear directed at enemies outside our country, we will continue to be blindsided by the home-grown domestic terrorist acts that have been going on since our country’s inception. Donald Trump is the culmination of centuries of white supremacy from slavery to Jim Crow, to mass incarceration, to the attacks being committed by white, neo-Nazi terrorist groups in our backyards. If we can’t acknowledge this simple fact, we deserve President Trump.
Gacita Writes 