Kay Burner English 112-107 Professor Steele April 14, 2014

The right to fight and the line of terror: when have you crossed to the wrong side of terrorism

I love the people that I have in my life. They all come from different walks of life and are so diverse that I am always intrigued by the conversations that I have with them. One day, my friend Rajvir, who is Arab-American and I were having a conversation about his trip to California to visit some family. He told me while the trip was nice, he hated the fact that his every move was being watched and that people on both the plane and the airport. Seeing the look of frustration and hurt on his face melted into my mind and left an impression that my heart couldnt escape. Although I have never directly been in this situation, I empathized with the pain my friend was feeling. He continued to lay his burden of the trip on me and I realized that this is something that sadly happens way too often. I understand that the 9/11 attacks imprinted a feeling of fear, weakness, and heartache that a lot of Americans had never experienced. We felt a breach of trust and security and we didnt and still dont know how to deal with it. So, we tend to project our fears of terrorism on to how we believe a terrorist looks like and we feel safer by putting a face to what we fear most, the unknown attack. However, in doing this, we limit ourselves to a life of paralyzing stereotypes and second guessing people that have no reason to be questioned. Instead of us learning about what we fear, we want to know what we fear. And as

Burner 2 empowering as finding out your fear is, if we do nothing about it, it can be just as crippling. After this conversation with Rajvir and realizing that I still have some fears of terrorism, I wanted to know more about what makes a terrorist and how the perspective of the terrorist is portrayed in America. Before going into the perspective of the terrorist, one must know what makes a terrorist and how to define terrorism. Kevin McDonald, author of Our violent world: terrorism in society, describes terrorism as a notoriously difficult concept to define. In fact, if I were to start in this field from scratch, I would avoid the word terrorism all together. These words makes a bold statement. I take from those words a sense, that there is no right way to describe terrorism. Terrorism is something that is based on perspective. I interviewed some people and asked their opinions and every answer was different. However, there was one common theme: fear was the driving force of this action. Terrorism is based on fear. Terrorist usually use force to control a person or people into whatever their motive of interest. The goal of terrorism is to spread a message of power on their behalf and fear to the rest of the world that is against their cause. McDonald goes on further into saying, The immediate victims are not as important as the broader message sent to the public. Understanding that the terrorist is someone that cares more about what and how something is being said more than action that has happened allows us to further exam the reasoning behind terrorism a little easier. Terrorism is not a new concept. There has been instances of terrorism that can be found all throughout history. Some examples of the earliest form of terrorist groups can be found in 1st century roman culture. In the providence of Judea, a group of jewish men, called Sicarri, would attack wealthy jews and kidnap their slaves for ransom. They would also communicate threats to the Romans and would slay them in public in order to get the message across that they wanted to overthrow the Roman government. These group of men were a part of a larger group called the Zealots who also had the

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common goal of overthrowing the roman government. If you continue through history and travel to the land of India in the 7th century, you would fall upon a group called thuggee, who were responsible for cult rituals that would consist of finding victims to strangle and offering as sacrifices to the Hindi Goddess Kali. When you fast forward in time to the nineteenth century to Russia, the forming of modern day terrorism was formed by Russian Revolutionary Mikhali Bakunin. Bakunin is quoted writing, No other action except terrorism by an individual or small groups could cleanse the Russian soil. Later in nineteenth century Russia, the anarchist organization known as Narodnaya Volya or Peoples will launched a wave of bombings and assassinations. They targeted the czar, the royal family and other government officials, whom they believed were the embodiment of corrupt regime. The terrorist theory came to the United States with the arrival of German Radicals such as Karl Heinzen and Johann Most, who were responsible for advancing the philosophy of using weapons of mass destruction in a systematic campaign of terrorism. Heizen and Most however did not practice what they preached, but wrote the blueprint that others would soon follow. At the turn of the nineteenth century in America, terrorism in the form of political assassination became a major global phenomenon. The 1960s brought forth a movement where everyone wanted change and no one wanted to wait for it. A lot of different activist groups began to form in order to get the results that they needed now. With frustration of the mainstream civil rights movement different groups formed such as the Black Panther Party, Puerto Rican Nationalists, Jewish Extremists and single-issue terrorist organizations such as animal rights groups also became active during this era. Of course with the increase of the minorities voices through the ears of the nation, groups such as the Aryan Nations tried to arise stronger. However, the movement of the Aryan Nations, in connection with the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi,

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skinhead, and other white militant groups. Of course to these groups, they were merely acting as freedom fighters, acting on the behalf of their cause and their beliefs. The law of yin yang comes into play in the world of terrorism. Where there is evil, there also lies good and when there is failure and fear, lies hope and success. And although terrorism has cast a shadow of fear and horror into the world, there is a beacon of light and rightenous in the hands of the freedom fighter. The freedom fighter, or the nations hero for justice and freedom is someone or something that people find great comfort in knowing that they exist. But how does one define a freedom fighter? According to Merriam-Webster, A freedom fighter is a person who takes part in a resistance movement against an oppressive political or social establishment. A person who is part of an organized group fighting against a cruel and unfair government or system. The freedom fighter is a symbol of revolution and sign for a better tomorrow for some people. And yet others see freedom fighters in a different light. Leroy D Spencer, a student at the University of California states, Read the quote, "one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter" Quote is quite disingenuous when you consider an accepted definition of "terrorist" includes targeting, killing, and maiming civilian noncombatants while freedom fighters fight against a government they feel is oppressive. A "freedom fighter" only becomes a terrorist when he targets innocent people to "terrorize them". This all brings my topic full circle when in return allows me to bring home a certain point. How does one determine who is a terrorist versus who is a freedom fighter? How can you single out and define a terrorist in an airport? Does the terrorist have a specific look or is it just someone that is assumed to fit the role. After looking at the history of the terrorist as well as the history of the freedom fighter, the background of both is so different it would be hard to pinpoint when exactly what physically attributes contribute to a terrorist in America. So why is it that we still continue to use the Arab

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Americans or Muslims as the face of terrorism here in the United States? The point that I really want to drive home is that although we can all agree that terrorism is horrible, its hard to pinpoint who is truly a terrorist. We have a lot of programs that we have put in place to stop terrorist attacks, however a lot of these programs has underlining stereotypes that allow the process of identifying these potential terrorist and terrorist attacks possible. While I can concur that sometimes, stereotypes to a certain extend has been formed based on some truth, I think this is an unjust and hurtful way to go about trying to stop terrorism. Terrorist can come in many different forms of people and so for us to keep just looking closely at what we saw on 9/11, I think we should look increase our ideas of the terrorist. In our eyes, we think by taking some liberal freedoms to increase the security and safety of America is the right thing to do. As Americans, for years we have been going to other countries and helping them with issues that we believe are wrong. However, some countries would argue that this constitutes as terrorist behavior. I dont think that the intentions of America is completely wrong when we do this, but our methods in doing so can be looked at as questionable. Until we can stop living in fear and living in fear and begin spreading education to each other about terrorism, tolerance, peace, love, and justice for all mankind, the idea of terrorism will live on. We will sadly continue to write the history of terrorism as long as we have hatred, greed, intolerance, and evil in this world. But until the day that the power of love overcomes the love of power, we can do our best to promote and be the change we wish to see in this world all past, present, and future.

Works Cited

Kushner, Harvey W. Encyclopedia of Terrorism. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications, 2003. Print. Pg. 144147. Pg. 359-360.

McDonald, Kevin. Our Violent World: Terrorism in Society . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Print. Pg. 3135; pg. 97-99; pg 123-124

Krueger, Alan B. What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. Print. Pg. 16-18

Medina, Richard M, and George F. Hepner. The Geography of International Terrorism: An Introduction to Spaces

and Places of Violent Non-State Groups. Boca Raton: Taylor & Francis, 2013. Print. Pg. 37-39