Going to extremes

B Y M A H I R A L I | 8/23/2017 12:00:00 AM

GIVEN that Barcelona is among the most popular tourist destinations in

Europe, it is hardly surprising that almost all the victims of last Thursday`s
terrorist rampage came from various parts of the world. The murderous
intent, as is usual in such cases, was indiscriminate.
Preciselywhatmotivatedthe young Muslims, several of them still in their
teens, to participate in the gory plot is open to conjecture, although it is
probably safe to assume that a profoundly misguided view of religious
obligations was a part of the mix.

News reports suggest they were radicalised by a Salafist imam who, like the
terrorists, was of Moroccan origin, and died in the massive explosion in
Alcanar when gas canisters stored for the purpose of staging a more
explosive attack thankfully blew up prematurely.

Apparently, the intended target was the Sagrada Familia church, the most
prominent example of Antonio Gaudi`s quirky architecture in a city
delightfully peppered with examples of his unorthodox designs.

The resort to a vehicle as an instrument of terrorism along the lines of

attacks in France, Germany and Britain seems to have been Plan B. And
although even a single life lost in such horrifying instances is one too many,
the toll, dreadful as it was, could have been much worse.

Much the same could be said about the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia
the previous weekend, where a radicalised young man targeted anti-fascist
protesters by driving a car into them and killing Heather Heyer, a legal
assistant. She was among those who rallied to oppose the Unite the Right
demonstration organised by a panoply of racist groups, ostensibly to oppose
the local government`s decision to remove a statue of Confederate general
Robert E. Lee that had been put up in 1924, almost 60 years after the South
had lost its right to perpetuate slavery.

The American Civil War ended in 1865, but the struggle toclarifyits legacy
goes on.

The period known as Reconstruction was relatively short-lived. It wasn`t

until a century after Abraham Lincoln`s Emancipation Proclamation that
voting rights and other constitutional guarantees of equality for African
Americans were ensconced in law.

Even so, the white supremacists have sporadically resurfaced. They were
suitably impressed by Donald Trump`s efforts, long before he became a
presidential candidate, to insinuate that anyone called Barack Hussein
Obama could hardly be American.

They were even more enthused when candidate Trump articulated slurs
against Mexicans and declared he would institute a ban on
MuslimsenteringtheUS.AfterCharlottesville, he was quiet for a while, then
announced he saw little difference between the neo-Nazis and their
opponents. He was subsequently per-suaded to be more clear-cut in his
denunciation of racists, but thereafter returned to his original formulation,
declaring that there were `many fine people` on both sides.

The president may have felt flattered because some of the far-right
demonstrators wore `Make America Great Again` caps, never mind that
many of them were echoing the `blood and soil` slogans of the German
Nazis amid considerable evidence of distinctly anti-semitic vibes. His
ambiguity spurred a backlash from leading lights of the Republican Party as
well as the captains of industry, which flowed into the West Wing disarray
that has crippled the White House.

The announcement of a `new` strategy for Afghanistan (and Pakistan) was at

least partially an attempt to restore presidential authority, presaging
increased participation in an essentially unwinnable war. But the darkness
that simultaneously crept across the continental US, courtesy of a complete
solar eclipse, was perhaps a better metaphor for its current woes at home
and abroad. Writingrecently in The Guardian, Jason Burke drew appropriate
parallels between the Islamist and American nationalist varieties of the far
right, without claiming equivalence. It is per-fectly true that those
determined to spread hatred prey on vulnerable young minds and channel
their grievances towards antagonism against `the other`, invariably those of
a different religion, race or ethnicity. Wherever this attempt succeeds, the
consequences tend to be horrendous.

At the most basic level, such tendencies derive from a refusal to recognise
the common humanity we all share. In the narrative of the Islamists, anyone
not fundamentally wedded to a heinous interpretation of the faith is fair
game. Among American nationalists, the enemies range from people of
colour to Jews and `communists`, a list that has not changed a great deal
since the resurgence in far-right tendencies after the Second World War,
amid open references to `finishing Hitler`s work`.

Back then, Harry Truman, who ushered in the American security state,
baulked from taking action against African American lynchings. But neither
he nor his successors in the White House, regardless of how far to the right
they leaned or how shamelessly they dog-whistled, publicly declared
neoNazis to be `very fine people`. The shift is both telling and ominous. m
mahir.dawn@gmail.com
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