URBAN PERSPECTIVE-The two words that were glaringly missing in the reams of news clips, press reports, and news features on alleged Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood Clinic killer, Robert Lewis Dear were “domestic” and “terrorist.” His target, the clinic, and his victims were deliberately and calculatedly chosen. Attorney General Loretta Lynch promptly labeled the shooting a "crime against women receiving healthcare services at Planned Parenthood." And he allegedly made rambling utterances about “more baby parts.”
The shootings came against the backdrop of months of vicious, vile, and relentless campaign of attacks and vilification of Planned Parenthood by Republicans as well as efforts to gut or outright eliminate all funding for Planned Parenthood programs and services. The targets and the murders were by any definition the lethal combination of politics and raw terrorism. In almost every case, the perpetrators of these murderous acts are non-Muslim.
According to FBI reports, between 2008 and 2012, about six percent of domestic terrorism suspects were Muslim, or about 1 in 17. Dear fit the profile to a tee of just who is likely to commit a domestic act of terrorism, namely, a staunch gun advocate, politically disgruntled, white male.
Yet during the same period of those FBI reports on domestic terrorism, a University of Illinois study found that the overwhelming majority of those labeled domestic terrorists on network TV news shows were Muslim.
While President Obama and Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders quickly blasted the Colorado Springs mayhem, not one of the GOP presidential candidates condemned the shootings. The closest any of them came were tepid statements from Sen. Ted Cruz, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Florida governor Jeb Bush expressing sympathy for the victims.
The issue of who gets called a “domestic terrorist” following a violent outburst exploded into a national debate following the massacre at the Charleston AME Church last June. Obama branded the massacre an act of terror. Yet, the FBI and nearly all the major media outlets and GOP leaders that commented on it refused to brand the shooter, Dylann Roof, a terrorist or call his actions an act of domestic terrorism.
The refusal to call Roof, and now Dear, “terrorists” is far from an arcane quibble over terms and definitions, or even the race and gender of the shooters. It strikes at the heart of how many Americans have been reflexively conditioned to view terrorism and thuggery. They see it through the narrow, warped prism of who commits the acts, rather than the horrific acts and their consequences. FBI Director James B. Comey was blunt when pressed as to why he refused to brand Roof as a terrorist: “Terrorism is an act done or threatened in order to try to influence a public body or the citizenry, so it’s more of a political act and then, again, based on what I know so far, I don’t see it as a political act.” But this begs the issue. In his so-called manifesto, Roof made it clear that his target was blacks and that he targeted them to sow fear and terror and start a racial conflagration.
Likewise, Dear’s reference to “baby parts” was very deliberate, pointing toward specific groups he saw as a threat to the right-wing’s stock definition of “the American way.” When you combine a hate-filled shooter’s naming of groups, the easy access to guns and whatever demons are in his head, the horrid consequence is a terror act -- as sure as if he had mapped out a bomb attack on a local Democratic Party headquarters.
The Justice Department did hint that it is exploring a domestic terrorism case against Dear. But since Dear will be prosecuted in state court, there is absolutely no guarantee that state prosecutors will treat Dear’s act as anything other than a straight murder case – even if his alleged crime fits every definition of what a hate crime is in law and public policy.
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There’s little doubt that if Dear had been Muslim who had shot up a Protestant church, he would have been branded a terrorist and the Justice Department would have been under relentless national pressure to bring terrorism charges against him. Such an act would have been a textbook legal fit of the FBI’s definition of domestic terrorism: an act “dangerous to human life,” intended to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population” – and same definition could just as easily apply to Dear’s acts.
The narrative in the public’s mind about Dear was set long before he wreaked havoc with his deadly act. He is a deeply disturbed, mentally challenged drifter and loner, who, if anything, is in dire need of mental treatment and care. Part of the blame for him not getting the help he needed is somehow foisted onto “society” and its failures.
Government agencies, much of the media as well as a broad swath of the public have so far doggedly refused to shed its ingrained mindset that terror acts can only be committed by a foreign group, almost always Muslim. This confuses, disarms, and puts even more Americans in harm’s way from the nation’s home grown terrorists -- people who are likely to look, think and act like Dear.
(Earl Ofari Hutchinson is President of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.) Photo: Getty images. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 97
Pub: Dec 1, 2015
