Why It's Important to call the White Nationalists Terrorists
By Dan Gil/Contributing Writer
This weekend gave the United States a long look into the past. Protests at the University of Virginia turned the college campus into a violent and deadly scene of mayhem as a rally of white nationalists convened in Charlottesville to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee the week before.
In response to the scheduled rally, anti-fascists, anarchists, and a levy of other political groups organized against the white nationalist rally and violence ensued. Images and videos of this past weekend surfaced quickly shedding newfound light on, and giving recognition to groups of organized and politically active white men who have taken up a racist mantel held previously by neo-nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan.
For a brief weekend, it seemed younger generations in the United States caught a glimpse of what the country may have been felt like during the the Civil Rights Movement. For others, it fully revealed to them a portion of the country which has invisibly existed on the American periphery for some time now and has only gained mass media attention relatively recently. Most tragically however, for many this past weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia comes as no surprise at all.
Over 19 people were injured and one was killed when the violence culminated in a vehicular attack on protesters of the rally on Saturday. James Alex Field Jr., the man being charged with the crime, was identified by police as a resident of Ohio, and the Southern Law Poverty Center has declared him a white nationalist. However, it seems many media outlets had some trouble finding a title for the group white men shrouded in hate. Obviously they are white nationalists, but first and foremost, they are terrorists.
They are terrorists by definition. They are people using unlawful and violent intimidation tactics against civilians for their own pursuit or political gain; therefore, they should be called as such. The Department of Justice (DOJ) launched a civil rights investigation into Saturday’s fatal car attack during the protests, a sign that this group was very clearly motivated by hate.
It’s important to recognize them as such because the way the media frames them inevitably changes the way people frame them in their own minds; especially, when they agree with narratives surrounding culture and race.
The term terrorist has become emblematic of a dark-skinned radical proponent of Islamist doctrine. It’s a term which has lent itself to fit racial stereotypes contrived from these stories that we’ve developed about certain cultures. The way that the media talks about it will ultimately change the way that we see it and people attach a huge amount of meaning to what words are used.
The word has changed its meaning to fit the political climate of our world and society. Terrorist has become a politicized word and has since lost its real definition. It has instead been molded by narratives driven by a human tendency to simplify and generalize at the expense of creating an inaccurate image of the Arab and Muslim communities.
Ed Koch, a famous politician, lawmaker, and TV personality once said that, “Stereotypes lose their power when the world is found to be more complex than the stereotype would suggest. When we learn that individuals do not fit the group stereotype, then it begins to fall apart.” We have to acknowledge the poorly constructed box the term “Terrorist” has constructed around the Arab and Muslim communities in the United States and
By using the word terrorist you’re recognizing fact. You’re recognizing the fact that most terrorist incidents in the country have been committed by right-wing extremists. By calling them terrorists you’re using a word which doesn’t minimize the amount of terror felt by minorities in the United States following this weekend. And, maybe more than anything, by calling them terrorists, you’re recognizing that deep seeded hatred is a pervasive issue across all cultures rather than just an attribute of one or many.
By not doing so, we are stating, as a society, that a terrorist is a definition dictated by cultural or social backgrounds rather than by practical and literal ones. By calling James Alex Field Jr. a white nationalist by definition does not do his victims enough justice. The person Field Jr. killed on Saturday was killed by a terrorist. By not calling them terrorists we are allowing our very own thoughts and perceptions about the world be molded by simple stories, ones which do not reflect reality.