A Year of Selective Outrage Over Terror Attacks

Identity politics has led to a hierarchy of victims and to dishonesty about the perpetrators.

A number of high-impact terror attacks took place across the world last year. Terrorists were inspired by a number of different ideologies and targeted a variety of victims. As identity politics has become more salient in Western politics, the identity of both the victims and the perpetrators played a huge role in the way political leaders responded to each attack.

Following the March 2019 mosque massacres in Christchurch, New Zealand, leading politicians across the Western world did not hesitate to describe them as far-right terrorist attacks on Muslim worshippers during Friday prayers. Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton expressed her solidarity with the global Islamic community. She said ‘we must continue to fight the perpetuation and normalisation of Islamophobia and racism in all its forms’. Former US president Barack Obama tweeted that he and his wife, Michelle, were grieving with the people of New Zealand and the ‘Muslim community’. The then UK prime minister, Theresa May, correctly described Christchurch as a ‘horrifying terrorist attack’.

Against the Left: A Ro... Rockwell Jr, Llewellyn H Best Price: $2.58 Buy New $8.00 (as of 07:43 UTC - Details) Contrast this with the language used by the same three figures following the coordinated series of Islamist-inspired terror attacks in Sri Lanka, which took place one month later on Easter Sunday. Affectionate expressions of solidarity with persecuted Christian communities were notable by their absence. Christians murdered in their own churches were bizarrely referred to by both Clinton and Obama as ‘Easter worshippers’. The attacks were sophisticated and well-planned, and they had the clear aim of killing a large number of Christians in ‘target-rich’ churches. Nevertheless, Theresa May – a vicar’s daughter – referred to them as ‘acts of violence’, not terrorism.

The difference between the condemnations of the Christchurch and Sri Lanka terror attacks was striking. After Christchurch, there was no hesitation about naming the religious backgrounds of the victims and directing emotion and affection towards Muslim communities. Politicians also had no issue with categorising the events in Christchurch as terrorism. But this simply was not the case for Sri Lanka’s Christians – around 250 of whom were killed by jihadists during those Easter Sunday services.

Then in August 2019, a far-right terrorist called Patrick Crusius killed 20 people in a racist, anti-Hispanic attack in the Texas city of El Paso. Unleashing his terror at Cielo Vista Mall, Crusius published a violently anti-immigration ‘pre-attack’ manifesto in which he expressed fears that Hispanic people were ‘taking over’ Texas in both a demographic and political sense. President Donald Trump’s response to the El Paso terrorist attack was disappointing the say the least. He labelled it ‘an act of cowardice’. He dubiously emphasised the role of mental-health problems and videogames in mass shootings. The president was reluctant to delve into the ideological motivations that underpinned this act of white-nationalist terrorism.

Read the Whole Article