The think tank New America issued a report today documenting “the lethal terrorist incidents in the United States since 9/11.” It found that a total of 26 Americans have been killed by “deadly jihadist attacks” in the last 14 years, while almost double that number — 48 — have been killed by “deadly right wing attacks.” The significance of that finding was well-captured by the New York Times’s online home page caption today, promoting the paper’s article that included this quote from Terrorism Professor John Horgan: “There’s an acceptance now of the idea that the threat from jihadi terrorism in the United States has been overblown.”
That the U.S. government, media and various anti-Muslim polemicists relentlessly, aggressively exaggerate “the terror threat” generally and the menace of Muslims specifically requires no studies to see. It’s confirmed by people’s everyday experiences. On the list of threats that Americans wake up and worry about every morning, is there anyone beyond hypnotic Sean Hannity viewers for whom “terrorism by radical Islam” is high on the list?
To believe the prevailing U.S. government/media narrative is to believe that radical Islam poses some sort of grave threat to the safety of American families. The fearmongering works not because it resonates in people’s daily experiences and observations: it plainly does not. It works because it’s grounded in tribalistic appeals (our tribe is better than that one over there) and the Otherizing of the marginalized (those people over there are not just different but inferior): historically very potent tactics of manipulation and propaganda. Add to that all the pragmatic benefits from maintaining this Scary Muslim mythology — the power, profit and policy advancement it enables for numerous factions — and it’s not hard to see why it’s been so easily sustained despite being so patently false.It’s literally hard to overstate how trivial the risk of “radical Islam” is to the average American. So consider this:
(Sources: deaths from traffic accidents; deaths from bees; deaths from lightning; deaths from furniture; deaths from right-wing extremists)
If anything, the chart severely understates how exaggerated the threat is, since it compares the total number of deaths caused by “Muslim extremists” over the past 14 years to the number of deaths caused daily or annually by threats widely regarded as insignificant. This is the “threat” in whose name the U.S. and its Western allies have radically reduced basic legal protections; created all sorts of dangerous precedents for invasions, detentions and targeted killings; and generally driven themselves to a state of collective hysteria and manipulation.
Photo: CNN screen capture
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5 Comments
Joseph Val, you are correct in your assessment of the Capitalist West vs. Tribal/Collectivist MENA. However, the endless meddling of Western leaders does not give you a pass. How would the world be different if the U.S. were to suddenly “opt out” of it’s global ambitions? Would the proletariat simple ease into the power vacuum and usher in peace and prosperity? Cool fantasy indeed.
An “overblown concern for the safety of our own skins” is precisely the reason you we’re able to create and send your response without worrying about the safety of your own skin. Get it? No, I don’t deny the existence of “Islamophobia”. Nor do I deny the existence of Globalwarmaphobia, Cancerphobia, Patriophobia, Frackophobia, Plutocraphobia, Flagophobia, or Whitemaleophobia. They all exist and are constantly fed by our dishonest leaders and their dishonest ambitions and narratives. Pointing out the fact that no one has been drowned, decapitated, crucified, or burned alive in Times Square is not a point upon which one may balance an argument. The Islamosupremacist is no different than the White Supremacist. Acknowledging the threat presented by these myopic ideologies does not make one “phobic”. It makes one honest.
“radical islam” was/is the creation of western Intelligence, primarily as a force to destroy arab nationialism/socialism, and has been used as the pretext for the west doing so in iraq, pakistan, afghanistan, syria, libya, sudan, somalia, lebanon, usw. One only has to read some Zbigniew Brzezinski in order to find this out, hardly a radical left-wing conspiracy theorist. Most of the ‘plots’ in western countries have been instigated by the overzealous urging of the FBI, in the US, as well as in the UK, one reason the brits are less than open-armed in their reception of that organisation, which is far more criminal than the “Islamists” demonised in the western press. Try again, Mike.
I think the point is our overblown concern about the safety of our own skins. Do you doubt the existence of Islamophobia in the U.S.? Do you think that might be the reason we seem so unconcerned about the violence others must endure because they are also Muslim?
I’m not sure what this article is supposed to prove. Are the people across the planet who must deal with the violence of radical Islam on a daily basis supposed to be comforted by the fact that the neatly groomed suburbs of the U.S. are yet unscathed? How profoundly arrogant and unZnet like. Try again.