The First Tea-Party Terrorist?
The First Tea-Party Terrorist?
By ROBERT WRIGHT
Copyright by The New York Times
February 23, 2010, 9:30 pm
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/the-first-tea-party-terrorist/?ref=opinion
Joseph Stack had barely finished flying his airplane into a Texas office building when the battle over his legacy began.
Bloggers on the left asked why people — especially people on the right — weren’t calling him a terrorist. “If this had been done by a brownish-looking Muslim guy whose suicide note paralleled Islamist political themes,” wrote Matthew Yglesias, then right wingers would be “demanding that anyone who refused to label the attack ‘terrorism’ be put up on treason charges.”
Bloggers on the right, such as Conn Carroll, asked why people — especially people on the left — were acting as if Stack was a “conservative Tea Party nut” when the anti-tax animus that led him to point his plane at I.R.S. offices was only one part of an eclectic ideology.
These are arguments worth having, for two reasons.
Joseph Stack saw himself as part of a cause, as one in a long line of fighters against tyranny.
First, the label “terrorist” shapes our immediate response to attacks and our long-term policies. We’ve invaded countries and altered domestic surveillance laws as part of a “war on terror,” whereas we wouldn’t do such things as part of a “war on a nut who flew his plane into a building and is dead now.”
Second, given the apparent momentum of the Tea Party movement, it would be nice to know if Stack’s kamikaze mission was a not-all-that-shocking emanation from it — whether, as some claim, more than a few Tea Partiers are unhinged.
In common usage, a “terrorist” is someone who attacks in the name of a political cause and aims to spread terror — to foster fear that such attacks will be repeated until grievances are addressed. Thus, Amy Bishop, the vehement Alabama tenure-seeker, wouldn’t qualify as a terrorist; she seems to have no cause larger than herself and, when she gunned down colleagues, presumably wasn’t hoping to strike fear of the untenured into the hearts of tenured faculty everywhere.
Stack, in contrast, saw himself as part of a cause, as one in a long line of fighters against tyranny. The manifesto he left behind reads, “I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. … I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be whitewashed and ignored” — at which point, God willing, “the American zombies wake up and revolt.” This man was, by prevailing semantic conventions, a terrorist.
Was he a Tea Partier — or at least a Tea Party sympathizer? Conservatives who say no point to leftish themes in his manifesto. And it’s true that — in a line much-quoted by these conservatives — he seems to wish that the government would do something about health care. Then again, who doesn’t?
There are clearer left-wing strands in Stack’s writing — he identified with blacks and the downtrodden, he said the rich oppress the poor — but I’m not sure how relevant that is, because I’m not sure how purely conservative the Tea Party movement is anyway.
Yes, it mobilized against a liberal health care bill and the stimulus package, but it also opposes corporate bailouts. Sure, Tea Partiers hate taxes, but that alone doesn’t distinguish them from many Americans. On social issues the Tea Partiers include some libertarians along with a larger number of family-values conservatives.
And when you move to foreign policy, things don’t get more coherent. Though some Tea Partiers are hawks, many follow Ron Paul’s lead, combining a left-wing critique of military engagement with a right-wing aversion to the United Nations and other multilateral entanglements.
In the end, the core unifying theme of the Tea Partiers is populist rage, and this is the core theme in Stack’s ramblings, whether the rage is directed at corporate titans (“plunderers”), the government (“totalitarian”) or individual politicians (“liars”).
I don’t doubt that Tea Partiers are on balance on the right, and if their movement ever crystallizes into a political party that will be its location. But until the requisite winnowing happens, a person with Stack’s fuzzy ideology wouldn’t feel terribly alone at a big Tea Party.
Sometimes “terrorism” is a one-word self-fulfilling prophecy.
I emphasize that I’m talking about his ideology, not his penchant for flying planes into buildings. Still, some of the ingredients of that penchant — a conspiratorial bent, a deep and personal sense of oppression, an attendant resentful rage — can be found in the movement, if mainly on its fringes. There are some excitable Tea Partiers out there.
You could, on the one hand, follow this logic to the conclusion that Joseph Stack was the first Tea Party terrorist.
But you could instead conclude, as both Yglesias and the blogger Glenn Greenwald kind of suggest in their posts on the Stack episode, that maybe we should just quit using the word “terrorist.” After all, if we start thinking of the Tea Party movement as housing terrorists, then — “terrorist” being the policy-shaping word that it is — we’ll be more inclined to wiretap Tea Partiers and infiltrate their gatherings. And subjecting excitable people with a persecution complex to actual persecution could lead to more excitement than I’m in the mood for.
Obviously, there are circumstances under which any political movement would pose enough of a threat to warrant special surveillance. But defining that threshold is a delicate matter, best done calmly. And there’s something about the word “terrorist” that can impede cool reflection and get people to define the threshold in a way that winds up fueling more terrorism. Sometimes “terrorism” is a one-word self-fulfilling prophecy.
So, for example, if we do as some suggested in the wake of the foiled underwear bombing and start subjecting Muslims to ethnic profiling at airports, this indignity will help terrorist recruiters. Indeed, any capable terrorist mastermind aims to inspire just this sort of overreaction.
Including Joseph Stack. Here is his stated rationale for his final mission: “I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions, people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are.”
Overreaction was a reasonable thing for him to hope for, given the way America reacted the last time terrorist-flown aircraft hit American buildings. And the fact that he hoped for it may be yet another reason to consider him a terrorist; strategically, he thought just as Osama bin Laden does. But maybe our best revenge against both of these terrorists would be to avoid describing them that way.
By ROBERT WRIGHT
Copyright by The New York Times
February 23, 2010, 9:30 pm
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/the-first-tea-party-terrorist/?ref=opinion
Joseph Stack had barely finished flying his airplane into a Texas office building when the battle over his legacy began.
Bloggers on the left asked why people — especially people on the right — weren’t calling him a terrorist. “If this had been done by a brownish-looking Muslim guy whose suicide note paralleled Islamist political themes,” wrote Matthew Yglesias, then right wingers would be “demanding that anyone who refused to label the attack ‘terrorism’ be put up on treason charges.”
Bloggers on the right, such as Conn Carroll, asked why people — especially people on the left — were acting as if Stack was a “conservative Tea Party nut” when the anti-tax animus that led him to point his plane at I.R.S. offices was only one part of an eclectic ideology.
These are arguments worth having, for two reasons.
Joseph Stack saw himself as part of a cause, as one in a long line of fighters against tyranny.
First, the label “terrorist” shapes our immediate response to attacks and our long-term policies. We’ve invaded countries and altered domestic surveillance laws as part of a “war on terror,” whereas we wouldn’t do such things as part of a “war on a nut who flew his plane into a building and is dead now.”
Second, given the apparent momentum of the Tea Party movement, it would be nice to know if Stack’s kamikaze mission was a not-all-that-shocking emanation from it — whether, as some claim, more than a few Tea Partiers are unhinged.
In common usage, a “terrorist” is someone who attacks in the name of a political cause and aims to spread terror — to foster fear that such attacks will be repeated until grievances are addressed. Thus, Amy Bishop, the vehement Alabama tenure-seeker, wouldn’t qualify as a terrorist; she seems to have no cause larger than herself and, when she gunned down colleagues, presumably wasn’t hoping to strike fear of the untenured into the hearts of tenured faculty everywhere.
Stack, in contrast, saw himself as part of a cause, as one in a long line of fighters against tyranny. The manifesto he left behind reads, “I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. … I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be whitewashed and ignored” — at which point, God willing, “the American zombies wake up and revolt.” This man was, by prevailing semantic conventions, a terrorist.
Was he a Tea Partier — or at least a Tea Party sympathizer? Conservatives who say no point to leftish themes in his manifesto. And it’s true that — in a line much-quoted by these conservatives — he seems to wish that the government would do something about health care. Then again, who doesn’t?
There are clearer left-wing strands in Stack’s writing — he identified with blacks and the downtrodden, he said the rich oppress the poor — but I’m not sure how relevant that is, because I’m not sure how purely conservative the Tea Party movement is anyway.
Yes, it mobilized against a liberal health care bill and the stimulus package, but it also opposes corporate bailouts. Sure, Tea Partiers hate taxes, but that alone doesn’t distinguish them from many Americans. On social issues the Tea Partiers include some libertarians along with a larger number of family-values conservatives.
And when you move to foreign policy, things don’t get more coherent. Though some Tea Partiers are hawks, many follow Ron Paul’s lead, combining a left-wing critique of military engagement with a right-wing aversion to the United Nations and other multilateral entanglements.
In the end, the core unifying theme of the Tea Partiers is populist rage, and this is the core theme in Stack’s ramblings, whether the rage is directed at corporate titans (“plunderers”), the government (“totalitarian”) or individual politicians (“liars”).
I don’t doubt that Tea Partiers are on balance on the right, and if their movement ever crystallizes into a political party that will be its location. But until the requisite winnowing happens, a person with Stack’s fuzzy ideology wouldn’t feel terribly alone at a big Tea Party.
Sometimes “terrorism” is a one-word self-fulfilling prophecy.
I emphasize that I’m talking about his ideology, not his penchant for flying planes into buildings. Still, some of the ingredients of that penchant — a conspiratorial bent, a deep and personal sense of oppression, an attendant resentful rage — can be found in the movement, if mainly on its fringes. There are some excitable Tea Partiers out there.
You could, on the one hand, follow this logic to the conclusion that Joseph Stack was the first Tea Party terrorist.
But you could instead conclude, as both Yglesias and the blogger Glenn Greenwald kind of suggest in their posts on the Stack episode, that maybe we should just quit using the word “terrorist.” After all, if we start thinking of the Tea Party movement as housing terrorists, then — “terrorist” being the policy-shaping word that it is — we’ll be more inclined to wiretap Tea Partiers and infiltrate their gatherings. And subjecting excitable people with a persecution complex to actual persecution could lead to more excitement than I’m in the mood for.
Obviously, there are circumstances under which any political movement would pose enough of a threat to warrant special surveillance. But defining that threshold is a delicate matter, best done calmly. And there’s something about the word “terrorist” that can impede cool reflection and get people to define the threshold in a way that winds up fueling more terrorism. Sometimes “terrorism” is a one-word self-fulfilling prophecy.
So, for example, if we do as some suggested in the wake of the foiled underwear bombing and start subjecting Muslims to ethnic profiling at airports, this indignity will help terrorist recruiters. Indeed, any capable terrorist mastermind aims to inspire just this sort of overreaction.
Including Joseph Stack. Here is his stated rationale for his final mission: “I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions, people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are.”
Overreaction was a reasonable thing for him to hope for, given the way America reacted the last time terrorist-flown aircraft hit American buildings. And the fact that he hoped for it may be yet another reason to consider him a terrorist; strategically, he thought just as Osama bin Laden does. But maybe our best revenge against both of these terrorists would be to avoid describing them that way.
posted by Carlos T Mock at 11:59 PM
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