If white people can be terrorists too, why doesn't it get news coverage?

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A jerk in Austin planted a bomb in front of a women's clinic in Austin. He made his own sizable IED and filled a bag with explosive and about two pounds of nails. The local JTTF down there found the thing and defused it in time. The dude was arrested a couple days ago, and is being prosecuted under terrorism laws.

My question, why didn't this thing get more attention? Was it b/c he targeted a clinic where abortions happen(which could be why the current Admin isn't crowing about it), or b/c a christian white guy trying to kill people doesn't fit into some popular narrative of what "terrorism" is nowadays? Hell, people freaked the fuck out when some kid tried to make a smiley face on the map with pipe-bombs and mailboxes 5 years ago.

― kingfish, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 16:55 (seventeen years ago) link

well it didn't go off fortunately. I wondered myself when this happened how often it happens in other cities and if I just don't hear about it.

Terrorism against women's clinics has a more lengthy history doesn't it? It isn't "foriegn" and waged against all of America. It's internal and aimed at a specific group. Still terroism but I think in those difference lie the unequal amount of coverage. (also could this type of thing not be viewed like school shooters - crazy people)

― Ms Misery, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:00 (seventeen years ago) link

lol @ smiley face pipe bomber though!

― CharlieNo4, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:02 (seventeen years ago) link

That kid was truly a horrible monster, but there's an awful part of me that would've like to have seen that smiley face come to fruition.

― Pleasant Plains, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:08 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, it's been a form of domestic terrorism for years. Hell, other than the WTC bombing, up until 2001, the major terrorist bombings were done by white christian fundamentalists. Eric Rudolph was the guy running around, killing doctors, bombing clinics, and set off the bomb at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

― kingfish, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:11 (seventeen years ago) link

well there is the fact that the doj is now an organ of a political party that believes (or will countenance the belief that) an abortion doctor has as high a "body count" as any single terrorist; they're not publicizing this to the rafters, are they now. but --

maybe because your clinic-bombers are objectively less of a threat than the Other Kind of terrorism? they are not equivalent, and asking the coverage of them to be such seems as political as keeping mum, if not more so.

― gff, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:16 (seventeen years ago) link

also could this type of thing not be viewed like school shooters - crazy people

No way in hell: these are the LAST people who should be viewed that way. There are whole organized networks advocating for this sort of thing, all of them sane enough to protect themselves by continually skirting and challenging law enforcement. They are ideologically motivated terrorists, flat out (and if you pull them under the category of mental illness, you're going to have to pull like 80% of American criminals in there with them).

― nabisco, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:17 (seventeen years ago) link

i think the answer is "white people"

― lfam, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:18 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost gff I actually can't decide whether or not I agree with you, so honest question: by what standard are these people "objectively less of a threat" than international terrorism?

― nabisco, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:19 (seventeen years ago) link

There are whole organized networks advocating for this sort of thing,

Some of them yes, but not all. Surely some people going around bombing shit are acting completely on their own. I haven't read anything about this guy being connected to anti-abortion groups. (but I didn't read the paper this morning so I could have missed something.

― Ms Misery, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:19 (seventeen years ago) link

As I said, I can understand why the apparatchiks in the Admin aren't crowing about this, but why wouldn't the screamy networks cover this? I'm wondering if that's a function of ideology(these women deserved what they were going to get) or already defined media narrative(white christians as terrists? There's no story here).

xp Eric Rudolph had support, i remember hearing. Somebody helped him hide out for years 'til he finally nabbed in 2003. The weird part about his brother sending a vid to the authorities where the brother cut off his own arm w/ a tabletop saw was a particular odder aspect of all this.

― kingfish, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:22 (seventeen years ago) link

link??

― lfam, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:23 (seventeen years ago) link

haven't read anything about this guy being connected to anti-abortion groups.

did any of the 9/11 dudes ever meet bin laden?

― and what, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:24 (seventeen years ago) link

I haven't read anything about this guy being connected to anti-abortion groups

see, this is the thing that i would count on the gonzales doj to be less than thorough in finding out...

― gff, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:24 (seventeen years ago) link

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/9/19/3328/99097

― and what, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:26 (seventeen years ago) link

Even when it's a lone actor, S, the motivation seems to be "rational" and ideological in most cases -- not random violence borne of mental illness, but specific violence born of politics. Either way, no one involved will ever make this claim, because it would mean labeling their own strongly felt political and religious beliefs ... insane.

(Granted, show me a person with a history of mental illness who just happens to latch onto this cause, and winds up going violent through this avenue, and fine -- you can call that mental illness. The majority, though: it DOES get really hard, on an intellectual level, to separate extremist views from mental illness, but choosing the latter to describe these people tilts REALLY hard toward considering everything people do pathological.)

― nabisco, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:27 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost nabisco: level of state or other support, organization, and history of success

― gff, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:28 (seventeen years ago) link

The Rudolph family supported Eric and believed he was innocent of all charges,[7] but found themselves under intense questioning and surveillance.[8] On March 7, 1998, Daniel Rudolph, Eric's older brother, videotaped himself cutting off one of his own hands with a radial arm saw in order to, in his words, "send a message to the FBI and the media."[9] The hand was successfully reattached.

― kingfish, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:30 (seventeen years ago) link

"they are not equivalent, and asking the coverage of them to be such seems as political as keeping mum, if not more so."

no one has said anything about equivalency, & to say that to publicize news about white bombers with specific ideological targets is 'political' is insane

nabisco, i think he's right about that but that its mostly a case of who's being targeted, the general public vs a specific sector, one is far more primed for pumping fear into the public than the other

― deeznuts, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:32 (seventeen years ago) link

add to that list: reach, size.

xposts: doesn't the thread question imply equivalence? white terrorists do get coverage, just less of it. kf's post quoted... news sources!

― gff, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:35 (seventeen years ago) link

asking for news coverage =/= equivalency

― deeznuts, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:37 (seventeen years ago) link

i wouldnt expect an abortion clinic bomber to get the same coverage as any muslim bomber anywhere in the us, but that doesnt mean i dont think it deserves coverage

― deeznuts, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:38 (seventeen years ago) link

IT GOT COVERAGE. POST QUOTE COVERAGE. COVERAGE.

― gff, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:41 (seventeen years ago) link

yes its amazing that someone somewhere reported an attempted mass murder

― deeznuts, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:42 (seventeen years ago) link

That's part about what I'm talking about; that for 6+ years now, american mass media(and the Admin) has been putting forth a particular narrative as to what "terrorism" is, that it's a bunch of crazy dark-skinned muslim islamofascist jihadis having come from some alien part of the world to secret themselves amongst us, Cylon-like(which is where Ron Moore got the idea). And since american 24-7 deals in easily spun and crudely defined narratives, shit that falls outside of accepted storylines doesn't get covered. If you encounter facts that you have no conceptual architecture or context to understand them in, you're more likely to reject or ignore them. Why would a for-profit broadcast news outlet that's made mad cash from shit like this for years not grab on to another potential story that they can freak people out with, on the cusp of May sweeps, no less?

Maybe this is what happens when we didn't have an IRA-like group blowing shit up for long enough for us to understand the different forms that terrorism can take.

Or maybe I just answered my own question.

xp

Fine, then i'll redefine my thread question as "national news coverage".

― kingfish, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:52 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, deeznuts, that's kinda what I was trying to think through -- I'm not sure if it should make it more or less newsworthy that this sort of violence is actually very predictable, and a much more specific threat. The news rule seems to go either way, depending on the topic!

The main different in terms of terrorism-type is just "ambition," though, no? International terrorist attempts to strike US soil have to be grand symbolic things, because they obviously can't keep up any daily campaign; more newsworthy as a grand ongoing threat, but most of the time, not actually news! Whereas eople attacking clinics, especially back in the 90s, actually managed to keep up an ongoing domestic campaign of assassinations and terrorism, which seems ... more notable, I think. Their success PERCENTAGE level is higher, and if not for one successful attack on 9/11, their murder rate would be higher and far more localized/predictable. They lack foreign state support, but as far as the US goes, their funding and organization are far more healthy and non-undermined than those of any international terrorist group. Which I guess is fine -- since that 90s flare-up it seems to have worked to just push these organizations to marginalize those elements, and this doesn't seem like a growing problem or anything. But having anything like a small ongoing terrorist cell in the US strikes me as ... well, news, in a way that's somehow just as significant as having foreign groups aspire toward huge attacks.

― nabisco, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:53 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost i don't think the comparison is even apples to apples since the austin bomb was defused -- coverage of a bomb that went off and killed people would be totally different (i hope).

altho yeah, if the exact same device was found in a subway planted by a syrian national well we'd have another war on our hands wouldn't we

― gff, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:57 (seventeen years ago) link

The even more weird thing about the Tim McVeigh/OK City bombing is that the aims were the same as the WTC attacks; to fundamentally change the structure of U.S. Gov't. Dude read some batshit fundie Tom Clancy-like technothriller where that happened, and figured he could do that in real life, too.

― kingfish, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:01 (seventeen years ago) link

A curious side note to this story is that the day after they caught this guy another bomb was found outside a random person's home. On the surface, no connection (she wasn't a clinic employee or anything.) The FBI was supposedly going to investigate and I haven't seen any new developments. Just a copycat weirdo?

― Ms Misery, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:23 (seventeen years ago) link

it DOES get really hard, on an intellectual level, to separate extremist views from mental illness, but choosing the latter to describe these people tilts REALLY hard toward considering everything people do pathological.

This is a really interesting point, to me, because there's a vested political interest in declaring (or not declaring) a given extremist terrorist as "pathological" or not--the administration, for example, might want to declare this asshole pathological (even if he were by certain standards sane and rational) so as to distance the anti-choice movement from this kind of extreme violence, while on the other hand, the 9/11 bombers might be specifically depicted as sane and rational actors so that they can no longer be thought of as "crazed extremists" but as paradigmatic of "Muslims" or "political Islamists."

― max, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:39 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah yeah, definitely -- and note how you're positing a middle to the spectrum ("crazed extremists"), something between "ideological force" and "lone nut." But in both of these cases you have groups of people who don't know one another and agree about using violence to advance an ideological agenda, which comes from a direction of general coherence and sanity. And when it comes to clinic attacks, I feel like there's a lot of continuity between them and non-violent anti-abortion protest -- which is to say that mainstream groups may deplore the violence, but they share the ideology that makes people conclude the violence is noble. (As opposed to even Islamic terrorism, where the wider group can not only deplore the tactic but hardly share in the ideology at all.)

― nabisco, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:52 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh, yeah, I think that's exactly what I mean. Writing this guy off as "crazy" denies the very thin line between "mainstream" anti-abortion rhetoric and the websites with the addresses of abortion doctors; and to generall ignore this story (as the press is apparently doing) implicitly writes this guy off, I'd think. Although a case could be made for the opposite, I guess.

― max, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 18:58 (seventeen years ago) link

http://rr-bb.com/image.php?u=1472&type=sigpic&dateline=1177590119

― and what, Wednesday, 2 May 2007 19:25 (seventeen years ago) link

Down in Alabama, the feds broke up a ring of assholes planning to go take out Mexicans in Dekalb County. Among the usual firearms, they'd somehow gotten ahold of a grenade launcher, a machine gun, and about 2500 rounds of ammo. Oh yeah, and they made at least 130 of their own grenades.

Actually, this ties in with the Minutemen thing, too. At what point will there be so much xenophobic hate that one of these groups of fuckheads is actually able to pull some horrible thing off? If that happens, will it get covered as the big media event, or will it be another thing where "fucking w/ members of a current out group = not that big a deal, relatively" takes over again?

― kingfish, Monday, 7 May 2007 15:53 (seventeen years ago) link

on a related note, how to tell when you're dealing with a pathology:

WASHINGTON - The National Rifle Association is urging the Bush administration to withdraw its support of a bill proposed by New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg that would prohibit suspected terrorists from buying firearms.

Backed by the Justice Department, the measure would give the attorney general the discretion to block gun sales, licenses or permits to terror suspects...

― kingfish, Monday, 7 May 2007 15:59 (seventeen years ago) link

kf, that's their thing man!! yeah it's batshit but a totally unfettered 2nd amendment is their mission. no doubt most of their members would support this bill.

aclu : 1st amendment :: nra : 2nd

― gff, Monday, 7 May 2007 16:25 (seventeen years ago) link

er, drop the itals after "members," whoops

― gff, Monday, 7 May 2007 16:26 (seventeen years ago) link

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