1NC vs. GW
1
1. “Curtail” means to restrict
Webster’s 15 – Webster's New World College Dictionary, 4th Ed., “curtail”,
http://www.yourdictionary.com/curtail
verb
To curtail is defined as to restrict something, stop something or deprive of something.
An example of curtail is when a town wants to stop drunk driving.
2. Violation - “Restrictions” are direct governmental limitations –
Viterbo 12 (Annamaria, Assistant Professor in International Law – University of Torino, PhD in
International Economic Law – Bocconi University and Jean Monnet Fellow – European University
Institute, International Economic Law and Monetary Measures: Limitations to States'
Sovereignty and Dispute, p. 166)
In order to
distinguish an exchange restriction from a trade measure, the Fund chose not to give
relevance to the purposes or the effects of the measure and to adopt, instead, a technical criterion
that focuses on the method followed to design said measure.
An interpretation that considered the economic effects and purposes of the measures (taking into account the fact that the measure
was introduced for balance of payments reasons or to preserve foreign currency reserves) would have inevitably extended the
Fund's jurisdiction to trade restrictions, blurring the boundaries between the IMF and the GATT. The result of such a choice would
have been that a quantitative restriction on imports imposed for balance of payments reasons would have fallen within the
competence of the Fund.
After lengthy discussions, in 1960 the IMF Executive Board adopted Decision No. 1034-(60/27).46 This Decision clarified that the
distinctive feature of a restriction on payments and transfers for current international transactions is "whether it
involves a direct governmental limitation on the availability or use of exchange as such*.47 This is a
limitation imposed directly on the use of currency in itself, for all purposes..
Government surveillance involves direct government action
Richards 8 Neil M. Richards, Professor of Law, Washington University in St. Louis.
December, 2008 Texas Law Review 87 Tex. L. Rev. 387 Article: Intellectual Privacy lexis
What, then, should the solution to this problem be? The theory of intellectual privacy I have
articulated here suggests that the interest in confidential communications also needs to be
considered, and that this interest is a First Amendment one. Government surveillance - even the
mere possibility of interested watching by the state - chills and warps the exercise of this interest.
This effect was understood by the drafters of the Fourth Amendment, who grasped the
relationship between preventing government searches of papers and protecting religious and
political dissent. n271 Because government surveillance involves direct state action, it is also
a rare case where constitutional doctrine could do useful work on its own. Because we are some
distance removed from the freedom of thought, the confidentiality of communications need not
be protected absolutely, particularly given the legitimate government interest in the prevention of
international terrorism. But by the same token, this interest is not always sufficient to override
the First Amendment interests in intellectual privacy. Constitutional doctrine - either First
Amendment law or Fourth Amendment law taking expressive interests into account - could
therefore mandate warrants for all surveillance of intellectual activity. This standard should at
least be the level of the current Fourth Amendment warrant requirement, and could possibly be
higher, given the particular expressive interests that could elevate scrutiny of intellectual activity
beyond a search for contraband or other kinds of incriminating evidence.
3. The the government is not enacting an action though the plan. It may have
an effect of possibly curtailing surveillance in the distant future, but it does not
have a direct effect as of the 1ac plantext of curtailing governmental
surveillance.
4. Voting issue--Limits---allowing effectual reductions explodes the topic. Any action can
potentially result in less surveillance. Limits are key to depth of preparation and
clash. They get more ground to weigh as offense against counterplans or to link
turn DAs like politics, at the expense of negative preparation, because it’s
impossible to research every single non-topical trick the aff could deploy. That
crushes competitive equity which comes first because debate is a game. It’s
very unlikely that a direct effect of the plan is a curtailment of surveillance, hold
them to a very high standard.
2
The only ethical demand available to modern politics is that of the Slave and
the Savage, the demand for the end of America itself. This demdand exposes
the grammar of the Affirmative for larger institutional access as a fortification
of antiblack civil society
Wilderson 10- [Frank B. Wilderson, Assistant professor of African American Studies and
Drama at UC Irvine, Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms, 5-7]
¶ WHEN i WAS
a young student at Columbia University in New York there was a Black woman who used to stand outside the gate
and yell at Whites, Latinos, and East and South Asian students, staff, and faculty as they entered the university She accused them of
having stolen her sofa and of selling her into slavery She always winked at the Blacks, though we didn't wink back. Some of us
thought her outbursts bigoted and out of step with the burgeoning ethos of multicultural-ism and "rainbow coalitions." But others
did not wink back because we were too fearful of the possibility that her isolation would become our isolation, and we had come to
Columbia for the precise, though largely assumed and unspoken, purpose of foreclosing on that peril. Besides, people said she was
crazy. Later, when I attended the University of California at Berkeley, I saw a Native American man sitting on the sidewalk of
Telegraph Avenue. On the ground in front of him was an upside-down hat and a sign informing pedestrians that here they could
settle the "Land Lease Accounts" that they had neglected to settle all of their lives. He, too, was "crazy."¶ Leaving aside for the
moment their state of mind, it would seem that the structure, that is to say the rebar, or better still the
grammar of their
demands—and, by extension, the grammar of their suffering—was indeed an ethical grammar.
Perhaps it is the only ethical grammar available to modern politics and modernity writ large, for it
draws our attention not to how space and time are used and abused by enfranchised and
violently powerful interests, but to the violence that underwrites the modern world's capacity to
think, act, and exist spatially and temporally. The violence that robbed her of her body and him of his land provided
the stage on which other violent and consensual dramas could be enacted. Thus, they would have to be crazy, crazy enough to call
not merely the actions of the world but the world itself to account, and to account for them no less!
The woman at
Columbia was not demanding to be a participant in an unethical network of distribution: she
was not demanding a place within capital, a piece of the pie (the demand for her sofa notwithstanding).
Rather, she was articulating a triangulation between two things. On the one hand was the loss
of her body, the very dereliction of her corporeal integrity, what Hortense Spillers charts as the transition from
being a being to becoming a "being for the captor,"1 the drama of value (the stage on which surplus value is extracted from labor
power through commodity production and sale). On
the other was the corporeal integrity that, once ripped
from her body, fortified and extended the corporeal integrity of everyone else on the street. She
gave birth to the commodity and to the Human, yet she had neither subjectivity nor a sofa to
show for it. In her eyes, the world—not its myriad discriminatory practices, but the world itself—was unethical. And
yet, the world passes by her without the slightest inclination to stop and disabuse her of her claim. Instead, it calls her "crazy." And
to what does the world attribute the Native American mans insanity? "He's crazy if he thinks he's getting any money out of us"?
Surely, that doesn't make him crazy. Rather it is simply an indication that he does not have a big enough gun.¶ What
are we to
make of a world that responds to the most lucid enunciation of ethics with violence? What are
the foundational questions of the ethico-political? Why are these questions so scandalous that
they are rarely posed politically, intellectually, and cinematically—unless they are posed obliquely and unconsciously, as
if by accident? Give Turtle Island back to the "Savage." Give life itself back to the Slave. Two simple
sen-tences, fourteen simple words, and the structure of U.S. (and perhaps global) antagonisms
would be dismantled. An "ethical modernity" would no longer sound like an oxymoron. From
there we could busy ourselves with important conflicts that have been promoted to the level of
antagonisms, such as class struggle, gender conflict, and immigrants' rights.¶ One cannot but wonder
why questions that go to the heart of the ethico-political, questions of political ontology, are so unspeakable in intellectual
meditations, political broadsides, and even socially and politically engaged feature films. Clearly they can be spoken, even a child
could speak those lines, so they would pose no problem for a scholar, an activist, or a filmmaker. And yet, what is also clear—if the
filmogra-phies of socially and politically engaged directors, the archive of progressive scholars, and the plethora of left-wing
broadsides are anything to go by—is that what can so easily be spoken is now (500 years and 250 million Settlers/Masters on) so
ubiquitously unspoken that these
two simple sentences, these fourteen words not only render their
speaker "crazy" but become themselves impossible to imagine.¶ Soon it will be forty years since radical
politics, left-leaning scholarship, and socially engaged feature films began to speak the unspeakable.2 In the 1960s and early 1970s
the questions asked by radical politics and scholarship were not Should the United States be overthrown? or even Would it be
overthrown? but when and how—and, for some, what would come in its wake. Those steadfast in their
conviction that there remained a discernable quantum of ethics in the United States writ large (and here I am speaking of everyone
from Martin Luther King Jr. prior to his 1968 shift, to the Tom Hayden wing of Students for Democratic Society, to the Julian Bond
and Marion Barry faction of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to Bobby Kennedy Democrats) were accountable, in
their rhetorical machinations, to the paradigmatic Zeitgeist of the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, and the Weather
Underground. Radicals
and progressives could deride, reject, or chastise armed struggle mercilessly
and cavalierly with respect to tactics and the possibility of "success," but they could not dismiss
revolution-as-ethic because they could not make a convincing case—by way of a paradigmatic
analysis—that the United States was an ethical formation and still hope to maintain credibility
as radicals and progressives. Even Bobby Kennedy (as a U.S. attorney general) mused that the law and its enforcers had no
ethical standing in the presence of Blacks.3 One could (and many did) acknowledge America's strength and power. This seldom rose
to the level of an ethical assessment, however, remaining instead an assessment of the "balance of forces." The political discourse of
Blacks, and to a lesser extent Indians, circulated too widely to wed the United States and ethics credibly. The raw force of
COINTELPRO put an end to this trajectory toward a possible hegemony of ethical accountability. Consequently, the
power of
Blackness and Redness to pose the question—and the power to pose the question is the
greatest power of all—retreated as did White radicals and progressives who "retired" from the
struggle. The question lies buried in the graves of young Black Panthers, AIM warriors, and Black
Liberation Army soldiers, or in prison cells where so many of them have been rotting (some in
solitary confinement) for ten, twenty, or thirty years, and at the gates of the academy where the "crazies" shout at passersby.
Gone are not only the young and vibrant voices that effected a seismic shift on the political landscape, but also the
intellectual protocols of inquiry, and with them a spate of feature films that became authorized, if not by an
unabashed revolutionary polemic, then certainly by a revolutionary Zeitgeist.¶ Is it still possible for a dream
of unfettered ethics, a dream of the Settlement and the Slave estate's4 destruction, to manifest
itself at the ethical core of cinematic discourse when this dream is no longer a constituent
element of political discourse in the streets or of intellectual discourse in the academy? The answer
is "no" in the sense that, as history has shown, what cannot be articulated as political discourse in the streets is doubly foreclosed on
in screenplays and in scholarly prose, but "yes" in the sense that in even the most taciturn historical moments, such as ours, the
grammar of Black and Red suffering breaks in on this foreclosure, albeit like the somatic compliance of hysterical symptoms—it
registers in both cinema and scholarship as a symptom of awareness of the structural antagonisms. The election of President Barack
Obama does not mitigate the claim that this is a taciturn historical moment. Neoliberalism
with a Black face is neither
the index of a revolutionary advance nor the end of anti-Blackness as a constituent element of
U.S. antagonisms. If anything, the election of Obama enables a plethora of shaming discourses in response to revolutionary
politics and "legitimates" widespread disavowal of any notion that the United States itself, and not merely its policies and practices,
is unethical. Between 1967 and 1980, we could think cinemati-cally and intellectually of Blackness and Redness as having the
coherence of full-blown discourses. From 1980 to the present, however, Blackness and Redness manifest only in the rebar of
cinematic and intellectual (political) discourse, that is, as unspoken grammars.¶ This grammar can be discerned in the cinematic
strategies (lighting, camera angles, image composition, and acoustic design), even when the script labors for the spectator to
imagine social turmoil through the rubric of conflict (i.e., a rubric of problems that can be posed and conceptually solved) as
opposed to the rubric of antagonism (an irreconcilable struggle between entities, or positions, the resolution of which is not
dialectical but entails the obliteration of one of the positions). In other words, even when films
narrate a story in
which Blacks or Indians are beleaguered with problems that the script insists are conceptually
coherent (usually having to do with poverty or the absence of "family values"), the nonnarrative,
or cinematic, strategies of the film often disrupt this coherence by posing the irreconcilable questions
of Red and Black political ontology—or nonontology. The grammar of antagonism breaks in on the mendacity of
conflict.¶ Semiotics and linguistics teach us that when we speak, our grammar goes unspoken. Our
grammar is assumed. It is the structure through which the labor of speech is possible.5 Likewise, the
grammar of political ethics— the grammar of assumptions regarding the ontology of suffering—
which underwrites film theory and political discourse (in this book, discourse elaborated in direct
relation to radical action), and which underwrites cinematic speech (in this book, Red, White, and Black films from the mid1960s to the present) is also unspoken. This notwithstanding, film theory, political discourse, and cinema assume an ontological
grammar, a structure of suffering. And this structure of suffering crowds out others, regardless of the sentiment of the film or the
spirit of unity mobilized by the political discourse in question. To put a finer point on it,
structures of ontological
suffering stand in antagonistic, rather then conflictual, relation to one another (despite the fact that
antagonists themselves may not be aware of the ontological position from which they speak). Though this is perhaps the most
controversial and out-of-step claim of this book, it is, nonetheless, the foundation of the close reading of feature films and political
theory that follows.
Racial profiling cannot be understood free from its historical context on the
plantation. Other approaches fail because they render this concrete situation
metaphorical.
Sexton 07 (Jared, Racial Profiling and the Societies of Control from “Warfare in the American
Homeland: Policing and Prison in a Penal Democracy” edited by Joy James, Duke University
Press, p. 200-02. Sexton is an associate professor of African American Studies and an associate
professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine. They have a Ph.D from
the University of California, Berkeley in Ethnic Studies // EMS).
In theory, everyone in the United States (and many outside its boundaries)¶ is subject to these rules of engagement. Yet, as Ira
Glasser, former director of the¶ America Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), recently noted, while
the police could,¶ say,
randomly raid apartment buildings on the Upper West Side of Manhattan¶ and yield fruitful
results, they clearly do not. As he puts it, "They don't do it¶ because most of the folks who live in those
apartment buildings are white. They¶ don't do it because if they tried to do it, the outrage
would become so big, so¶ fast that it would become politically impossible to sustain."12 We might
wonder¶ who would be outraged at such operations and whose outrage would make a¶ difference? At any rate, the verdict of his
analysis is clear: On our highways, on our streets, in our airports, and at our customs checkpoints, skin color once again, irrespective
of class, and without distinctions based on education or economic status, skin color once again is being used as a cause for
USDIClOn, and a sufficient reason to violate people's rights.¶ For blacks in particular the situation is acute. The most recent attack on
Fourth¶ Amendment protections followed immediately the Warren Court's "due process¶ revolution," as inaugurated by its
decisions in the Mapp (1961) and Miranda¶ (1966) cases. This shift in judicial opinion in favor of criminal suspects and defendants,¶
disproportionately black and characteristically depicted as such, was¶ supposed by some to be the criminal-law equivalent to or
extension of then recent¶ civil law reforms. The
motion toward constitutional protections for blacks¶ was,
then, taken to be a byproduct of the limited success of the Civil Rights¶ Movement, but its broader implications were rapidly
conflated with the perceived¶ threat of the radicalization of struggle dubbed "Black Power,"
which for¶ the mainstream presented ominous criminal tendencies, among other things.¶ The idea that
blacks could or should have both civil and criminal rights thus¶ entered the furor of an emergent "law and order" political culture
whose executive'¶ legislative, and judicial wings all feverishly and collaboratively retrenched.¶ The
legal history from
Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to George W Bushfrom¶ "war on crime" to "war on drugs" to
"war on terror" -is alarmingly short.¶ The liberal civil-rights legislation and judiciary review
enjoyed a very brief and¶ largely ineffective life. But the "revolution" in criminal rights never
even got¶ off the ground; it never actually happened except in the collective paranoid¶ fantasy of "white America." There
is, finally, no golden age for blacks before¶ the criminal law. Therefore, in our discussions of a so-called creeping fascism¶ or nascent
authoritarianism or rise of the police state, particularly in the wake¶ of the Homeland Security and PATRIOT acts, we might
do
better than trace its¶ genealogy to the general warrant (or even the Executive Order), whose
specter¶ forever haunts the democratic experiment of postrevolutionary civil society.¶ Instead,
the proper object of investigation is the antebellum slave code and its¶ antecedents in colonial
statute, not because the trajectory of this legal history¶ threatens to undo the rights of all, but
precisely because the prevailing libertarian¶ impulse in the United States has so resourcefully
and rendered¶ the concrete situation in metaphoric terms.¶ Under the force of this blacks, who were clearly in
the but definitively¶ not of it, were not only available to arbitrary search and seizure-the¶ bane of the general warrant-but were, in
the main, always already searched¶ and seized. More to the point, they had, in the famous phrase, "no rights that a¶ white man
bound to respect," including the right to life. The
ethos of slavery- in other¶ words, the lasting ideological and affective
matrix of the white supremacist project-admits no legitimate black self-defense, recognizes no¶ legitimate
assertions of black self-possession, privacy, or autonomy. A permanent¶ state of theft, seizure, and abduction
orders the affairs of the captive community¶ and its progeny. Structural vulnerability to appropriation,
perpetual and¶ involuntary openness, including all the wanton uses of the body so finely detailed¶ by
scholars like Saidiya Hartman and Hortense Spillers, should be understood¶ as the paradigmatic conditions of
black existence in the Americas, the defining¶ characteristics of New World antiblackness.14 In
short, the black, whether¶ slave or "free," lives under the commandment of whites.Is Policing blacks in
the¶ colonial and antebellum periods was, we recall, the prerogative of every white¶ (they could assume the role or not) and was
only later professionalized as the¶ modern prison system emerged out of the ashes of Reconstruction.I6 Without¶ glossing the
interceding history, suffice it to say that such policing was organized¶ across the twentieth century at higher orders of magnitude by
the political,¶ economic, and social shifts attending the transition from welfare to warfare¶ state. "Racial
profiling," then, is
a young term, but the practice is centuries-old. In¶ other words, the policing of blacks-whose
repression has always been state sanctioned,¶ even as it was rendered a private affair of
"property management" _¶ remains a central issue today; it has not recently emerged. Amnesty
International's¶ public hearings on racial profiling, the stalled federal legislation termed¶ "HR 1443," the ACLU'S "Driving while Black"
campaign, and the problematic¶ reworking of the issue of racial profiling after September 11 all unfold against¶ the backdrop of this
long history of "policing black people." The
effects of crude¶ political pragmatism, legalistic singlemindedness, or historical myopia enable¶ us to identify the unleashing of the police with the
advent of the war on drugs¶ or the xenophobic panic around the New Immigration or the
emergence of¶ Homeland Security against the threat of terrorism.
The affirmative is the perfect example of #AllLivesMatter – their focus on
contingent violence of Muslim oppression puts anti-blackness as an
afterthought – their erasure of this ontological condition is inexcusable – the
combination of struggles through the perm is genocide
Qalander 15, Mast Qalander is a Pakistani Muslim who advocates anti-racist, anti-colonial feminism.
She has published multiple books and essays/articles on the matters of social justice. “WHY I’M NOT
DOWN WITH #MUSLIMLIVESMATTER,” https://muslimreverie.wordpress.com/tag/anti-black-racism-inthe-muslim-community/ NN
I’m well aware of how hashtags can be used as tools to express solidarity, speak
out, and mobilize against injustice
I noticed a lot of Muslims on Facebook
using the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter. It was heartbreaking to hear the news and I understood
the grief Muslims were expressing
I cringed when I saw the hashtag because I recalled all
of the critiques of #AllLivesMatter
as a response to #BlackLivesMatter Though
I don’t have a twitter account, but
. Almost immediately after the Chapel Hill murders,
online. However,
, which was used online and in activist rallies/spaces
.
#MuslimLivesMatter is not exactly the same
it still co-opts the movement against police
brutality and racism that systematically targets, terrorizes, and devalues black people. ∂
other non-black Muslims posting up both #MuslimLivesMatter and
#AllLivesMatter
When they persist in posting these hashtags,
it seems like they are doing it out of defiance against #BlackLivesMatter as if the latter is
“ethnocentric” and supposedly doesn’t value the lives of non-black people The persistence and
refusal to listen also reflects the anti-blackness that exists in our communities ∂
We know the lives of brown Muslims are not valued in this society
but they become more than hashtags when we
see them used to organize protests and movements
:∂ Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black
lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black
folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly
oppression ∂ hen we deploy “All Lives Matter” as to correct an intervention specifically
created to address anti-blackness,, we lose the ways in which the state apparatus has built a
program of genocide and repression mostly on the backs of Black people
We perpetuate a level of White supremacist
domination by reproducing a tired trope that we are all the same, rather than acknowledging
that non-Black oppressed people in this country are both impacted by racism and domination,
and simultaneously, BENEFIT from anti-black racism ∂ When you drop “Black” from the equation
of whose lives matter, and then fail to acknowledge it came from somewhere, you further a
legacy of erasing Black lives and Black contributions from our movement legacy
as #AllLivesMatter,
It became more
unsettling when I watched South Asian, Arab, white, and
. While there are many people who mean well when they post these hashtags, I still see a disturbing amount of people getting very defensive (an d even make racist remarks) when they are informed about how these
hashtags co-opt and appropriate #BlackLivesMatter (and this is yet another example of how we cannot make it about people’s “intentions”).
,
.
.
addressed sensitively.
I know this is an issue that needs to be
and I know there are lot of Muslims who are shaken up or
feel triggered after the brutal murders of Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha. Hashtags may seem trivial to some,
. #BlackLivesMatter was created by three self-identified Black queer women, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal
Tometi. As Garza writes
[…]
W
—beginning with the theft of millions of people for free
labor—and then adapted it to control, murder, and profit off of other communities of color and immigrant communities.
.
. And consider whether or not when
dropping the Black you are, intentionally or unintentionally, erasing Black folks from the conversation or homogenizing very different experiences. The legacy and prevalence of anti-Black racism and hetero-patriarchy is a lynch pin holding together this unsustainable
economy. And that’s not an accidental analogy.∂ There are excellent critiques that I will quote and share below about #MuslimLivesMatter (because I believe they do a better job at explaining the problems of this hashtag), but I’ll just share a few thoughts here. Yes,
the lives of Muslims are not valued in white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy
. We know how the media and
Hollywood has demonized Muslims and Islam for a very long time. We know that Islamophobia isn’t something that “only started after 9/11,” but existed well before that. We know how the massacres against Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis show us how
we also cannot deny that when we talk about Islamophobia,
it is often centered on the experiences of Arab and South Asian men. African/black Muslim
men and women are frequently left out of the narrative, marginalized in mosques, otherized,
and vilified by Arab, South Asian, white, and other non-black Muslims.∂ Anti-black racism is
global
they’ll marginalize black Muslims or make racist
remarks about the black people
There is also a colorblind narrative that
accompanies the sermons about Malcolm X. remember a white imam in one of my local
mosques giving a speech about how
racist black supremacist
Islam advocates colorblindness or that “race doesn’t
exist in Islam
also erases his blackness
brown people are not seen as human beings, especially if they are Muslim. At the same time,
. We cannot be preaching Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) or the Qur’an’s teachings about diversity and how no one is sup erior to another person on the basis of race if we are not practicing it in the community. Yeah, we’ll hear Arab,
South Asian, and white imams quote Malcolm X whenever it is convenient or boast about Muhammad Ali, but then
(Muslim and non-Muslim) in their neighborhood.
I
Malcolm used to be a “
” until he went for Hajj and started to accept all Muslims (he liked to
emphasize on how Malcolm started to accept white people). The conclusion the imam drew from this was that
.” This narrative not only ignores Malcolm’s post-Hajj speeches against white supremacy, imperialism, and the western power structure, but
(side note: I’ll be
writing a post one of these days on how religious and community leaders, especially those in the west, use Islam to silence a nti-racism).∂ We’ll hear non-black Muslims speak highly of Hazrat Bilal (peace be upon him), the Abyssinian companion of the Prophet, and
how he was chosen specifically by the Prophet to be Islam’s first muezzin. We’ll hear them talk about how beautiful his voice must have been and how he was one of the most trusted companions of the Prophet. We’ll also hear talk about how Islam doesn’t tolerate
when it comes to the way we treat black people or talk about black people,
whether Muslim or not, there is no denying that anti-black racism exists and needs to be actively
addressed and challenged. We’ll still hear
non-black Muslims use the n-word
racism and point to Hazrat Bilal as proof. Yet,
Arab, South Asian, white, and other
(and even argue
that they can “reclaim” the term) and use derogatory, anti-black words in Arabic, Urdu/Hindi, and other languages.∂ When two Somali Muslims, Mustafa Mattan and Abdisamad Sheikh-Hussein, were recently murdered (Mattan was murdered a day before the
Chapel Hill murders), we didn’t see the same outrage from Muslims in North America nor did we see the start of “Muslim Lives Matter.” It was necessary and important that Muslims spoke out against the murders of Deah, Yusor, and Razan, so I am by no means
The only thing that is wrong is how non-black Muslims tend to devalue the lives
of black Muslims and non-Muslims
saying that anything was wrong with this.
. Abdisamad Sheikh-Hussein was 15 years-old and deliberately hit by an SUV that had a message reading “Islam is worse than Ebola” on the rear-view mirror. The
Islamophobia and anti-Muslim violence was frighteningly explicit in this case, but why wasn’t there a national outcry about his murder from Muslim communities and national organizations? As Khaled A. Beydoun and Margari Hill recently wrote in their article, “The
Colour of Muslim Mourning”:∂ The curious case of Mustafa Mattan is as much a story of intra-racial division and anti-black racism within the Muslim population as it is a narrative about the neglected death of a young man seeking a better life far from home… The
outpouring of support and eulogies that followed their deaths revealed that Deah, Yusor and Razan were, in life and in death, archetypes of young, Muslim Americans. Lives neglected by the media, but ones that mattered greatly for Muslims inside and outside of the
US. […] Despite a few vocal critics, Mattan’s erasure in the discussion of Islamophobia in North America is evident. The exclusion of Mattan and Sheikh-Hussein perpetuates a harmful hierarchy that privileges Arab narratives and excludes black/African Muslims. This
In order to understand the critiques of #MuslimLivesMatter,
we need to acknowledge that anti-black racism exists in our communities. We also need to
understand that these critiques are more than just about hashtags. Because
#BlackLivesMatter is not “just a hashtag,” it represents a movement We can create our own
hashtag and call for justice and solidarity for all Muslims without co-opting, appropriating,
and/or stepping upon the rights of other communities.
racial stratification relegating black Muslim lives is evident as much in death as it is in life. ∂
.
#JusticeForMuslims and #OurThreeWinners (the latter was started by the victims’ family) should be used
instead. Below is an excerpt from Anas White’s excellent article, A Black Muslim Response To #MuslimLivesMatter:∂ #BlackLivesMatter began as a statement to an establishment – an overall system if you will, declaring the seeming unrecognized value of black lives.
It continues to hold that same meaning, even as it moves to become an expression of the movement itself. A movement against deep rooted systemic racism, high rates of police brutality, extra-judicial executions, media smearing and vitriol, and the failure of the
BlackLivesMatter was not born of an
occurrence, but of an atmosphere wrought with repeat occurrence.
justice system to actually hold anyone accountable for dead black men, except dead black men. It is important to remember, that #
[…] A 12 year old black boy was shot and killed for playing with a BB gun,
his sister then handcuffed to watch him bleed. A black father was killed in a Walmart, holding a toy gun sold at that very Walmart, in a state where it is legal to carry guns. A black father was shot in the back, while handcuffed. A black father was essentially choked to
death in high definition. A black protest was met with a para-military, and national guard troops. A black woman was shot seeking help. A black man was literally lynched. Where were you then? My respect to every single one of you that ever attended a protest, and
to every Imam that ever gave mention, but I mean this on a deeper level. Where was the Muslim community in response to these egregious civil rights violations? Where is the Muslim community in solidarity with a movement against these civil, and even human
Stop Using #MuslimLivesMatter”:∂ #BlackLivesMatter represents an entire
movement and its history. It’s not “just” a hashtag, it’s a powerful outcry born from a racial
injustice
This appropriation of a
movement is counterproductive and frankly unfair to both the Black and Muslim communities
We should not be blending together two complex, multifaceted issues for the sake of
convenience. It’s a reductive move that simplifies both struggles, and it only contributes to
erasing the very real, very dangerous implications that Islamophobia specifically holds for
Muslims.
rights issues?∂ And an excerpt from Sabah’s article, “
felt by a people. It cannot, and should not, be molded to fit another people’s struggle. And solidarity, while important (and in fact, essential), never involves co-opting another movement. […] There is obviously nothing inherently wrong with
saying that “Muslim lives matter,” but contextually, it’s being used parallel to #BlackLivesMatter — it’s meant to evoke the same concepts, using the same kind of language.
The alternative is an unflinching paradigmatic analysis that poses the question
of whether civil society is ethical
Wilderson 10 [Frank, Professor of African American Studies and Drama at UC Irvine, Ph.D. in
Rhetoric/Film Studies from UC Berkeley, “Red, White, & Black”, pp ix-]
STRANGE AS it might seem, this book project began in South Africa. During the
last years of apartheid I worked for revolutionary change in both an underground
and above-ground capacity, for the Charterist Movement in general and the ANC in
particular. During this period, I began to see how essential an unflinching
paradigmatic analysis is to a movement dedicated to the complete overthrow of an
existing order. The neoliberal compromises that the radical elements of the Chartist
Movement made with the moderate elements were due, in large part, to our inability
or unwillingness to hold the moderates' feet to tthe fire of a political agenda
predicated on an unflinching paradigmatic analysis. Instead, we allowed our
energies and points of attention to be displaced by and onto pragmatic
considerations. Simply put, we abdicated the power to pose the question—and the
power to pose the question is the greatest power of all. Elsewhere, I have written
about this unfortunate turn of events (Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid),
so I'll not rehearse the details here. Suffice it to say, this book germinated in the
many political and academic discussions and debates that I was fortunate enough to
be a part of at a historic moment and in a place where the word revolution was
spoken in earnest, free of qualifiers and irony. For their past and ongoing ideas and
interventions, I extend solidarity and appreciation to comrades Amanda Alexander,
Franco Barchiesi, Teresa Barnes, Patrick Bond, Ashwin Desai, Nigel Gibson,
Steven Greenberg, Allan Horowitz, Bushy Kelebonye (deceased), Tefu Kelebonye,
.
Ulrike Kistner, Kamogelo Lekubu, Andile Mngxitama, Prishani Naidoo, John Shai,
and S'bu Zulu.
Social death is a condition of existence and not some avoidable impact—how
we relate to this condition is all that is important
Wilderson 02 - The Prison Slave as Hegemony's (Silent) Scandal-Presented a t #Imprisoned
Intellectuals # Conference Brown University]
Civil society is not a terrain intended for the Black subject. It is coded as waged and
wages are White. Civil society is the terrain where hegemony is produced,
contested, mapped. And th e invitat ion to p articipate in hegemony's gestures of
influence, leadership, and consent is not ext ended to t he unwaged. We live in the
world , but ex ist out side of civil s ociety. This structurally impossible position is a
paradox, because the Black subject, the slave, is vital to political economy: s/he
kick-starts capital at its genesis and rescues it from its over-accumulation crisis at its
end. But Marxism has no account of this phenomenal birth and life-saving role
played by the Black subject: from Marx and Gr amsci we have con sistent s ilence.
In taking Foucau lt to ta sk for a ssum ing a univ ersal s ubject in r evolt ag ainst d
iscipline, in the same s pirit in which I have t aken Gr amsci to ta sk for as suming a
u niversal sub ject, the subject of civil societ y in revolt a gainst capita l, Joy Jam es
writes : The U.S. carceral network kills, however, and in its prisons, it kills more
blacks than any other ethnic group. American prisons constitute an "outside" in U.S.
political life. In fact, our society displays waves of concentric outside circles with
increasing distances from bourgeois self-policing. The state routinely polices the14
unassim ilable in the hell of lockdow n, deprivat ion tanks , control units , and holes for political
prisoners (Resisting State Violence 1996: 34 ) But this peculiar preoccupation is not Gramsci's
bailiwick. His concern is with White folks; or with folks in a White (ned) enough subject position that
they are confronted by, or threat ened by th e remova l of, a wag e -- be it monetary or social. But Black
subjectivity itself disarticulates the Gramscian dream as a ubiquitous emancipatory strategy, because
Gramsci, like most White activists, and radical American movements like the prison abolition
movement, has no theory of the unwaged, no solidarity with the slave If we are to take Fanon at his
word when he writes, #Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a
program of complete disorder # (37) then we must accept the fact that no other body functions in the
Imaginary, the Symbolic, or the Real so completely as a repository of complete disorder as the Black
body.
Blackness is the site of absolute dereliction at the level of the Real, for in its
magnetizing of bullets the Black body functions as the map of gratuitous violence
through which civil society is possible: namely, those other bodies for which violence
is, or can be, contingent. Blackness is the site of absolute dereliction at the level of
the Symbolic, for Blackness in America generates no categories for the
chromosome of History, no data for the categories of Immigration or Sovereignty; it
is an experience without analog # a past, without a heritage. Blackness is the site of
absolute dereliction at the level of t he Imaginary for #whoever says #rape # says Black, # (Fanon) ,
whoever says #prison # says Black, and whoever says #AIDS # says Black
(Sexton) # the
#Negro is a phobogenic object # (Fanon). Indeed &a phobogenic object &a past
without a heritage &the map of gratuitous violence &a program of complete disorder.
But whereas this realization is, and should be cause for alarm, it should not be
cause for lament, or worse, disavowal # not at least, for a true revolutionary, or
for a truly revolutionary movement such as prison a bolition. 15 If a social
movement is to be neither social democratic, nor Marxist, in terms of the structure of
its political desire then it should grasp the invitation to assume the positionality of
subjects of social death that present themselves; and, if we are to be honest
with ourselves we must admit that the “Negro “ has been inviting Whites, and as well as
civil society #s junior partners, to the dance of social death for hundreds of years, but few have wanted
to learn the steps. They have been, and remain today # even in the most anti-racist movements, like
the prison abolition movement # invested elsewhere. This is not to say that all oppositional political
desire today is pro-White, but it is to say that it is almost always “anti-Black” which is to say it will not
dance with death. Black liberation, as a prospect, makes radicalism more dangerous to the U.S. Not
because it raises the specter of some alternative polity (like socialism, or community control of existing
resources) but because its condition of possibility as well as its gesture of resistance functions as a
negative dialectic: a politics of refusal and a refus al to affirm , a program of complete disorder. One
mus t embrace its disorder, its in coherence and allow oneself to be elaborated by it, if indeed one's
politics are to be underwritten by a desire to take this country down. If this is not the desire which
underwrites one #s politics then through what strategy of legitimation is the word #prison # being
linked t o the wo rd #abolition #? Wh at ar e this movem ent #s lines of po litical a ccount abilit y?
There #s nothing foreign, frightening, or even unpracticed about the embrace of disorder and
incoherence. The desire to be embraced, and elaborated, by disorder and incoherence is not anathema
in and of itself: no one, for example, has ever been known to say #gee-whiz, if only my orgasms would
end a little sooner, or maybe not come at all. # But few so-called radicals desire to be embraced, and
elaborated, by the disorder and incoherence of Blackness # and the state of politica l movemen ts in A
merica to day is ma rked by t his very N egroph obogen isis: #gee-whiz, if only Black rage could be
more coherent, or maybe not come at all. # Perhaps there #s something more terrifying about the joy of
Black, then there is about the joy of sex (unless one is talking sex wit h a Negr o). Perhaps coalitions
today p refer to remain in- orgas mic in the fa ce of civilsociety # with hegemony as a handy
prophylactic, just in case. But if, through this stasis, or paralysis , they tr y to do t he work of pr ison a
bolit ion # that work will fail; because it is always work from a position of coherence (i.e. the worker)
on behalf of a position of incoherence, the Black subject, or prison slave. In this way, social formations
on the Left remain blind to the contradictions of coalitions bet ween worker s and s laves. T hey remain
coalitions opera ting with in the logic of civil society; and function less as revolutionary promises and
more as crowding out scenarios of Black antagonisms # they simply feed our frustration. Whereas the
positionality of the worker # be s/he a factory worker demanding a monetary wage or an immigrant or
White woman demanding a social wage # gestures toward the reconfiguration of civil society, the
positionality of the Black subject # be s/he a prison-slave or a prison-slave-in-waiting # gestures
toward the disconfiguration of civil society: from the coherence of civil society, t he Black subject
beckons with the in coherence of civil war. A civil war which reclaims Blackness not as a positive
value, but as a politically enabling site, to quote Fanon, of “absolute dereliction“: a scandal which
rends civil society asunder. Civil war, then, becomes that unthought, but never forgotten understudy of
hegemony. A Black specter waiting in the wings, an endless antagonism that cannot be satisfied (via
reform or reparation) but must nonetheless be pursued to the death.
3
The counterplan: The United States federal government should
significantly curtail its domestic surveillance of those it perceives as
terrorists except for white supremacist individuals and groups.
Right wing hate groups are prevalent – increased domestic surveillance is
necessary to check
Banerjee 3/19 (Shruti, “Addressing an urgent need for increased monitoring of right-wing
extremist groups and domestic terrorism”, http://rightswireblog.org/tag/right-wingextremism//rJ)
With incidents like neo-Nazi Keith Luke raping a woman and murdering three people in 2009 because
he wanted to kill all non-whites and Richard Poplawski, a white supremacist and gun enthusiast, killing three
cops in 2009, it’s obvious that right-wing hate groups in the United States are active and prevalent. In a
report for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Analyst Daryl Johnson warned of increased recruitment
and radicalization amongst right-wing hate groups in light of current events, such as the candidacy and
election of an African-American president. His predictions couldn’t have been more correct. While conducting an internet survey, I
was unsurprised to find a plethora of fear mongering, bigoted propaganda (Fox News has made me accustomed to this). But I was
disturbed to come across a video of right-wing militia men training their followers to “kill fags in a way they won’t enjoy you
touching them,” as well as
right-wing extremist videos on how to make your own bomb and horrific
images of judges and government officials being lynched [not linked for graphic and safety reasons]. These
types of multimedia are unfortunately aplenty on YouTube and other sites, speaking to the prevalence of these extremist groups and
their ideologies. Despite
these blatant messages to commit acts of domestic terrorism by over 900
active right-wing extremist groups, as of 2012, the U.S. government only had one analyst
researching all right-wing hate groups’ activities in the country. As Johnson correctly predicted, a lack of
surveillance and accountability for these hate-driven recruitment messages has ultimately led
to more instances of domestic terror. By looking at a history of right-wing extremist groups from the 1990s to present
and analyzing the government’s response to these groups, it’s evident that our failure to take Johnson’s warnings
seriously has left our country more vulnerable to acts of domestic terrorism. TRENDS IN DOMESTIC
TERROR AND EXTREMIST GROUPS In the U.S., there are four main categories of right-wing extremist groups:
militia groups, white supremacist groups, sovereign citizen movements and various single issues
movements, according to the book Right-Wing Resurgence: How a Domestic Terrorist Threat is Being Ignored by Daryl Johnson.
Militia groups are defined by federal law as domestic organizations that have two or more
members who retain and use firearms, teach or endorsing paramilitary training and advocate for violent resistance or
overthrowing of the federal government. They tend to be against government regulation—for example,
anti-taxation and anti-gun regulation—and have a history of attacking federal buildings. White
supremacists groups tend to believe in the intellectual superiority of Caucasians over all other races and have a history of violently
targeting minority groups such as African-Americans and Latinos. Sovereign citizen movements aim to disassociate themselves with
the U.S. by giving up citizenship and creating a self-sufficient environment. These
movements generally have antigovernment agendas and have attempted to rename U.S. territories. Single issue movements are
comprised of groups that dedicate their time to a certain issue, such as anti-abortion and anti-immigration groups. These groups
have been known to physically attack institutions that they do not agree with, like medical clinics that provide abortions. According
to a DHS report, there
are many factors that lead to the rise of right-wing extremist groups, including
slow economic growth, high unemployment, a liberal political climate (i.e. the election of the first African-
American president), heavy
recruitment of veterans, anti-immigration sentiment, anti-abortion
sentiment, anti-LGBT movements, general anti-government and anti-authority sentiments and
prevailing racism. For example, the report documents that there was an uptick in right-wing extremist activity during the
early 1990s, a time characterized by high unemployment, slow economic growth, the appearance of a liberal political climate during
the 1992 presidential election and the passage of more restrictive gun laws. This surge in right-wing groups and extremist rhetoric
culminated in the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing. This act of domestic terrorism, which was carried out by Timothy McVeigh, killed
168 people and injured over 600 others. After the Oklahoma City Bombing, there was a decline in militia groups from 165 active
militia groups in 1997 to only 60 active groups in 1999, according to Right-Wing Resurgence. Unfortunately, this decline did not last
long, and Johnson was shocked by the uptick in extremist groups his department witnessed in the mid-2000s. The DHS documented
in its report the formation of 45 new anti-government militia groups in an abrupt six month period (from October 2007-March 2008)
after witnessing a gradual decline in these groups over the last decade. Johnson noted in his book that this drastic increase in
extremist groups was the largest recorded in fifteen years, and the Southern Poverty Law Center currently reports that this number
has further increased to 939 active hate groups. During this period, Johnson’s department at the DHS also noticed a sharp increase
in hate speech and death threats directed at Barack Obama. EXPANSION AND BACKLASH In
January 2005, Johnson was
asked to help draft a five-year budget plan for the DHS. He noticed that the edited version listed
Islamic groups and left-wing groups as domestic terror threats, but failed to mention a single
right-wing group. As Johnson recounts in his book, he was assured by his supervisor that this was not an actual assessment of
the domestic terror threat and will just be used for budgeting purposes. This DHS budget plan garnered significant political
attention, especially from Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson from Mississippi. According to Right-Wing Resurgence, at a
hearing Congressman Thompson said: “As the bombings of the Alfred. P Murrah Building in Oklahoma City ten Years ago
demonstrated, right-wing
domestic terrorists are capable of harming America in ways similar to alQaeda. Indeed, white supremacists, violent militiamen, anti-abortion bombers, and other rightwing hate groups have shown a remarkable ability to resist law enforcement authorities. In 2003,
for example, the American radical right staged a ‘comeback’ with the number of skinhead groups doubling from the prior year.”
Thompson continued, “If
DHS’ long term planning documents do not consider these and other risks
posed by right-wing domestic terrorists, then lower-level agents working to fight these groups
may not be receiving enough budgetary, policy, or administrative support from their superiors.
This means possible threats to our homeland could go undetected”. At the time of this report, Johnson was the only
analyst researching non-Islamic domestic terror threats. After this critique of the 2005 DHS budget, Johnson
was allowed to hire more analysts to build a team specifically designed to detect and analyze
right-wing domestic terror threats, though this team would later be dismantled due to political
backlash. Prior to this initiative, the government paid very little attention to domestic terror threats
from right wing groups. Johnson recalls in his book that “between 2004 to 2009, virtually no one in DHS
leadership had expressed an interest in non-Islamic extremists,” and Janet Napolitano was the first
Secretary of Homeland Security to ask him about these right-wing threats. This seemed like a new era of surveillance of these rightwing groups until a DHS employee leaked Johnson’s DHS report in 2009 titled, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political
Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” which outlined the factors that were promoting the formation of
right-wing terrorist groups (mentioned above). Conservative news media immediately picked up the leaked report and used it as a
political tool to undermine the Obama administration by distorting the analysis. For example, conservative figurehead Lou Dobbs
argued that, “the report says that people who are opposed to restricting Second Amendment rights to bear arms or who are
concerned about illegal immigration and border security could well fall under the Department Of Homeland Security definition of an
‘extremist’.” Dobb’s analysis is incomplete and incorrect under the actual definition of “extremist” provided in the report, but a lack
of government responsiveness to these attacks allowed the conservative media to continue to distort and politicize the report,
arguing that DHS monitoring directly targeted conservatives. Napolitano showed some initial support, but the White House
eventually distanced itself from this report and downsized Johnson’s unit, virtually dismantling the only government department
monitoring non-Islamic domestic terror threats. A few days after the report leaked, the government also suspended all domestic
terrorism-related training and reporting. Ironically, this report, which was used by conservatives as a political tool to criticize the
Obama administration, was written by the epitome of a “good conservative.” Johnson is a family man, a gun owner, a registered
republican and a devout Mormon. HUMAN RIGHTS IMPLICATIONS OF IGNORING RIGHT-WING TERRORIST GROUPS In the aftermath
of the leak, the
political discourse surrounding the report completely overshadowed its resounding
message: that right-wing groups pose a legitimate threat to our domestic safety. Caving to political
pressures when we have compiled hard numbers proving the prevalence of a terrorist threat and ignoring the direct connection
between propaganda, recruiting and instances of domestic terror creates a dangerous environment that allows extremist groups to
stay active. As Congressman Thompson rightfully feared in 2005, the refusal to properly monitor these extremist groups has led to
undetected and underreported human rights violations on our own soil. For example, the rise of anti-immigration propaganda,
publicized rallies against immigrants and legislation endorsing racial profiling in Arizona and elsewhere, were all directly correlated
with an uptick in violent crimes against Hispanics, as documented in my previous article. It is appalling that law enforcement and
government officials repeatedly call calculated crimes driven by hate ‘isolated incidents’. For example, John Stack, an antiestablishmentarian, was very open about his hatred for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and government regulations. He outlined
his frustrations in a six-page manifesto before flying a plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas in 2010. Texas law enforcement
insisted this was an ‘isolated incident’, which is hard to believe when instances of anti-government violence are common in Texas.
Writing off these cases of domestic terrorism by right-wing extremists as ‘isolated incidents’ is a rhetorical tool used by politicians
and law enforcement to make sure they are not liable for failing to protect their constituents from known and active domestic terror
threats. We need to be more critical of the deference we give to the first amendment rights of extremists when they are clearly
promoting domestic terrorist activities. As President Obama acknowledged, we need a multifaceted approach to combat
international terrorism because relying solely on military force does not thwart recruitment efforts, leaving individuals ‘ripe for
radicalization’. We must combat domestic terrorism by impeding recruitment efforts with the same fervor that we do for
international terror threats. This
begins by combating hate speech and radical ideologies that preach
intolerance, recognizing domestic extremist threats as systemic in nature and adequately
monitoring right-wing extremist groups.
Right wing terrorists vastly outnumber “Islamic extremists” – prefer empirics
NYTimes 6/24 (The New York Times, June 24, 2015 “Homegrown Extremists Tied to Deadlier
Toll Than Jihadists in U.S. Since 9/11” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/tally-of-attacksin-us-challenges-perceptions-of-top-terror-threat.html?_r=0 thw_)
WASHINGTON — In
the 14 years since Al Qaeda carried out attacks on New York and the Pentagon,
extremists have regularly executed smaller lethal assaults in the United States, explaining their motives
in online manifestoes or social media rants. But the breakdown of extremist ideologies behind those attacks may come as a
surprise. Since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly twice as many people have been killed by white
supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical
Muslims: 48 have been killed by extremists who are not Muslim, including the recent mass killing in Charleston, S.C.,
compared with 26 by self-proclaimed jihadists, according to a count by New America, a Washington research center. The
slaying of nine African-Americans in a Charleston church last week, with an avowed white supremacist charged
with their murders, was a particularly savage case. But it is only the latest in a string of lethal attacks by people
espousing racial hatred, hostility to government and theories such as those of the “sovereign
citizen” movement, which denies the legitimacy of most statutory law. The assaults have taken the lives of
police officers, members of racial or religious minorities and random civilians. Non-Muslim extremists have carried
out 19 such attacks since Sept. 11, according to the latest count, compiled by David Sterman, a New America program
associate, and overseen by Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert. By comparison, seven lethal attacks by Islamic
militants have taken place in the same period. If such numbers are new to the public, they are familiar to
police officers. A survey to be published this week asked 382 police and sheriff’s departments
nationwide to rank the three biggest threats from violent extremism in their jurisdiction. About
74 percent listed antigovernment violence, while 39 percent listed “Al Qaeda-inspired” violence,
according to the researchers, Charles Kurzman of the University of North Carolina and David Schanzer of Duke University. “Law
enforcement agencies around the country have told us the threat from Muslim extremists is not
as great as the threat from right-wing extremists,” said Dr. Kurzman, whose study is to be published by the
Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security and the Police Executive Research Forum. John G. Horgan, who studies
terrorism at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, said the mismatch between public perceptions and actual cases had become
steadily more obvious to scholars. “There’s an acceptance now of the idea that the threat from jihadi terrorism in the United States
has been overblown,” Dr. Horgan said. “And there’s a belief that the
threat of right-wing, antigovernment
violence has been underestimated.” Counting terrorism cases is a subjective enterprise, relying on shifting definitions
and judgment calls. If terrorism is defined as ideological violence, for instance, should an attacker who has merely ranted about
religion, politics or race be considered a terrorist? A
man in Chapel Hill, N.C., who was charged with fatally
shooting three young Muslim neighbors had posted angry critiques of religion, but he also had a
history of outbursts over parking issues. (New America does not include this attack in its count.) Likewise, what
about mass killings in which no ideological motive is evident, such as those at a Colorado movie
theater and a Connecticut elementary school in 2012? The criteria used by New America and most other
research groups exclude such attacks, which have cost more lives than those clearly tied to ideology. Some
killings by non-Muslims that most experts would categorize as terrorism have drawn only
fleeting news media coverage, never jelling in the public memory. But to revisit some of the episodes is to wonder why.
In 2012, a neo-Nazi named Wade Michael Page entered a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and opened fire,
killing six people and seriously wounding three others. Mr. Page, who died at the scene, was a member of a
white supremacist group called the Northern Hammerskins. In another case, in June 2014, Jerad and Amanda Miller, a
married couple with radical antigovernment views, entered a Las Vegas pizza restaurant and fatally
shot two police officers who were eating lunch. On the bodies, they left a swastika, a flag inscribed with the
slogan “Don’t tread on me” and a note saying, “This is the start of the revolution.” Then they killed a
third person in a nearby Walmart. And, as in the case of jihadist plots, there have been sobering close calls. In November
2014 in Austin, Tex., a man named Larry McQuilliams fired more than 100 rounds at government
buildings that included the Police Headquarters and the Mexican Consulate. Remarkably, his shooting spree hit no one, and
he was killed by an officer before he could try to detonate propane cylinders he drove to the
scene. Some Muslim advocates complain that when the perpetrator of an attack is not Muslim,
news media commentators quickly focus on the question of mental illness. “With non-Muslims, the media
bends over backward to identify some psychological traits that may have pushed them over the edge,” said Abdul Cader Asmal, a
retired physician and a longtime spokesman for Muslims in Boston. “Whereas
if it’s a Muslim, the assumption is
that they must have done it because of their religion.” On several occasions since President Obama took office,
efforts by government agencies to conduct research on right-wing extremism have run into
resistance from Republicans, who suspected an attempt to smear conservatives. A 2009 report by the Department of
Homeland Security, which warned that an ailing economy and the election of the first black president might prompt a
violent reaction from white supremacists, was withdrawn in the face of conservative criticism. Its
main author, Daryl Johnson, later accused the department of “gutting” its staffing for such research. William Braniff, the executive
director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, said the
outsize fear of jihadist violence reflected memories of Sept. 11, the daunting scale of sectarian conflict
overseas and wariness of a strain of Islam that seems alien to many Americans. “We understand white supremacists,” he said. “We
don’t really feel like we understand Al Qaeda, which seems too complex and foreign to grasp.” The contentious question of biased
perceptions of terrorist threats dates back at least two decades, to the truck bombing that tore apart the federal
building in Oklahoma City in April 1995. Some early news media speculation about the attack assumed that
it had been carried out by Muslim militants. The arrest of Timothy J. McVeigh, an
antigovernment extremist, quickly put an end to such theories. The bombing, which killed 168 people,
including 19 children, remains the second-deadliest terrorist attack in American history, though its toll was
dwarfed by the roughly 3,000 killed on Sept 11. “If there’s one lesson we seem to have forgotten 20 years after Oklahoma City, it’s
that extremist
“And
violence comes in all shapes and sizes,” said Dr. Horgan, the University of Massachusetts scholar.
very often, it comes from someplace you’re least suspecting.
Resurgence of right-wing extremists groups-attacks coming
James 8 (Mark James Director of Missouri Department of Public Safety and works at Address to the Terrorism & Justice
Conference The Balance For Civil Liberties Conference. He graduated from University Of Central Missouri, “Journal of the
Institute of Justice and International Studies (2008): 9-19” “THE PERFECT STORM: ARE WE HEADED FOR A
RESURGENCE OF RIGHT-WING DOMESTIC TERRORISM?” Proquest)
In the 2000s the focus has been on foreign enemies as a nation. We again are seeing unprecedented home foreclosures, soaring
gas prices, foreign oil dependency, and have the potential for an African American President or a woman President. The
Democratic Party has the chance to maintain control of Congress. For
a rightwing fanatic this poses a huge
concern. This poses the possibility of a return to the 1990s where the most stringent gun laws in the history of the country were
passed.¶ Soon, we will be having hundreds of thousands of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Depending on who gets
in the Whitehouse it may be sooner than later. Depending on who gets in the Whitehouse, homeland security may be downplayed.
What is the legacy of these returning troops, what are they going to come back to? Will they be viewed as the heroes and patriots
that they are? Or will there be a view that they were occupational forces in a country where we were the aggressors, and so forth?
This has potential for some dangerous things to occur.¶ Obviously, illegal immigration is a huge political issue right now.
Depending on what happens with the current legislative initiatives it will have a great effect on the rest of the decade. ¶ Examining
the economic and political variables of the 1980s and 1990s and comparing them to what is presently happening - recession, home
foreclosures and liberal viewpoints taking over Congress-there
is room to note that these rightwing extremists
will be more likely to take action. Looking at the common sociological concerns, stem cell research
may be as volatile as the abortion issue depending on how things happen. ¶ If we make the wrong decisions as a nation to our
returning veterans and if they do not get the kind of medical care that they need, and we do not recognize, as a nation, their
sacrifice with their service, that could set the stage for some sort of return to a right-wing extremist movement.¶
According
to the Southern Poverty Law Center, that gathers information on right-wing extremist groups,
there are 844 active groups in the United States. In Missouri there are many of these groups represented. These
groups are still here, they still meet. They have not done anything criminally violent for some time. They are still actively
engaged and still doing things.¶ I believe it is not if, but when. I think there will be a new resurgence of right wing extremism in
the United States and I think it will occur over the next four years. I think that it is going to occur regardless of whether it is the
Democrats or Republicans who win the Whitehouse. We are hearing a lot of discontent from the ultra-conservatives with Senator
McCain being the political candidate because they think he is too liberal.¶
I think we will see a resurgence of right
wing extremism within the next four years. Although we are monitoring all these known
existing groups, I do not think that the next Timothy McVeigh is someone we know. I do not think we have the intelligence to know who the next one is. The
point is that these right-wing extremists have been in it for a long time. They have the networks and they communicate, interact
nationally and internationally. They are there now to act as advisors for whoever is that next
generation of the group.¶ My admonition is that we do not develop tunnel vision in having our
whole national security apparatus be overly focused on how Al Qaeda is going to return here
and do us further harm. We may lose track of someone from right in our own midst who will
do some terroristic event sooner or later. I think all the dynamics are brewing together to
create the perfect storm.
Case
Even if they were to conclusively end the war on terror and our fear of the
Islamic terrorist the Aff would be insufficient to solve the cycles of violence
they identify –
Cold war and the War on Crime are the root causes
McLeod (Law Research Fellow, Georgetown University Law Center. J.D., Yale Law School, 2006;
Ph.D., Stanford University) 8
(Allegra M., EXPORTING U.S. CRIMINAL JUSTICE:
CRIME, DEVELOPMENT, AND EMPIRE
AFTER THE COLD WAR A DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED TO THE PROGRAM IN MODERN
THOUGHT AND LITERATURE AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES
OF
STANFORD UNIVERSITY, September 2008 245-6)
To understand how we got here, and more importantly to imagine alternative political futures, it will
not be sufficient to end the war in Iraq, or even the war on terror, for the same ideological
vacuum that troubled the 1990s after the Cold War will then likely again loom large, and the
same bi-polar metaphorical war-making models derivative of Cold War rhetorics will provide
again a ready solution. The roots of the current moment in which international cooperation is
directed by figurative and actual wars with no conceivable end and by fear of evil criminal (failed)
states and evil criminal actors are to be found in the pathologies, both institutional and ideological,
of the Cold War and the war on international crime, not in the U.S. response to
September 11, 2001 alone. To think outside these terms is a struggle that existed long
before September 11, 2001, and one that will require conceiving new forms of governmentality
and new forms of global interaction—that is, acts of imagination that demand more than an end
to current wars. Indeed, what is called for is something difficult to muster and unfamiliar to be sure:
the courage to embrace and permit to flourish small-scale, context-sensitive, equitable-development
focused grassroots alternatives, and the possibilities of the unfinished.
And this is offense – they’re wrong and obscure a long history of American
global violence
Sanders (PhD in Pols from University of Toronto) 12
(Rebecca, Exceptional Security Practices, Human Rights Abuses, and the Politics of Legal Legitimation in
the American “Global War on Terror,
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/32880/3/Sanders_Rebecca_201206_PhD_thesis.pdf)
Seen in this historical light, post-9/11 security practices are not entirely novel. The 9/11-centrism of
popular policy debates often obscures the long history of exceptions to the rule of law
found in American security practice. This is important because the extraordinary events of 9/11
are not in themselves a sufficient explanation for the policies in question. Although the
specific character of post-9/11 security practices is particular to the context, there is no clear
correlation between the resort to human rights abuses and 9/11 . It may be a reason,
but is not itself the cause.
Islamophobia is engrained within American culture. Changing government
policies is ineffective
Sheehi 11 (Stephen, March 9, 2011. “Don’t Blame the Kingdom for Islamophobia, Blame the Kingdom.” Shehi is a professor
of Middle East studies at the College of William and Mary. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/840/dont-blame-the-king-forislamophobia-blame-the-kin // EMS).
To approach the current hearings on “radicalization” of American Muslims along partisan
boundaries is to deflect from the depths to which Islamophobia is engrained within American
political culture. That Geller had to “beg” to be included in the CPAC convention and attack paleo-conservatives such as
Grover Norquist suggest that the Republican Party realizes the liability of the visibility of Tea Bag xenophobia.¶ Blaming
opportunistic and predatory Islamophobes is a convenient means to distance the American
mainstream from their own Islamophobia. King’s hearings are dangerous not for their demonizing of Muslims but
because they further mainstream these predators and offer them a prominent political platform and the credibility that comes with
Islamphobia as a mass cultural
phenomenon is that the latter is a fully fledged ideological component of American culture that has
flowered since the end of the Cold War to accommodate US power in a unipolar world.
Consequently, Islamophobia permeates all spectra of American culture. Juan Williams’ honesty that Muslims
it.¶ However, the difference between good ole’ fashioned Muslim and Arab hating and
make him nervous, Howard Dean accusing Islam of being “stuck in the 12th century,” and Obama’s clear distaste for the “wisdom” of
In the media, discussion of
Muslims and Islam is, at best, infused with the Good Muslim-Bad Muslim dichotomy that
poses patriotic loyalty against religious identity. While highlighting the psychological instability of white
Park 51mosque show how Democrats share their counterparts’ suspicion of Muslims.¶
terrorists and ignoring the white supremacy beliefs of anti-government militias, cable news obsesses over “home grown terrorism,”
perpetuating the stereotype of the “Muslim threat” and, therefore, legitimizing it as a valid analytical topic.¶ Islamophobia
is
not only a set of misrepresentations, misunderstandings and intolerance by overt racists and
the religiously bigoted. It is a culture formation that has been activated for ideological reasons.
As such, the shared Islamophobia of both parties translates into very real effects for Muslims.
For example, municipal police hire Islamophobe charlatans to train them to identify home grown threats using outlandishly
racist anti-Muslim literature. As a consequence, not only do police profile and target anyone who might look like their version of a
Muslim but they under report hate crimes against Muslim and Arab Americans.