first, a breif exerpt from alfred fortin's 'notes on a terrorist
text':
'the language of antiterrorism is by now a well-established an
rehearsed refrain, one frequently heard in the voices that make up
American political culture. This should worry us since, to a
certain extent, the penetration of that discourse into our ordinary
language is a measure of the increasing militarization of our common
life. The greater the ease with which we invoke the
terrorist-as-enemy in our shock over the violence surrounding us,
the more this refrain stands as witness to the internalisation that
readies us for counterviolence. The more comfortable the language of
antiterrorism is to us, the more familiar the terrorist figure who
haunts us, the more entrenched that seizure of our political
imagination becomes.'
John Ransom wrote:
> I think society has a compelling interest, one that overrides the
> right of free speech, in stopping the dissemination of such views.
> what's to keep others from trying to silence socialists and
> Islamic fundamentalists? But I think this is a logical dead end.
> In fact, *nothing* keeps others from trying to silence socialists
> and Islamic fundamentalists. Let them try. They will lose.
who will lose? who will try? who are the ones we decide to exile
with our forced censorship? what political commitments do we
re-entrench when we justify so called 'limited' discursive violence
against the nebulous 'others', this time, with 'white' faces?
> But groups who unapologetically celebrate and hope to recreate
> regimes that systematically murder millions upon millions of
> individuals are not worthy of *citizens'* right to free speech.
worthy? how does one 'earn' rights? what hoops of power must one
jump through to be endowed with such liberal virtues?
closing quote from fortin: 'what we become blinded to in the rush to
talk terrorism, to reproduce its strident vocabulary, however, are
the power effects that the adoption of that discourse entails,
especially in regard to our imagining of the terrorist figure.
Media portrayals and official condemnations of terrorism reinforce
the dominant strategic dicourse to the extent that they assume
current constructions of the terrorist figure. This simplistic
picturing of political actors likewise spawns an impoverished and
fragmented understanding of their political struggles, an
understanding easily enlisted into the ideological service of those
who would deny us the making of critical distinctions about complex
political phenomenon.'
do we merely silence or do we try to understand, to critically
evaluate? and it isn't just about 'who the next "other" will be'
i.e. the black faces staring up from the ghetto, the turban clad
terrorists from the islamic world, or the redneck nationalists; its
more about 'why will we accept the next "other" so
unconditionally' and what solutions we forclose in the process...
cheers,
paul