White, Christian, . . . Terrorist?
I've been surprised by the epithets used to describe Eric Rudolph, the man behind the Atlanta Olympics bombing, as well as the bombings of abortion clinics and a lesbian nightclub, who has recently avoided the death penalty by pleading guilty and helping the police find his caches of explosives.
NPR calls him a "serial bomber," the New York Times doesn't use any epithets, Fox News calls him a "confessed murderer." I don't understand why the press doesn't label him as a terrorist. He did, after all, admit to wanting to scare people. This is a textbook case of domestic terrorism.
CJR thinks misusing the label of "terrorist" doesn't matter much, beyond reducing the utility of the adjective, but I disagree. I think it is very important that we recognize that terrorism is an American phenomenon, too, that you don't need brown skin and a funny accent to be a terrorist, that Islam doesn't cause terrorism — extremism, of any kind, does.
All to often the "terrorist" label becomes a rhetorical device, used to associate negative imagery with whoever the speaker disagrees with. Witness Bush Education Secretary calling the National Education Association a "terrorist organization," or the standard practice of calling the Earth Liberation Front eco-terrorists. ELF isn't interested in causing terror, or even killing people; they want to cause property damage. They're criminals, to be sure, but not terrorists.