What is a Terrorist?

Look at these icons of American History. Nat Turner. John Brown. Terrorists? Martyrs? Lunatic serial killers? Cultists? Symbols of pride and moral clarity? I guess you could find folks who could shove them in any one of those boxes. So as our President and Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney et al. frame this war of good versus evil, liberal wankers versus loyal patiotic Americans, can we say that Nat and Brown were the Mohammad Atta and Osama Bin laden of their time? After all, not until Osama Bin Laden have single individuals and their acts of violence had such a profound transformative effect on the course of our laws, our political structure, our culture.

"We did what had to be done!" Cryptic, isn't it? That's what Nat Turner said at his trial upon recanting a phony coerced confession. As misunderstood and misquoted as Nat is, he remains a colossus in black America's own little pantheon. Could he be no better than a suicide bomber? Is he an INSURGENT as in Iraq, dealing with the ambivelance of the very people he wanted to free (and recall, ambivalence doesn't mean you don't care, it means your heart and /or brain are jerked in opposite directions)? Why did he go on a "rampage" with his followers, and not just escape north and onto Canada? Perhaps at some point he saw the futility of becoming an American Spartacus, for even Spartacus could not resist mighty Rome. He saw the killing, burning, hacking, beating and fear--the FEAR--in whites as the ends to the means. In essence, you give those who have all the power what they fear the most: Powerlessness. Brutality becomes the answer to brutality. Thus he exposed for all to see a conflict that rages to this day: America's mythology versus reality. Note, the Virginia Legislature, along with that of border states like Kentucky and Maryland entertained resolutions ABOLISHING slavery (replacing it with serf-like peonage and low wages, for sure) as a direct result of the revolt. But, like Rome, opted instead to increase legal oppression of blacks and enforce this on a national level in Congress and through the White House. I bet you thought that "State's Rights" was a Southern thang, eh? Nope, it was a Northern thing as these states, even racist New York, thried to prevent enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act (take a look at the Rendition Clause of the Constitution, plus Full Faith and Credit--it's still in there, folks! I say take that out before we start talking about erasing the civil rights of fags and dykes...). States Rights became the Southern cry when the shoe was on the other foot--when basic human and civil rights for blacks was on the table. Again, why can't people just be honest about this stuff? Does it dimish one's power and standing to admit hey, it ain't about right and wrong, it ain't about God vs. the Devil--it's aboutpower, who's ox is getting gored? ;-)

John Brown was another individual who changed America forever--greasing that log flume ride into a horror show of bloody civil war, shoved along by Nat. From Kansas to Harpers Ferry, the man's terrible myth was scarier than his actual deeds. Indeed, the rednecks he battled in Kansas had murdered and looted far more any of Brown's real privations. But he was a symbol, like Nat Turner, and the potential of what he could do, coupled with that symbolism, was what struck fear into those in power. Power being, of course, the South, which ran the national government directly or indirectly through "doughface" clown Presidents like poor Franklin Pierce or James Buchanan. Yet this man dies a martyr. And his place in history isn't even as ambivalent as Nat Turner's. He is a symbol of righteous struggle for a moral cause.

Is Hamas or Hezbollah's cause any less compelling? Are the passions and history similar in any way? I'm just asking. I suppose in some Red States I'd be a traitor or over-thinking fruit for putting that out there. I don't think I could find a NASCAR Dad or Desparate Housewife who truly can name the author of the second-worst terrorist attack in US History? He was a patriotic, all American clean shaven WHITE BOY named Tim McVeigh. Of course, we don't racially profile clean shaven, GOP-voting white boys, even when they buy a ton of chemical fertilizer. (as a sidebar, there are plenty white Muslims--look at Bosnia--and some of the worst hijackers and urban terrorists in the 1970s were blond blue-eyed Bader-Meinhoff and Red Brigade operatives working with the PLO, etc. Watch out for that little old white grandma, then who breezes through the metal detector then. That Poligrip might just be C-4...)



Look, I have a neighbor, now celebrating Yom Kippur, with an uncle who boasts killing four British Marines with a Sten submachine gun in 1947, during a prison break. This same guy blew up a truck which was filled with goats and two Arab farmers. The attack was meant to "send a message" to Arabs living in Palestine that Israel was there to stay, and that no Jew would be herded off to die ever again, as what happened in the German (notice I didn't say Nazi) concentration camps just a few years earlier. Apparently these victims were just farmers, both lived side by side with Jews in Palestine for generations, both supported partition (which created Israel in 1947, shepherded by a woefully unlauded African American, Dr. Ralph Bunche ).
Was this guy's uncle a terrorist? I'm sure most Jews and many Americans in toto would say no. Why? Maybe because the difference between a terrorist and a rebel, a patriot, a hero depends on who is in power, on who writes history?

John Brown and Nat Turner are heroes to me, just as John Wayne and Rev. Jerry Falwell and Oliver North might be another person's heroes, or Bin Laden is the hero of some unemployed teenager living in a hovel on the outskirts of Cairo. Or some thug like "Marlowe" on The Wire is the hero of another disillusioned kid living on Aisquith Street in West Baltimore. The trick is, how do you reconcile their violence, ignorance, destructiveness. Many folks, be they evangelicals or ex-Marines or rednecks or radical Muslims or nililistic "corner kids" in any US city don't have or want the mental tools to critically assess that paradox. Either way, it's got shit to do with "good versus evil" on any real, gut-to-nutsack level. Think about it...