Amerika

Terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. After a mass-stabbing in a Minnesota mall, the local police chief made a statement to the effect of, “But we still don’t know if this is terrorism.”

Like a chemical reaction, the right-wing social media exploded. How would it not be terrorism? The guy screamed “Allahu Ackbar” and asked potential victims if they were Muslim. (Hint to potential victims: lie.)

At the same time, we have a typical modern conundrum: “terrorism” is an ill-defined term. What the police chief means is that it is unclear whether (a) this was a lone mental health case who went seeking for an explanation for his visions and impulses and found Allah or (b) this guy was sponsored by a known terrorist group.

To flip it around, was it terrorism when Dylan Storm Roof shot nine black people in a church after praying with them? He was not associated with any organized groups, nor sponsored, and seems to have acted on his own.

Our faux elites specialize in getting us to ask the wrong questions. The question “But is it terrorism?” (said in breathless Lawrence, KS housewife lilt) is the wrong question.

The right question is: is this diversity performing normally?

As with many things in life, the answer will be complex. Diversity pits groups with different self-interest against one another.

If you are a Muslim in America, you will find the values of your adopted homeland to be alien, and will want yours to take precedence over those. Since democracy is a form of pluralism, and is designed intentionally to frustrate such ambitions, you will be left with a quantum of fury to express.

This affects those who are most marginal, or least vested — money, families, power, recognition — in society, before anyone else. This is why terrorist groups pitch their message to the disaffected and often use those with mental health problems in their attacks. Who else volunteers for a suicide mission but someone miserable and unstable?

Since we know from history that diversity has never been anything but a burden to societies, and that it induces chaos and lowers social trust, we can safely say that diversity is a path to dystopia.

That leads to the vital question: is the real terrorism the few focal-point events where bombs go off or mass killings occur, or is it the subjugation of a population through the norming of a constant background hum of diversity-related crime, distrust, instability and enmity?

Tags: diversity, terrorism