For someone who's first political awakening revolved around supporting abortion rights, this was depressing and sad, but not terribly surprising (not the part where his shooter was charged). The extremist right wing had started ramping up its violent rhetoric when it became clear that their side was not going to win in 2008, with some notable results.
Acts like this are terrorism. While the singular act of assassinating George Tiller had a specific material purpose in killing one of the few doctors in America willing to perform late term abortions, the more important motive and result is the instilling of fear amongst those that support abortion rights, or even amongst those who don't overtly support the right-wing Christian based forced-pregnancy movement. The choice of churches in both of the examples I linked to above is an important aspect of the overall timbre of the attacks (Sara Robinson, Orcinus):
First Knoxville, then this. Sherilyn Ifill once made the point that lynchings typically occurred on courthouse lawns as a symbol that the mob had overridden the authority of the state and taken justice into its own hands. So what does it mean when right-wing terrorists start gunning down progressives in the pews of their own churches? Two events do not a pattern make -- but if this keeps happening, it'll be clear that there's a message being sent...
...(Christian) fundamentalists have never been willing to recognize the legitimacy of other faiths.* And certain factions on the far right have never had qualms about vandalizing mosques or synagogues in order to harass Muslims and Jews into political and social silence.
But they used to leave Christian churches pretty much alone. The fact that this shooting occurred in a church (again) suggests that this tactic is now being tried out on more closely related faith groups whose views don't comport with the fundamentalist party line. As Dave has often pointed out, bringing violence to houses of worship is usually an overtly eliminationist act. They are trying to terrify liberals by making us feel at risk and unsafe inside our own spiritual sanctuaries -- the very places we go to feel the most security and peace. This is terrorism, plain and simple -- Christian fundamentalist terrorism, committed by people Sam Smith has started referring to as "Jesus's Jihadis."
Sara Robinson hits the right points, because terrorism is only partially about the violent act-it is also about the symbolism. If you are a terrorist, what you do, how you do it, and where you do it are all important facets of sending a specific message to your opponents-if you don't believe as we believe, or if you are not just like us, you are not safe, even in the sanctuary of a church, a previously near-untouchable target.
Seeing this act for what it really was-a stepping-up in the extremist right-wing of it's intent to resort to violence-is of the utmost importance, partially because of the way America's democracy works, and partially because of the nature of leaderless resistance. In order to ensure that a broad array of political voices can be heard without retribution, our nation's Çonstitution allows for almost unlimited political, social and artistic voice, regardless of how extreme it may be. While this is in the main a good feature of our democracy, it does allow for the use of scapegoating, nativism and claims of un-Americanism to be used as weapons to gain political advantage. The freedom that allows for vigorous political debate also allows for this kind of low manipulation-it is part of the bargain that we strike in America to run a workable democracy. And ultimately, rhetoric is only rhetoric. Rush Limbaugh may be a lying asshole, Michelle Malkin may write a book in favor of interment camps for Muslims, Ann Coulter might wish publicly for the New York Times to be bombed, but their words, no matter how vile, don't make their opponents disappear (though they clearly wish for this to be so). In fact, if the last two elections are any indication, Americans have rejected their message in large numbers. But therein lies the problem-rhetoric about liberals and attempts to associate Barack Obama with terrorists or to claim he isn't really an American, and attempts to demonize liberals generally, didn't do the job.
The conundrum between the need for almost unlimited speech freedom, even in the case of liars or violently-oriented people; and the degree to which eliminationist rhetoric and resentment over the loss of power can lead to acts of violence; demands that the terms of the debate be very clear and as truthful as can be. This is why it is important to define acts like killing George Tiller as terrorism. Because that is what this was-an act on the part of right-wing, Christianist extremists to send a message to their opponents that they are not safe from extra-governmental acts of violence, including death. And if it is not seen and understood as such amongst the broader public, and not reported that way in the media, it will be very difficult to fight it effectively on the rhetorical battleground, where the seeds for future terrorist acts are either sown or washed away.
This act should be defined as terrorism because of its symbolic intent. All acts of terrorism are intended to do this-it is what defines terrorism, as the very word connotes the spreading of terror and fear within a population, through targeting that population for violent or intimidating acts. The social or political motivations can vary, as can the degree of organization, but the effort of the tactic itself is always the same-to intimidate. To that end, symbolism is key. For example, during the height of the lynching era in the American south, many of the lynchings had a highly public element:
On 2 April 1899, approximately two thousand white men, women, and children participated, as both witnesses and active agents, in the murder of Sam Hose in Newman, Georgia. Sam Hose was burned alive. In the final moments of his life, the assembled crowd descended upon his body and collected various parts of it as souvenirs. The Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican recounted the scene of Hose's dismemberment in the following manner:
Before the torch was applied to the pyre, the negro was deprived of his ears, fingers and genital parts of his body. He pleaded pitifully for his life while the mutilation was going on, but stood the ordeal of fire with surprising fortitude. Before the body was cool, it was cut to pieces, the bones were crushed into small bits, and even the tree upon which the wretch met his fate was torn up and disposed of as "souvenirs." The negro's heart was cut into several pieces, as was also his liver. Those unable to obtain ghastly relics direct paid their more fortunate possessors extravagant sums for them. Small pieces of bones went for 25 cents, and a bit of liver crisply cooked sold for 10 cents.
Seven months later in December 1899, the New York World, in an article entitled "Roasted Alive," reported on the similar fate of Richard Coleman in Maysville, Kentucky, before a crowd of "thousands of men and hundreds of women and children." The article noted that "Long after most of the mob went away little children from six to ten years of age carried dried grass and kindling wood and kept the fire burning all during the afternoon." It also revealed that "Relic-hunters visited the [End Page 639] scene and carried away pieces of flesh and the negro's teeth. Others got pieces of fingers and toes and proudly exhibit the ghastly souvenirs to-night."3 In a 27 February 1901 Chicago Record article on the hanging and burning of George Ward before a crowd of four thousand people in Terre Haute, Indiana, the newspaper gave the following account of the scene of Ward's murder:
When the crowd near the fire tired of renewing it after two hours, it was seen that the victim's feet were not burned. Someone called an offer of a dollar for one of the toes and a boy quickly took out his knife and cut off a toe. The offer was followed by others, and the horrible traffic was continued, youths holding up toes and asking for bids.(Harvey Young, The Black Body as Souvenir)
This kind of highly public, grisly killing was integral to maintaining the subordinate status of African Americans in the south. The actual amount of lynchings, though substantial, was not nearly enough to eradicate the presence of black people in the south, and in any case, this would not have been desirable, as their labor was needed:
There was, however, no possibility that a color line could be drawn literally; blacks in the south could not be locked out or driven away, because the south's economy was tottally dependent on their labor, and no definition rooted in biology could successfully be used to assign every individual his or her proper place (J. William Harris, Ettiquette, Lynching, and Racial Boundaries in Southern History: A Mississippi Example).
Thus, to demarcate the "color line" in a manner that would effectively render blacks subordinate without literally driving them out of the south entirely, highly ritualized acts, like those described above, acted as a symbolic warning. Similarly, the choice of targets or dates of acts will be imbued with symbolic meaning. Al Quaeda could have chosen any of millions of targets within America-it chose the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, symbols of America's economic and military might. An attack like that will not, as a singular event, cause the existential destruction of the U.S., nor would Al Quaeda believe that it would. Rather, by choosing those particular symbols of America, they are attempting to send a message, both about their grievances with the U.S., and, in the case of the Pentagon, about what little security military strength can really provide, even on your home turf, when faced with dedicated, extremist religious fundamentalism mixed with a willingness to resort to violence. So too is the assassination, in his church, of Tiller such a symbolic act, with the same desired result. Christianist extremists are attempting to sow insecurity amongst the population, specifically the non-Christianist, non-forced pregnancy supporting population, choosing a highly significant target imbued with meaning and with a well-known history for his part in this particular struggle.
Unfortunately, there is already some resistance to calling this act terrorism, as will be seen below. During the mid to late 1990s, acts like this and the Oklahoma City bombing were often commonly described as domestic terrorism. However, the election of George Bush, who the extreme right wing found more favorable, tamped down much of the right-wing militant activity, and thus it was not so much in the media spotlight. Furthermore, the rise of Islamic terrorism in the public consciousness after 9/11 pushed memories of that era out of the public mind.
An equally difficult hurdle to overcome is the "lone wolf" image that singular acts such as this are often described as. This muddies the waters in correctly defining acts like this, even amongst people who may be otherwise sympathetic to Tiller, like in this exchange from Rachel Maddow's show on June 1:
JONATHAN TURLEY, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR: Hi, Rachel.
MADDOW: I`m making these observations politically just as a citizen, but I wanted to ask you tonight if it`s legally appropriate, legally useful, to approach this problem as terrorism?
TURLEY: Well, in some cases, it is. You know, some of these past cases have elements of terrorism. Rudolph is a good example of that -- although, you know, he was not just anti-abortion, he was anti-homosexual. He was sort of at war with the world. And that makes this definition a little more difficult.
Some of us, particularly on the civil libertarian side, are uncomfortable with using the terrorism label because, you know, the Bush administration expanded this definition to the breaking point. I testified not long ago in Congress of how the Bush administration would classify what were rudimentary criminal cases as terrorism cases and use these laws against them.
The problem we have, as you know, is to deal with lone actors like this. I don`t believe that the man who killed Dr. Tiller was a classic terrorist. I think that he was a murderer. He assassinated him.
But I don`t see the elements of an organized terrorist plot. And in many ways, he`s the most dangerous thing that we face.
or another example here, from CNN on May 31st, before his shooter was apprehended:
MIKE BROOKS, CNN SECURITY ANALYST (via telephone): You know, Don, what you just heard from that great affiliate reporter who has been working hard on this story, that he did wear a bulletproof vest, and he was shot in the head.
So to me, that says it's someone who probably had been looking at him, knew his actions. This subject has also apparently had been seen there at the church.
So it's probably someone that he knew, had some contact with, or someone who was actually planning this for quite some time.
But you talked about back, and we talked Don back in 19'84. I was on the FBI joint terrorism task force in Washington, D.C. and was involved in an investigation that dealt to see whether or not there was a nationwide conspiracy to kill abortion doctors and to bomb abortion clinics.
LEMON: That was called VAAPCON, right? Violence Against Abortion Providers Conspiracy. It was a grand jury, right, in that case?
BROOKS: That's correct, Don. It was a grand jury that was sitting in the eastern district of Virginia.
The investigation lasted for almost two years, and there were about 13, roughly 13 subjects that we were looking at, to say, OK, are these people involved in a conspiracy?
After the investigation, a little over two years, it was decided that, you know what, there is not a conspiracy. These were all basically lone actors, because it started right after July, 1994, Paul Hill in Pensacola killed Dr. John Britain. And right after that, there had been a bombing of an abortion clinic falls church. And that's when we decided -- the Justice Department decided we have to take a closer look.
LEMON: Paul Hill was the first -- I believe he was the first man, or the first person who got the death penalty for killing an abortion provider. So that's very interesting.
So this tells you -- you're saying this guy acted alone, maybe with some sort of vigilante, and was following this guy, and just had a vendetta and wanted to get him.
BROOKS: Just hearing what I'm hearing right now, Don, that's what it sounds like.
and further on down, here:
LEMON: I was wondering if it was going to change, and it might change that.
Bill, in the short time that we have left, talk to me about -- you said both sides will be tamping down and really monitoring themselves. But does this offer and fodder for either side in this issue?
SCHNEIDER: Well, I think it would be unfortunate if people exploit what was possibly, likely an individual act of violence. I don't think you can characterize it as a policy on the part of abortion opponents.
These statements skirt around the issue, and in the last statement, deny, the reality of the leaderless resistance movement in America. In this permutation of right-wing extremist terror, groups are made up of cells of 2-6 people, working autonomously for an understood goal, but without any centralized plan:
Leaderless resistance ensures that the larger movement can never be concretely linked to these individual acts. The important connection, though, can easily be found on a broader scale...
"There is a problem talking about 'a conspiracy' or 'a national conspiracy,'" says Michael Reynolds, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Klanwatch arm. "What we may have, looking at the overall pattern, are several conspiracies."
The arsonists (church arsonists in the 1990s) rely on leaderless resistance: "It's a guerrilla strategy. Instead of a top-down structure, you have cells of two to six individuals going out and committing whatever acts they choose, whether it's assassination, robberies, arson or bombings...
(In God's Country, Dave Neiwert)
This concept of leaderless resistance reaches back to at least 1992, in the aftermath of the Ruby Ridge meltdown. The keynote speaker in the meeting in Estes Park, Colorado was former Klan leader Louis Beam, an early proponent of leaderless resistance:
This Louis Beam (sp) created this plan, he wrote it out in one of his last publications when he was the leader of the Klan, called "The Seditionist." And what it means is that small groups, with no leaders that can be caught and topple the whole group, will go out and plan their own acts of domestic terrorism and act when they feel like they should act, based on the conditions and the material. And the purpose of the movement, in its many postings on the Internet and the World Wide Web and the publications and videos and books they sell, is to give inspiration to the Timothy McVeighs in our society. (National Press Club Luncheon Speaker Morris Dees, APRIL 16, 1996)
It's important to remember that while there is no centralized plan to this kind of terrorism, as there would be with a group such as Al Quaeda, there is a generally known and understood concept of action that its adherents recognize and act on, disseminated through literature and the internet. Thus, these actors, whether they be lone wolves like Paul Hill or small groups like those linked to the bombing in Oklahoma City, know what to do and can plan their attacks without having to be told by a central leader or committee.
Abortion clinics have often been targets of this kind of terrorism:
Attacks on abortion clinics and their workers are perhaps less common but often command more attention, especially when they entail horrifying murders like Paul Hill's fatal shotgun attack on Dr. John Britton and his escort, James Barrett. Hill is only one of several anti-abortionists who have used lethal force agains clinics and their employees: John Salvi III killed two women in two gun attacks on abortion clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1994; Michael Griffin, a onetime associate of Hill, fatally shot abortion doctor David Gunn in 1993...A Grants Pass, Oregon, woman named Shelley Shannon shot and wounded a Wichita, Kansas, abortion doctor in 1993; from prison, her correspondence to other anti-abortionists has indicated a nationwide underground network of like-minded activists inclined to commit violence against abortion workers. One of these groups linked to Shannon, the Army of God, later claimed credit for setting off pipe bombs at an abortion clinic and a gay nightclub in Atlanta.
While I am sympathetic to claims of civil libertarians that the Bush Administration stretched the definition of terrorist to the breaking point, the specific issue regarding the Bush Administration revolved around using such definitions to grab unprecedented executive power, for which the terrorism issue acted as a tool. Such expansion of executive power is a real problem, but it is a separate one. By no means should it allow us to shy away from calling acts like the murder of George Tiller terrorism. Terrorists use violence as a way of "achieving a radical change in the status quo, which would confer a new advantage, or the defense of priveleges they perceive as threatened" (Martha Crenshaw, The Strategic Logic of Terrorism). There is no doubt that acts like this are an attempt to both confer a new advantage and to protect privileges right-wing Christian extremists perceive to be under attack.