PerspectiveIs White Terrorism the New 9/11?
Is there a danger of overreaction to the mass shootings in El Paso,, Dayton, and other places? Should America confront its fringes with the wrath it brought to the Middle East after September 11, 2001? Two decades of evidence argues against changing the whole way we do business in the face of a few fanatics. In any event, what would a “war on white nationalism” actually entail? Will it be a decades-long slog, this time on American soil? Will it feature the mistakes of the war or terror? Curtis Mills writes: “Before it embarks upon a new, ill-considered crusade, America should contemplate the costs and consequences of its last war on terror.”
“In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy,” President Trump said in an official statement at the White House following the El Paso and Dayton shootings. “These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart, and devours the soul. We have asked the FBI to identify all further resources they need to investigate and disrupt hate crimes and domestic terrorism — whatever they need.”
Curt Mills writes in the National Interest that it’s the latter point on which the post-El Paso future will be litigated. Anxiety surrounding the dwindling prestige and power of white Americans permeates U.S. politics. Demographic trends combined with unforgiving inequality, ceaseless immigration and ubiquitous technology are helping create a narrative of disrepair, of anomie, in segments of society. Disdain on the Left for “deplorables” and the like has only further helped fuel a sense of resentment and alienation. The columnist Janan Ganesh avers in the Financial Times that America “should not give into the pessimism of white nationalism.”
Yet there is a danger of overreaction. Should America confront its fringes with the wrath it brought to the Middle East after September 11, 2001? Two decades of evidence argues against changing the whole way we do business in the face of a few fanatics. America is a violent, perhaps unhappy, country, to be sure. But as Ganesh notes: “If a person in 1945 were given sight of the west in 2019, what would strike them — the social dislocation brought about by racial variety or, actually, how little of it there has been given the scale of the change?”
What would a “war on white nationalism” actually entail? Will it be a decades-long slog, this time on American soil? Will it feature the mistakes of the war or terror?
Writing in the Atlantic, Max Abrahms, too, sounds a cautionary note. According to him, “As a term, extremism is used sloppily to denote both a person’s political goals and the methods used to achieve them. There’s an important difference, though, between rooting for extreme ends and using extreme means to realize them. Chat rooms are full of people expressing sundry offensive—even reprehensible—political visions. The smart counterterrorist swallows hard and leaves them alone. But it’s interdiction time the moment the prospect of violence is even mentioned as a way forward.”
Mills quotes Richard Hanania of Columbia University, whose work on terrorism and foreign policy is now drawing increased attention, who said: “Every serious attempt to measure our response to terrorism from a cost-benefit perspective shows that it has been an extreme and ridiculous overreaction…. The costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, in terms of blood and treasure, dwarfed those of the 9/11 attacks themselves, and the number of worldwide terrorist attacks actually increased due to our policies.”
Mills concludes: “Before it embarks upon a new, ill-considered crusade, America should contemplate the costs and consequences of its last war on terror.”
