Last night, one woman made a difference. The twitter user @SecretGamerGrrl wrote a powerful Twitter essay about why the recent Planned Parenthood and Black Lives Matter attacks are domestic terrorism, and why the attackers should be called terrorists. This is not what you are expecting.
Secret Gamer Girl argues that these “gunmen” (as they have been called by mainstream media) should be called “terrorists” because they are systematically recruited and trained, have been taught to fear anyone who is not like them, have been indoctrinated that their rights are under attack by society in general, and have become isolated socially, so that they are more and more dependant on their like-minded cronies.
Sound familiar?
It sounds like the narrative we have been fed when it comes to Islamic extremists, but it hasn’t been applied to domestic terrorism.
In her words:
“Here’s why it’s imperative that news organizations properly label things like what happened today in Colorado and Monday in Minneapolis as acts of terrorism. It isn’t some semantic thing to prove a point about racism. It’s to get across that these people aren’t acting alone. There is a very real terrorist organization in this country who directly recruits and radicalizes young Americans, training them to hate and fear those they consider their ideological enemies: Anyone who either advocates for the rights of any marginalized group, and any member of such a group who they see as directly benefiting from such advocacy.”
The essay goes on over several hours and dozens of tweets, explaining how websites like 4Chan and its offshoot, 8chan, as well as others like wizchan.org, become meeting places for depressed white men who are looking to give their lives meaning. They are trained in ideology and in logistics, and gain support and encouragement for terrorist plans. These would-be terrorists begin using jargon and develop in-jokes (which furthers their sense of bonding and increases the distance from “outsiders,” in addition to dehumanizing their targets), which is also a way for them to identify each other on more mainstream sites, like Twitter.
She connects the Dylann Roof shootings with this formula, as well as the earlier Elliot Rodger sorority shooting. Same method of recruitment, same ideology, same encouragement and logistics support, same use of jargon. This is domestic terrorism. She points to evidence that there are more “homegrown” acts of terrorism in America than jihadi terrorism.
Secret Gamer Girl explains how this type of domestic terrorism is applied toward any perceived group of “social justice warriors” (“SJWs”) or those who benefit from SJWs’ discourse: women, minorities, or any other group that is perceived to be “gaining rights” at the expense of white men in America. The individual chooses the nearby group (a black church or a college sorority) that best fits his narrative of victimhood and oppression, then gets to work.
There is another important piece of the puzzle that makes this domestic terrorism, rather than just a whole lot of “lone wolves” acting independently: thought leaders. Secret Gamer Girl lists three major thought leaders who help run the recruitment websites, and who help disseminate the ideas that white men are under attack in America.
But I can’t do her argument justice: I encourage you to read the entire string of tweets here. She is incredibly articulate, and very knowledgeable about the players involved.
She ends her essay with this impassioned plea:
“Mass shootings like the two we’ve had this week are acts of terrorism. Children we have let slip through the cracks fell into the indoctrination programs of hateful, murderous ideologues, marinated in their propaganda for a few years, picked up guns, and went out to kill as many American citizens as they could, […] because they resent the rights and freedoms granted to women, black people, and other marginalized members of our society. The people who indoctrinated them are still indoctrinating others, slowly pushing them towards the same cliff… We need to start […] calling terrorism terrorism. We need to acknowledge that terrorists are pushed into mass murder by their peers.”
Featured image is by John McStravick via flickr, available under this Creative Commons license.
