Troubling analogies (Schroedinger's Terrorist)

[drwex]

If you're not in a mood to hear my thoughts on topics of potential offensiveness feel free to skip. This is politics and social ... stuff I don't have a good word for. This post explicitly discusses rape and other violence.

On the BBC this morning, they were probing various segments of French public opinion toward Muslims in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo Paris murders. Opinions ranged from a far-right politician who made predictable statements about closing "radical" mosques and expelling people who wouldn't "accept French society" to a person who was apparently supposed to represent a more middle-of-the-road point of view, who made the following statement:

Most Muslims aren't terrorists but most terrorists are Muslims and we should not be afraid to examine why.

I found myself rather taken aback by that - instinctively my left/liberal bias is to reject blame of any segment of the population on the basis of actions of some of its members. Then my brain produced the following:

Most men aren't rapists but most rapists are men and we should not be afraid to examine why.

Well, shit. I think I believe the second statement and now I'm trying to figure out whether the first statement is also one I should believe and if not, why not. In particular, pretty much every discussion I've seen of why women may rightly fear strange men (see for example Schroedinger's Rapist) might be applied to French (or American) attitudes towards Muslims with some pretty simple cut-and-paste. Is that right? Is it appropriate?

If that's the gist of the "analogy is correct" argument, I need to probe why the analogy might be wrong. I started to think about possible counter-arguments, and I'm having problems.

One thing that leaps out at me is that most of the victims of terrorism are themselves Muslim. From the recent Taliban massacre of Pakistani schoolchildren to the daily bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan it feels like the vast majority of those killed around the world by terrorists are Muslims. Some of the more targeted attacks such as Charlie Hebdo and some of the general attacks such as the London Tube bombings affect non-Muslims more, but the statistics argue the other way.

Conversely, the vast majority of rape victims are women. It's true that men do rape men, particularly in situations like prison or child abuse, but again the statistics argue that 'men commit rape against women' is the canonical case. So that's a way the analogy is flawed.

Some argue that terrorism is more often fatal and physically injurious. Some rapes are violent and do physical harm to the victim but we've learned that looking for bruises is not a good way to judge if rape happened. But this is a misery contest nobody wins - rape victims may suffer life-long devastating injuries; terrorist victims may suffer life-long devastating injuries. I don't think it's fruitful to try to distinguish along these lines. It is true that laws worldwide almost always treat terrorist offenses worse than sexual assault offenses, but perhaps that's a flaw in the legal system, not in the analogy.

Terrorists often argue that they are using the only means available to them to remedy injustices. There are reports that the NYC shooter thought he was avenging a wrong, and it's clearly true that many people who go to conflict zones such as Iraq or Syria to join the jihadist fight do so because they see it as their only way to respond to perceived aggression by white/western invaders. Perhaps then one way that the analogy fails is that terrorists act out of a political motive where rapists act out of personal motives. This might be right but I feel like I'm on pretty shaky ground here - I'm sure there are people who have done good research on what motivates rapists and terrorists but I don't feel qualified to comment.

But even if I am not, isn't that the thrust of the original comment - that we should investigate the motivations of Muslims? Doesn't that end up lending support to the analogy?

And here is where I feel like I've foundered in the tar pit: I don't know what to think past this point.

Comments

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a survivor of child abuse, and one who has looked at unbiased information gathered from my fellow survivors, I can state with assurance that most rapists are not men.

They are the mothers of the victims.

[drwex]

I am sorry for your personal trauma; I have my own similar things I do not write in open LJ entries.

However, I do not think your or my personal experiences outweigh the statistical findings.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

The statistical findings are that 2 out of 5 members of the general population* are victims of child abuse, and that in 83% of cases the primary abuser was the victim's mother.


(*Three out of five of the prison population. Hardly surprising that child abusers are killed in prison whenever the opportunity arises. Penitentiaries have a terrible record for rehabilitation, but I do have to give them credit for providing closure.)

[ron_newman]

"child abuse" and "rape" are not the same thing, however. Overlapping categories, perhaps.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

You might want to consider who you're making excuses for.

[elfy.livejournal.com]

Can you point out sources for that? I would be interested in reading more about it.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I wish I could. It was too long ago, and I'm lucky to remember where I learned something last month. This brain is a junkyard with no inventory records.

[elfy.livejournal.com]

What I can find (US numbers) is that for "general" child abuse it's more women who are the perpetrators (but it say 53.5% were female, not 83%), but that seems to include all sorts of violence against children, including shaking, malnourishment etc. http://www.safehorizon.org/page/child-abuse-facts-56.html

For rape & sexual abuse I only find numbers that 14% of women are the abusers of boys and 6% of abusers are female if girls are abused. http://www.victimsofcrime.org/media/reporting-on-child-sexual-abuse/statistics-on-perpetrators-of-csa

That is why I wanted to know your sources, it would be interesting to compare and see if that is a country thing or what makes your sources so different in numbers, if there is a bias somewhere or which source seems more reliable. As a victim/survivor myself I am always quite aware of things like that.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Believe me, if I knew the name of the group I'd be in contact with them myself.

I do know that they did not depend on official figures gathered from cases whose prosecutors depend for election on the goodwill of the League of Women Voters; they interviewed survicors of abuse, and took their word over the authorities who decided what constitutes "real" abuse.

I also know that if you have ever had a parent walk in on you without knocking it was specifically to see you naked. There is no innocent reason to do something to you that you have been trained not to do since you could walk.

[drwex]

I understand that this is something you have strong feelings about, but you've strayed from vague unsupported statements to statements that are simply broad-brushstroke wrong and insulting. Let's either move this discussion back in line or end it here please.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to disbelieve in it.

I'll miss you.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

I'd want to see a source on "most terrorists are Muslims", but that's informed by my experiences in the US where Muslims are domestic terrorists, but Christians are "lone wolves" and "mentally disturbed".

[drwex]

I believe that if you simply count the number of attacks in Iraq alone (where bombings in 2012-2014 sometimes reached 12,000 per month) the conclusion is well-supported. It's possible that a very small number of people are committing all these attacks but I find that unlikely, particularly given the number of such acts that involve the suicide of the terrorist.

I haven't done a statistical analysis of terrorist attacks in Western/first-world countries but I believe the conclusion there would also be well-supported. There are clearly counter-examples (DC sniper, Hans Brevik, Unabomber) but all of the WTC attackers were Muslim and there were 20 of those, not counting those who supported and trained them. If you stretch to the point of counting, say, all of the Branch Davidians as terrorists I think that might tip the numbers but I'd argue that many (most?) of them were equally victims of the terrorist leaders there.

[ceo]

Well, in Iraq, pretty much everyone is Muslim, so one would expect most of the terrorists to be.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Yeah. In the US, most people aren't Muslim, so I would expect that most terrorists are not either.

Besides plain old antigoverment stuff, you've got whatever Operation Rescue morphed into, people lynching blacks and murdering gay folks and burning down gay clubs, etc - things that aren't necessarily classed as "terrorism" here in the US but if it were happening anywhere else or with different demographic data, it would be. I am thinking in terms of the US, since that's where I'm living and where I'm paying the most attention to the news. Obviously, attacks in a war zone is likely to involve the groups at war, but here in the US, I don't think "terrorist" attacks are mostly Muslims.

When I think of non-Mulsim terrorism in the US, I can think of plenty of instances besides the Unabomber and the DC sniper without even including not-necessarily-political stuff like Aurora and Newtown - the Bundy supporters who shot cops in Las Vegas, the guy who a plane into the IRS building in TX, anthrax letters in 2001 and ricin a couple of years ago, shootings at jewish and sikh temples, the shooting at LAX. That's just off the top of my head. I think the pentagon shooting a couple of years ago was a 9/11 truther. The white libertarian in NH who was in a standoff for a while with cops/feds. Racist bombing in Coer d'Alene, the recent bombing at the NAACP in Colorado.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

I think it can be tricky trying to tease out political from not, especially when "the government" is a common player in schizophrenic episodes (my cousin who had schizophrenia had lots of hallucinations involving government operatives, and had he lived I could see him being someone like the IRS plane guy was).

We also consider gang violence as different from terrorist attacks. So, a gang fire bombing a house is gang violence. Lone white dude bombing the NAACP, terrorist. There may be nuances I'm missing.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure, but if you're going to try and tease out terrorism from mental illness, you shouldn't limit that to a particular focus for the illness - so someone who has some kind of break and radicalizes with one extremist group vs another should maybe be considered the same if you're looking at it that way.

[aelf.livejournal.com]

To a certain extent I agree - the Unibomber may have diagnosable conditions, but I think his manifesto is coherent enough to categorize him. My cousin's ravings weren't, nor do I think the IRS plane guys were. But that's going to depend a lot on perspective. I'd categorize McVeigh as a Christian extremist, although I don't think that was his driving bias but I think it was inextricably woven into his ideology. Others would just consider him an anti-government terrorist.

I do suspect people have less of a concern about labeling someone as an "anti-government terrorist" rather than a "religious group terrorist" and that people have less concern about labeling someone as a "majority religious group terrorist" vs "minority religious group terrorist" ... but I'm not sure that gets us anywhere either.

[drwex]

This is diving into some very fuzzy territory. I think the prototype for this kind of fuzziness is Major Hassan's shooting at Fort Hood (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Fort_Hood_shooting). Lots of people referred to it as a "terrorist act" but the DoD insist on calling it "workplace violence" and the government even went so far as to fight a lawsuit from families of the victims who wanted that classification.

It's pretty clear that Major Hassan was a Muslim, and was in pretty substantial contact with Anwar Al-Awlaki. This was evidence introduced at his trial and not disputed, afaik. Al-Awlaki was himself labeled a terrorist and assassinated by this same U.S. government.

All of which is to say that "terrorist" is a political label, not a particularly well-defined categorization. More in the next post.

[drwex]

As I commented below I think we do distinguish terroristic acts based on their apparent motivations. rmd I take your original point that if we properly consider terroristic acts in the US then the majority are committed by non-Muslims. I'm just not sure where one can draw the line between "violent crime" and "terrorism" and if that's really a good focus for this discussion.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

Nitpicking here: DC sniper was Muslim (Nation of Islam).

[ron_newman]

That's a war. I'd exclude it entirely from such calculations.

[vibrantabyss.livejournal.com]

I would also like a further breakdown based on motivation. If a terrorist act is committed by follower of religion B, but not because "my religion told me to" (McVeigh) vs an abortion clinic shooting... should you mark those the same way?

But I certainly agree that if someone blows something up because Jesus told them to, regardless of spin, that should be a "Christian Terrorist" tally.

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

There was an interesting analysis of this earlier this year on CNN, after the guy in Kansas City murdered several Jewish people while shouting "Heil Hitler!"

And another analysis:

And so far as Christian terrorism goes, how about the Lord's Resistance Army? The anti-balaka in the Central African Republic? (Granted, a response to the Seleka but the anti-balaka are really terrorists in their own right.) They kill lots and LOTS of people - but the people they're killing are black, so people don't pay lots of attention. (First person who says "It's Africa so it's tribalism, not terrorism!" gets my never-ending scorn.)

And then there's the IRA, who everyone seems to have forgotten about.

delete after reading

[vibrantabyss.livejournal.com]

but again the statics argue that but again the statics argue that

I think you meant statistics

[drwex]

Ayep. Fixed now, thanks.

[vibrantabyss.livejournal.com]

And my brain just injected "and why aren't (gang) rapes counted as terrorist activities?" At least some of what I mark as motivations are remarkably similar to bombings ... "you have offended, and must be taught a lesson, and be a warning to others"

Bracketing added after, as my main-brain isn't sure why gang should matter....

[drwex]

See my response below to frobzwiththingz: I think we (roughly English-speaking society) have made some distinctions between superficially identical criminal acts based on the motivations of the perpetrators.

[ceo]

My problem with the first statement is that it implies that a predilection to terrorism is innate among Muslims, rather than being a reaction to perceived injustices. There was a time not that long ago when a significant percentage of the terrorist attacks in Europe were being committed by Catholics (i.e. the IRA), but I don't think that a lot of "moderate" people were saying "Most Catholics aren't terrorists but most terrorists are Catholics and we should not be afraid to examine why." (I might well be wrong about that.)

[drwex]

I agree that historical period existed, though I'm not enough of a historian to know. I do recall that the height of the IRA's terror campaign overlapped with similar acts committed by and against Algerians, as well as the PLO, Fatah, and various European groups such as Bader-Meinhoff that committed similar acts.

[frobzwiththingz.livejournal.com]

Point one: I think it's pretty silly to be trying to somehow force out some sort of analogous relationship between the causes and demographics of events whose statistical frequencies vary by *many orders of magnitude*.

Point two: I'm quite sure that all those folk who are part of the collateral damage of, say, the Mexican drug cartels, are quite happy and somehow better off because their deaths and injuries somehow escape being labelled "terrorism". Maybe it's because the Mexican drug cartel thugs aren't Muslim. Wouldn't fit the narrative, you know.

[drwex]

I take your point that there's a significant difference in the frequency of occurrence, even if you factor in the large number of car bombings and suicide attacks in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm not sure if that counts as a point against the analogy.

I'm not sure what point you're making with the appeal to wider incidents of violent acts. Are you saying that the first statement (by the Frenchman) is invalid because we have too limited a definition of terrorism? And that if we included the vast numbers of major criminal acts committed worldwide then that would invalidate the assertion about who the majority of terrorists are?

Assuming for the moment that's what you mean, I take the point. Certainly the original UN Convention on Terrorism (https://treaties.un.org/doc/db/Terrorism/english-18-7.pdf - a remarkably short and readable document) defines specific terror crimes in a way that includes what we today call terrorism and today call "violent crime." However, I would counter-argue that the meaning of the word has morphed. You are of an age close enough to myself to remember when the terrorists were left-wing Europeans and Palestinians and the phrase used was "political terrorism". We came to separate a PLO hijacking of an airplane from, say, D. B. Cooper's escapade. I would argue that in 2015 it's not unreasonable for the BBC or that Frenchman to distinguish "violent acts committed in the name of political or religious goals" from "superficially identical violent acts committed in the name of monetary gain."

I think the discussion after the hijackings of 9/11 really drew this bright line. There was a lot of hand-wringing over "what do they want" and an eventual understanding that the people involved in that act were not going to hand over a list of demands to be negotiated. Their goal was terror - causing fear and panic in the target population - as an end in itself. You might argue that Los Zetas or other criminal organizations similarly cause terror, but I think they do that as a means to advance their monetary ends.

And finally, I would argue that this discussion is exactly the sort of "examining why" that was called for. Perhaps I'm arguing myself into agreeing with that Frenchman.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

"instinctively my left/liberal bias is to reject blame of any segment of the population on the basis of actions of some of its members." I can think of some segments you don't apply that bias to. It sounds like you're having an emotional reaction to the statement, looking for evidence to reject it, and not finding enough but sticking with with the emotional reaction. Perhaps it's time to consider that it's a correct analogy?

I find both valid statements. I've done digging into various documents of islamofascist ideology (as distinct from the tenets of the religion) and shaped my opinions from what I've found there.

[drwex]

Perhaps it's time to consider that it's a correct analogy?

Well, yes. That's sort of the point of mustering arguments pro and con. If I only make bad arguments in convincing myself, then that's a disservice. If others can poke holes in my arguments or make better ones then I might be more convinced one way or another.

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

*pebble*

[dcltdw]

Enh. We have plenty of non-Muslim terrorists in the USA, but they're just not labelled as such. "Terrorist" has become a dog whistle for othering non-Whites.

[drwex]

I see that you're not terribly concerned about this, but I think out-of-hand dismissing it, as you appear to be doing here, is somewhat rude. See also my next post.

[dcltdw]

Actually, that post led me here. My derision, such as it is, is not pointed at you -- I think that's an excellent analogy to consider -- but rather, the original statement. I think its a product of believing that one lives in a post-racial society, which neither the USA not France qualifies for. So it's not, to me, an out of hand "this is not worthy of consideration" dismissal so much as a "this fails a basic test" dismissal.

[drwex]

Ah, then I think we'll have to agree to disagree. France has pretty terrible racial problems (see riots) and I've not heard anything from there that sounds anywhere like the utter stupid that emits from the US on this topic. Further, I don't think whether or not the original statement is racist bears on the usefulness of the analogy.

[selenite.livejournal.com]

I thought the "Irish aren't white" meme only applied to pre-1850s. The IRA is regularly labeled terrorists.

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

Perhaps then one way that the analogy fails is that terrorists act out of a political motive where rapists act out of personal motives.

Eldridge Cleaver's ''Rape was an insurrectionary act" in Soul on Ice comes to mind. Also The Red Army's rapes in post-war Berlin had a revenge motive that was both political and personal. And to further blur the categories, rape was used as a form of terror in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. None of these examples justify rape in any circumstance, IMHO.

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

I read all of this.

I feel completely powerless to do anything significant about the hate and cruelty and sadness that humans can create. And I suspect that it's those feelings that make it difficult for me to feel like I have anything of any value to add here. I think what I feel a need to do instead is smile at as many strangers as I can today, and tomorrow, and the next day. I'll hold doors open and let people get ahead of me in traffic. It's not much and likely will do no lasting good, but geez we all need some kindness.