.png)
Author Information
Media Coverage of Fort Hood: Let's talk about it
David Brook's Op-Ed in the NY Times states that Major Hasan's Muslim identity was "played down" because the media "didn't want the horror to become a pretext for anti-Muslim bigotry."
While I would dispute his assertion that Hasan's Mulsim identity was "played down" (it did not seem played down at all to me), let's suppose, just for a minute, it was.
Brooks' contention that this "playing down" was to protect us from what he describes as a fear that: "If public commentary wasn’t carefully policed, the assumption seemed to be, then the great mass of unwashed yahoos in Middle America would go off on a racist rampage."
I counter this contention that if "protection" was what was being sought, the protection was of a different sort. We are not being protected, as Brooks' contends, from seeing a malevolent narrative "that sees human history as a war between Islam on the one side and Christianity and Judaism on the other." The media exposes us to this narrative daily.
However, we are being protected from challenging this narrative. This narrative relies on an Other, an Other that is conveniently portrayed as living half way around the world in a pre modern state of nomadism and warlords. Our war against this Other is made okay by the idea that we are only trying to help democratize, modernize and, yes, save this Other.
The problem with the Hasan story is that this Othering faces an inconvenient roadblock. Hasan is American, well-educated, and part of our military. Hasan's involvement in this narrative means that we would have to ask to consider why one of "us" could become one of "them" in this war. It means we would have to consider our own culpability as a warring nation in the process of creating enough hatred to spawn terrorism. If Brooks is correct, the protection is not of triggering racism, but of triggering reflection.
Brooks closes with the statement: " It wasn’t the reaction of a morally or politically serious nation." At least on this, we can agree.
For the compelte transcript of David Brooks article go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/opinion/10brooks.html?_r=1&em
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
Printer-friendly version- Topic Tags:
Comments
Obama and Islam?
Andrew,
As the most recent presidential election was gearing up, there were more than a few reports circulating down here in Oz about Barack Obama's 'connections to Islam' and by extension his time in Indonesia (I'm sure the same also happened in the US).
In context to your tidy reading of the US 'id' and the manufactured identity in the public imagination of the Other (in this case, a Muslim Other), do you see any connection between the reporting of Hasan and the fear pedaling that occurred with Obama's heritage? The idea of the cultural 'double agent' is an interesting one when considering colonialities- that fear of resistance from within is a theme that emerges often in the experiences of colonial powers through history. Is this image-massaging perhaps connected to a fear that Obama is (like more than a few US citizens), symbolically at least, potentially a bit like Hasan?
Cheers,
Andrew
unsure...
I am unsure about the connection between coverage of Obama and coverage of Hasan, mostly because I think the coverage of either is so hard to characterize.
I do think that, as a nation, we work too much in simple dichotomies, us/them, black/white, good/evil, democracy/dictatorship, normal/sociopath, etc. These dichotomies undermine the complexity of appreciating our own own complicity in creating injustices that we postion oursleves as trying to understand and/or solve. Inevitably, we then seem to fail in helping to solve much of anything.
Hasan's motives?
When examining the media coverage of the Fort Hood shootings I think the emphasis is primarily focused on the religious beliefs of the supposed shooter. There is mention that he was a psychiatrist in the military but for the most part the story is focusing on the fact that he is a Muslim. As such, the implications are that his religious convictions were his prime motivation to carry out this horrible act. The strange thing about this whole issue (as Andrew is alluding to) is the fact that this guy was an American and a member of the Army, which doesn’t really jive with the usual discourse of “Muslim terrorist” bent on destroying the West. The media coverage that’s emerging now is trying to connect Nidal Hasan with terrorism. Given the fact that the media is constantly vilifying Muslims it only seems logical that they would try to somehow spin this into some sort of terrorism related event, as opposed to possibly explaining this event as someone in the US army that just snapped.
If we look at other homegrown massacres in the US such as Columbine or the Oklahoma City bombings there’s no major focus on the perpetrators’ religious beliefs. In the case of Columbine, the media focused on the fact that the killers were outcasts that were into Marilyn Manson. This was the case despite the fact that the shooters asked some of their victims if they believed in Jesus before they killed them. I’m not saying that Hasan’s beliefs didn’t play a role in all this, however the fact that he was against the wars taking place, he was tormented by colleagues, and was completely against being deployed to Afghanistan seems like a tiny footnote amidst the accusations that he was a religious extremist.
reply to "Hasan's motives"
"I’m not saying that Hasan’s beliefs didn’t play a role in all this, however the fact that he was against the wars taking place, he was tormented by colleagues, and was completely against being deployed to Afghanistan seems like a tiny footnote amidst the accusations that he was a religious extremist."
Well said: I am sure we we will not ever know what made Hasan "snap." However, in light of the possibilities you mention, the postioning of Fort Hood as an example of Islamic extremisim is totally irresponsible.
Post new comment